Cultural history of psychiatry, the use of the paradigmatic case in a ?from below? history: the case of J.M.O. Córdoba, Argentina (1892-1915).

FERRARI FERNANDO JOSÉ

Angers

Encuentro; 34th Annual Meeting of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences; 2015

European Society for the History of the Human Sciences

As much Foucault, in his Histoire de la folie à l´âge classique (1961), as Goffman with his ?Asylums? (1961) and Thomas Szasz (1961) with The myth of Mental Illnes: Fondations of a theory of personal conduct, they make a critic to the mythological history of psychiatry and introduce rich discussions about the psychiatric power and constrictive force of medical practices on madness. The Works of Robert Castel and Klaus Dörner extended the problems introduced and developed a social history of psychiatry that included the external aspects of the practice of psychiatry. In our case we agree in many ways to a Cultural History of Psychiatry, proposed by Rafael Huertas in his ?Cultural history of psychiatry. Re-Thinking madness? (2012). His work is indebted of the mentioned works of Critical History. One of the main premises of this type of approach proposes a selection of archival documents, which have been used sparingly when researching about history of psychiatry. We mean: Medical records, aministrative Records, Criminal Proceedings etc... the main objective of these approach is to seek a psychiatric history that contemplate practice as presented in these records. So we will pay less attention to the Great Treaties and Great characters. One of the main effects of these kind of histories is that enables you to know the conditions in which psychiatric practice is carried out. Health, academic, educational and government institutions, as well as medical knowledge can be acknowledge ?from below?". We can say institutional macro phenomena can be understood from singular events, that Foucault called capillarity events. It is from this perspective that we analyze the JMO case. A case of a Civil prosecution that took event between 1892 and 1915 in Cordoba, Argentina. The case is part of a series of 78 documents of Civil prosecution that covers the period from 1758 to 1930 in Cordoba, Argentina. We will reconstruct the way in which the psychiatric device was built. The J.M.O. case can be interpreted as an exemplary case that will show: 1) The discussions about the diagnosis and the emergence of the first applications of diachronic criteria of Jules Falret. 2) The view that the patient himself has of his disease and 3) The local particularities of the psychiatric device, a) The presence of religious discourse in health institutions, b) The absence of an asylum c) The systematic travels of mental ill patients to Buenos Aires asylums.