Insanity and republic in Brazil: the influence of racial theories

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the various ways in which insanity was understood and dealt with in the transitional period from Empire to Republican form of government in Brazil, considering the influence of racial theories imported from Europe hence 1870. The adoption of those theoretical models have played a series of social and political roles with regard to a project of nation-building. In this context, the manifestations of insanity became associated with disease, degeneration and risk and thus submitted to various "scientifically" justified rules of oppression. Until today the scientific interpretations of the problem of "mental disease" continue to ascribe the illness to the patient. By limiting the disease and its cause to a range of problems that are exclusively personal, without considering the social, economical and political context of their emergence, those explanations establish an ideology.