Almas enclausuradas : práticas de intervenção médica, representações culturais e cotidiano no Sanatório Espírita de Uberlândia (1932-1970)

Abstract

The proposal of this work is to think about how madness and its institutionalization happened in Uberlândia. This discussion involving madness as the thematic still is current and intriguing for all that it represented and still represents in our society. Doubts have appeared intensely around the great unknown that involves the madness. Which are the indications that evidence madness? Or even, madness really exists? Many other investigations are placed, also questioning the medical speech, that before was presented as winning, as also its practices and curative techniques. On the other hand, today we can observe how much the debates of other society segments had been important, because, in a way or another, they had not accepted the imposition of psychiatric knowledge. This research was originated from a vast documentation found in the Sanatório Espírita de Uberlândia, institution established in 1942 and deactivated in middle 90´s. They are 29 books containing innumerable handbooks of the interns from 1942 to 1959. In this documentation we find information about the reason of the internment, report from the responsible for the sheltered, theirs diagnostics and the prognostics, therapeutical methods used, among other informations. Having in mind these documentation possibilities of analysis, the field of reflection used in this research has as premise to work with complex speeches that had been elaborated about the insanity present in Uberlândia and understand how it made possible the institutionalization practical.