In search of the forbidden fruit: the female representation and the emancipation of women in the discourse of the psychiatrist Porto-Carrero

Abstract

In the midst of reformist proposals in the First Republic, in 1923 the Brazilian League of Mental Health (BLMH) was founded. Among its objectives was the improvement of the alienated care through professional improvement and asylums, a concept based on individual psychic hygiene. Throughout the 1920s, the League moved toward eugenics, prevention and individuals education. The various appropriations of the eugenic theory in Brazil enabled a part of psychiatry to think of mental hygiene divided between "superior" and "inferior" individuals, suggesting segregationist alternatives of control, extending its objectives to all domains of social life. In this scenario, we highlight the psychiatrist Júlio Pires Porto-Carrero (1887-1957), one of the pioneers to study and popularize psychoanalysis in Brazil and coordinator of the first clinic in the country. Based on a dialogue between History and Psychology, the present research aims to analyze the discourse on social representation and the emancipation of women in the conception of this alienist, taking into account their importance as a member of the Brazilian psychiatric elite in the first half of XX century. There is also an attention to his reading and interpretation of Freud. As a methodology, the analysis of the periodical Archivos Brasileiros de Higiene Mental of the Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental and Freud's work will be adopted in order to confront the two authors' considerations regarding feminine issues and to identify the concepts of psychoanalysis that helped in the construction of the Porto-Carrero thought.