“Que tal se os loucos tiverem razão?”: um olhar psicanalítico sobre o messianismo

• Autor(a) principal: Beteille, Irene Moura
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: [e-mail]
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UERJ
• Texto Completo: http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/handle/1/17700
• topic: Psicanálise; Messianismo; Loucura; Psychoanalysis; Messianism; Madness; CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA::TRATAMENTO E PREVENCAO PSICOLOGICA::INTERVENCAO TERAPEUTICA

The divestment from the public sector in mental health devices deployed after the Psychiatric Reform at the turn of the century seems to follow the growth of religious institutions such as the Therapeutic Communities. Theoretically, they aim at hospitalizing drug users as a treatment method. However, in practice, they have become warehouses of members of Foucault’s (1961) "uniform world of Unreason". Would it be a recurrence of what happened four centuries ago in the European countries covered by Foucault? The fact I did part of my doctorate in Germany – the country where Messianism played an important role in the emergence of the Peasants’ War (1526) and where Anabaptists movements (1533) took place during the late Middle Ages – was paramount so that I could draw parallels with the messianism that inspired several revolts in Brazil. I refer to the topic of messianism, which, according to the religion sociologist Lísias Nogueira Negrão (2001), is “the belief in a savior, God himself or his emissary, and the expectation of his arrival, which will end the existing balance, regarded as unfair or oppressive, and establish a new era of virtue and justice”. My interpretation is an effort to, through psychoanalysis, shed light on the Messianic interference in mental health in Brazil – the advent of Pentecostalism and Neopentecostalism. To better understand the context in which those movements took place, I stem from the hypothesis that the drop in external references that fulfilled the function of the S1 in the master's discourse, contributed to the emergence of the prophetic discourse of Messianic leaders. It is similar to what happened to Antônio Conselheiro, who prayed for the return of the monarchical regime by the hands of Princess Isabel, and who was cheered by a mass of men recently freed from slavery, but with no social conditions to exercise their roles as citizens. During the reign of Pedro II, who founded the hospice named after him, the separation then established between medical and religious knowledge was giving way for the scientific discourse to have the upper hand. In some writings by FIOCRUZ (The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation), I was able to verify that this backed the transformation of the initial treatment for madness into the incorporation of eugenic practice imported from the German psychiatry and the creation of death factories, the “Brazilian Holocaust”. My hypothesis is that the growing intolerance towards madness in our society, which has led to the recent increase in policies to confine drug users and psychotic subjects in Therapeutic Communities, differs from the conduct from 400 years ago, that was due to the valorization of reasoning in Protestant countries. Considering Lacan, I investigate a progression to the Worse. At the same time, the colorful world of the Brazilian Unreason denounces, through the hysteric's discourse, the monochromatic life imposed by Messianic leaders on those who plead for masters. After all, as Lacan (1946) points out, if madness is the most faithful companion of freedom, why should madmen exchange such good company for the halter of such scoundrel leaders?!