Circulation of ideas about schizophrenia within the psychiatric context of Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s and 1920s.

Abstract

The article examines the circulation of the schizophrenia category in debates and psychiatric spaces in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth century. It analyzes this category in the scientific exchange between Eugen Bleuler and Ernst Kretschmer - observing correspondences between psychodynamic and constitutionalist theories in the European context - and then pursues its use in the Observation Pavilion of the Hospício Nacional de Alienados, in articles and scientific meetings. We investigated how its circulation was simultaneous in scientific and assistance spaces. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that, as occurred in the European context, Brazilian psychiatrists actively participated in the transnational circulation of the schizophrenia category through its appropriation and expanded use of the semantic field "schizo" according to local interests.