Correa Gomez, M.J.;
(2012)
Lay people, medical experts and mental disorders. The medicalization of insanity through the incapacitation of the mentally ill in Chile, 1830-1925.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
Abstract
By focussing on the judicial evaluation of individual capacity in the context of the colonial curatela de dementes and the republican interdicciOn por demencia this dissertation explores key aspects of the medicalization of insanity in Chile during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines 281 court cases of guardianship and of interdiction through which people were deemed to be mentally incapable and therefore to lack the capacity to engage a `normal life'. It shows some of the varied material, social and professional settings within which classificatory decisions and acts regarding the medicalization of insanity were made in the context of the political and economic transformation of Chilean society during the nineteenth century. It demonstrates that the liberal-republican project which emerged after the independence took particular interest in mental illness and contributed to the development of institutional and judicial frameworks fostering the development of legal categories of incapacity linked to medical notions of insanity. Judicial descriptions of insanity problematized medical knowledge, physicians expertise, and medical diagnostic choices. The analysis of these narratives shows that they were deeply shaped by the daily and subjective experience of insanity and by the fact that they were created and tailored in order to reach a particular aim. Claimants, witnesses and also physicians talked persistently about madness and described the conflicts created by insanity and the aims that motivated their participation in the trial. While lay people usually needed to solve domestic problems, physicians as expert witnesses dealt with the aspiration for truth and professional legitimacy. The exploration of more than 400 certifications of insanity reveals the tensions between the stipulated (or assumed) ontological status of medical knowledge and the subjective nature of the practice of diagnosis. They show the growing influence of medical knowledge and the process of empowerment of physicians in Chilean society, but also shows the key role played by lay people in both, the recognition of physicians expertise and the articulation of a medical diagnosis.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Lay people, medical experts and mental disorders. The medicalization of insanity through the incapacitation of the mentally ill in Chile, 1830-1925 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Permission for digitisation not received |
| UCL classification: | |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1343906 |
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