A interface entre psiquiatria e literatura na obra de Lima Barreto / The interface between psychiatry and literature in the work of Lima Barreto

AUTOR(ES)

Sergio Rachman

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2010

RESUMO

INTRODUCTION: The medical humanities have been increasingly valued worldwide. However, there are few psychiatric studies in this area in Brazil. The work of Lima Barreto (1881-1922) is important to the psychiatrist because this writer had great contact with the psychiatric medium of his time, because of his fathers mental illness and because of his picture of alcoholism, which led him to two hospitalizations in the National Asylum for the Insane in Rio de Janeiro. In this paper we try to relate the work of Lima Barreto to the historical context of psychiatry and his biography, testing also the hypothesis that the author had cognitive decline expressed in the preparation of his latest book, due to alcoholism. METHODS: The authors work was investigated, and the representations of mental illness analyzed. The theoretical framework used included Mikhail Bakhtins concepts of chronotope and carnivalization. It was also used a software (WordSmith tools 3.0) to find linguistic variables that could be related to cognitive decline of the author. RESULTS: In early works, there is a tendency to characterize mental illness in an idealized or caricatured way, and in the late ones, in a more naturalistic and objective way. The paths of the characters in later novels have more fatalistic tendencies, with lower levels of psychological change of the characters, when compared to the early novels. With the reports of the author on his admission in the psychiatric hospital, we have access to a description of condition of the National Asylum for the Insane, its internals and the character of admissions. It was also observed that there was less lexical diversity in the last work of the author, as measured by the software. CONCLUSIONS: Lima Barretos work is a representative source for those studying the history of psychiatry of the early twentieth century and provides different elements compared to those present in several studies, mainly linked to ideologies critical to psychiatry. The differences in the representations of mental illness at the beginning and the end of the work probably reflect biographical and psychological elements of the author. The finding of lower lexical diversity present in the latest work may be related to cognitive decline of the author.

ASSUNTO(S)

linguística/estatística &dados numéricos psychiatry/history linguistics/statistics &numerical data medicina na literatura psiquiatria/história medicine in literature

Documentos Relacionados

• Revolta e melancolia : uma leitura da obra de Lima Barreto
• Cyro dos Anjos e Lima Barreto : burocracia e patrimonialismo na literatura
• Lima Barreto e a literatura de urgência: a escrita do extremo no domínio da loucura.
• "Ética e literatura na obra de Samuel Rawet"
• Lima Barreto : um mulato intelectual na bruzundanga : um estudo do projeto de literatura militante de Lima Barreto