Art, Culture, and Psychopathology: An Introduction to the Anti-Asylum Narrative of Brazilian Psychiatrist Nise da Silveira
Art, Culture, and Psychopathology: An Introduction to the Anti-Asylum Narrative of Brazilian Psychiatrist Nise da Silveira

Summary/Abstract: During the mid-1940s, psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (1905 ‒ 1999) began to challenge psychiatric methods of imprisoning patients and treatments such as lobotomy, electro-shock, and insulin therapy. She translated and introduced Jung's theory to Brazil, after meeting him in Switzerland in 1957, where she also presented her work “Schizo-phrenia in Pictures” at the 2nd International Congress of Psychiatry in Zurich. Nise da Silveira was a pioneer of the process of deinstitutionalizing mental health treatment long before Franco Basaglia's visit and influence in Brazil in the late 1970s. Silveira established the “Occupational Therapy Atelier” at the “Pedro II Psychiatric Center” in Rio de Janeiro in 1946, as well as the “Museum of Images of the Unconscious” in 1952. She questioned the neurological and physiological epistemology of mental disorders, advocating instead for a humanist and psychological approach to subjec-tivity, marking a shift from institutional psychiatry to psychopathology. We investigate how this change was made possible by Jungian psychoanalysis and art therapy, in which the Brazilian psychiatrist discovered alternative types of treatment targeted at understanding and treating mentally ill patients. In this way, we focus on her ability to incorporate culture as a way of expressing and managing subjective pain, especially in the case of schizophrenic patients.

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