O palimpsesto da loucura: uma releitura histórico-social da Esquizofrenia

Abstract

with madness, adopting schizophrenia as a paradigmatic case to analyze the persistence of social exclusion in contemporary representations. A qualitative exploratory approach was employed, anchored in bibliographic and documentary review. The formal and epistemological structure of the research adopts Theodor Adorno's essay model, rejecting closed systematization and the pretension of exhausting the object within static categories. The theoretical framework relies on Social Psychology, mobilizing the constructs of social representations, stereotypes, and stigmas. The analysis demonstrates that the spatial and symbolic matrix of exclusion derives from the prophylactic response to leprosy in the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, behavioral deviance was objectified by theological-inquisitorial discourse. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, alienism drove the medicalization of the subject, instituting asylum confinement and the state management of moral treatment. At the turn of the 20th century, biological psychiatry and the subsequent advent of psychopharmacology imposed organic determinism, transmuting moral failure into cerebral anomaly and biological essentialism. In contrast, the anti-asylum movement and anti-psychiatry politicized mental suffering, advocating for deinstitutionalization and the guarantee of civil rights. The results indicate that the stigma of schizophrenia functions as a historical palimpsest. The structural core of rejection of alterity remains fixed, while its justifications undergo discursive updates that adapt segregation to the scientific and control paradigms of each era.