Histories of Psychiatry in Latin America: New Trends

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel explores a variety of new methodologies and approaches to the history of psychiatry in Argentina, Mexico, and the Cuban diaspora in the United States and promises to deepen our understanding of the development and practice of psychiatry inside and outside of the asylum. Marco Ramos considers mental health outside of the traditional hospital in his examination of the deployment of psychoanalysis in military trials of conscripts accused of homosexuality during the last dictatorship. Alejandra Golcman and Teresa Ordorika, looking at Argentina and Mexico respectively, offer detailed and exhaustive analyses of clinical records and intake forms in order to clarify how psychiatric theory shaped clinical practices and patient experiences inside hospitals. Finally, Jennifer Lambe explores the psychiatric confinement of a 100 Cuban ‘Mariel’ migrants and places their experiences into broader transnational narratives and perspectives. In sum, these works represent significant and original contributions to our understanding of how mental health practices have operated in diverse institutional and political settings.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Chair

• Jonathan D Ablard, Ithaca College

Individual Presentations

• The Intimacy of Cold War Power: Psychoanalysis and Barrack Life in Argentina - Marco A Ramos, Yale University

• The Mariel Crucible: Psychiatric Dehospitalization between the U.S. and Cuba - Jennifer L Lambe, Brown University

• Modos de interpretar y actuar ante los trastornos psiquiátricos en Argentina del siglo XX: las historias clínicas como fuentes - Alejandra Golcman

• Medical Narrative of Hysteria: An Analysis of the Intake Forms and Clinical Files of Patients at the Castañeda Hospital, Mexico City (1910-1968) - Teresa Ordorika Sacristán, CEIICH-UNAM