The article problematizes Brazilian psychiatric thought on hysteria in the early decades of the twentieth century, a time when a biopolicy of population management was lending impetus to the growth of social medicine. This notion is situated within the context of the nineteenth-century debate on hysteria that took place in major European centers and served as the main reference for Brazil's fledgling field of psychiatry. The debate found expression in Brazilian psychiatric discourse as part of the era's project for medical reform and prevention in Brazil. The work of Brazilian neurologist Antônio Austregésilo (1876-1960) within this project is also addressed, since he played a fundamental role in dismantling hysteria as a diagnostic category in psychiatry, a process that continued through the entire Old Republic.
hysteria; biopower; psychiatry; Antônio Austregésilo (1876-1960); Brazil