This paper proposes a debate on deinstitutionalization processes within the field of mental health, positioned within the context of worldwide control society and new forms of power. Construction of a care network that would replace psychiatric hospitals is a challenge that establishes demands that are totally different from those found in lunatic asylums. However, these changes in themselves do not characterize the overcoming of the desire to reproduce, with its insistence on separation. Invention of new care methods calls for plural knowledge that surmounts boundaries between disciplines and faces up to what is instituted in each of us. Within this context, we present work carried out in two residential therapeutic services in two geographical extremities of the country (Porto Alegre and Natal). From these experiences, we believe that clinics should be envisaged at the production level and as fields for experimentation, thereby revealing their dimension of micropolitical resistance.
Mental health; Deinstitutionalization; Contemporary clinic; Biopolitics; Resistance