This article aims to outline the distinction between ethics and diagnosis in psychoanalysis and in psychiatry, based on the case study of Jacinta Passos (1914-1073), a political militant and writer from Bahia (Brazil) diagnosed as schizophrenic. As a result of that evaluation, she was afterwards excluded from society. We concluded that there are relevant differences between the two disciplines, and that psychoanalysis has important ethical contributions to offer to the field of mental health.
Ethics; diagnosis; politics; psychiatry and psychoanalysis