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Critical history of hypnosis in psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, between 1930 and 1970 (abstract: p. 14)

The objective of this study was to analyze the history of the use of hypnosis, as a clinical practice, in the Psychiatric Clinic of the School of Medicine, at the University of São Paulo (USP), between 1930 and 1970. There was a transition in psychiatry in São Paulo in this period, when the activities of the Juqueri Hospital were transferred to the School of Medicine at USP. This was decisively supported on the symbolic power of the psychiatric speech, which took over the axiom “scientific being” as an evaluative filter to appreciate or depreciate certain practices. Hypnosis remained immune to the “scientific” sieve of the same psychiatrists who adopted it as a clinical practice without submitting it to the same scrutiny applied to other practices, especially psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. By means of documents produced in the analyzed period, the authors aimed at identifying the thrust of these psychiatric speeches, pervaded with their so-called scientific dimension, which culminated in a strategy to either keep or not keep certain practices, such as hypnosis.

Hypnosis; History of psychiatry; Antônio Carlos Pacheco e Silva; History of clinical psychiatry FMUSP; History of psychotherapy


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