The objective of this article is to demonstrate that a proper understanding of the process of constitution of psychoanalysis requires avoiding explanations that define it a priori as having an intrinsic theoIogicaI, religious character. Thus, it suggest an ethnographic approach that is abIe to identify the constitution of the disciplinary fieId of psychoanalysis and of its Iegitimacy vis-à-vis other knowIedges directed toward the understanding and treatment of mental illness, and shows that in some circunstances psychoanalysis can assume an explicit religious character; in others, a scientific character in the sense Bruno Latour attributes to "scientific facts". Such approach of psychoanalysis is largely responsibIe for its wide spread-up in our society, for wich it has utilized the same resources used by "hard sciences" disciplines.
Psychoanalysis; hard sciences; Bruno Latour; mental illness; anthropoIogy; religion; "scientific facts"