SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
vol.37 issue1Christian psychopathology: psychiatry and knowledge for the sake of salvation in the early years of FrancoismIberian eugenics?: Cross-overs and contrasts between Spanish and Portuguese eugenics, 1930-1950 author indexsubject indexarticles search
Home Pagealphabetic serial listing  

Services on Demand

Journal

Article

Indicators

Related links

  • On index processCited by Google
  • Have no similar articlesSimilars in SciELO
  • On index processSimilars in Google

Share


Dynamis

On-line version ISSN 2340-7948Print version ISSN 0211-9536

Abstract

CAMPOS, Ricardo  and  NOVELLA, Enric. Mental hygiene in early Francoism: from racial hygiene to the prevention of mental illness (1939-1960). Dynamis [online]. 2017, vol.37, n.1, pp.65-87. ISSN 2340-7948.

In this paper, we study the ideological bases of mental hygiene, understood as racial and moral hygiene, during the first years of Franco's regime and their evolution until 1960. First, we discuss the conceptualization of mental hygiene in the 1940s and its role as a tool for the legitimization of dictatorship, revealing the involvement of orthodox Catholicism and its links with moral and racial hygiene. Second, we assess the transformation of mental hygiene during the 1950s towards modernization and a stronger linkage with the dominant trends of contemporary psychiatry without ever leaving the ideological background of Catholicism. For this purpose, we will focus on analysis of the activities of the Mental Hygiene Week held in Barcelona in 1954 and on the creation in 1955 of the National Board of Psychiatric Care, which took on mental hygiene as one of its functions. This paper shows the close relationship of mental hygiene during the early years of Francoism with the political principles of the Dictatorship. The 1940s witnessed the deployment of a harsh discourse in which mental hygiene was a tool for the (moral and spiritual) education of the Spanish people in the political principles of the "New State", pathologizing political dissent and ideologically purifying the country. In the 1950s, Francoist mental hygiene underwent a process of aggiornamento marked by international political events following the defeat of fascism in World War II, advancing a project for (authoritarian) modernization in an international context already directed towards mental health.

Keywords : Mental hygiene; racial hygiene; psychiatric care; mental health; National Board of Psychiatric Care; IV Mental Hygiene Week.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )

 

Creative Commons License All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License