Body and Psychiatric Discourse in the Early Twentieth Century in Uruguay: Insufficiency, Weakness and Adaptation

Abstract

This study analyzes the psychiatric medical discourse and experimental psychology during the twentieth century in Uruguay, as expert knowledge on children and as referents of the pedagogic discourse of that period. As an introduction some key elements of psychiatry in the country are presented; from them, it is stuyed how the dysfunction of the body became the focus of analysis that led to a series of school children´s classifications. The relationship of the dysfunctional body with school learning is at the core of the reflection, and indiscipline and mental weaknesses are taken as elements articulating the psychiatric and psychological discourses with the pedagogical one, through the notion of adjustment disorder.

Keywords

• Cuerpo
• discurso psiquiátrico
• adaptación
• funcionalidad