The intervention of psychiatry in the invention of the dangerous subject 1930-1945

Abstract

In the 1930s, Uruguay faced the consequences of the 1929 crisis. A series of devices were created to account for the behaviors considered deviant, which became a focus of concern and intervention. Alcoholism, syphilis, unwanted immigration, begging, vagrancy, madness, were quickly associated with criminal behavior that threatened the consolidation of the nation. This type of behavior became a focus of vigilance under the paradigm of social defense. The categorization of these behaviors "deviated" by criteria that demarcated the normal and the pathological, generated an increasing medical intervention for its management: psychiatry became the institutional depository of the determination of dangerousness. The article will address how the biopolitical intervention of psychiatry was formatted in the characterization and design of preventive strategies that focused on the dangerous subject.