A cruz no laboratório da ciência: religião e poder no Hospital Psiquiátrico São Pedro

Abstract

This dissertation intends to analyze the internal relations of power in Hospital Psiquiátrico São Pedro, in Porto Alegre, throughout the twentieth century, seeking to understand how the religious of the Congregation of St. Joseph earned its place in an institution for the scientific treatment of insanity. The narrative follows two trajectories: one of these nuns and a patient. Both lived the first years of their lives in the colonization and immigration region of Rio Grande do Sul, and later, for different reasons, spent many time in the hospital. Sister Paulina is more than 60 years working in São Pedro, while Anninka was hospitalized in the same institution during four intermittent periods, for about 38 years. Through these characters, I tried to reconstruct the moments of tension and harmony between these two theoretically distinct fields (science and religion), fields that, for decades, have walked so closely linked in Rio Grande do Sul asylum space. In the routine of an institution of great proportions, with all the problems common to other asylums built in Brazil since the second half of the nineteenth century, even the internees themselves took roles in several areas, becoming important aides of São Pedro ́s administration staff – especially the Sisters. Research for this work was made by official documentation linked to the Hospital, the specialized historiography on the subject and, crucially, through interviews with doctors, staff, a former patient and Sister Paulina, which were granted to the author especially for this investigation.