Disparate emotions? The play of emotions in clinical histories and patients’ letters (Pinel Sanatorium, SP/Brazil – 1929–1944)

Abstract The Pinel Sanatorium, the brainchild of Doctor Antonio Carlos Pacheco e Silva, a leading figure in Brazilian psychiatry, was inaugurated in 1929 in São Paulo as a private institution. It operated until 1944, during which time it recorded approximately 4,500 hospitalisations. In 30 psychiatric records, in addition to the usual clinical records, such as the Psychiatric Examination – in which the doctor records the elements he deems essential for identifying the mental illness from different sources of information, such as those provided by family members – attachments were found containing letters and short texts written by the inpatients. Addressed to different people, these letters, which were retained and evaluated by the doctors, played a central role in assessing the psychiatric conditions of the inmates. However, by being considered historical sources that reveal the ‘point of view’ of the mad, these documents are fundamental to the development of innovative approaches in the field of the history of madness and psychiatry. Based on the articulation between the context in which these records were produced, the social markers of difference that constitute the subjects, as well as the emotions expressed by the people who wrote them, the article sets out to answer two questions: (1) How the emotions expressed – both by the inmates and by their loved ones – were interpreted by psychiatrists and used to formulate diagnoses, and to define treatments and prognoses; (2) What meanings these emotions took on for the inmates themselves, in other words, how they put their experiences and subjectivities on display.