Dehumanization, Segregation and Emotions in Past European Psychiatric Institutions

This paper investigates the lived experiences of individuals confined within two major European psychiatric institutions, Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Portugal and the Cadillac-sur-Garonne psychiatric hospital in France, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using a people-centred approach, we integrate spatial analysis, archival research, material culture and oral testimony to examine how these institutions worked as spaces of social segregation and emotional discipline. Rather than viewing psychiatric hospitals just as sites of medical care, we critically assess their roles in reinforcing sanist, classist and gendered systems of control. Internment partly erased legal, social and personal identities, to an extent attempting to render patients ‘non-persons’. We want to change the current perspective about the dimensions of institutional life by highlighting the dehumanization, mortality rate and emotional experiences of the individual inside these institutions. We support an archaeology that acknowledges the structural violence of such institutions and the resilience of those who lived within them, seeking to restore voice and dignity to marginalized histories.