Lavagem cerebral: ciência, mito e pseudociência do controle psicológico / Lavado de cerebro: ciencia, mito y pseudociencia del control psicológico / Brainwashing: science, myth, and pseudoscience of psychological control

Resumo O interesse pela possibilidade de reconfigurar a mente humana foi recorrente na história da humanidade, sob diferentes formas aliadas principalmente à religião, à guerra e à política. Somente a partir de 1950, entretanto, é que psicólogos, psiquiatras e outros pesquisadores se dedicaram com maior profundidade ao tema, popularizado pelo termo genérico de lavagem cerebral. O objetivo deste artigo é revisar as bases teórico-conceituais e metodológicas desses esforços, assim como sua manifestação atualizada na psicologia social, quando se busca a modificação de atitudes, crenças e comportamentos. São analisados criticamente os usos da lavagem cerebral para gerar mudanças significativas por técnicas de pressões psicológicas e tortura física, os mitos de sua implementação e sua (ir)reversibilidade.

Resumen El interés por la posibilidad de reconfigurar la mente humana ha sido recurrente en la historia de la humanidad, en diferentes formas, principalmente aliadas a la religión, la guerra y la política. Sin embargo, sólo después de 1950, psicólogos, psiquiatras y otros investigadores se dedicaron con mayor profundidad al tema, popularizado por el término genérico de lavado de cerebro. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar las bases teórico-conceptuales y metodológicas de estos esfuerzos, así como su manifestación actualizada en la psicología social, cuando se busca modificar actitudes, creencias y conductas. Se analizan críticamente los usos del lavado de cerebro para generar cambios significativos a través de técnicas de presión psicológica y tortura física, los mitos de su implementación y su (ir)reversibilidad.

Abstract The interest in the possibility of reconfiguring the human mind has been recurrent in the history of humanity, in different forms, mainly allied to religion, war, and politics. Only after 1950, however, did psychologists, psychiatrists, and other researchers dedicate themselves in greater depth to the topic, popularized by the generic term brainwashing. The aim of this paper is to review the theoretical-conceptual and methodological bases of these efforts, as well as their updated manifestation in social psychology, when one seeks to modify attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The uses of brainwashing to generate significant change through techniques of psychological pressure and physical torture, the myths of its implementation, and its (ir)reversibility, are critically analyzed.

From achievement to power: David C. McClelland, McBer & Company, and the business of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), 1962-1985.

During the 1960s, Harvard psychologist David McClelland focused his research and business endeavors on increasing the need for achievement in small businesspeople, with the goal of fostering economic success in the developing world. However, by the early 1970s, McClelland would focus almost entirely on developing executives' need for power in the United States. In this paper, I argue that underlying this shift was McClelland's dedication to the project of behavioral engineering and a newfound belief that training individuals in the responsible exercise of leadership and managerial power had become the most effective path to achieving his liberal political aims.

Higiene mental infantil y psicoanálisis en la clínica de conducta, Santiago de Chile, 1936-1938 / Child mental hygiene and psychoanalisis at the clinic of conduct, Santiago de Chile, 1936-1938

Tomando en cuenta la importancia del estudio situado en historia de las ciencias, en este artículo se explora una temprana iniciativa de higiene mental infantil en Chile que aun no ha sido abordada por la literatura especializada: la Clínica de Conducta, fundada en Santiago en 1936 como parte de la Escuela Especial de Desarrollo, la cual había sido creada por la Reforma Educacional de 1928. La Clínica de Conducta puso en marcha un programa estatal de higiene mental infantil que incluía como referencia central al psicoanálisis, en un periodo en que no era habitual encontrarlo en la bibliografía médica local. Se analizará aquí el contexto de creación de estos servicios, así como los modos en que la higiene mental y el psicoanálisis fueron apropiados y utilizados en una institución cuyo principal interés no era la defensa o legitimación de una teoría, sino el abordaje de problemáticas sociales como la delincuencia y la educación infantil. Aparecen así algunas características de la historia de los saberes psi en Chile, mostrando cómo se despliegan en el escenario de problemáticas sociales y cómo se vinculan con el devenir de otras disciplinas y prácticas como la criminología y la pedagogía (AU)

Taking stance in a situated perspective, this article looks into one of the first Chilean state initiatives aimed at the study and care of child psyche. This institution that has not yet been explored by specialized literature: the Clinic of Conduct, founded in the city of Santiago in 1936 as part of the Special School of Development, which was created in the context of a the Educational Reform of 1928. The Clinic of Conduct launched a state managed mental hygiene programme that included psychoanalysis as its main reference at a time when psychoanalysis was not yet a regular reference in the local medical world. We are thus interested in analysing context in which this initiatives were created and the ways in which mental hygiene and psychoanalysis were appropriated and used in an institution in which the principal interest was not the defence or legitimation of a singular theory, but the approach to specific social problems such as child delinquency and education. Some characteristics of the history of psy knowledges in Chile emerge from this study, showing how they unfold on the scenario of social problems and how they relate to other disciplines and practices such as criminology and pedagogy (AU)

The Surgical Elimination of Violence? Conflicting Attitudes towards Technology and Science during the Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s.

ARGUMENT: In the 1970s a public controversy erupted over the proposed use of brain operations to curtail violent behavior. Civil libertarians, civil rights and community activists, leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, and some U.S. Congressmen charged psychosurgeons and the National Institute of Mental Health, with furthering a political project: the suppression of dissent. Several government-sponsored investigations into psychosurgery rebutted this charge and led to an official qualified endorsement of the practice while calling attention to the need for more "scientific" understanding and better ethical safeguards. This paper argues that the psychosurgery debate of the 1970s was more than a power struggle between members of the public and the psychiatric establishment. The debate represented a clash between a postmodern skepticism about science and renewed focus on ultimate ends, on the one hand, and a modern faith in standards and procedures, a preoccupation with means, on the other. These diverging commitments made the dispute ultimately irresolvable.

The role of the concentration camps in the Nazi repression of prostitutes, 1933-9.

This article uses prostitutes as a case study in order to investigate the role of the early concentration camps as centres of detention for social deviants. In contrasting the intensification of repressive policies towards prostitutes against narratives which demonstrate the unexpectedly lax treatment of these women, it explores what the reasons behind these contradictions might have been, and what this demonstrates about the development of these institutions. It asks the following questions. How and why were prostitutes interned? Which bureaucrats were responsible for incarcerating these women and what did they view the role of the camp to be? Were such policies centrally directed or the product of local decision-making? Through asking these questions, the article explores to what extent these camps were unique as mechanisms for the repression and marginalization of prostitutes.

Biopolítica e medicalização dos anormais / Biopolitics and medicalization of abnormal ones

O artigo aborda a temática da medicalização dos sofrimentos e das anomalias comportamentais numa perspectiva histórica. Analisa a emergência de uma nova configuração epistemológica do saber psiquiátrico ocorrida na segunda metade do século XIX. Tomando como ponto de partida os estudos sobre biopolítica da população de Foucault e Agamben, as reflexões de Canguilhem sobre as fronteiras difusas da normalidade e o curso que Foucault dedica aos anormais, o artigo estuda o surgimento de uma psiquiatria ampliada relacionada ao não-patológico. São analisados os Anais de Higiene e Medicina Legal e os Anais Médico-Psicológicos, publicados na França entre os anos de 1857 e 1924, com o objetivo de compreender de que modo foi construída essa medicina das condutas e quais foram as estratégias biopolíticas defendidas pelos teóricos da degeneração.

This paper approaches the thematic of the medicalization of sufferings and behavioral anomalies from an historical perspective. It analyzes the emergency of a new epistemological configuration of psychiatric knowledge that emerged in the second half of the 19th Century. Taking as starting point the studies on biopolitics of the population of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, the inquires of Georges Canguilhem about the diffuse borders between the normal and the pathological, and the course that Foucault dedicates to Les anormaux, this paper studies the sprouting of an extended psychiatry related to the non pathological dimension. The Annales dïhygiéne publique et de médecine legal and Annales Médico-Psicologiques, published in France between years 1857 and 1924, are analyzed with the goal of understanding the way by which it was constructed this medicine of the behaviors and those biopolitical strategies defended by the theoreticians of the degeneration.

O corpo e a construção das desigualdades de gênero pela ciência / The body and the construction of the unevenness of gender by science

Este trabalho analisa, a partir de uma revisão bibliográfica assistemática, como a distinção entre o corpo masculino e o feminino produzida pela ciência desde o século XIX, especialmente pelo discurso e prática médica, enunciadores legítimos dos desígnios naturais dos corpos, vem contribuir para a construção de uma inferioridade do corpo feminino que legitima desigualdades de gênero vigentes nas sociedades tradicionais que, de algum modo, ainda se reproduzem ou permanecem na contemporaneidade.

This paper analyzes, from an unsystematic literature review, how the distinction between male and female body produced by science since the 19th century, especially through the discourse and practice of medicine, legitimate enunciators of bodily legitimate designs, can help make the construction of inferiority of the female body that legitimizes gender inequality in traditional societies that, somehow, still reproduce or remain in the contemporary world.

Limit setting in mental health: historical factors and suggestions as to its rationale.

The task of enforcing behavioural limits in mental health settings is widely regarded as necessary but also potentially counter-therapeutic. There has been little discussion of the ideological basis for limit setting in psychiatry, and this paper attempts to locate the progress of this ideology from the moral treatment movement to contemporary medicalized psychiatry. It is suggested that limit setting has its foundations in the Enlightenment tradition of the autonomous individual and the power of reason, and in the dual functions of psychiatry as a therapeutic and social control system. The account draws on the work of critical psychiatry, as well as on recent research concerning the discourses and practices of mental health nurses, and concludes that these dual functions are inherent to the psychiatric project.

The social control of behavior control: behavior modification, Individual Rights, and research ethics in America, 1971-1979.

In 1971, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights began a three-year study to investigate the federal funding of all research involving behavior modification. During this period, operant programs of behavior change, particularly those implemented in closed institutions, were subjected to specific scrutiny. In this article, I outline a number of scientific and social factors that led to this investigation and discuss the study itself. I show how behavioral scientists, both individually and through their professional organizations, responded to this public scrutiny by (1) self-consciously altering their terminology and techniques; (2) considering the need to more effectively police their professional turf; and (3) confronting issues of ethics and values in their work. Finally, I link this episode to the formation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, whose recommendations resulted in changes to the ethical regulation of federally funded human subjects research that persist to the present day.

Norma e cuidado de si: Foucault e a história das práticas de subjetividade / Standard and self care: Foucault and the history of practices of subjectivity

A proposta deste trabalho é estudar a visão de Foucalt sobre uma história das práticas de subjetividade, situando suas formulações acerca das relações entre sujeito e norma e sujeito e ética. Trata-se da perspectiva foucaultiana de subjetividade que implica a recusa de uma teoria a priori do sujeito. Inicialmente, examinam-se as práticas de normalização do sujeito, pois constituem uma engrenagem político-científica, orientada pela noção de vida como realidade própria da existência do homem. São analisadas duas modalidades de práticas da norma. Na primeira, acompanham-se os escritos foucaultianos sobre a medicalização do corpo propiciada pelas teorias e práticas anátomo-patológicas. Trata-se, na segunda, da medicalização da sociedade a partir das práticas de prevenção e segurança social. Sobre as relações entre subjetividade e ética, analisa-se a pesquisa de Foucault sobre as formas de subjetivação das sociedades gregas antigas. Nesse estudo, Foucault explora a prática do cuidado de si como princípio da experiência moral na Antigüidade, procurando mostrar modelos de prática éticos como forma de constituição de si como sujeito. Procura-se, nas duas modalidades de experiências subjetivas relativas à norma e à ética, insvestigar os seguintes aspectos: 1) estatuto ontológico do sujeito; 2) princípio de subjetivação; 3) técnicas de constituição de si; 4) objetivo do trabalho de si sobre si.

Culture as metaphor: company culture and business strategy at Raleigh Industries, c. 1945-60.

This study of Raleigh Industries, one of the leading bicycle manufactures in the world in the immediate post-war years, argues that its business strategy was in part shaped by a managerial commitment to a dominant company culture which was deeply embedded in Raleigh's history. Using the notion of culture as metaphor, the paper examines the way that core values in the company acted as a guide in the setting of organisational goals and, intended or unintended, impinged upon company performance. In many respects, the culture guided the company well, but our study shows a number of ambiguities, tensions and contradictions between culture and strategy which had negative effects on company behaviour. Thus, Raleigh's attachment to personal capitalism constrained its capacity expansion programme, and, while it adopted what appeared to be a progressive education and training policy, it in effect trained workers for the past rather than the future.