The search of the stone of madness: notes about the process of psychiatry biologization

Abstract

Contemporary psychiatry is marked by a biologicist tendency with special use of psychotropic in the treatment of its supposed illness. In this sense, the aim of this paper is to analyze, within the historical constitution of psychiatry, its search for the organic origin of mental disorders, from Philippe Pinel’s theory of alienism and Benedict-Augustin Morel’s theory of degeneracy. Thus, inspired by the genealogical foucaultian perspective, this article intends to present clues about the way of the biologization of psychiatric speeches and practices, who arrive the 21st century in the current classification system of mental disorders, which nourishes the biomedical paradigm and promote the banalization of diagnosis and the widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs.