Essais pour une préhistoire de la psychiatrie au Canada (1800-1885) : suivi d'une anthologie de textes

The authors analyze the eighteenth and nineteenth century Quebec discourse on the subject of insanity. The authors note that in the eighteenth century, the insane were excluded from social contact, with the state recognizing only their indigence. They were relegated either to the "Loges", designed to expiate their sins since insanity was linked to an abuse of mind and body, or to prison for appropriate punishment, since madness was considered to lead to crime. But economic pressures produced by the growing number in indigents, including the mentally ill, led to the creation of the Beauport asylum in 1845. The authors then describe how the urban insane, marginal to both the French and English communities, were placed in private institutions and subjected to a system of profit maximization controlled by bourgeois physicians. This situation, the authors point out, increased the distance between proprietors and occupants, and accounts for the lack of original discourse on the subject of insanity. In addition, the reasoning of the alienist physicians was without scientific foundation, taking root rather in the dominant industrial capitalist ideology. As for the content of the discourse, the Beauport physicians borrowed from moral treatment and restraint system notions, giving them a certain "Quebec character."

Recherches et theories, no. 15

Trois-Rivières, QC

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Département de philosophie

1977

ix-345p.

fr