Musical Therapy in Mental Health of São Paulo: a review on hygiene, psychiatry and discipline in Juqueri hospital, in the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

This article intends to establish in part of history of mental health especially with regard to psychiatry, about how the music and health relations was constituted in Brazil, in the period between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the 1950s. At this context, the music in the Mental Health was articulated at biopolitical practices. Hygienism takes music as an instrument for controlling life and disciplining bodies; establishing preventive discourses, mental practices such as the experiences at the Juqueri Psychiatric Hospital as well as defenses and criticism of “melotherapy”, music pharmacopoeia and the modern music. Two works one by Carvalhal Ribas and another by Mário de Andrade, were the main bibliographical sources of this research on the trajectory of musical experiences in health, which briefly mentions some psychiatrists of the time and some of their most influential ideas in that historical period.