Entre a eugenia e o higienismo

This study analyzes the relationship between eugenics and hygienism in Brazil and how Brazilian psychiatry was constituted within this relationship. Our hypothesis is that there is a common link, traversed by the notion of mental hygiene. It would therefore be necessary to try to combat the supposed forms of physical and mental degeneration at various levels. Methodologically, we start from the analysis of the concepts of eugenics and hygienism and how they became confused, especially in the psychiatric field, with the development of the notion of mental hygiene. In addition to the analysis of articles and essays published in the Arquivos Brasileiros de Higiene Mental, a journal of the Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental, as well as the statute of this entity, we also used authors who have already studied both eugenics and its relationship with psychiatry and hygienism: Costa (2007), Reis (2003), Boarini (2003), Diwan (2007), Stepan (2005), Stern (2016), among other national and international authors. Finally, it is observed that although there may have been a conceptual and practical flexibility, it was precisely at this crossroads that psychiatry became even stronger in its process of institutionalization as a medical discipline.