Higiene mental infantil y psicoanálisis en la clínica de conducta, Santiago de Chile, 1936-1938

Abstract

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.