The Alienist: madness, power and science

Abstract

This article analyzes Machado de Assis short story The Alienist. Centered on the delusions of Simão Bacamarte, a psysician and psychiatrist, in this fiction are reflected the impasses and intentions of the scientific conceptions of the nineteenth century, particularly of the Positivism which has profound links with the birth of the Humanities. On the on hand, the thirst for a scientifically sound explanation of its object, in this case Madness, and on the other the right he attributes himself of arbitrating on Madness and the Mad, and of acing upon these arbitrations with complete and total powers. Machado de Assis' work denounces the link between science and power, as well as the appropriation by men of science of the right each individual possesses of telling his or her own truth. This conducts the story to its final irony: there seem to be more madness in the pretension of establishing clear-cut limits between Reason and Madness than in losing oneself between these proposed limits.