O cuidado dos mortos: uma história da condenação e legitimação do espiritismo

Spiritualizing psychiatry: Transpersonal psychology, DSM, and Brazilian research about spirituality

“…Since the second half of the twentieth century, there have already been huge efforts conducted by Kardecian Spiritist physicians to legitimize and introduce its practices and health models in mainstream psychiatric institutions (Aureliano and Cardoso, 2015). However, given that this was a topic already addressed by important Brazilian psychiatrists at the beginning of the twentieth century from a pathological viewpoint (Giumbelli, 1997), the Kardecian Spiritist physicians could not achieve their goals regarding the main scientific institutions. To be able to persuade their academic peers and raise funds for their research on spirituality, contemporary psychiatrists felt the need to legitimize their scientific endeavor through other connections: by referring to a category in the main diagnostics manual of North American psychiatry.…”

“…The psychiatrists diagnosed these religious practitioners as mentally ill and understood possessive and mediumistic practices of these religions as symptoms of mental illness (Dantas, 1988). From the 1930s onward, the topic began to be addressed more and more by anthropologists from a cultural perspective, starting a process that would displace the possessive and mediumistic practices from the medical pathological discourse to the anthropological one (Giumbelli, 1997). At the same time, although there was a parallel development of Kardecist psychiatric practice starting in the 1950s, with the creation of medical Spiritist associations and hospitals that apply a conventional psychiatric treatment with complementary mediumistic practices nowadays (Aureliano and Cardoso, 2015), this 'spiritualistic medicine' did not find its way to universities and medical scientific research in Brazil.…”