Loucura e estigma à luz da obra Dom Quixote de La Mancha.

Abstract

The ways of perceiving madness throughout history have little contributed to the mental health Field and to the possibility of enjoying the concept of welfare to its fullest. It's possible that the work of Miguel de Cervantes can contribute to another way of understanding and seeing this type of experience. Methodology: This paper is categorized as a theoretical study having the reflexions on madness in the work of Dom Quixote de La Mancha, Cervantes (2012) as its core. This study discusses the concept of madness based on the ideas of Foucault (2014) and on the mythical-religious model proposed by Pessotti (1994) and tries to find a way to contextualize the vision of madness and the norms of social control in the 1500s, when Cervantes' work, the core of the study, was produced. Based on that work, the norm and the concepts of pathological and stigma are counterpointed with the ideas of Canguilhem (2010) e Goffman (1990). Results and discussion: Dom Quixote, Who lived between the XVI e XVII century, was a victim of a changing world, marked by the transitioning to the Middle Ages. At that time, society would dictate the fate of the mentally ill, mainly sending them to jails and banishing them from society due to the fact that they would have ideas and behaviors that, in most cases, used to shock and go against the norm, and therefore, having their freedom and possibility of experiencing welfare taken away from them. In the Middle Ages, they had ships that would take the mad ones to other cities and they'd walk around with no perspective, and would be judged by their errant ways, especially due to the fact that madness used to be associated with the devil. Dom Quixote, on the other hand, tried to make the most of his experience besides the historical context he was in. Conclusion: The discussion about madness in the work of Dom Quixote reveals the experience of the unknown, going through reasonable and unreasonable, making it possible to see positivity in the madness.