Saudade de Nise: Memory and Mental Health in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

"Saudade de Nise: Memory and Mental Health in Rio de Janeiro" explores the legacy of pioneer Brazilian psychiatrist Nise da Silveira (1905-1999). Despite great resistance from the psychiatric establishment, she began to lead workshops in painting and sculpture at the asylum in Engenho de Dentro in Rio’s North Zone. Many of her clients (she preferred this word over “patients”) exhibited marked improvement. Several would go on to gain fame in the Brazilian art world. This thesis situates Nise da Silveira within Brazilian psychiatric history, particularly along a trajectory from late 19th and early 20th century eugenics through the psychiatric reform of the 1970s, an anti-asylum movement which continues to this day. Based on two months of ethnographic field work, this thesis tracks Nise da Silveira’s legacy at three centers of mental health: Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente (Museum of Images of the Unconscious), Casa das Palmeiras (House of Palm Trees), and Hotel da Loucura (Madness Hotel). While da Silveira founded the first two spaces in the 1950s as centers of art therapy and research, the minds behind the Hotel da Loucura, founded in 2012, reconceive her methods and apply them to street theater. Considering the 2016 dissolution of the Hotel da Loucura in the face of tensions with the public health system, this thesis examines the significance of Nise da Silveira — and, more broadly, revolutionary psychiatry — in today’s world.