Classifying the women: psychiatric diagnoses and female subjectivity in the Manicomio Provincial de Málaga, Spain, 1909-1950

Abstract The clinical histories of women’s asylums allow us to deepen the gap between the positivist illusion of psychiatry during the first half of the 20th century in Spain and the subjective experience of the psychiatric internment of doubly subaltern crazy women. Diagnostic classifications were key in this attempt at positivization. This paper aims to point out which subjectifying elements participated in the application of diagnoses such as schizophrenia, psychopathy, and oligophrenia in the women’s wards of the Manicomio Provincial de Málaga, and to show how the hegemonic ideal of femininity established a permeable limit between sanity and madness of women, between assimilations and resistances.

摘要 女性收容所的临床病历档案，可助力我们深入探析20世纪上半叶西班牙精神病学的实证主义幻象，与双重从属的疯癫女性接受精神科住院治疗时的主观体验之间的鸿沟。诊断分类在这场实证化尝试中居于核心地位。本文旨在阐明，马拉加省省立精神病院（Manicomio Provincial de Málaga）女性病区在应用精神分裂症（schizophrenia）、精神病态（psychopathy）、精神发育迟滞（oligophrenia）等诊断时，涉及了哪些主体性建构要素；同时揭示，霸权性女性气质理想如何在女性的理智与疯癫之间、在同化与反抗之间，划定了一道可渗透的边界。