The author studies Portuguese psychiatry in the period of its institutionalization. It summarizes the international scientific-medical context, showing the progress of medicine, where, in addition to biology, the study of psychogenetic formulations began at the end of the 19th century. It then analyses the national context, including legislation, establishments and their history, regulations, plans for reform, publications and scientific dissemination, and education, highlighting the reform of 1911. The protagonists, their ideas and published works are analysed, trying to show their differences of opinion in various matters, in historical times crossed by social and political conflicts, but of great wealth in the level of ideas. If in the first phase the main figures are heralds of eighteenth-century philosophical and scientific currents, in the second phase new ideas arise that allow the renewal of the relations between neurology and psychiatry, and a more psychological and psychotherapeutic attitude is disclosed. In conclusion, psychiatry, according to a multidisciplinary enlargement, is defining more diverse forms of institutional treatment, with a more inclusive biological vision. |