Abstract

BELTRAN, María José. The intervention of psychiatry in the treatment of difficult children in the Uruguay (1930-1950). Psicol. Conoc. Soc. [online]. 2018, vol.8, n.2, pp.25-38. ISSN 1688-7026.  https://doi.org/10.26864/pcs.v8.n2.3.

The article presents and discusses the intervention of psychiatry in the approach of difficult children, understood as those that showed deviant behaviors: they were restless, distracted, apathetic or undisciplined.

Concerned about childhood as the future of the nation, psychiatry tried to detect these children through the application of tests and implement corrective measures to channel them.

These events will be analyzed from the notion of medicalization, understood as the expansion of medical knowledge to various non-medical fields as well as the definition of problems as deviations. This process was due to the consolidation of psychiatry in the period and a sociopolitical demand to address behaviors that could threaten social progress.

Keywords : Psychiatry; Medicalization; Childhood; Deviant.

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