O alienista
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| "O Alienista" | |
| Author | Machado de Assis |
|---|---|
| Country | Brazil |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Genre(s) | Short story |
| Published in | Papéis avulsos |
| Publication type | Anthology |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | 1882 |
"O Alienista" ("The Psychiatrist") is a novella (a narrative fictional narrative longer than a short-story and shorter than a novel) written by Brazilian author Machado de Assis. It was first published in 1882 as part of the Papéis avulsos.
Published a year after Machado's first major novel, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, The Psychiatrist is a tragicomic literary piece on madness, scientism and power. It follows the scientific efforts of Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a prominent Portuguese physician whose obsession for discovering a universal method to treat and consequently cure pathologic disturbs drives inhabitants of the small Brazilian town of Itaguaí to fear, conspiracy and revolutionary attempts. In a short space of time, Bacamarte's madhouse, popularly named "Green House", passes to take inside of its walls not only mentally ill patients but also healthy citizens who, according to the doctor's diagnoses, are about to develop some sort of mental illness. Porfírio, the town's barber, indicts Bacamarte for his corruptive influence over the Municipal Assemlency, which since the beginning approved the experiments taken place at the Green House, "the Bastille of human Knowledge".
The Psychiatrist stands out as a highly ironic critic to the arbitrary of Scientism and its influence on cultural and political matters; Machado himself was very skeptical about the mechanistic tendency of science to explain and even predict human actions, exposing man to a determinist analysis. Here, as in both previous and posterior works of Machado de Assis, is quite noticeable the influence of British pre-romantic digressive style of Sterne. Machado also based some scenes of this novella in historical references, prominently the French Revolution.
