El encierro institucionalizado

Abstract

The goal of this document consists in analyzing two of the organizational components for the psychiatric practice; these components are the discipline and the confinement Foucault (1967). The psychiatric instance has been welcomed by the institutional system of our societies, and it is now when its seems appropriate to browse the path by which madness has become institutionalized, so this is way the psychiatric institution should be analyzed from the components that guarantee its legitimate functionality. The confinement implications for the patient mental experience are shown, supported on the process described by Goffman (1972), declaring that when an individual assumes the patient role in the psychiatric institution, he begins a journey thought several stages trying to adapt himself into the new situation brought by his status as an internal; this situation is also framed by the foundations which legitimate the psychiatric hospital. It can be concluded that it is important to open a debate around the patient’s subjective construction during his permanence into the psychiatric institution.