What do Ibero-american Madmen Express? Narrative Sources and Their Possible Approaches

Abstract

This article presents an overview of recent historiography on madness and psychiatry, with a special emphasis on works that examine the narratives of individuals who were deemed insane. The authors of the works under consideration all analyzed patients’ letters, diaries and notebooks. Our focus is on works from Ibero-American countries from the end of the twentieth century until the present, with special attention on major currents and trends in the recent historiography. Two areas merit special attention here: a concern for conceptualization of the words madness and madman and themes and privileged narratives. The goal is to understand both the similarities and differences in historical production across different national realities.