Medicine, Anthropology and the moral order in 19th century Spain

Abstract

Based on the idea that the emergence of the modern sciences of mind is the result of a complex historical process of constitution, secularization and naturalization of the psyche, this article examines the conditions for the deployment of medicopsychological discourses and the origins of disciplines such as mental medicine, experimental psychology and neuroscience in the specific context of nineteenth century Spain. From this point of view, and going beyond the reception or assimilation of a series of concrete concepts or practices, the progressive development of the medical knowledge of the human psyche appears to have been largely stimulated by the joint influence of three equally important factors: the gradual introduction of the Enlightenment project of naturalizing the soul, the spreading of a new selfunderstanding of medicine as a global anthropological knowledge and the ambition of consolidating a certain moral order supported by the prestige and authority of science in the context of the new bourgeois society.