Machado de Assis, Lima Barreto and certain madness <i>truth</i>

Abstract

The analogy between “O alienista”, by Machado de Assis, and Diário do hospício, by Lima Barreto, reveals similarities and differences in the authors’ perspectives towards a very important issue for both: madness. Machado has used a fictional support to build up the image of an alienist in the 19th century, Simão Bacamarte, the symbol of science as a supreme power. Lima wrote his diary in an emergency, while he was a psycriatric patient at Hospital Nacional dos Alienados (1919/20). Each one in his style and genre, both have inverted power’s perspective for they disqualified the alienist’s authority, either exaggerating his ridiculous image or criticizing his arbitrary positions and faults. Both authors point out another way of looking for a certain madness truth and criticize psychiatry’s despotic power in a period ruled by scientific truth.