Psychiatric modernity in debate: Miguel Bombarda, Juliano Moreira, and the 1906 Lisbon Congress
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2026.v16.1627Keywords:
Psychiatry/history, racism, Colonialism, Paranoia, 19th Century History, 20th Century HistoryAbstract
Introduction: Between 1890 and 1930, psychiatry in Portugal and Brazil consolidated as a medical specialty through a process marked by tensions between distinct modernity projects. Objective: This article analyzes the trajectories of Miguel Bombarda and Juliano Moreira, whose reforms embodied opposing visions of psychiatric modernity, using the 1906 Lisbon Congress as a case study. The focus is on the divergences between Bombarda’s environmental openness and Júlio de Matos’ hereditarianism, as well as between Matos’ biological determinism and Moreira’s social approach. Method: A historical-contextualist approach is adopted, critical of presentism (prolepsis and reprojection). Primary sources (Section VII proceedings and Volume général) are treated as procedural documents, contrasted with secondary literature. Results: Bombarda, with his organicist reforms, coexisted with Portuguese institutional structures, while Moreira prioritized social, educational, and environmental factors, challenging hereditarianism, although he retained pathologizing categories. The debate on paranoia at the 1906 Congress, particularly between Moreira and Matos, revealed tensions between biological and environmental perspectives, as well as internal divergences within Portuguese psychiatry. Through the lens of Santos’ "abyssal line" concept, the episode exposes asymmetries of scientific authority between centers and peripheries in the Luso-Atlantic space. Conclusion: Luso-Brazilian psychiatry was not merely an extension of European models but a field reconfigured by local conflicts over heredity, environment, and scientific authority. The 1906 Congress provides a critical lens to analyze how these tensions were contested transatlantically.
Keywords: Psychiatry/history; Racism; Colonialism; Paranoia; 19th Century History; 20th Century History.
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