Psychiatry and humanism in Argentina.

The authors of the present selection of Latin American Psychiatry texts were characterized by a common deep humanistic attitude. These prolific writers were able to establish or extend the scope of the discipline in which they chose to act, questioning the establishment of rigid boundaries within the framework of a rigorous epistemological reflection. Thus the systematizing spirit of Jose Ingenieros' in the context of positivist evolutionism, resulted in the act of founding a discipline that integrated the biological and the social. In the case of Guillermo Vidal his conception of mental health went beyond the biomedical to consider psychotherapies as an emotional commitment, continence and empathic understanding; with regard to César Cabral his formation and extensive clinical practice resulted in a work defined by the inquiring into the theoretical concepts underlying Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology. This brief selection does not exhaust the issues or the level of ideas and discussions of Psychiatry in Argentina, but constitutes a textual corpus representative of a disciplinary conception understood as scientific and humanistic endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]