Open Access“The Faustian spirit of the technical world”. Mental illness and cultural criticism in Franco’s Spain
Author(s) -
Enric J. Novella
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
culture and history digital journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.103
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2253-797X
DOI - 10.3989/chdj.2021.007
Subject(s) - criticism , artificiality , modernity , psychic , malaise , aesthetics , philosophy , liberalism , sociology , literature , epistemology , law , art , politics , political science , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology , immunology , biology
Taking into account the almost constitutive affinity of mental medicine and cultural criticism, it should not be surprising that, given its particular conflict with modernity, General Franco’s dictatorship was a period of intense flowering of conservative psychiatric essay writing, Starting from the fears of a possible physical and moral regression of “Hispanity” due to the artificiality of modern life, the infiltration of liberalism and the erosion of traditional values, the genre shifted its interest towards an analysis of the contemporary “neurotic society” that, with philosophical reference points such as Ortega or Heidegger, pointed to the excesses of instrumental reason, “mechanization” and the “hyper-technification” of the modern world as one of the main sources of malaise and psychic suffering.