A dicotomia entre corpo e mente e a sua influência no uso crescente e acentuado de psicofármacos na atualidade

Abstract

The present work deals with the growing and accentuated use of psychotropic drugs, nowadays, for the treatment of psychic suffering. The latter, which were once part of the very act of living, have been constantly captured by the discourse of biomedicine, which considers them as the result of disorders located in the body – in the brain, more specifically –, reducing the possible range of human experiences. Intense process of standardization of life that is related to the supervisory and normative role transferred to medicine, previously the responsibility of religious power, which aims, above all, to regulate social relations through a work ethic that serves the interests of the capitalist mode of production. Faced with this scenario, we bring the constant advance of medical jurisdiction over the diverse manifestations of life to the criticisms that Nietzsche directs to modern philosophy and science as producing values of unity over reality – its standardization. For the author, the tendency to crystallize knowledge about life, differentiating its manifestations between Truth and illusion, is related to the inheritance of the Socratic-Platonic philosophical tradition and Christianity on the thought and institutions of modernity. From the point of view of scientific practice, the multiple nature (and the multiple body) and the secondary characters of matter have been set aside. On the other hand, the primary characters, given their constancy and immutability, in addition to being mathematizable, began to define reality as a whole, basing the mechanistic paradigm on scientific investigation. The production of unity to which Nietzsche refers was reflected in the social engineering inaugurated by modernity, which is manifested in the phenomenon of witch hunts, in the monopolization and homogenization of technical knowledge and in the episteminicide of others, as well as in the correction of reality through social orthopaedics forces carried out by disciplinary techniques, at the service of the mode of capitalist subjection. Finally, as a result of this investigation, it is possible to affirm that the defence of the existence of true values and, therefore, transcending the immanent reality, should be thought of as a means of realizing the domain and control over the forces of life. The development of medical-pharmacological technologies can therefore be understood as a process of improving social control exercised by professional doctors and the knowledge of biomedicine, in maintaining and improving the exploitation of body forces, which are based on the ideals of renouncing the body and its satisfactions. Based on Espinosa's philosophy, it was possible to propose that part of the solution for the accentuated use of psychotropic drugs today refers to the revaluation of the multiple experience with the body and its affections; a rescue of the erotic experience, based on Foucault's reading of the practices of the self of modernity. Furthermore, when faced with the power of the pharmaceutical industry to maintain the mechanical paradigm of mental suffering, which supports pharmacological therapy, we argue that overcoming it should also be seen as a fight against market interests in the right to health.