Lo biomédico, lo clínico y lo comunitario: Interfaces en las producciones de subjetividad

Abstract

This article discusses current transformations in Mental Health and Psychiatry interventions in Chile from a professional standpoint. The goal is to understand how practice, roles identities and ethical professional profiles driven by transformations in the sector which were encouraged by the adoption of the so-called Community Model have been re-configured. We also sought to understand how this relates to a given government logic and to a desirable type of subjectivity. We followed an ethnographic approach in a Chilean Mental Health and Community Psychiatry team. Results indicate that intervention agents identify tensions between more traditional approaches, which were inherited from the psychiatric model and strategies that are particular to the new model. These tensions generate conflicts in their practice, their roles and their identities. However, there are common elements that may configure a new professional ethics connected to elements of self with links to a level of subjectivity that is typical of a neoliberal government logic.