Psychiatric politics and religious agency: notes on black boxes, the playful and the notion of in(ter)vention in mental health

Abstract

This article reflects on complexities and black boxes, as Bruno Latour elaborated, here for mental health policies in Brazil. Black boxes are ‘machines’ that cannot be unraveled, a panacea of complexities. What I’m talking about is a black box of studies, and as a result, of the intervention in mental health. I discuss the deleterious (dis)articulation between attitude and conduct from a semantized view by the notions of psychiatric praxis, therapeutic praxis and religious agency. The starting point of the reflection is to consider that there is in this (de)articulation a regime established by empirical and epistemological inconsistencies, conditioned by the play I called in(ter)vention, based on the contribution of Roy Wagner, and to consider that intervention and invention are articulated and inseparable devices.