"O alienista" is a satiric novella written by the Brazilian author surnamed Machado de Assis. The story ran in Rio de Janeiro's newspaper A Estação, then was published in 1882 as part of the author's short-story collection Papéis avulsos. An English translation was published in 1963. In 1970, the story was adapted into the comedy filmThe Alienist. In 2007, it was adapted into a same-titled graphic novella by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.
Plot summary
Published a year after Machado's first major novel, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, "The Psychiatrist" follows the scientific efforts of Dr. Simon Bacamarte. Bacamarte, a Brazil-born Portuguese, is a prominent physician whose sincere obsession for discovering a universal method to cure pathological disorders drives inhabitants of the small Brazilian town of Itaguaí to fear, conspiracy, and revolutionary attempts. ;Chapters 1–4 In a short space of time, Bacamarte's newly opened asylum, popularly named "the Green House", passes to take inside of its walls not only mentally ill patients but also healthy citizens who, according to the doctor's diagnoses, are about to develop some sort of mental illness. ;Chapters 5–10 Porfírio, the town's barber, indicts Bacamarte for his corruptive influence over the Municipal Council, which since the beginning approved the experiments taken place at the Green House, "the Bastille of human Knowledge". A revolt and council change ensues, but the new regime proposes an alliance to the alienist, until being toppled back to the original council. The local priest also misquotes Dante. ;Chapters 11–12 This gives pause to Bacamarte, who changes his tack and decides that balanced people are actually a small minority, and thus the anomaly that should be cured: the modest, the loyal, the wise, the patient, etc., are now admitted to be scientifically disequilibrated according to his new theory. ;Chapter 13 After they all have been "cured" and discharged, Bacamarte eventually considers that he's the most well-balanced person of the village and thus the one most in need of treatment. Uncompromising to the last, he locks himself alone into his asylum, where he dies seventeen months later. The village concludes that he was the only madman from day one. "Be that as it may, his funeral was conducted with great pomp and rare solemnity."
