That our definitions of what illness is are subjective, I accept that we sometimes, in a fever to figure out what’s “wrong”, all too easily react strongly, I also accept. Perhaps in the loosest of definitions, this is true however–and I admit this may be due to conditioning–I wholeheartedly reject this. The end result, then, is a novella that asks important questions, but seems to land on the idea that there is no such thing as mental illness. Indeed, the novella itself does not seem to wish to land anywhere–once 80% of the town has been locked up, the Alienist suddenly frees all 80% in favor of a new theory that only the sane are insane, thereby locking up the remaining 20% finally, he frees even them, then determines that only the perfect could possibly be insane, locks himself up, then, a year and change later, dies.

De Assis raises the interesting question of what it means to be mentally ill, and who gets to make that call, and the fact that he raises this question in 1882 is prescient, but also leads me to wonder whether I should view it as a sign of advanced, progressive thought that seeks to understand and define what could be a very useful field, or a more stolid traditionalism that rejects the very notion of mental illness. I actually finished this early in the week–on Monday, I think–but I wanted to give it time to sit and stew. Simultaneously, therefore, the Alienist appears to become more and more despotic, until he has nearly the entire town either locked away or in perpetual fear of being locked away. However, it soon becomes apparent that with no real definition of what it means to be mentally ill, the criteria by which he determines who is to be sent to the Green House–his psych ward (though “compound” would be a better word, I suppose)–becomes more and more arbitrary. The Alienist in de Assis’s novella is a man who is dedicated to the sciences, who discovers the burgeoning field of psychotherapy and deigns to study the mentally ill in the small Brazilian town of Itaguai.

The alienist by machado de assis