Aranyketrecek az államszocialista Magyarországon

The state socialist system that emerged after 1948, among the other areas of life, reshaped mental normalisation in line with the foundations of its worldview. Accordingly, on the one hand, the forms of treatment that were incompatible with the principles of Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism – such as psychoanalysis and various, more common forms of psychotherapy – were discredited. On the other hand, work therapy – the theory of which was formulated earlier and was reinterpreted in the era as the only non-biological form of intervention aiming to change behaviour – embarked on the path of institutionalisation. The significance of this process can be understood through Michel Foucault’s line of thought, according to which the division of space is one of the most fundamental tools of modern power to maintain order. Such regimes designate a smaller or larger area for each citizen to facilitate their disciplining (schools, mental hospitals, etc.) in a space where their actions can be tracked. Within the state socialist regime, the location and type of institutions in which they found an ample scene for the application of work therapy underwent ideological revision both in terms of their place in the physical space and the implications associated with these spaces. By examining these processes, we can unfold where they designated the place of the mentally ill within society. In my study, starting from the above-mentioned observation problematized by Foucault, I aim to answer the following questions: could they create an institutional structure capable of realising work therapy in practice as one of the cornerstones of state-socialist psychiatry? As a result, was the Communist power able to designate a new place for the mentally ill interpreted in the state socialist context, similarly to other social groups with the collectivisation of the agriculture in state farms and labour camps?