JUDGES, PSYCHIATRISTS AND SOCIAL WELFARE. FROM INCOMPATIBLE MARRIAGE TO A MENAGE À TROIS

Abstract

Starting from the assertion that the feelings toward poor and poverty are cultural and historical constructions, in this paper the policies of classification, management and treatment of pauperism are analyzed beginning whith their vigilance and control until their confinement, or the configuration of social agencies and professions specifically devoted to that object. The management of poverty in the XIXth century will be a matter of scientific projects which from the eugenics -in its more extreme versions- or the hygienism -in its more moderare ones-, will be the origin of a series of disciplinary techniques and measures applied by, at least, the following professional fields: judgeship, psychiatry, and the social welfare. In this "menage a trois" the policy of families -specially of women and children at risk-, and the control ot their privacy, will be the task of social welfare, and the definition of transgressions and delinquents, transforming the legal judgement in a clinic diagnostic, will be the task of judges and psychiatrists.