Microchemistry of power: psychiatric medications, neoliberalism and government of behaviors

Abstract

In this article I try to describe certain political and subjective effects that can unfold from the contemporary psychiatric discourse regarding the use of psychiatric medications (especially Prozac). To this end, I circumscribe – as units of analysis – manuals on psychiatry and psychopharmacology, the Ministry of Health’s mental health manual, publications by the Brazilian Psychiatric Association and the international bestseller Listening to Prozac by American psychiatrist Peter Kramer. In view of the contents of this documentary corpus, I examine: a) how, in these statements, actions of power subjugation and conduct-government are traced; b) how this set of propositions on psychotropic drugs can be part of a neoliberal strategy to govern behaviors (in the name of recovering, maintaining or enhancing the human capital of individuals). The argument of this work is that the current psychoactive drugs dispositive is configured as one of the tactical elements of a neuromolecular biopolitics that presents convergences with neoliberal strategies for governing the conduct of the subject “entrepreneur of himself”.