“The Faustian spirit of the technical world”. Mental illness and cultural criticism in Franco’s Spain

Taking into account the almost constitutive affinity of mental medicine and cultural criticism, it should not be surprising that, given its particular conflict with modernity, General Franco’s dictatorship was a period intense flowering conservative psychiatric essay writing, Starting from fears possible physical moral regression “Hispanity” due to artificiality modern life, infiltration liberalism erosion traditional values, genre shifted interest towards an analysis contemporary “neurotic society” philosophical reference points such as Ortega or Heidegger, pointed excesses instrumental reason, “mechanization” “hyper-technification” world one main sources malaise psychic suffering.