Psicologia, educação e reforma dos costumes: lições do jornal religioso selecta catholica ( 1846/1847)

Abstract

This dissertation investigates psychological ideas diffused through the religious periodical Selecta Catholica (1846 1847) and their impact on the educational proposals of D. Antônio Ferreira Viçoso, bishop of the city of Mariana, Minas Gerais, between 1844 and 1875, within the context of a reformation of cultural practices and customs of the clergy and of the local population. The bishop actively participated in several important educational initiatives taking place in Minas Gerais during the 19th century, and his main educational project was the reformation of the clergy and of the local populations customs and values. In order to encourage this reformation, the bishop used the press as a strategy to spread diversified readings and printed matters useful, from his point of view, for the moral education of character. The Selecta Catholica is one of the pamphlets which purpose was to educate the customs of the local population and to promote Catholic faith, fighting against ideas stemming from the Enlightenment and of liberal and materialist ideals that, since the end of the 18th century, began to be disseminated in the region of Minas Gerais. The method used in this research is grounded on the history of psychological ideas and on the contributions of proposals on cultural historiography made by Roger Chartier and Michel de Certeau. According to Marina Massimi, the expression psychological ideas must be understood as encompassing knowledge and cultural practices construed within particular periods and sociocultural circumstances that nowadays can be understood in general as psychological. Through the survey of psychological ideas disseminated in the writings of the periodical it was possible to identify a view of the human being as a physical, social and cosmic body, grounded on platonic and aristotelic-tomist models. The relationship between the faculties of the soul and the human body were seen as an expression, in a lesser scale, of the relationships existing in society, and of the natural links between the Creator and men. These ideas about men and society inform an specific educational proposal which basis is the value of the family as the main element in society, responsible for the education of childhood, as well as the view of the Church as the visible expression of God in the world and as the head of society.