ABSTRACT
In this chapter I demonstrate that, in relation to gender violence in general, and to incestuous violence in particular, there is a continuum of discourses on excess (qhencha), produced within rural communities (but reflected in psychiatric institutions) and on lack (organic deficiency, i.e. schizophrenia, mental retardation), produced within psychiatry, that result in the revictimisation of rural women who have experienced such forms of violence, and the legitimatisation of women’s subordinate place in society, both inside and outside the psychiatric institution. Through archival research, in-depth interviews, and participant observation, I examine one case study within the Female Chronic Unit of Bolivia’s National Psychiatric Hospital, and relate it to an understanding of how indigenous concepts on danger in relation to women, and those from psychiatry on female vulnerability, become interlinked within the institution to configure a particular form of diagnosis and treatment for women who have experienced incestuous violence.
