Narratives constructed during periods of hospitalization in psychiatric institutions express, in various forms, how certain individuals who lived the experience of the asylum, reflected on this experience. The narratives provide information, clues, traces, which considerably increase the understanding of historiography on such spaces, of its constitution in the past until the present, opening intriguing questions about the limits of psychiatric knowledge and power, and especially about the subject that occupied these spaces. The discovery and exploitation of these new sources by historians, has outlined a new scenario in the analytical field known history of madness and psychiatry, discussed issue in the first part of this article. The second part presents some narratives developed within the institutional walls with the intention, as to hear what tells as demonstrating its contribution that historical studies transpose some of their "walls".
madness; psychiatric institution; narratives; history of madness and psychiatric; historiography.