John Foot

Franco Basaglia and the radical psychiatry movement in Italy, 1961–78

This article provides a short introduction to the life and work of Italian radical psychiatrist and mental health reformer Franco Basaglia. A leading figure in the democratic psychiatry movement, Basaglia is little known and often misunderstood in the English-speaking world. This article will seek to address this by highlighting Basaglia’s significant role in the struggle for both deinstitutionalisation and the human rights of those incarcerated in Italy’s asylums during the 1960s and 1970s.

Photography and radical psychiatry in Italy in the 1960s. The case of the photobook Morire di Classe (1969)

In the 1960s Franco Basaglia, the Director of a Psychiatric Hospital in a small city on the edge of Italy (Gorizia), began to transform that institution from the inside. He introduced patient meetings and set up a kind of Therapeutic Community. In 1968 he asked two photographers – Carla Cerati and Gianni Berengo Gardin – to take photos inside Gorizia and other asylums. These images were then used in a photobook called Morire di Classe (To Die Because of your Class) (1969). This article re-examines in detail the content of this celebrated book and its history, and its impact on the struggle to reform and abolish large-scale psychiatric institutions. It also places the book in its social and political context and as a key text of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s.

How Italian Football Creates Italians: The 1982 World Cup, the ‘Pertini Myth’ and Italian National Identity

Abstract Italy’s victory in the 1982 World Cup is usually narrated through the figure of Sandro Pertini, the President of Italy who attended the final as a spectator. It is also often described as an ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘democratic’ World Cup. This paper looks at the ways in which that victory intersected with forms of national identification, and unpacks the forms in which the stories coming out of the tournament provided a perfect framework for such identification – redemption, the wise father-figure, the artists, the workers, the underdogs. The paper goes on to critique the ways in which the simplistic link between national identity and football has been made in the past, and the descriptive accounts of this tournament to date. The latter part of the paper looks in detail at the figure of Pertini and his relationship with the 1982 victory. It is argued that Pertini’s 1982 image provides Italians with a rare example of a universally popular moment, which has been exploited by both right and left in the years that followed. It is also argued that, Pertini’s connection with the victory was very carefully stage-managed and needs to be seen in terms of the framing provided by television and commentary. Pertini himself managed the event perfectly so as to create osmosis between his own personality and the football team itself. However, the link between Pertini and 1982 came at a cost. His own radical past was toned down to the point of being forgotten, and he was re-invented as a bland figure ‘Italy’s grandfather’. A final section looks at the possible effects of the 1982 victory, including the idea that what has been termed the ‘footbalization’ of Italian society really began after 1982, and not with the rise of Silvio Berlusconi in the mid-1980s as is often claimed.

Storie di case. Abitare l'Italia del boom

the middle and upper classes borrow from or participate in globalizing patterns of housing consumption and class identity? Answers to such questions might push readers to think even more broadly about gates and the act of gating. These are small quibbles and queries. Dinzey-Flores compels her readers to reconsider gates in all their historical, racial, class and spatial complexity – an accomplishment that makes Locked In, Locked Out well worth the read. The writing is sophisticated and the author is clearly in conversation with larger theoretical debates. In the end, though, the book is also more than an academic exercise: it is a fiery indictment of homogeneous, gated urbanism and the wide-ranging inequities found within.

Gli esperimenti di Kingsley Hall e Villa 21 a Londra negli anni Sessanta: Mito, memoria e storia

This article will look at the Villa 21 and Kingsley Hall ‘experiment’ in London carried out in the 1960s by a group of radical psychiatrists and others including R.D. Laing, David Cooper and others. The article will examine historical approaches to ‘Villa 21’ and Kingsley Hall, myths connected to these experiments, the reality of what happened there and their legacy and influence. It will also look at the way that Franco Basaglia and others reacted to Villa 21 and Kingsley Hall and the debates over alternatives to the asylum in relation to existing public institutions and alternative places of care. The article will also draw an extended compari son between the Kingsley Hall experiment and the role played by Gorizia in the 1960s, under the leadership of Franco Basaglia.

Gli esperimenti di Kingsley Hall e Villa 21 a Londra negli anni Sessanta

This article will look at the Villa 21 and Kingsley Hall ‘experiment’ in London carried out in the 1960s by a group of radical psychiatrists and others including R.D. Laing, David Cooper and others. The article will examine historical approaches to ‘Villa 21’ and Kingsley Hall, myths connected to these experiments, the reality of what happened there and their legacy and influence. It will also look at the way that Franco Basaglia and others reacted to Villa 21 and Kingsley Hall and the debates over alternatives to the asylum in relation to existing public institutions and alternative places of care. The article will also draw an extended compari son between the Kingsley Hall experiment and the role played by Gorizia in the 1960s, under the leadership of Franco Basaglia.

Television documentary, history and memory. An analysis of Sergio Zavoli's The Gardens of Abel

This article examines a celebrated documentary made for Italian state TV in 1968 and transmitted in 1969 to an audience of millions. The programme – The Gardens of Abel – looked at changes introduced by the radical psychiatrist Franco Basaglia in an asylum in the north-east of Italy (Gorizia). The article examines the content of this programme for the first time, questions some of the claims that have been made for it, and outlines the sources used by the director, Sergio Zavoli. The article argues that the film was as much an expression of Zavolis vision and ideas as it was linked to those of Franco Basaglia himself. Finally, the article highlights the way that this programme has become part of historical discourse and popular memory.