Mental health outside the asylum: the European legacy of Franco Basaglia

• Department of History
• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

This workshop co-organised by the History of Science and Medicine Working Group, and the Robert Schuman Centre, in collaboration with the project "MANICOMIO, ADDIO! Franco Basaglia 100" by Chille de la Balanza, explores the legacy of Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia.

This March will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Franco Basaglia, a key thinker and reformer in the global anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960's. Although his legacy is still very much alive in Italy, it is much less well known abroad. We will mark this centenary with a workshop centred around the legacy of Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia, including topics such as (de-)institutionalisation, mental health and (de-)stigmatization. The event will begin with a keynote by Bojan Bilic, a scholar of gender studies at the University of Vienna, on the impact of Basaglia's ideas on Yugoslav feminism and psychiatry. The keynote will be followed by a roundtable with historian Vinzia Fiorino, literary scholar Marina Guglielmi, psychologist Patrizia Meringolo and sociologist Mariella Orsi, in which we will further expand on Franca Ongaro Basaglia’s work, the position and role of women in asylums, and narratives and images created inside and outside the asylum.

After the event, participants will have the opportunity to take a walk around the premises of San Salvi, former asylum of Florence, led by the theatre company Chille de la Balanza.