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

Journal article


Foot, John. (2015). Photography and radical psychiatry in Italy in the 1960s. The case of the photobook Morire di Classe (1969). History of Psychiatry. 26(1), pp. 19 - 35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X14550136
AuthorsFoot, John
Abstract

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.

Keywordsantipsychiatry; Franco Basaglia; Italy; photography; psychiatric reforms
Year2015
JournalHistory of Psychiatry
Journal citation26 (1), pp. 19 - 35
PublisherSage Publications Ltd.
ISSN0957-154X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X14550136
Scopus EID2-s2.0-84923337182
Page range19 - 35
Research GroupSchool of Arts
Publisher's version
File Access Level
Controlled
Place of publicationUnited States
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