The Basaglian Legacy in Italian Psychiatry: Remembering, Myth-Making and Crystallising

Abstract

Trivelli engages with the work of Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia (1928–1980) and the promulgation of Law 180 in 1978, which abolished psychiatric hospitals in Italy. The chapter focuses on the Trieste Mental Health Department as the representative centre of a Basaglian legacy on a national and international scale, often presented as a model of good practice and the symbol of Law 180. In discussing the nostalgia that characterises much historiography around Italian deinstitutionalisation, Trivelli problematises how the Department has related to the figure of Basaglia. She suggests that employing ‘Basaglia’ as a cultural currency in order to safeguard present ‘models’ of care in Trieste contrasts starkly with the ideas that inspired his work.