Giorgio Antonucci

Giorgio Antonucci
Born 1933 (age 82–83)
Lucca, Tuscany, Italy
Residence Florence, Italy
Citizenship Italian
Fields Psychiatry
Institutions Psychiatric hospital Osservanza, Imola (Italy), psychiatric hospital Luigi Lolli, Imola (Italy), Citizens Commission on Human Rights
Known for criticism of psychiatry, freedom of thought, non-psychiatric approach to psychological suffering, rejection of the involuntary commitment
Notable awards Thomas Szasz Award (2005)

Giorgio Antonucci (Lucca, 1933) is an Italian physician, known for his questioning of the basis of psychiatry.[1]

Biography

In 1963 Giorgio Antonucci studied psychoanalysis with Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, and began to dedicate himself to psychiatry trying to solve the problems of the patients and avoiding hospitalisation and any kind of coercive method. In 1968 he worked in Cividale del Friuli,[2] in a ward of the city hospital that had been opened as an alternative to the mental hospitals.

In 1969 he worked at the psychiatric hospital of Gorizia, directed by Franco Basaglia.[3][4] From 1970 to 1972 he directed the mental hygiene centre of Castelnuovo nei Monti in the province of Reggio Emilia. From 1973 to 1996 he worked in Imola on the dismantling of the psychiatric hospitals Osservanza and Luigi Lolli. During the earthquake that struck Sicily in 1968 he worked as a doctor with the Civil Protection Service of Florence. He currently lives in Florence and collaborates with the Italian branch of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

Thought on psychiatry

Dacia Maraini: "Regarding the so-called insane persons, what does this new method entail?"

Giorgio Antonucci: "For me it means that insane persons don't exist and that psychiatry must be completely eliminated."

— Interview, 1978[5]

In his writings, Giorgio Antonucci affirms that theoretically he is close to the humanistic-existential perspective of Carl Rogers, the approaches focused on the critique of psychiatry (Erving Goffman, R. D. Laing, David Cooper and Thomas Szasz[6]) and the critique of the psychiatric institution of Franco Basaglia.

Szasz affirms to agree with Antonucci on the concept of "person" of the so-called psychiatric patients: they are, like us, persons in all respects, that can be judged emotionally and in their "human condition"; "mental illness" does not make the patient "less than a man", and it is not necessary to appeal to a psychiatrist to "give them back humanity"[6] He is the founder of the non-psychiatric approach[1][7][8] to psychological suffering, that is based on the following propositions:

  1. The involuntary commitment cannot be a scientific and medical approach to suffering, because it is based on violence against the patient's will.
  2. The ethic of the dialogue is substituted for the ethic of coercion. The dialogue cannot take place unless the individuals recognise themselves as persons in a confrontation among peers.
  3. The diagnosis is rejected as psychiatric prejudice that impedes to undertake the real psychological work on the suffering of people, due to the contradictions of nature and the conscience and because of the contradictions of society and the conflicts of living together.
  4. Psychoactive drugs aim to sedate, to drug the person in order to improve the living conditions of the people that look after the psychiatric patient. All the other instruments that damage the person are refused, from the lobotomy to the castration (proposed by some people also in Italy with reference to sexual offenses), and every type of shock.
  5. In order to criticize the institutions it is necessary to bring into question also the thought that created them.

Giorgio Antonucci thinks that the "essence of psychiatry lies in an ideology of discrimination".[9]

Giorgio Antonucci and Thomas Szasz

"Italian psychiatry has been incalculably enriched by Giorgio Antonucci. It is possible to consider him a good psychiatrist (whatever the meaning of the word): and that is true. It is also possible to consider him a good antipsychiatrist (whatever the meaning of the word): and that is just as certain. I prefer to consider him a respectable person that puts the respect for the so-called insane person above the respect for the profession. For that I send him my greetings." -Thomas Szasz[7]

Awards

On 26 February 2005 Giorgio Antonucci received in Los Angeles the Thomas Szasz Award.

Works

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 I pregiudizi e conoscenza critica alla psichiatria (in Italian). Preface by T. Szasz. Apache. 1986.
  2. ↑ "Edelweiss Cotti e Giorgio Antonucci a Cividale del Friuli – Foto" (in Italian). Centro di Relazioni Umane.
  3. ↑ Francese, Daniela (2011). Sanità S.p.a. (in Italian).
  4. ↑ Fortini, Franco (1996). Disobbedienze: Gli anni della sconfitta, scritti sul manifesto 1985-1994 (in Italian).
  5. ↑ "Dacia Maraini intervista Giorgio Antonucci" [Dacia Maraini interviews Giorgio Antonucci]. La Stampa (in Italian). 26 July 1978 and 29–30 December 1978.
  6. 1 2 Preface by Thomas Szasz in “Il pregiudizio psichiatrico” by Giorgio Antonucci
  7. 1 2 Il pregiudizio psichiatrico [Psychiatric injury] (in Italian). Eleuthera. 1989. ISBN 88-85861-10-5.
  8. ↑ Thomas Szasz Award
  9. ↑ Foot, John (2015). The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. New York: Verso Books. p. 105. ISBN 9781781689264.

Interviews in Spanish

External links

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