Analytical psychology and psychiatry in Italy today
[Article]
Angelo Malinconico
Leiden
Brill
The aim of this article is to offer some reflections on the potential of analytical psychology in the field of psychiatric cure of psychotic patients mostly in the context of public mental health services. It will do so by drawing on Italian past and present experiences, as well as investigating future perspectives. The Italian mental health legislation which has been in force for 32 years now is still of particular value and shows how the clinical, political, economic and hermeneutic realms are interconnected and worthy of attention especially in the therapy of psychosis. Analytical psychology can and must set itself up as the organiser of meaning between the different fields of psychiatry, depth psychology and socio-psychiatry. Analysed in his social and political context, the therapy of the psychotic patient makes of individuation a political as well as a therapeutic act of searching for the Self of both individuals and systems. This would signal the return of analytical psychology to its roots in psychiatry from which it rose up and from which it split off as a result of grave inadequacies on both sides. The aim of this article is to offer some reflections on the potential of analytical psychology in the field of psychiatric cure of psychotic patients mostly in the context of public mental health services. It will do so by drawing on Italian past and present experiences, as well as investigating future perspectives. The Italian mental health legislation which has been in force for 32 years now is still of particular value and shows how the clinical, political, economic and hermeneutic realms are interconnected and worthy of attention especially in the therapy of psychosis. Analytical psychology can and must set itself up as the organiser of meaning between the different fields of psychiatry, depth psychology and socio-psychiatry. Analysed in his social and political context, the therapy of the psychotic patient makes of individuation a political as well as a therapeutic act of searching for the Self of both individuals and systems. This would signal the return of analytical psychology to its roots in psychiatry from which it rose up and from which it split off as a result of grave inadequacies on both sides.