From life”
Bread and democracy for breakfast
Basaglia had left Gorizia in 1969. In those years he had had to question himself about the scientific basis of psychiatry, the nature of the disease, the function of the mental hospital, the possibility of a cure. He thus discovered that the absolute scientific certainties on which psychiatry based its operations and its undisputed power were extremely uncertain. And that on these uncertainties total and violent institutions were built, absolute and objectifying treatment methods to the point of segregation, to electroshock to the point of denying the presence of the other.
To be effective, psychiatry must make the person himself an object.
Basaglia’s work shook this ideological construction to its foundations. He chose to look at the people and not the disease, stubbornly trying to restore meaning to the devastated lives, the stories, the affections, the feelings hitherto denied by the disease, by the diagnosis, by the mental hospital.
He never had any doubts between the rules of the asylum and the needs of the inmates.
In Trieste he was driven by the urgency of facing the harsh immobility of the mental hospital, by the risk of remaining an accomplice, now director, of that harshness. He had to create experiences of change that were exemplary. He spoke about this in interviews, conferences and publications. A few years earlier, in ’68, Einaudi had published “L’associazione negata”, the book on the experience conducted in Gorizia.
In those years the echo of the Gorizia assembly had attracted operators and students from all over.
In Naples where I attended medical lessons, in the assemblies we learned about the existence of psychiatric hospitals.
In the collectives, medicine was spoken of as a way of power. And it was also said that the places where the exercise of power was absolute were psychiatric hospitals.
A medicine to be renewed, it was said.
Many of us were attracted precisely by these speeches and by the importance of criticism of the institutions which in those years was at the center of the political debate, in the movements, in the media. The discussions, the demonstrations, the strikes in support of the great health reform that was coming, were in the works. Encouraged by these discussions with some companions, we asked to attend as interns the Institute of Nervous and Mental Diseases where we would like to bring the words of “dispute” of the collective. In the Institute of Nervous and Mental Diseases, the power of the Director Barone was unquestionable, the hierarchies were dizzyingly vertical. Students strictly at the back of the queue following the visiting Director. Without being able to say a single word. Total absence of communication and the word democracy had to stay outside the door.
More than an exercise in our critical thinking!
Basaglia was committed to recruiting young people. He was now sure that he would go to work in Trieste. He would have done anything to form a group of young people. It is simpler – he said – to train new psychiatrists while experimenting with transformation practices, rather than trying to change the mind and culture of old and already trained psychiatrists. Many of us accepted enthusiastically and fearfully. We were looking for a professional position that could ensure some continuity with the student “struggles” and the medical profession we were embarking on. We were aware of the frustrating and dissociated professional life that awaited us. “The dream of a better thing”, the vision of the better world that he had pushed us in Gorizia, in Parma, in Trieste begins to fade.
Responding to Basaglia’s call, without realizing it, we were finding our way, without separations, without dissociations: the “long march through the institutions” and the tireless daily work.
Writes Michele Zanetti, the president of the Province who in 1970 called Basaglia to Trieste and who supported the project with conviction, recalling that beginning: Trieste was perhaps the only corner of Europe in which a large number of “refugees” of the of ’68 had the opportunity to concretely exercise their social commitment, their professional vocation, so as to demonstrate how much they were capable of doing without giving up their ideals, without being “recruited” or “bought” by that society that they wanted to change .
In the spring of ’71, a few months before my graduation, I managed to find contact with a Neapolitan friend who worked with Basaglia in Colorno. I was accompanied to the room where Basaglia usually worked and where at that moment he was holding a meeting with his collaborators.
Everyone spoke on first name, they sat in a non-hierarchical manner, they didn’t wear white coats, it was not possible to appreciate signs of differences and hierarchies. Basaglia, who was waiting for a student to visit, got up and came towards me, made me sit with them and began to talk to me in informal terms, asking me to do the same.
Another world appeared to me.
I didn’t really understand what they were talking about and yet one thing was clear to me: there were other ways of working and maintaining relationships and what I was seeing certainly resembled that change I was discussing with my companions in Naples. Basaglia told me that he intended to recruit young people to form a new group, which would soon move to Trieste. I awkwardly said that I would graduate soon. Good – he said enthusiastically – and as soon as you graduate you can go back to Parma to start. I was dazed. On 6 September 1971 I left for Parma.
Shortly thereafter I landed in Trieste.
In San Giovanni everything is discussed. In the wards every morning there is a meeting with all the patients and nurses present. People now talk about their dissatisfactions, requests for objects, changes in schedules, general considerations about life in the asylum which amaze me. I can’t help but listen. A patient listening exercise. The words I heard at university appear to me for what they are, distant, empty, violent. I understand that I have to listen, recognize, build closeness. Those are the mentally ill! Later at eleven o’clock meeting with all the nurses in the department to listen to and discuss their comments on the assembly. To share decisions on small changes in the department, on the way of distributing lunch, on wake-up times, dinner times, going out times. Listen to the words of concern for those changes that require their participation, listen to those who do not speak, and the words of criticism and those who say they are against it. And every Thursday general meeting. Everyone is invited to participate. The people, the internees, intimidated by the possibility they now have of speaking, find it difficult to express their desire to go outside. Here we begin to talk about cooperatives, about fighting occupational therapy, about living.
Perhaps this is the dream of the best thing, of democracy, of the utopia that was accompanying us. Every day the director waited for us at five in his office. The end of the day meeting. The legendary “5 o’clock meeting”. Basaglia and the older people talked about what was happening inside and outside the hospital. The conflicts with the unions, the resistance to change among nurses, administrative offices, the campaigns against Basaglia’s project by political parties. We young people have to listen and learn. After a long time we found the courage to talk about the problems that seemed unsolvable to us, our defeats, the projects, the dynamics that paralyzed the work. Basaglia listened and found the words to present the problem in another way, he reassured us.
An unthinkable piece of luck. I listen and I begin to understand that you must distance yourself as soon as possible from the words you heard at the University.
Franco Rotelli, my dearest friend, companion for 50 years, who taught me many things, passed away last year. An emptiness and great pain.
After Basaglia, Franco Rotelli was the director of the psychiatric hospital until its definitive closure.
He will say, remembering with me those first years in San Giovanni: “with Basaglia we grew up on bread and democracy for breakfast”.