Per la Salute mentale

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"But the two most remarkable specimens are the doctors: the head psychiatrist, now nearing retirement and his successor, likewise of an advanced age. The former is a slender, wiry, haughty figure, a silk scarf perpetually knotted around his neck. He rarely wears his white smock and is practically never seen so that for an instant I think that he’s never even examined or had any contact with the young patients. The second is a little old chap, bald, always in his white smock (the malicious tongues on the ward insinuate that it’s in order to save on dry-cleaning bills) and always locked in his office."
From: A professional autobiography
Lorenzo Decarli

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"I entered the room. I was sure I would find you there, wrapped in your sheets, your hair dishevelled. But to my great surprise you were not there. “My God,” I thought, “where are you?” I noticed the missing window fasteners and your footprints on the wall.
You were a master of escape - you left in the silence in the morning without being noticed and you managed to get out quickly and nimbly through the window. Looking at the window, I wondered how you managed to get through. Only a contortionist could have made it."
From: "The Omelette"
Cristina Facco

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Life-stories, the biographies of women and men are the only credible forms of resistance to current psychologies. A long road lies before us, in cultural and probably also in scientific terms, in order to re-establish a psychology based on experience, contexts, on the existential projects of individuals and groups, on collective and solitary moments................."
From: "Subjects: Ther Stories Must Be Told"
Franco Rotelli

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"........................The phone is not ringing, S. goes to answer.
“Who was there, S.?”
“A woman, she says I have to stay here.”
From: "The Little House"
Eugenio Azzola

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"In 1798, two years after being transferred to the Salpetrière Hospital as its Director, Pinel wrote a letter to the Interior Minister Neufchateau asking for the transfer of a nurse, a certain Jean Baptiste Pussin, from the Bicetre Hospital (where Pinel had known him as his first assistant in treating the mentally ill) to Salpetrière.............................".

From practice, to theory, to practice
(A very brief, true story concerning autonomy, responsibility, knowledge, power……)

Main characters:
Jean B. Pussin, the “first” “psychiatric” “nurse” in History,
Philippe Pinel, the first “psychiatrist” in History.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________