RESUMO
The mid-1970s saw in Italy a growing interest for the history of psychiatry, both among historians and psychiatrists, often in the context of the mounting struggle for the abolition of asylums. My aim here is to show the originality of Jervis' position in this regard. Already in 1967, in a period dominated by silence over the past of psychiatry, Jervis affirmed the importance of history for the critique of the present. His warning remained crucial in the following years; as the psychiatry looked at the past mostly in order to condemn it, Jervis emphasised the importance of understanding historical change, both in the distant and recent past. Looking at Jervis allows us to engage with history and memory, ideological diatribes and reassessments. It is in this perspective that several of his writings are examined here, encompassing both historical analyses and occasional autobiographical and personal notes.
Assuntos
Psiquiatria/história , Psicologia/história , História do Século XX , História do Século XXI , ItáliaRESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Inserting adults with psychic problems into families has recently been practiced in various European countries and also in Italy, where some mental health departments support such families. Beyond the well known story of Gheel, the etero and omofamily care of psychiatric patients has a forgotten history. METHODS: On the basis of unexplored and exceptionally rich sources from the archives of the asylums in Florence, as well as of the Province di Florence, which funded assistance to the mentally ill--this research focuses on the subsidized "domestic custody" of hundreds of psychiatric patients, who had already been institutionalized. Beginning in 1866, outboarding was supported by the provincial administration in Florence with the collaboration of the asylum medical direction. RESULTS: In the late 19th C. and in the early 20th C. prestigious psychiatrists sought alternatives to the institutionalisation. These alternatives involved varied participants in a community (the patients and their families, the administrators and the medical specialists, the neighborhood and the police). The families played a special role that historians of the psychiatry exclusively dedicated to the insane asylums have not really seen. CONCLUSIONS: The role of the families in the interaction with the psychiatric staff is not, even on a historiographical level, simply an additional and marginal chapter of the practices and of the culture of the mental health. These archival evidence contradicts some common places on the past of the Italian psychiatry before 1978, and provokes new reflections of possible relevance to the present.
