Who is Franco Basaglia and why is the English-speaking world not aware of him? A Conversation with Vincenzo Passante

Heart Forward Conversations from the Heart

Vincenzo Passante is a psychologist who lives in London but hails from Trieste, Italy. He was raised and educated in Trieste, which gives him a unique vantage point to contribute given the mission of this podcast. In this conversation, we compare and contrast the system in Trieste against the vision behind mainstream mental health care in the UK. Vincenzo left the British National Health Service after two years of disillusionment. He worked in a crisis service and then, briefly, for a psychotherapy service. While in both settings there were amazing, talented professionals, the structure of the service was organized around deeply institutional rules which left very little space to the value of human subjectivity, a key ingredient in the Trieste system. Astonishingly for him, during this period he found out that virtually nobody there knew about Trieste and the possibility of helping people in a different way.

Vincenzo – who speaks both English and Italian fluently – has had the benefit of not only studying philosophy in high school and during his Psychology degree at university, which adds an intellectual bent to his view of the world, but he is quite knowledgeable about the writings of Dr. Franco Basaglia. As Basaglia sought to close the asylums in Italy, he had a clear vision for a community-based system of care which focused upon the wholeness and dignity of the people who depended upon that system for treatment and support. He has also been able to read some of Basaglia’s seminal writings that have yet to be translated into English. So, this conversation affords us the opportunity to do a deeper dive into Basaglia.

Vincenzo started a podcast in 2019 to spread awareness about Basaglia’s views and their practice in Trieste (and elsewhere). He wanted people to know how health and illness can coexist dialectically within people and society, without the need for separate institutions to exclude those who do not fit. The podcast -- called A Place of Safety? -- because that is how the British system describes institutions who exclude people from society, affords him the opportunity to challenge the British approach to mental health treatment and educate people about a better way. Perhaps, he thought, a good way to start is to reclaim the meaning of words and talk about a vision of “safety” that does not endorse violence and exclusion.

Articles

An intellectual emergency in UK mental health services by Vincenzo Passante Spaccapietra - Asylum Magazine

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