Franco Basaglia - psychiatrist

Work led to closure of mental hospitals by law

Franco Basaglia was destined for an academic career until
the University of Padua deemed him too unconventional

The psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, whose work ultimately led to changes in the law that resulted in the closure and dismantling of Italy’s notorious psychiatric hospitals, was born on this day in 1924 in Venice.

As the founder of the Democratic Psychiatry movement and the main proponent of Law 180 - Italy's Mental Health Act of 1978 - which abolished mental hospitals, he is considered to be the most influential Italian psychiatrist of the 20th century.

His Law 180 - also known as Basaglia’s Law - had worldwide impact as other countries took up the Italian model and reformed their own way of dealing with the mentally ill.

Basaglia was born to a well-off family in the San Polo sestiere of Venice. He became an anti-Fascist in his teens and during the Second World War was an active member of the resistance in the city, to the extent that in December 1944, he was arrested and spent six months inside Venice’s grim Santa Maria Maggiore prison, being released only when the city was liberated in April of the following year.

He graduated in medicine and surgery from the University of Padua in 1949 and seemed destined for an academic career but after qualifying as a doctor in the field of ‘nervous and mental diseases’ and becoming an assistant professor he was deemed too unconventional for the tastes of the university hierarchy and told he should seek a career elsewhere.

Basaglia believed mental hospitals merely
reinforced the health problems of patients

As a result, Basaglia had to look for work and when he was appointed director of the provincial asylum in Gorizia, close to the border with Yugoslavia in northeastern Italy.

It was a grim job. Gorizia, 140km (87 miles) from Venice, was like a remote outpost and psychiatrists at the time regarded it as a sign of failure if they were forced to work in asylums. But Basaglia felt he had no choice.

In his studies he had already become convinced that the conventional methods for handling psychiatric patients needed to change and the post at Gorizia offered him the chance to put his ideas into practice.

On his first day in charge, he refused to sign the permits for the restraint of prisoners. He had soon introduced a requirement that doctors did not wear white coats and instead mingled freely with patients. Locked wards were opened, and the use of shackles and straitjackets was quickly outlawed.

He felt the traditional institutional response to psychiatric patients in distress, which revolved around physical abuse, forced restraint and appalling ‘punishments’, did nothing except reinforce the presumed ‘insanity’ of the victims.

Although he faced opposition from the older staff, he gradually replaced them with doctors he felt shared his views. Amid the tide of radical thinking that was sweeping Italy in the late 1960s, he published a book, L’istituzione negata - The Institution Denied - describing the methods being employed at Gorizia. It became a bestseller and a TV documentary based on the book made him famous.

Basaglia believed strongly in the rehabilitation of the
victims of mental illness sufferers in the community

Occasionally, his determination to rehabilitate patients had tragic consequences. On at least two occasions, individuals he had allowed out of confinement committed murders. Basaglia was tried for manslaughter in both instances, and both times was cleared of the charge.

Basaglia left Gorizia in 1969, after which he a brief period in charge of the asylum in Colorno, near Parma, and six months in New York where he worked in a psychiatric hospital in Brooklyn. In 1971, he returned to Italy to be director of the San Giovanni psychiatric hospital in Trieste.

By then, other psychiatrists in Italy were putting Basaglia’s methods into practice and his ideas were acquiring political support. He repeated at the Trieste institution many of the measures that had proved successful in Gorizia, with the addition of such steps as launching co-operatives so that patients who were considered well enough could be re-integrated into the world of work. In 1977 he announced that the San Giovanni hospital was to close.

Soon afterwards, politicians successfully argued that a programme of closure should begin at psychiatric hospitals across the country.

Franca Ongaro continued Basaglia's
work after his death

The Italian Parliament approved Law 180 on May 13, 1978, initiating the gradual dismantling of psychiatric hospitals, a process completed over the following 20 years.

In their place was to be a decentralised community service of treating and rehabilitating mental patients and preventing mental illness and promoting comprehensive treatment, particularly through services outside a hospital network. The emphasis in mental health moved from protecting society towards meeting the needs of patients.

Basaglia was described as a charismatic figure, so enthused about his work he would stay up all night talking with anyone who could match his intellectual stamina. He was also a heavy smoker. Sadly, by the time Basaglia’s Law came into force, he was suffering the effects of the brain tumour that would kill him.

He returned to San Polo, where he died in 1980 at the age of only 56. His wife, Franca Ongaro, who had worked with him on many of his books and essays, continued to work on his behalf after his death to ensure Basaglia’s Law was fully implemented.

The Basilica Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is one of the
most notable churches in the San Polo sestiere of Venice

Travel tip:

San Polo, the smallest of the six Venice sestieri, is a vibrant district on the west side of the Grand Canal connected to the eastern side by the Rialto Bridge. The main sights include the Rialto Market, the 15th century Gothic church of San Polo and the imposing Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, usually just called the Frari, built in brick in the Venetian Gothic style and containing monuments to distinguished Venetians buried in the church, including a number of Doges and the painter Titian, who painted two large and important altarpieces that can be seen inside, the Assumption of the Virgin on the high altar and the Pesaro Madonna. where stalls sell fish, fruit and vegetables. The canalside Erbaria area has become a fashionable meeting place for aperitifs and cicchetti - the small snacks that are a kind of Venetian tapas.

Venice hotels by Booking.com

The Piazza della Vittoria is the central square in the
town of Gorizia, on the Italian border with Slovenia

Travel tip:

Gorizia has the look of an historic Italian town but it has changed hands several times during its history, which is not surprising given its geographical location.  It sits literally on the border with Slovenia and, in fact, is part of a metropolitan area shared by the two countries, the section on the Slovenian side being now known as Nova Gorica. It has German, Slovenian, Friulian and Venetian influences, which can be experienced in particular in the local cuisine.

More reading:

Roberto Assagioli - the psychiatrist locked up by Mussolini

Cesare Lombroso, the father of modern criminology

The 1848 revolt in Padua, when students joined citizens in armed uprising

Also on this day:

1544: The birth of the poet Torquato Tasso

1847: The birth of wartime politician Sidney Sonnino

1851: Verdi's Rigoletto performed for first time


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History’s first air raid

Balloon bombs dropped on Venice

Luigi Querena's dramatic painting of the blazing Church of San
Geremia on the Grand Canal during the Austrian bombardment 

Venice suffered the first successful air raid in the history of warfare on this day in 1849.

It came six months after Austria had defeated the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the First Italian War of Independence as the Austrians sought to regain control of Venice, where the revolutionary leader Daniele Manin had established the Republic of San Marco.

The city, over which Manin’s supporters had seized control in March 1848, was under siege by the Austrians, whose victory over the Piedmontese army in March 1849 had enabled them to concentrate more resources on defeating the Venetians.

They had regained much of the mainland territory of Manin’s republic towards the end of 1848 and were now closing in on the city itself, having decided that cutting off resources while periodically bombarding the city from the sea would bring Venice’s capitulation.

An artist's impression of how the
balloon bombs may have looked

However, because of the shallow lagoons and the strength of Venice’s coastal defences, there were still parts of the city that were out of the range of the Austrian artillery.

It was at this point that one of Austrian commander Josef von Radetzky’s artillery officers, Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius, came up with the unlikely idea of attaching bombs to unmanned balloons and letting the wind carry them into Venice.

He devised a crude timing device using charcoal and greased cotton thread that would release the bomb at the moment he calculated it would be over the city.

Of course, he had no control over the speed or direction of the wind and when a first attempt was made in July 1849 it failed miserably, none of the balloons reaching their target and some drifting back towards where they were launched, exploding over the Austrian forces.

Undeterred, the Austrians tried again on August 22, launching an estimated 200 balloons, each carrying more than 14kg (30lbs) of explosives.  This time a number of them hit their target, although the damaged they caused was minimal.

Daniele Manin led the overthrow of the
Austrians in Venice in 1848

Nonetheless, it signalled the arrival of a new dimension to warfare, raising the possibility that civilian populations well behind the front lines of their armies could become targets for attack.  To the vocabulary of warfare could now be added the ‘air raid’.

In fact, it was Italian forces that would launch the first proper ‘air raid’ in history, some 62 years later in 1911, when bombs were dropped from an Italian aeroplane over a village near Tripoli in Libya, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

As it happens, the Republic of San Marco fell only two days after the 1849 balloon attack, although the two events were almost certainly unconnected.  Venice was already on its knees, with stocks of food and ammunition exhausted, and Manin had negotiated a honourable surrender than would see himself and other leaders spared their lives and liberty on condition that they leave Venice and go into exile.

The beautiful Oratory of the Crucifix in Chiesa di San Polo
lined with paintings by Giandomenico Tiepolo

Travel tip:

Daniele Manin’s birthplace in Venice was in the San Polo sestiere – district – of which the main public space is the vast Campo San Polo, the second largest square in Venice after San Marco and much quieter, at least in terms of tourist activity, and some would say a much more comfortable place to experience an authentic Venice, with bars frequented as much by local people going about their business as visitors.  In any other city the 15^th century Gothic Chiesa di San Polo would be the main attraction, featuring an interior beautifully restored by David Rossi in the early 19^th century and featuring paintings by Tintoretto, Jacopo Guarana, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Palma il Giovane and Paolo Veronese.

Campo Manin in San Marco, featuring the statue of Manin

Travel tip:

Manin’s main residence in adult life was a house on the Rio de l’Barcaroli canal in the San Marco sestiere facing what used to be Campo San Pernian, now renamed Campo Manin, through which many visitors pass each day between Teatro la Fenice with Teatro Goldoni. In the centre of this square is a bronze statue of Manin, sculpted by Luigi Borro and erected in 1875, with a bronze winged lion of Venice resting at the foot of the plinth. 

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