Giorgio Antonucci (24 February 1933 – 18 November 2017) was an Italian physician, known for his questioning of the bases of psychiatry.
Biography Antonucci was born, on 24 February 1933, in Lucca, Tuscany. In 1963 he studied psychoanalysis with Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, and began to dedicate himself to psychiatry trying to solve the problems of the patients and avoiding hospitalisation and any kind of coercive method (mechanical, pharmacological, psychological). In 1968 he worked in Cividale del Friuli with Edelweiss Cotti, in a ward of the city hospital that had been opened as an alternative to the mental hospitals, called the Centro di Relazioni Umane [Centre for Human Relations]. In 1969 he worked at the psychiatric hospital in Gorizia, directed by Franco Basaglia. From 1970 to 1972 he directed the mental health centre of Castelnuovo nei Monti in the province of Reggio Emilia. From 1973 to 1996, he worked in Imola on the dismantling of several wards of the psychiatric hospitals Osservanza and Luigi Lolli. During the earthquake that struck Sicily in 1968, he worked as a physician for the Civil Protection Service of Florence. At the time of his death in 2017 Antonucci lived in Florence and collaborated with the Italian branch of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, with the Centro di Relazioni Umane and with Radicali Italiani.
Thought on psychiatry In a 1979 interview with Dacia Maraini, Antonucci make a provocation about the abolition of psychiatry. In his writings, Antonucci affirmed that theoretically he is close to the humanistic-existential perspective of Carl Rogers, the approaches focused on the critique of psychiatry (Erving Goffman, R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz) and the critique of the psychiatric institution of Franco Basaglia. Szasz affirmed to agree with Antonucci on the concept of "person" of the so-called psychiatric patients: "They are, like us, persons in all respects, that can be judged emotionally and in their "human condition"; "mental illness" does not make the patient "less than a man", and it is not necessary to appeal to a psychiatrist to "give them back humanity"". He is the founder of the non-psychiatric approach to psychological suffering, that is based on the following propositions:
The involuntary commitment cannot be a scientific and medical approach to suffering, because it is based on violence against the patient's will. The ethic of the dialogue is substituted for the ethic of coercion. The dialogue cannot take place unless the individuals recognize themselves as persons in a confrontation among peers. The diagnosis is rejected as a psychiatric prejudice that impedes the undertaking of the real psychological work on the suffering of people, due to the contradictions of nature and the conscience and because of the contradictions of society and the conflicts of living together. Psychoactive drugs aim to sedate, to drug the person in order to improve the living conditions of the people who look after the psychiatric patient. All the other instruments that damage the person are refused, from the lobotomy to the castration (proposed by some people also in Italy, with reference to sexual offences), and every type of shock. In order to criticize the institutions it is necessary to bring into question also the thought that created them. Antonucci posited that the "essence of psychiatry lies in an ideology of discrimination". He defended a different "psychiatric thought, which considers psychiatry as an ideology without scientific content, a non-knowledge, whose aim is to annihilate people instead of trying to understand the difficulties of life, both individual and social, in order to defend people, change society and give life to an authentically new culture."
Giorgio Antonucci and Thomas Szasz In the words of Thomas Szasz, "Italian psychiatry has been incalculably enriched by Giorgio Antonucci. It is possible to consider him a good psychiatrist (whatever the meaning of the word): and that is true. It is also possible to consider him a good antipsychiatrist (whatever the meaning of the word): and that is just as certain. I prefer to consider him a respectable person that puts the respect for the so-called insane person above the respect for the profession. For that I send him my regards."
Awards On 26 February 2005 Antonucci received in Los Angeles the Thomas Szasz Humanitarian Award. Szasz said of Antonucci, "His long-standing, courageous, and effective efforts to liberate psychiatric slaves in Italy from their bondage makes him an eminently worthy recipient of CCHR's Thomas Szasz Award."
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