Memories of the Manicomio: Representations of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Institutions in Contemporary Italian Writing
Authors:   , Bello Eleonora 
Published: December 2021

<p>In the long-standing relationship between mental illness and literature in Italy, where historically literary and medical discourses on neurosis have been intertwined, the criticism of mental institutions has stood out as a literary trope only since the spread of radical psychiatry movements in the 1950s. From Le libere donne di Magliano (1953), by Tuscan psychiatrist and writer Mario Tobino, many writings produced around the years of the Basaglia reform and in the following decades have openly engaged with the dark present and past of psychiatric hospitals. However, while the shocking personal testimonies and photographic and audio-visual records of internment that supported and promoted the Basaglia reform are being reassessed today as tangible acts of memory, less attention has been given to the literary representations of asylums and their role as a medium of memory for a twenty-first-century readership. This has become clear in the years around the thirtieth anniversary of the Law 180/78, when the contemporary representations of the Italian teatro di narrazione significantly dealt with the theme of the internment, seeking to debunk the cultural myths surrounding psychiatric hospitals and their patients. This thesis seeks to address this gap by arguing that the literary discourse on mental hospitals in Italy has focused on the intricate relationship between cultural perceptions of mental disorders, personal experience of treatment and internment, and their legacy on the country’s collective memory. I structure my analysis within the intersection of two main theoretical frameworks: the first refers to the recent psychiatric and historical assessments of the Italian psychiatric confinement, and the second draws from theoretical conceptualisations of the relationship between literary genres and collective memory. To do this, I consider three literary genres that have played a significant role in this debate, each within their specific conventions: the memoir, the novel and narrative theatre. After introducing the discourse on the perception of mental confinement through a review of its representations in different media, I discuss the memoir in depth, focussing on Tobino’s three published diaries, Alda Merini’s L’altra verità. Diario di una diversa (1986) and Fabrizia Ramondino’s Passaggio a Trieste (2000). This is followed by a thorough analysis of the relationship between the novel and the psychiatric institution through the reading of Tobino’s Per le antiche scale. Una storia (1972), Italo Calvino’s La giornata d’uno scrutatore (1963) and Luca Masali’s La vergine delle ossa (2010). Finally, I discuss Ascanio Celestini’s La pecora nera. Elogio funebre del manicomio elettrico (2006), Renato Sarti’s Muri. Prima e dopo Basaglia (2008) and Marco Paolini’s Ausmerzen. Vite indegne di essere vissute (2012), in the context of narrative theatre. Through my analysis of these texts and theatrical performances, I show how the manicomio gradually acquires the status of lieu de mémoire in contemporary Italian writing. Depicting, criticising and remembering the asylum, contemporary literary writings have responded to its disappearance as a physical space by rethinking it as a metaphorical means of understanding the present. Progressively challenging a literary tradition which struggled to give voice to the experience of mental disorder, these depictions have recognized persistent forms of social exclusion in contemporary Italy and highlighted the pressing need for a new culture of representing internment.</p>