The Man Who Closed the Asylums

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Asylums incarcerate the “mad” and exclude them from society. Gorizia, a grim mental asylum, right on the edge of Italy, miles from anywhere, was no exception. Yet, when a new director was appointed in 1961, everything changed. Drawing on the writings of Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault, interested in experimental “therapeutic communities” in the UK, the work of Frantz Fanon, and the ideas linked to radical psychiatrists like Félix Guattari, Franco Basaglia was convinced that the entire asylum system was morally bankrupt. So he decided to abolish it. This is the first comprehensive account of Basaglia’s revolutionary approach to psychiatry and mental health. The book is a gripping account of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the twentieth century. From the Hardcover edition.