Franco Basaglia
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| Name: | Franco Basaglia |
| Date of Birth: | March 11th, 1924 |
| Occupation: | psychiatrist/professor |
| Ethnicity: | Italian |
Franco Basaglia was an Italian professor, neurologist, and psychiatrist who argued that persistent and extreme mental distress was mainly caused by systemic social exclusion.
He also argued that agressive mental health treatments mostly served to quiet and strike terror in patients. And that psychiatry was simply the scientific wing of the control of social deviancy.
He saw the mental hospital as the best example of social exclusion causing mental distress. However the mental hospital was simply a summary of the problems of psychiatry, not an isolated problem.
Influence[edit | edit source]
He was instrumental in getting a law passed in Italy that ordained that all psychiatric hospitals be shut down, called, "Basaglias Law", passed in parliament in 1978. Psychiatric hospitals were later set up again, but in smaller numbers than in other European countries, and his community based approach to psychiatric care is still largely in place.[1]
His philosophy regarding social exclusion was later shared (accidentally) by modern intellectuals such as Paul Moloney and Jordan Peterson. However, Jordan Peterson gives psychiatry carte blanche, unlike Basaglia, as Jordan thinks one should use whatever one is offered by society for alleviation of psychic distress.
Basaglia and incels[edit | edit source]
Franco Basaglia's philosophy on the psyche bears the most resemblance to self-identified incels attitude towards the mental distress of incels.