Basaglian psychiatry through the prism of philosophy: A conversation with Dr. Mario Colucci

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Meet Mario Colucci, a psychiatrist who has worked in a variety of roles in the Trieste system for over 30 years. He is currently the director of the Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment Service , which is linked to the general emergency room of the civil hospital in Udine, in the same region of Trieste.

I consider him “the psychiatrist’s philosopher” because of his keen intellect and how he effortlessly weaves philosophy into telling the story of Basaglia.

In this interview, we explore four themes:

• Philosophy – and how it impacted the thinking of Franco Basaglia in the 1960’s
• Education of psychiatrists – then and now
• Power dynamics between clinician and patient – and power-sharing
• The “total institution”

To provide some additional resource material to follow along in the conversation, the following links may be helpful.

General discussion of phenomenology.

Four influential books that coincidentally were published in 1961, the same year that Franco Basaglia was assigned to the asylum in Gorizia:

• Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Michel Foucault (1961)
• Asylums. Erving Goffman. (1961)
• The Wretched of the Earth. Frantz Fanon. (1961)
• The Land of Remorse. Ernesto de Martino (1961)

Additionally, Dr. Colucci provided additional resources from his own research. In 2001, he and Pierangelo Di Vittorio wrote the first monograph on Basaglia. In 2024, they wrote a book and the links to the abstract and the book are provided below.

Franco Basaglia. Thought, Practices, Politics [abstract from a book written by Mario Colucci and Pierangelo Di Vittorio] 2001 by Edizioni Bruno Mondadori, Italy. 2005 by Éditions Érès, France; 2006 by Ediciones Nueva Visión, Argentina; 2020 by Edizioni Alpha Beta, Italy; 2024 by Meltemi Editore, Italy.

Franco Basaglia. Pensiero, pratiche, politica. Mario Colucci and Pierangelo Di Vittorio. 2024

Here is a link to an article, “The Issue of Violence in Psychiatry,” written by Colucci in April, 2025.

Foucault and Psychiatric Power after Madness and Civilization [Published in Alain Beaulieu and David Gabbard (eds.), Michel Foucault and Power Today:
International Multidisciplinary Studies in the History of the Present. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.]

Medicalisation. Mario Colucci. SISSA – International School for Advanced Studies Journal of Science Communication ISSN 1824 – 2049 http://jcom.sissa.it/ JCOM 5 (1), March 2006

Psychiatrie et santé mentale: une querelle sans fin. Lettre d’Italie, L’Information psychiatrique 2021 ; 97 (10) : 845-7. Mario Colucci.