Franco Basaglia: the body and the corporality of the encounter.

Abstract

On the centenary of the birth of Franco Basaglia - Italian psychiatrist and neurologist - it is incumbent upon us to question the ways in which Basaglia can critically illuminate or help us interpret the social uncertainty in which we are living. Many important contributions have enriched our knowledge of Basaglia's work in recent months. He was a modern practical intellectual, in the Gramscian sense, where the authentic intellectual moves from the real needs of the masses and seeks their solution from the given historical situation, recomposing it in the more general course of the world. Basaglia addresses our society: Do we want to be "fair"? Do we not want to remain in barbarism? Then, in our project of democracy, there must be a place for madness. It is not enough to stop marginalizing the insane or those whom, in the language of medicalization, we call "mentally ill". We have to make room for it. We must "reload" Basaglia's work beginning with restoring value to the centrality of the encounter with the other and to the corporality of the encounter, two themes that guided Franco Basaglia throughout his life.