Introduction: Social and Mental Alienation in Italy Between the Economic Miracle and the Years of Lead

Abstract

This chapter discusses the multiple meanings of the notion of alienation, providing some essential coordinates for the understanding of such a slippery concept. This chapter proceeds by contextualizing what we call the “years of alienation” and explaining why we believe this is a particularly telling label for Italy’s sociopolitical and cultural situation between the so-called Economic Boom and the Years of Lead (1958–1980). In order to do so, we explore, on the one hand, the ideological debate on alienation understood in its sociopolitical connotations, which found in literature and cinema a privileged site of elaboration; and on the other hand, Franco Basaglia’s subversion of the field of psychiatric health care. In particular, we pay attention to the clinical and the political meanings that mental alienation took on in this context, and the influence this revolution in psychiatry had on literature, cinema, and popular music.