Gabriele Piretti | "Tor Vergata" University of Rome (original) (raw)

advise by Gabriele Piretti

by Associazione Italiana per lo Studio della Santità dei Culti e dell'Agiografia AISSCA, Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, Marco Papasidero, Luca Pezzuto, Marco D'Alano, Gabriele Piretti, Jacopo De Santis, Ennio Sanzi, Mauro Mormino, Elena Zocca, Tommaso Caliò, Simona Tozzo, and Giovanni Florio

Papers by Gabriele Piretti

Santi in posa. L'influsso della fotografia sull'immaginario religioso, 2020

Giornale di Storia, 2019

The savages and the psychiatric interpretation of religious mysticism in 19th century Italy: A hi... more The savages and the psychiatric interpretation of religious mysticism in 19th century Italy: A hidden narrative

In the second half of the 19th century, the assertion of psychiatry in Italy came along at the same time as the birth of anthropology, which was heavily highlighted by racist and biological-evolutionist criteria, stemming from the cultural context of nationalism and colonialist frenzy. Although earlier Italian anthropology derived some of its conceptual tools from positivist psychology and psychiatry, at the same time psychiatrists and psychologists took seminal heuristic cues from the varied world of savages in order to advance on the theoretical elaboration of mental illness and to explain, often critically, widespread phenomena such as Spiritism.
In the final decades of the century, Italian psychiatry contributed as well, albeit with its own specifics, to the process of critical consideration upon catholic sainthood, recognizing occasionally pathological conditions in some of the displays of religious mysticism. The purpose of the essay is to open a breach on a lead which was ignored up until now in the studies related to psychiatric consideration on religious mysticism phenomena. If Cesare Lombroso, founding father of Atavism, had placed in the spectrum of “genius”, an exceptional but degenerate individual, a vast array of saints and prominent figures of European religious history, such as Francis of Assisi, John of God and Martin Luther; Eugenio Tanzi, psychiatrist from Trieste, hinging on the theory of Atavism and on the fundamental biogenetics law by Ernst Haeckel, related the psychology of the savages/primitives and children with paranoid syndrome: all three types were tied together by a peculiar way of experiencing and perceiving the world and the reality, which Tanzi called “mysticism”. The issue of sensibility refers, sometimes in an evident manner, other times in hidden fashion, to one of the key problems Italian and European psychiatry heatedly debated during this period: the field of sensory disorders, which turned out to be pivotal for the interpretation of religious mysticism.

Francesco da Assisi. Storia, arte, mito, 2019

Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, 2017

The medicalization of madness in the 19th century allowed a radicalization of the extensive proce... more The medicalization of madness in the 19th century allowed a radicalization of the extensive process of critical analysis over sainthood, which begun across the 16th and 17th centuries. Supernatural phenomena linked to mysticism – ecstasy, stigmata, visions, prophecies – were frequently at the core of the psychiatric thought, which categorized them mostly in the realm of pathological behavior and occasionally made those terms its own, in order to determine specific morbidities.
Teresa of Ávila was one of the greater mystical figures on whom the discipline focused: often mentioned in the works of the alienists, she ended up being considered as the quintessential “hysterical saint” in the second half of the 19th century. The purpose of this paper is to depict Teresa’s numerous pathological epiphanies in the scientific literature of the time-period, and through the category of hallucination, place particular emphasis on how psychiatry interpreted the divine visions that characterize her journey. In order to shine a brighter light on all these elements, the context of the French debate will also be examined, to display the heat and the intensity bestowed by each side on the different interpretations of the Spanish mystic’s spiritual experience.

Books by Gabriele Piretti

Il Santo in Manicomio, 2022

Nel corso dell’Ottocento, in un’epoca di grandi conflitti sociali e politici, i manicomi brulicav... more Nel corso dell’Ottocento, in un’epoca di grandi conflitti sociali e politici, i manicomi brulicavano di uomini e donne cui venivano diagnosticati disturbi legati alla sfera religiosa. Si atteggiavano a santi e sostenevano di aver avuto esperienze sovrannaturali: follia religiosa, monomania religiosa e paranoia mistica sono solo alcune delle etichette con cui veniva giustificato il loro internamento negli istituti.

Una parte cospicua della psichiatria, in una temperie culturale fortemente influenzata dal positivismo, finì per attribuire tali diagnosi persino a santi canonizzati come Francesco d’Assisi e Teresa di Avila. Nell’ampio dibattito che ne scaturì, giocò un ruolo fondamentale la categoria di “allucinazione”, con cui una parte della psichiatria pensava di aver risolto in chiave naturalistica il mistero delle visioni divine, suscitando l’intervento di ecclesiastici, medici e psichiatri contrari alla patologizzazione delle esperienze sovrannaturali.

Il libro, attraverso l’analisi della letteratura medico-scientifica francese e italiana dell’epoca e della polemistica cattolica e “spiritualista”, mette quindi in luce un aspetto finora ancora poco indagato: la ridefinizione della “realtà” in senso immanentistico veicolata dalle idee scientifiche dell’epoca e accolta da una parte della psichiatria, che determinava la messa al bando del sovrannaturale.

Santi in posa. L'influsso della fotografia sull'immaginario religioso, 2020

Giornale di Storia, 2019

The savages and the psychiatric interpretation of religious mysticism in 19th century Italy: A hi... more The savages and the psychiatric interpretation of religious mysticism in 19th century Italy: A hidden narrative

In the second half of the 19th century, the assertion of psychiatry in Italy came along at the same time as the birth of anthropology, which was heavily highlighted by racist and biological-evolutionist criteria, stemming from the cultural context of nationalism and colonialist frenzy. Although earlier Italian anthropology derived some of its conceptual tools from positivist psychology and psychiatry, at the same time psychiatrists and psychologists took seminal heuristic cues from the varied world of savages in order to advance on the theoretical elaboration of mental illness and to explain, often critically, widespread phenomena such as Spiritism.
In the final decades of the century, Italian psychiatry contributed as well, albeit with its own specifics, to the process of critical consideration upon catholic sainthood, recognizing occasionally pathological conditions in some of the displays of religious mysticism. The purpose of the essay is to open a breach on a lead which was ignored up until now in the studies related to psychiatric consideration on religious mysticism phenomena. If Cesare Lombroso, founding father of Atavism, had placed in the spectrum of “genius”, an exceptional but degenerate individual, a vast array of saints and prominent figures of European religious history, such as Francis of Assisi, John of God and Martin Luther; Eugenio Tanzi, psychiatrist from Trieste, hinging on the theory of Atavism and on the fundamental biogenetics law by Ernst Haeckel, related the psychology of the savages/primitives and children with paranoid syndrome: all three types were tied together by a peculiar way of experiencing and perceiving the world and the reality, which Tanzi called “mysticism”. The issue of sensibility refers, sometimes in an evident manner, other times in hidden fashion, to one of the key problems Italian and European psychiatry heatedly debated during this period: the field of sensory disorders, which turned out to be pivotal for the interpretation of religious mysticism.

Francesco da Assisi. Storia, arte, mito, 2019

Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica, 2017

The medicalization of madness in the 19th century allowed a radicalization of the extensive proce... more The medicalization of madness in the 19th century allowed a radicalization of the extensive process of critical analysis over sainthood, which begun across the 16th and 17th centuries. Supernatural phenomena linked to mysticism – ecstasy, stigmata, visions, prophecies – were frequently at the core of the psychiatric thought, which categorized them mostly in the realm of pathological behavior and occasionally made those terms its own, in order to determine specific morbidities.
Teresa of Ávila was one of the greater mystical figures on whom the discipline focused: often mentioned in the works of the alienists, she ended up being considered as the quintessential “hysterical saint” in the second half of the 19th century. The purpose of this paper is to depict Teresa’s numerous pathological epiphanies in the scientific literature of the time-period, and through the category of hallucination, place particular emphasis on how psychiatry interpreted the divine visions that characterize her journey. In order to shine a brighter light on all these elements, the context of the French debate will also be examined, to display the heat and the intensity bestowed by each side on the different interpretations of the Spanish mystic’s spiritual experience.

Il Santo in Manicomio, 2022

Nel corso dell’Ottocento, in un’epoca di grandi conflitti sociali e politici, i manicomi brulicav... more Nel corso dell’Ottocento, in un’epoca di grandi conflitti sociali e politici, i manicomi brulicavano di uomini e donne cui venivano diagnosticati disturbi legati alla sfera religiosa. Si atteggiavano a santi e sostenevano di aver avuto esperienze sovrannaturali: follia religiosa, monomania religiosa e paranoia mistica sono solo alcune delle etichette con cui veniva giustificato il loro internamento negli istituti.

Una parte cospicua della psichiatria, in una temperie culturale fortemente influenzata dal positivismo, finì per attribuire tali diagnosi persino a santi canonizzati come Francesco d’Assisi e Teresa di Avila. Nell’ampio dibattito che ne scaturì, giocò un ruolo fondamentale la categoria di “allucinazione”, con cui una parte della psichiatria pensava di aver risolto in chiave naturalistica il mistero delle visioni divine, suscitando l’intervento di ecclesiastici, medici e psichiatri contrari alla patologizzazione delle esperienze sovrannaturali.

Il libro, attraverso l’analisi della letteratura medico-scientifica francese e italiana dell’epoca e della polemistica cattolica e “spiritualista”, mette quindi in luce un aspetto finora ancora poco indagato: la ridefinizione della “realtà” in senso immanentistico veicolata dalle idee scientifiche dell’epoca e accolta da una parte della psichiatria, che determinava la messa al bando del sovrannaturale.