Alda Merini’s Memoir: Psychiatric Hospitalization, Institutional Violence And The Politicization Of Illness In 20th Century Italy
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Date
2021-06-20
Authors
Zinnari, Alessia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
Abstract
In 1964, the Italian poet Alda Merini was hospitalized in a mental
hospital in Milan as the result of a violent fight with her husband.
Merini would spend ten years in and out of hospital, while
her relationship with her family and with the literary circles in
which she moved deteriorated. Merini’s experience in the asylum
is narrated in her memoir L’altra verità. Diario di una diversa
(1986). Through an analysis of some crucial passages in the
memoir, this article seeks to demonstrate that Diario is a work
charged with both literary and historical value that deserves
more scholarly attention. Merini’s memories shed new light on
the situation of psychiatric patients, and especially of women, in
Italy before and after Basaglia’s reforms on mental institutions.
Demonstrating how the abuse that she suffered in the hospital
reflects society’s attitudes toward mental illness, disability, and
women, Merini shows that the type of trauma narrative that is
produced under institutions of coercive control – such as the
mental asylum – will often be one of resistance to oppression.
Description
14 pages
Keywords
illness narratives, institutionalization, trauma writing, testimony, women's writing, Basaglia Law
Citation
Alessia Zinnari (2021) Alda Merini’s Memoir: Psychiatric Hospitalization, Institutional Violence And The Politicization Of Illness In 20th Century Italy, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22:4, 426-438, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2021.1925863