Clinical psychology and psychotherapy in Italy during the second half of the 20th century

The article describes the most important events that, in the 1960s and 1970s, contributed to the development of modern clinical psychology and psychotherapy in Italy. In a conference organised in Milan in 1952 by the most authoritative Italian psychologist of the time, the Franciscan friar Agostino Gemelli, the methods and limits of clinical psychology were outlined and defined. In this way the discipline was legitimised, although it was placed under the tutelage of psychiatry. Clinical psychology eventually freed itself from this subordination, evolving in line with international trends to become one of the main fields of applied psychology, thanks to the contribution of at least four events: 1) the affirmation of psychoanalysis by the school of Cesare Musatt and as a result of the endeavours of Gemelli’s students; 2) the acceptance, on the part of the Catholic Church, of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic treatment in the face of distress and mental disturbance; 3) the scientific-cultural and political activity of Adriano Ossicini and Pier Francesco Galli, which opened the door to new psychotherapeutic theories and techniques; and 4)the closure of mental institutions (Basaglia Law, 1978) encouraged by anti-institutionalpsychiatry, and the new forms of treatment of mental illness practiced in therapeutic communities. This article reconstructs the vicissitudes of regulating the clinical psychologist and psychotherapist professions in relation to the diverse psychotherapeutic practices exercised in Italy since the 1970s.