Migration trauma and psychiatry in the early twentieth century

ABSTRACT

The article analyses, through the use of primary sources, the relationship between emigration and madness during the Italian transatlantic migration at the beginning of the twentieth century. During that years, mental illness started to spread among returning emigrants, while the countries of destination showed their disfavour towards new emigration, especially the one coming from the South of Italy. At that time, most of the Italian psychiatric community was influenced by the positivist and Lombrosian approach which considered mental alienation as an organic disease widespread among southern populations. The southern emigrant has been transformed into a person subjected to madness and the act of emigrating has been conceived as a symptom instead of a necessity. Lastly, the research focuses on ‘abandonment issues’ suffered by emigrants’ wives. These psychic pathologies, neglected by the psychiatry at that time, would have represented an opportunity for a better understanding of the migration trauma.

RIASSUNTO

L’articolo analizza, tramite l’uso di fonti primarie, la relazione tra emigrazione e follia durante la migrazione transatlantica italiana all’inizio del Ventesimo secolo. In quegli anni, la malattia mentale si era diffusa tra gli emigranti di ritorno mentre i paesi di destinazione mostravano il loro disfavore verso la nuova emigrazione, specialmente quella proveniente dal Sud Italia. In quella fase, la maggior parte della comunità psichiatrica italiana era influenzata dall’approccio positivista e lombrosiano che considerava l’alienazione mentale un male organico diffuso tra le popolazioni meridionali. L’emigrante meridionale è stato trasformato in una persona predisposta alla follia e l’atto di emigrare concepito come un sintomo anzichè una necessità. La ricerca si concentra infine sui “problemi da abbandono” sofferti dalle mogli degli emigranti. Le patologie psichiche, del tutto trascurate dalla psichiatria di quel tempo, avrebbero potuto rappresentare un’opportunità per una migliore comprensione del trauma migratorio.

KEYWORDS:

• asylum
• insanity
• migration
• psychiatry
• repatriation
• positivist doctrines

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Manicomio
• follia
• migrazione
• psichiatria
• rimpatrio
• dottrine positiviste

Archives

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato and DGSP – Direzione Generale di Sanità Pubblica. “Relazione del piroscafo ‘Città di Torino’”. In Relazioni sanitarie 1901–1912.

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato, MI-Ministero dell’Interno, and DSGP-Direzione Generale Sanità Pubblica. Relazioni sanitarie 1900–15, b. 681.

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato. CPC – Casellario Politico Centrale, b. 940, f. 52106, c. 12, a. 1911–12 and 1934–35.

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato. CPC – Casellario Politico Centrale, b. 1437, f. 48524, c. 55, a. 1911–13, 1931 e 1934–41.

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato. CPC – Casellario Politico Centrale, b. 344, f. 92725, c. 38, a. 1927–41.

ACS – Archivio Centrale dello Stato. CPC – Casellario Politico Centrale, b. 185, f. 75021, c. 151, a. 1928–41.

ASMG – Archivio Storico Manicomio Girifalco, cc – cartella clinica n. 1322 del 1904.

ASMG – Archivio Storico Manicomio Girifalco, cc – cartella clinica n. 1831 del 1909.

ASOPC – Archivio Storico Ospedale Psichiatrico Provinciale di Colorno, cc – cartella clinica 276, f. personale di Elvira P., 1910.

ASOPC – Archivio Storico Ospedale Psichiatrico Provinciale di Colorno, cc – cartella clinica 251, fascicolo personale di Clotilde C., 1899.

ASPA – Archivio dello Stato di Palermo. FP- Fondo Prefettura, Gab. – Gabinetto, b. 23, cat. 4, f. 6.

Notes

1. For a short work on this theme see: Mellina (1989, 409–419).

2. Published in Rome in 1926 by the Commissariato generale dell’emigrazione, an administrative body set up in 1901 for the protection of emigrants.

3. Molinari (2005, 108–109) – in relation to the trend of Italian emigration – points out that: the port of Genoa embarked 61 per cent of transoceanic emigration from 1876 to 1901 and it reduced the share of embarkations to just over 30 per cent since 1902, most of which took place from the ports of Naples, Palermo and, to a lesser extent, Messina.

4. Data reported by Ianni (1965) also based on the Annuario statistico from 1876 to 1925 from the Commissariat of Emigration.

5. This refers to the conclusion of Ødegaard (1936), in a study of the incidence of schizophrenia among his fellow Norwegians.

6. For an overall view cfr. Pizzolato (2005); Higham (1988).

7. ‘The diagnosis alienazione mentale (mental alienation) can mean everything or nothing, everything if this phrase is used to indicate insanity in general, nothing if it is used diagnostically to describe asymptomatic complex’ (Padovani 1910, 14).

8. The diagnosis paranoid psychosis was outlined in 1931 by Benigno Di Tullio (1931), psychiatrist, anthropologist and criminologist disciple of Cesare Lombroso, who, in relation to ‘paranoiacs’ claimed that ‘because of their mental constitution … enter in conflict with society’ insofar as they are incapable of abiding by the laws and the authorities of the countries in which they live. A definition that could easy fit the political militants hostile to Fascism, but also to immigrants, always considered backsliders as regards understanding and respecting the norms of their adopted country.

9. Only after World War 2, especially with the work of Malzberg and Lee (1956), did the new paradigm regarding immigration and mental illness become widely accepted. Following comparative studies of various immigrant groups in the US, the two authors demonstrated that the conditions that appear discriminatory in the rise of mental illness were, on the one hand, economic ones insofar as the subjects eligible for unemployment benefit, be they native or immigrant, black of white, were over twice as likely to suffer from mental illness than workers who were self-sufficient, and on the other, the reaction of an individual to a new environment, including the ability to adapt to the economic and social system.

10. An argument well described by the famous image discribed by Frigessi and Risso, in which the immigrant always find him/herself half way up the mountain like the mountaineer on the rock face, already a long way from the bottom but not yet in sight of the point of arrival, viz. never arriving (1982).

11. In particular, the sociologists of the Chicago School (Albion Small, William I. Thomas, Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess amongst others) began to study urban unrest and integration in depth, a crucial issue for a country based of successive waves of immigrants. Unlike psychiatry and psychology the aim of sociology was not to cure the individual but rather the collective and, at the same time, supply an interpretation of mental disquiet of immigrants that offered ‘more than one bridge connecting these disciplines, as witnessed by the birth of sub disciplines such as social psychology and social psychiatry’ (Pizzolato 2005, 103). For the story of these disciplines cfr. Dunham (1948) and House (1977).

12. From the fulsome literature on the argument here it is sufficient to mention the various considerations of psychiatrists with regard to the argument on southern immigrants in northern psychiatric hospitals, expressed at an international conference dedicated to Immigrazione lavoro e patologia mentale, organized by the Università Statale and Amministrazione Provinciale of Milan on 23–24 March 1963, (Milano 1964) and, with reference to ethnic prejudice, the work of Canestrari (1959) and Battacchi (1959).

13. The histories of Clotilde C. and Elvira P. are recounted more thoroughly by Re (2014, 128–131).

14. The reference is to Filomena C., c.c. 2410 and Maria C., cc. 2411, both in 1915.

15. The story is related by the Girifalco superintendent Bernardo Frisco (1915, 111–142). He treated the case, from the hereditary-degenerative approach without giving any weight to the fact that the two were affected by the migration of their husbands.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oscar Greco

Oscar Greco teaches History of the Nineteenth Century at the Department of Humanities, University of Calabria where he works in the research sector of Contemporary History. He holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Catania. Among his publications: I demoni del Mezzogiorno. Follia, pregiudizio e marginalità nel manicomio di Girifalco (1881–1921), Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2018; Caro compagno. L’epistolario di Fausto Gullo, Napoli: Guida, 2014; Lo sviluppo senza gioia. Eventi storici e mutamenti sociali nella Calabria contemporanea, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2012; Da emigranti a ribelli. Storie di anarchici calabresi in Argentina, Cosenza: Klipper, 2009