Can psychoanalytic thinking illuminate our understanding of law? The suggestion that criminal doctrine could be influenced by psychotherapy spread from the very heart of Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay seeks to examine not only a historical but also a doctrinal question: i.e. psychoanalytical endeavors to provide a theory of social behavior pertinent to law. This theory was relevant for law given the axiom that the law was created by man to regulate the behavior of man. Psychoanalysis sought to understand the workings of the mind. As a result, law was made by the minds of men. Although law is stereotypically perceived as being concerned with the external face of man, and psychoanalysis with the internal one, each discipline is in effect concerned with both of these. In law there is a rich psychological legacy, conserved by past generations to hand down to the future ones. The article explores the spread and the contribution of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to jurisprudence. Freud was busy shaping his revolutionary model of the workings of the mind; his work came to Italy via psychiatry and psychopathology. In their essays, Baroncini, Modena and Assagioli showed their understanding of the theoretical (and clinical) innovations introduced by the ‘great Viennese’ from the cathartic method to the new technique of psychoanalytic investigation. While, by 1912, Italian academic psychiatry concentrated mainly on “cleaning up” society, by expelling ‘abnormal’ and ‘degenerates’, the young Edoardo Weiss, Freud’s scholar, strenuously defended the newborn science by writing for magazines and speaking at conferences. Weiss built up a strong network of contacts with lawyers and criminologists through a prestigious review, «La Giustizia Penale». And, when Catholic hierarchy obtained, in 1934, the closure of the ‘scandalous’ «Rivista italiana di psicoanalisi», the Società italiana di Psicoanalisi still found a space within the pages of that legal journal. This is a fact so far ignored by historians of both psychoanalysis and law. Weiss expressed his vision of law as a ‘legitimate exercise of violence’, in the process of Civilization that (as Freud had taught him) sees the struggle, with an uncertain outcome, of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’, eternal Eros with his equally ‘immortal adversary’. In 1938 the implementation of the infamous racial laws forced many Italian psychoanalysts (most of them were Jewish) to seek refuge far from Europe. Weiss and family sailed from Naples to America. With his departure, the story of the Italian pioneers of psychoanalysis came to a halt. The winds of war put an end to the extraordinary and unexpected partnership between these psychoanalytical pioneers and one of the most popular Italian criminal law journals. Totalitarianism drove Freud out of Vienna and Weiss from Rome. Despite this, the foundations of the legal-psychoanalytical relation had been laid and from this a long dialogue had begun.

Da Vienna a Zurigo, da Trieste a Roma, questo libro prende ad oggetto le zone di contagio tra il discorso giuridico della penalità e quello terapeutico dell’analisi. Il nostro racconto si avvia con la magistrale lezione di Freud agli studenti viennesi di diritto (1906): sullo sfondo il sodalizio con il giovane Jung e il suo originale contributo alla «psicologia criminale». In Italia la perdurante ipoteca lombrosiana — declinata con la medicina costituzionale, la biotipologia e l’antropologia criminale — dava fiato, in quel torno d’anni, a una diffusa avversione per l’inconscio freudiano.Toccherà a Edoardo Weiss, l’«autentico e tenace pioniere» del movimento psicoanalitico italiano, impegnarsi nelle riviste e nei congressi per mettere al riparo la giovanissima scienza dalle malevoli allusioni e da toni di inaudita durezza che venivano anche da filosofi e letterati di formazione idealistica. Ma c’è di più: a Roma, dal 1932, egli seppe costruire una fitta rete di relazioni con i giuristi (e i criminologi) della prestigiosa rivista La Giustizia penale. Quando, nel 1934, le gerarchie cattoliche ottennero la chiusura della ‘scandalosa’ Rivista italiana di psicoanalisi, la SPI poté contare su una tribuna che vantava una vasta diffusione tra gli operatori del diritto. Un dato, questo, finora ignorato dalla storiografia. Le infami leggi razziali e i venti di guerra misero fine a questo straordinario (e impensato) sodalizio tra i pionieri della psicoanalisi e una delle più influenti riviste penali.

EDOARDO WEISS E «LA GIUSTIZIA PENALE». ZONE DI CONTAGIO TRA PSICOANALISI E DIRITTO

MIGLIORINO, Francesco
2016-01-01

Abstract

Can psychoanalytic thinking illuminate our understanding of law? The suggestion that criminal doctrine could be influenced by psychotherapy spread from the very heart of Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay seeks to examine not only a historical but also a doctrinal question: i.e. psychoanalytical endeavors to provide a theory of social behavior pertinent to law. This theory was relevant for law given the axiom that the law was created by man to regulate the behavior of man. Psychoanalysis sought to understand the workings of the mind. As a result, law was made by the minds of men. Although law is stereotypically perceived as being concerned with the external face of man, and psychoanalysis with the internal one, each discipline is in effect concerned with both of these. In law there is a rich psychological legacy, conserved by past generations to hand down to the future ones. The article explores the spread and the contribution of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to jurisprudence. Freud was busy shaping his revolutionary model of the workings of the mind; his work came to Italy via psychiatry and psychopathology. In their essays, Baroncini, Modena and Assagioli showed their understanding of the theoretical (and clinical) innovations introduced by the ‘great Viennese’ from the cathartic method to the new technique of psychoanalytic investigation. While, by 1912, Italian academic psychiatry concentrated mainly on “cleaning up” society, by expelling ‘abnormal’ and ‘degenerates’, the young Edoardo Weiss, Freud’s scholar, strenuously defended the newborn science by writing for magazines and speaking at conferences. Weiss built up a strong network of contacts with lawyers and criminologists through a prestigious review, «La Giustizia Penale». And, when Catholic hierarchy obtained, in 1934, the closure of the ‘scandalous’ «Rivista italiana di psicoanalisi», the Società italiana di Psicoanalisi still found a space within the pages of that legal journal. This is a fact so far ignored by historians of both psychoanalysis and law. Weiss expressed his vision of law as a ‘legitimate exercise of violence’, in the process of Civilization that (as Freud had taught him) sees the struggle, with an uncertain outcome, of the two ‘Heavenly Powers’, eternal Eros with his equally ‘immortal adversary’. In 1938 the implementation of the infamous racial laws forced many Italian psychoanalysts (most of them were Jewish) to seek refuge far from Europe. Weiss and family sailed from Naples to America. With his departure, the story of the Italian pioneers of psychoanalysis came to a halt. The winds of war put an end to the extraordinary and unexpected partnership between these psychoanalytical pioneers and one of the most popular Italian criminal law journals. Totalitarianism drove Freud out of Vienna and Weiss from Rome. Despite this, the foundations of the legal-psychoanalytical relation had been laid and from this a long dialogue had begun.
2016
978-88-6318-105-0
Da Vienna a Zurigo, da Trieste a Roma, questo libro prende ad oggetto le zone di contagio tra il discorso giuridico della penalità e quello terapeutico dell’analisi. Il nostro racconto si avvia con la magistrale lezione di Freud agli studenti viennesi di diritto (1906): sullo sfondo il sodalizio con il giovane Jung e il suo originale contributo alla «psicologia criminale». In Italia la perdurante ipoteca lombrosiana — declinata con la medicina costituzionale, la biotipologia e l’antropologia criminale — dava fiato, in quel torno d’anni, a una diffusa avversione per l’inconscio freudiano.Toccherà a Edoardo Weiss, l’«autentico e tenace pioniere» del movimento psicoanalitico italiano, impegnarsi nelle riviste e nei congressi per mettere al riparo la giovanissima scienza dalle malevoli allusioni e da toni di inaudita durezza che venivano anche da filosofi e letterati di formazione idealistica. Ma c’è di più: a Roma, dal 1932, egli seppe costruire una fitta rete di relazioni con i giuristi (e i criminologi) della prestigiosa rivista La Giustizia penale. Quando, nel 1934, le gerarchie cattoliche ottennero la chiusura della ‘scandalosa’ Rivista italiana di psicoanalisi, la SPI poté contare su una tribuna che vantava una vasta diffusione tra gli operatori del diritto. Un dato, questo, finora ignorato dalla storiografia. Le infami leggi razziali e i venti di guerra misero fine a questo straordinario (e impensato) sodalizio tra i pionieri della psicoanalisi e una delle più influenti riviste penali.
STORIA; DIRITTO; PSICOANALISI; WEISS; FREUD
History; Law; Psychoanalysis; Weiss; Freud
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11769/107633
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