Le emozioni e l'alienismo : Giovanni Clerici (1799-1868)

An intuitive and original interpreter of early Italian alienism, Giovanni Clerici (1799-1868) was a precocious and significant voice in counterpoint to the prevailing ‘organicist slope' prevailing in Italian psychiatry of his time and later. As assiduous contributor to the publications of Andrea Verga's Milan psychiatric school, he sought to elaborate a conception of madness and a classification of its various pathological forms starting from the emotional dimension, considered as primary and autonomous with respect to intellectual functions. At the basis of psychic functioning Clerici submitted three ‘radicals' (or ‘primary feelings'): affectability (radical of love), irascibility (hatred) and fear (dread), to which he tried to bring back the different psychopathological types of mentalillness. [Publisher's text]