The origins, characteristics and development of Critical Psychology in Italy

The paper discusses the development of Italian Critical psychology, as a current that enjoys full recognition within the psychological discipline, although it critiques the hegemonic currents making up the mainstream. We reconstruct its roots in the historical, political and cultural developments of the Country: the influence of German-language philosophy and science in the Italian culture; the socialist tradition of the nascent Italian social psychology of the 19th century; the protest movements of the late ’60s in Italian psychiatric hospitals as well as in the universities; the “paradoxical” situation due to the fact that Gramsci’s Marxism promoted openness to psychology as the science of subjectivity; but ‘official’ Italian Marxism failed to recognize the potential emancipatory relevance of psychology. In this context, the publication in 1974 of the Italian translation of Holzkamp’s Critical Psychology appealed to Italian left-wing psychologists as the answers they had been waiting for regarding the external relevance of psychology and its relationship with Marxism, articulated in a complete systemic model of psychology. The relationships with the Cultural Historical School are also explained. Critical Psychology still enjoyed an active presence in Italy during the 1980s and we suggest that it still continues to exert a significant – although not manifest– influence on the areas of Italian psychology outside of the hegemonic mainstream. This influence - concerning in particular the emancipatory aims and use psychology to address concrete social problems – is visible in the development of the European Social Psychology, which has grown up in opposition to mainstream North American Social Cognition, in Rhetoric and discursive psychology and in the Italian critical community psychology informed by Lewin’s action research