Italian Psychiatry in an International Context: Ugo Cerletti and the Case of Electroshock

Abstract

Taking as its starting point the Italian psychiatric context between the end of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth century, this essay analyses Italian psychiatry’s steps towards a new theoretical and therapeutical framework. Focusing on Ugo Cerletti’s work on the electric shock, this paper shows how this Italian psychiatric renewal occurred at the same time as a process of internationalization of psychiatric knowledge, practice and problems. Moving from Europe to America, the author describes Cerletti’s position towards the wide spread of a merely empirical and technical use of electric shock, and reconstructs an international debate on the divorce of electric shock from research.