Psychoanalysis and the Catholic Church in Italy: The role of Father Agostino Gemelli, 1925–1953

Abstract

Agostino Gemelli, a Catholic priest, psychiatrist, administrator, and educator, was an important figure in the early history of psychoanalysis in Italy. He was one of the few establishment figures to grapple with Freud's ideas in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century, a period during which Italy, compared to the rest of Europe and to the United States, was relatively impermeable to psychoanalysis. One of the factors that contributed to this was the opposition of the powerful Catholic Church, which identified in psychoanalysis a challenge to its authority. The author argues that Father Gemelli's shifting positions about psychoanalysis between 1925 and 1953 reflected the exigencies of his historical circumstances. Gemelli was able to identify in psychoanalysis an integrated view of the human condition in stark opposition to the brutal reductionism of psychiatry in Italy at that time, but also encountered in it elements intolerable to the Church. Examining specifically what it is that Gemelli could accept of psychoanalysis, and what needed to be rejected, between 1925 and 1953, illustrates the particular challenge posed by psychoanalysis to Catholicism in Italy.

“A disease of our time”: The Catholic Church's condemnation and absolution of psychoanalysis (1924–1975)

“…Gemelli accepted the idea, present in psychoanalysis, that the individual had to be investigated historically and dynamically, but he thought that psychoanalysis was inherently finalistic and deterministic—especially Freud's theory of sexuality, which he considered dangerous (see also Colombo, ). However, in Italy Gemelli widely spread a therapeutic approach linked to the humanistic and existential traditions.…”

Italian psychology under protection: Agostino Gemelli between Catholicism and fascism.

“…On the one hand, Gemelli saved the approach of psychoanalysis aimed to dynamically and historically study the mind and personality; on the other hand, he also believed that the determinism of the sexual drive theory of Freud was dangerous (cf. Colombo, 2003; Fornaro, 2009, 2010, Fornaro, in press). At the same time, Gemelli, as an expert for the Catholic Church dealing with scientific and psychological issues, also gave his opinion on the pedagogy of the “Montessori method.” The Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary (FMM) adopted this method in the Case dei Bambini (children's houses) founded in their convents in Rome and Milan.…”

Imprimi potest: Roman Catholic censoring of psychology and psychoanalysis in the early 20th century

“…Censors strive variously to maintain a truth, an orthodoxy, a morality, the boundaries of a profession. In the early 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church censored and suppressed psychological texts (Colombo, 2003; Desmazières, 2009), and I shall examine the censorship of some of the work of an Irish Jesuit psychologist, Edward Boyd Barrett (1883–1966). The publications in question were directed at a general Catholic readership, both clerical and lay.…”