Giorgio Antonucci in Florence (2017) | Author: Gerardo Musca (courtesy of the author). Giorgio Antonucci started his battle for the rights of the powerless in Florence in the sixties, where he worked as a physician. In 1968 he worked with Edelweiss Cotti at the Centre for Human Relations (Centro di Relazioni Umane) in Cividale del Friuli, and in 1969 with Franco Basaglia at the psychiatric hospital of Gorizia. In Reggio Emilia from 1970 to 1972 Giorgio organised the ‘Calate’, a popular movement of people who wanted better access to the psychiatric hospital San Lazzaro, where their relatives and friends had been hospitalised. From 1973 to 1996 he worked in two psychiatric hospitals in Imola: Osservanza and Luigi Lolli. In 2005 Antonucci received the Thomas Szasz Award in Los Angeles for his fight against the therapeutic state and a Certificate of Recognition by the Legislative Assembly of California for his defense of human rights. From 1996 to 2017 Giorgio continued his work in Florence defending people from forced hospitalisation. He is the author of many essays and books of poetry.
On Saturday November 18, Giorgio Antonucci died in Florence. He was a physician who became an international authority for the questioning of the basis of psychiatry. He was a psychiatrist who tried to dismantle the discipline from the inside once he understood its nature. He was the director of several wards of two psychiatric hospitals in Northern Italy who, through decades of field work side by side with the so-called ‘patients’, delving into their personal stories, listening with acute sensitivity, managed to liberate them from the clutches of psychiatry.
Giorgio was above all a humanist, a poet of freedom who dedicated his life to the liberation of the powerless. For me Giorgio was a special friend, who left in me an indelible mark.
