Basaglia: the psychiatrist as intellectual, theoretician, and activist for a dialogic citizen psychiatry

Abstract Purpose Franco Basaglia (1924–1980) was a psychiatrist who played an important role in transforming mental health care in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. Current mental health debates focus on community care, recovery, and co-production. Against this background, the paper describes theoretical references used by Basaglia and colleagues to psychiatric phenomenology, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault, and the role of psychiatrists as professionals and intellectuals, with a view to their relevance to current mental health care issues. Methods The paper is based on a non-systematic search and meta-narrative review of sources in Italian, French. and German, including the Archivio Basaglia in Venice, Italy. Results Basaglia and colleagues were influenced by phenomenology, Sartre, and Foucault. The tradition of psychiatric phenomenology helped in focusing on the ‘person’, the ‘body’, and the deprivation of individual rights among mental hospital patients. Sartre’