Vittorio Guidano: Biography Of This Italian Psychiatrist
There are many authors who throughout history have investigated the human psyche, and many schools of thought that have emerged.
Currently, one of the most accepted and valued is the cognitive-behavioral current. However, and especially in its origins, this trend has been criticized for focusing too much on a rational point of view and little on the emotional. Over time, the value given to emotion has increased, especially thanks to schools such as constructivism or theories such as John Bowlby’s attachment.
Another great school of thought, which has integrated elements of those previously mentioned to form a cognitive-constructivist model, is the post-rationalist school founded by Vittorio Guidano. Knowing the life of its main founder may be of interest in order to understand what this model proposes, so throughout this article we are going to carry out a short biography of Vittorio Guidano with the main stages of his life.
Vittorio Filippo Guidano was born on August 4, 1944 in Rome, Italy. With a pharmacist father, he spent much of his adolescence in Caracas, Venezuela, and later returned to the city where he was born to continue his academic training. There he would study high school at the Liceo Giambattista Vico, studies that he would finish in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in arts.
Later he enrolled and studied Medicine at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He completed a doctorate in Medicine and Surgery, a doctorate that he would complete in 1969. The protests and social movements of 1968, however, would make him begin to be interested in more social and psychological fields, something that ended up leading him to become interested in the human mind and psyche
In 1970 he received a scholarship from the Italian administration to enter the Institute of Psychiatry at the same University “La Sapienzia”, directed by Professor Reda. At this stage Guidano would begin to carry out his first research within the field of psychiatry focusing on trying to understand the human psyche.
Later, in 1972, he would carry out a specialization in Neuropsychiatry at the University of Pisa, and that same year he was one of the founders of the Società Italiana di Terapia Comportamentale e Cognitiva (Italian Society of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy) and later named president of the same (a position that he would maintain until 1978). While serving as such he continued to work in research at the University of Rome, where he was hired in 1974.
Specifically, his first works in this field were methodological and psychometric research focused on personality factors and the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy of the time, at that time recently introduced in Italy.
These investigations, which made him see some limitations as well as different theories that diverged in part with the approach of said model (such as Bowlby’s attachment), led him to develop his own way of observing the human psyche, beginning the development of a identity development model based on the cognitivist, experimental and relational paradigms.
The beginnings of post-rationalism
In 1976 he would be appointed Assistant Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychopathology at the University of Rome, and he would teach classes on this subject until 1985. But his professional activity did not end there: in 1978 he founded the Center for Cognitive Therapy in Rome, an institution that in addition to therapy offered training and training to therapists.
This center grew rapidly and would achieve a great reputation. In 1981 he was hired as a researcher at the University of Rome a relationship that would last until 1986, and held numerous conferences at universities around the world.
During those years he began to work with Giovanni Liotti, together with whom he would develop one of his most relevant works and which would end up becoming one of the key moments in the founding of post-rationalism: Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders (1983).
From this work begins to integrate elements of constructivism, Bowlby’s attachment theory and Piaget’s theories about development within one’s own model, in which emotions begin to be transcended and given increasing importance within the formation of identity, above cognitions.
His investigations continued, this time focusing on epistemology and aspects such as empiricism, rationalism and constructivism He integrated a systemic vision into his theory, based on advances in general systems theory and cybernetics.
Thus, he observed that we actively construct our own personal experience from what we live, something throughout development leads us to generate a unique identity, while being part of a living system: he developed the concept of Organization of the Personal Meaning and established different ways of organization, which can lead to both normotypicality and psychopathology.
Public Complexity of the Self in 1987, and another work, The Self in Processin 1991. In them already I started talking about the concept of post-rationalism as a way to differentiate their model (more focused on subjectivity and emotion in identity development than on cognition and reasoning in cognitivist theory).
During the last years of the 90s, Guidano began to delve deeper into the study of psychoses, researching and working on this type of disorders and trying to develop specific techniques and therapies for this type of disorders based on his model. However, he would not complete it: Vittorio Guidano died of a sudden heart attack in Buenos Aires on August 31, 1999 at 55 years of age, where he had traveled to attend a conference.
The death of this important psychiatry professional left his work unfinished, but despite this his contributions throughout his life have left a broad legacy: post-rationalism is a school of psychotherapy that serves as inspiration for many authors within the cognitive constructivist current.
