Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism

Patrizia Guarnieri is Professor of Cultural and Social History in the S.A.G.A.S. Department at the University of Florence, Italy. She has been a lecturer in Overseas Studies of Stanford University, USA and taught courses approved by the Psychology Department and the History of Science Program. She is the author of numerous publications, including A Case of Child Murder: Law and Science in Nineteenth-Century Tuscany, which has been translated into English.

"Guarnieri's powerful analysis of intellectual and political totalitarianism under Italian Fascism tells a gripping but fearful tale with profound resonances and implications for our own epoch as authoritarian populist nationalism begins to overtake democratic governments in Europe ... . She focuses not on exiled Nobel Prize Winners but on scholars who left without having achieved tenure and found it impossible in the post-war period to be reintegrated into the complex Italian university system." (Dorothy Porter, Medical History, Vol. 61 (2), April 2017) "This rich ... work stands as a testament to the art of historical detection. ... Guarnieri made intentional choices to make visible the contingency of archival research. ... Guarnieri's methodological choices make visible the process of historical interpretation and deduction, highlighting the incompleteness of individual pieces of historical evidence. ... This is a creative, and at times, brilliant work ... ." (Linda Reeder, Journal of the History of Medicine, Vol. 72 (2), April, 2017) "Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book results from an inspired examination of archival materials from several repositories (in Italy, the USA, the UK and Israel), and especially the files of the refugee scholars' assistance societies. It certainly casts new light on enraging episodes of academic persecutions about which we knew very little until now." (Simone Turchetti, Social History of Medicine, 2017) "Drawing upon an impressive amount of primary sources--which include coeval psychology journals and publications as well as manuscripts from private papers and archival repositories in Italy, the United States, England, and Israel--Guarnieri investigates how Benito Mussolini's regime affected the field of psychology in Italy. ... Overall, Bonaventura's and Calabresi's vicissitudes cast further light on the lot of both the exiles fleeing dictatorships and the Jews who had been the victims of fascist anti-Semitism." (Stefano Luconi, H-Italy, H-Net Reviews, networks.h-net.org, September, 2016) "This is a book packed to the brim with interesting material for further study ... . It is intensely multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary - touching not just on psychology, but also on social history, trans-national history, cultural studies, Jewish studies, politics and memory. ... book sheds light not just on the history of academic psychology in Italy, but also on a complicated and painful past which has remained hidden for some time. In that sense, it is a brave and important book." (John Foot, History of the Human Sciences, histhum.com, July, 2016) "One of the most thoughtful books by Patrizia Guarnieri ... . In detail, the author reconstructs the Italian and international relations and networks that supported Jewish researchers who were persecuted by Nazism and fascism (e.g., Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, London), focusing on the personal stories of Bonaventura and Calabresi." (Renato Foschi, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 52 (3), 2016)

• 1.Psychologists 'in the true sense of the word'.2.Neo-idealism and 'the Cinderella of the sciences'3.Fascistization discrimination and persecution4.The Zionist network and Enzo Bonaventura in Jerusalem5.The antifascist network and Renata Calabresi in New York