Resisting cognitive polyphasia in the social representations of madness

The broad social debate that developed on psychiatry in the 1970s and 1980s, and which accompanied the deinstitutionalization of madness (as enacted in Italy by the Basaglia Law n°180 promulgated on 13 May 1978 with repercussions that extended well beyond Italy’s borders), coincided with a series of studies on mental illness.