Comportamentismo e analisi e terapia del comportamento in Italia Brevi note storiche

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to outline the development of behaviorism and contextually of Behavior Analysis and Therapy in Italy. The behaviorist tradition is relatively young among Italian psychologist. This is due principally to two factors which are strictly related to the Italian cultural environment of the first half of the century. First, the idealistic viewpoint in philosophy, which claims the predominance of philosophy over science; second, the fact that during the fascist era psychology was progressively reduced to a level of extinction, despite its vigour at the beginning of the century. Moreover, because of the cultural isolation of those years, everything that carne from foreign countries, mostly from anglo-saxon states, was banned, including Psychology. The date of birth of Italian Behaviorism is 1942, when Virgilio Lazzeroni publishes a paper in which he claims for the behavior as subject matter of psychological research. The tree of Italian behaviorism has two main roots, which can be labeled as Pavlovian-reflexological- psychiatric and skinnerian-operant-psychological respectively. These streams independently flowed until the end of the Seventies, when they joined together. The diffusion of behaviorism in Italy is also related to important stages marked by scientific meetings which have seen relevant figures of the behavioral community as invited guests. We refer to these meetings as milestones, in that they were great changes of establishing scientific relationships with the international community. The first scientific association which explicitly traced its roots, or al least pan or them, in behaviorism was the Società Italiana di Terapia Comportamentale (SITC . Italian Society for Behavior Therapy), But the association that gathered Italian scholars which recognize behaviorisrn and behavior analysis as their scientific model was the Associazionc Italiana di Modificazione del Comportamento (AIAMC - Italian Association for Behavior Analysis and Modification) founded in 1977. AIAMC has since then devoted its resources to the promotion of behavior analysis and therapy in Italy through the organization of national and international meetings. Four year post-graduate courses in analysis and therapy contacts with other national and international behavioral associations. The last national congress look plaices in December 1992 in Siena, where 50 years ago behaviorism was born. Almost all the main books of behavioral literature have been translated into Italian, Many of the people in the research groups mentioned in the paper have personally attended to the translation of these books. In addition many titles have also been originally produced in Italy. The production covers issues related 10 theoretical, clinical, educational and organizational topics.