Psychoanalysis and the Catholic Church in Italy: The role of Father Agostino Gemelli, 1925–1953

Agostino Gemelli, a Catholic priest, psychiatrist, administrator, and educator, was an important figure inthe early history of psychoanalysis in Italy. He was one of the few establishment figures to grapple withFreud's ideas in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century, a period during which Italy,compared to the rest of Europe and to the United States, was relatively impermeable to psychoanalysis. One ofthe factors that contributed to this was the opposition of the powerful Catholic Church, which identified inpsychoanalysis a challenge to its authority. The author argues that Father Gemelli's shifting positionsabout psychoanalysis between 1925 and 1953 reflected the exigencies of his historical circumstances. Gemelli wasable to identify in psychoanalysis an integrated view of the human condition in stark opposition to the brutalreductionism of psychiatry in Italy at that time, but also encountered in it elements intolerable to the Church.Examining specifically what it is that Gemelli could accept of psychoanalysis, and what needed to be rejected,between 1925 and 1953, illustrates the particular challenge posed by psychoanalysis to Catholicism in Italy.© 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.