Borders, (Political) Violence and the Mind

A talk with Marta Verginella, University of Ljubljana, and Francesco Toncich, University of Trieste.

Programme

13:00–13:30 Marta Verginella: Verbalization of post-war trauma in the 20th century in psychiatric sources (1915-1950)
13:30–13:45 Discussion
13:45–14:00 Break
14:00–14:30  Francesco Toncich: In and Out of the Asylum: Psychiatrists, Patients, Families, and States Torn between Psychiatry and Antipsychiatry in the Upper Adriatic Area: A Border History of Psychiatry
14:30–14:45 Discussion

 

Marta Verginella: Verbalization of post-war trauma in the 20th century in psychiatric sources (1915-1950) 

The lecture will outline the broader historical and political dynamics that shaped the borderlands between Italy and Yugoslavia (Slovenia) in the twentieth century, a region marked by shifting sovereignties, national rivalries, and recurring episodes of violence. The lecture will then examine the verbalization of post-war trauma in psychiatric sources between 1915 and 1950, focusing on how the trauma caused by the First and Second World Wars was articulated by patients according to gender, social status, education, generational and national affiliation, and, crucially, how these expressions were received and transcribed by medical staff. It will highlight the contradictions that could arise for national and ethnic reasons between patients and medical personnel within a multi-ethnic environment torn apart by war and ideological conflicts.

Francesco Toncich: In and Out of the Asylum: Psychiatrists, Patients, Families, and States Torn between Psychiatry and Antipsychiatry in the Upper Adriatic Area: A Border History of Psychiatry

This paper presents my current post-MSCA project, funded by the EU NextGeneration programme and hosted by the Department of Humanities at the University of Trieste. It examines the historical interplay between psychiatry, its critiques, and broader social and political transformations in the Upper Adriatic and Alps–Adriatic region from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s, a borderland shaped by shifting geopolitical regimes and enduring transnational exchanges. It takes the lens of the dynamics between containment and reform and argues that psychiatric reform movements – particularly those advocating deinstitutionalisation in Italy and Yugoslavia during the Cold War détente of the 1960s and 1970s – were rooted not only in global currents of psychiatric critique but also in long-standing (trans-)regional medical cultures forged under the Habsburg Empire, which promoted therapeutic alternatives and challenged coercive practices. By tracing a genealogy of reforms across territories now included in Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, and Italy, the paper shows how shared professional networks, institutional legacies, and sociocultural practices persisted despite political fragmentation, repeatedly resurfacing during moments of crisis and change. Adopting a patient-centred perspective, the study situates individuals at the intersection of family, society, science, and the state, highlighting how evolving conceptions of mental and neurological disorders both reflected and shaped the relationship between psychiatry and society. Moving beyond top-down institutional narratives – even of deinstitutionalisation reforms – it explores how patients, professionals, and their social networks interacted with broader cultural, economic, and political forces, revealing how psychiatric knowledge, reform practices, and border dynamics co-evolved across time and space.

 

 

Marta Verginella

Marta Verginella is a Full Professor of History of the 19th Century and Theory of History at the University of Ljubljana. She directed the ERC project Post-war transitions in gendered perspective: the case of the North-Eastern Adriatic region between 2017-2023. In 2019, she was a visiting fellow at the Remarque Institute (NYU). Her research interests include border and national studies, gender studies, transnational history and the political use of history in the North Adriatic area. Among the works Il confine degli altri (Donzelli 2008); La guerra di Bruno (Donzelli 2015); Terre e lasciti. Pratiche testamentarie nel contado triestino fra Otto e Novecento (Beit 2016); Donne e confini (Manifesto libri 2021), Ženske in meje (FiF 2022). She edited and coauthored Slovenka. Il primo giornale femminile slovena (1897-1902)(Vita Activa 2019); Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918 (Purdue, 2023); Užaljeno maščevanje (Založba ZRC, 2023) and Women and Work in the North-Eastern Adriatic (CEU press 2025); La memoria dimezzata: i campi fascisti nelle testimonianze slovene with O. Luthar, U. Strle (Donzelli, 2025).

Francesco Toncich

Francesco Toncich earned a BA in Modern and Contemporary History from the University of Trieste and an MA in Eastern European History from the University of Vienna, where he contributed to the Austrian Biographical Lexicon at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He completed a PhD in Historical and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen (2015–19), focusing on scientific discourse on cultural diversity and hybridity in Habsburg Istria. His dissertation was published by Mohr Siebeck in 2021. He then held a postdoctoral position at the Research Centre for Comparative European History (University of Paris East-Créteil, 2020–21). From 2022 to 2024, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Ljubljana, researching the fragmentation of the Habsburg Monarchy through the history of public health, medicine, and psychiatry. Since May 2025, he has begun a new post-Curie research project at the University of Trieste, focusing on the history of the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatry in the Alps–Adriatic region.