Abstract: In the Sala de Nove of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, is a marvelous series of frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti entitled The Effects of Good Government and Bad Government. These 14th-century masterpieces were commissioned by the city Guelf leaders to celebrate its political credo that justice and the subordination of private interests to the common good cause all human social activities to flourish. Good Government, painted in the well-lit section of the room, expresses the delights of city and country life when administered by a good government; Bad Government, appropriately painted on the dark side of the room, reveals a city of violence and crumbling buildings, and a sinister and desolate countryside. Lorenzetti' s images are a physical portrayal of human social ideals (or lack of them) in much the same way as are Jerry Cooke's American photographs of psychiatric asylums in the 1940s [1] and Carla Cerati 's photographs of Italian asylums in the 1960s [2] . Photographs of today's ex-mental-hospital patients on the streets of American cities would certainly complement this series. If Cooke's and Cerati's images reveal the effects of bad psychiatry, what, then, are the images of good psychiatry? Why have the great advances in medicine and related sciences not provided much useful knowledge for transforming societies' public psychiatric institutions? What factors have caused both mental health professionals and policy planners in the United States and abroad to abandon their interest in the reformist goals and practices that have dominated Western psychiatry over the past 25 years? Without a doubt, the American community mental health center (CMHC) movement is under political attack despite its many remark-
Publication Year: 1985
Publication Date: 1985-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 7
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