The project MAI+, Memory Against Inhumanity

Abstract

The project MAI+, Memory against Inhumanity, which was ideated by Netforpp (European Network for Research and Education in Psychodynamic Psychiatry), complemented the Italian arrangement of the exhibition Registered, persecuted, annihilated: the sick and the disabled under National Socialism, which took place in Rome in 2017. The project, which was addressed to the students of a few high schools and secondary schools in Latium, was aimed at making adolescents know what mental illness is, whilst trying to get rid of cultural prejudices affecting the mentally ill. In order to achieve this objective, apart from evaluating the degree of information amongst the students by asking them to fill in a questionnaire, several different educational meetings were arranged. During these meetings, students were explained the concept of inhumanity as a psychopathological phenomenon derived from the dynamic of the annulment pulsion, which was developed by the psychiatrist Massimo Fagioli. This dynamic, which is enacted by making the human reality of a human being disappear, found its highest expression in National Socialism. A few workshops were also arranged where secondary school students staged performances on their idea of mental illness, whilst high-school students shot short videos on the topic of inhumanity.