Graziella Magherini

Graziella Magherini
Born(1927-08-23)23 August 1927
Died10 December 2023(2023-12-10) (aged 96)
Florence, Italy
NationalityItalian
Alma materUniversity of Florence
OccupationPsychiatrist
EmployerHospital of Santa Maria Nuova
Known forStendhal syndrome
Notable workLa sindrome di Stendhal
SpouseIvan Nicoletti
Children3

Graziella Magherini (Italian pronunciation: [ɡratˈtsjɛlla maɡeˈriːni]; 23 August 1927 – 10 December 2023) was an Italian psychiatrist.

Career

Born on 23 August 1927 in Florence, Magherini studied medicine at Florence University. She specialized in psychiatry at 28 and became a professor at 33. She later worked as a psychiatrist at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence.

Stendhal syndrome

Graziella Magherini is best known for her 1989 book La sindrome di Stendhal[1] (The Stendhal syndrome), which introduced this term to indicate a psychosomatic illness affecting individuals when exposed to art. After nearly 20 years of experience with patients at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy, Magherini began to note certain pathological abnormalities in a select group of her patients. Foreign visitors who had arrived in droves to indulge in the sumptuous beauty and art of the city were stricken by sudden and mysterious psychosomatic episodes that were induced by their identification with select and "personalized" art. "The Stendhal Syndrome occurs most frequently in Florence, because we have the greatest concentration of Renaissance art in the world."[2]

Her study The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal), published in 1989, is a description of her statistical methodology and, most importantly, a detailed description of some of her most interesting cases. Many of the case histories describe a foreigner who arrives in Florence, Italy and is overwhelmed by unrelenting depictions of Renaissance art and culture.

In the 'Inge Case,' Inge arrived from a Scandinavian country where she taught Italian to children. Her marriage was unsatisfactory and she was filled with the guilt of leaving her failing father, for whom she was a caregiver. Her Florence trip is the first she has taken in many years. Upon arrival she immediately felt 'out of sorts' and when she attended an Italian class for a second day, she noticed someone had taken her seat from the day before. Inge took this as a sign that no one wanted her in Florence. Suddenly, she was afflicted with an overwhelming sense of paranoia. Later, she visited one of Florence's famous cathedrals. She was drawn to one version of The Last Supper. Inge had palpitations and saw flashes of lights. In between flashes, she saw herself in the painting, as one of the women carrying a fruit basket to the table of Jesus. After a steady decline in her mental condition, she was admitted to the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital for observation.

From these cases, Magherini made some startling conclusions about the effects of artwork on the psyche, including that during the mirroring between art and subject, a sublime, aesthetic, and uncanny event occurs. Therein the art experience hooks a repressed trauma beneath the conscious sea of the subject rapidly pulling the trauma to the surface. The subject acts much like a distressed fish out of water. Magherini's job was to unhook the patient from this episode while under observation and gently place the patient back into society.

Personal life and death

A widow with three children, Graziella Magherini died on 10 December 2023 in Florence, at the age of 96.[3]

See also

Published works

  • Magherini, Graziella (1995). La sindrome di Stendhal (in Italian) (1995 ed.). Ponte alle Grazie. ISBN 88-7928-308-1. - Total pages: 219

References

  1. ^ Graziella Magherini. La Sindrome di Stendhal. Firenze, Ponte Alle Grazie, 1989. "Sindrome di standhal page A". Archived from the original on 5 May 2009. Retrieved 19 December 2009.
  2. ^ Maria Barnas. Confrontations: An Interview with Florentine psychiatrist Graziella Magherini. In: Metropolis M. Issue N° 4 (2008 August/September 2008). http://www.metropolism.com/magazine/2008-no4/confrontaties/english Archived 14 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ E’ morta Graziella Magherini, la psichiatra che spiegò la sindrome di Stendhal (in Italian)