[SPS seminar on identity - 18 June 2011] - On national and professional identity: a proposed reading using categories of conflict.

Abstract

The article examines the relations between national identity and psychologists’ professional identity by trying to interpret some events in Italian history since the Seventies by means of categories of conflict, used in many disciplinary fields with different meanings and taken here in one specific sense. Hypotheses are made about how the socio-cultural changes that affected the national community generated changes in modes of social adaptation, which make us see the demand addressed to the psychologist in different ways. The way aspects of conflict are symbolised in Italy at the end/beginning of the millennium are considered, and interpretative criteria are suggested for some issues in specific contexts (Mental Health Services, Public Safety Services, School) where the psychologist is called on to intervene by various organisational figures: staff member, risk prevention officer, cultural education assistant.