[SPS seminar on identity - 18 June 2011] -National and professional identity compared. The relation between public and private aspects.

Abstract

This article proposes the relation between public and private aspects as a category of interpretation in construing the Italian national and professional identity. This relation has changed through time from a mainly “public” logic, with strong State interventions in mental health and employment, to an administrative decentralisation where various protagonists, branches of the State, intervene in the local area. The public administration itself has changed, adopting new parameters for assessing work. Using three cases that deal with changing institutions and issues related to living together, we have tried to find a link between the demands addressed to psychologists and the evolution of the representation of public and private aspects.