Vittorio Guidano: biography of this Italian psychiatrist.

This researcher is especially known for developing the Cognitive Posrationalist Therapy.

Many authors throughout history have investigated the human psyche, and many schools of thought have emerged.

At present, one of the most accepted and valued is the cognitive-behavioral current. However, and especially in its origins, this current has been criticized for focusing too much on a rational point of view and too little on the emotional. With the passage of time, the value given to emotion has increased, especially thanks to schools such as constructivism or theories such as John Bowlby's attachment theory.

Another major school of thought, which has integrated elements of the aforementioned to form a cognitive-constructivist model, is the post-rationalist school founded by Vittorio Guidano. Knowing the life of its main founder may be of interest in order to understand what this model proposes, so throughout this article we will make a short biography of Vittorio Guidano, with the main stages of his life.with the main stages of his life.

A brief biography of Vittorio Guidano

Vittorio Filippo Guidano was born on August 4, 1944 in Rome, Italy. His father, a pharmacist, spent most of his adolescence in Caracas, Venezuela, and later returned to the city where he was born to continue his academic education. There he would study high school at the Liceo Giambattista Vico, studies that he would finish in 1964 with a degree in arts.

He then enrolled and studied medicine at the University of Rome "La Sapienza". He studied for a doctorate in Medicine and Surgery, a doctorate he completed in 1969. The protests and social movements of 1968, however, would cause him to become interested in more social and psychological areas, which eventually led him to become interested in the human mind and psyche..

The beginnings of his link with psychiatry

In 1970 he received a scholarship from the Italian administration to join the Institute of Psychiatry at the same University "La Sapienzia", directed by Professor Reda. At this stage Guidano would begin to carry out his first research in the field of psychiatryfocusing on trying to understand the human psyche.

Later, in 1972, he undertook a specialization in Neuropsychiatry at the University of Pisa, and that same year he was one of the founders of the Società Italiana di Terapia Comportamentale e Cognitiva (Italian Society of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy) and was subsequently appointed its president (a position he would hold until 1978). While working in this capacity, he continued to work in research at the University of Rome, where he was hired in 1974.

Specifically, his first works in this field were methodological and psychometric research focused on personality factors and on the effects of the cognitive-behavioral therapy of the time, then recently introduced in Italy. therapy, then recently introduced in Italy.

These investigations, which made him see some limitations as well as different theories that diverged in part with the approach of that model (such as Bowlby's attachment) led him to elaborate his own way of observing the human psyche, initiating the elaboration of a model of identity development based on the cognitivist, experimental and relational paradigms.

The beginnings of post-rationalism

In 1976 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychopathology at the University of Rome, and taught this subject until 1985. But his professional activity did not end there: in 1978 he founded the Cognitive Therapy Center in Rome, an institution that in addition to therapy offered training and education to therapists.

This center grew rapidly and achieved a great reputation. In 1981 he was hired as a researcher at the University of Rome, a relationship that lasted until 1986.In 1981 he was hired as a researcher at the University of Rome, a relationship that lasted until 1986, and he gave numerous lectures at universities around the world.

During those years he began to work with Giovanni Liotti, with whom he would develop one of his most relevant works and which would end up becoming one of the key moments in the foundation of post-rationalism: Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders (1983).

From this work begins to integrate elements of constructivism, Bowlby's attachment theory and Piaget's developmental theories into a model of its own, in which emotions begin to be transcended and given increasing importance in identity formation, over and above cognitions. s theories on development within a model of his own, in which emotions begin to be transcended and given increasing importance in identity formation, above cognitions.

His research continued, this time focusing on epistemology and focused on epistemology and aspects such as empiricism, rationalism and constructivism.. He integrated in his theory a systemic vision, based on the advances of the general theory of systems and cybernetics.

Thus, he observed that we actively construct our own personal experience from what we live, something that throughout development leads us to generate a unique identity, while being part of a living system: he developed the concept of Personal Meaning Organization and established different ways of organization, which can lead to both normotypicality and psychopathology.

He published Complexity of the Self in 1987, and another work, The Self in Processin 1991. In them he already he began to speak of the concept of post-rationalism as a way of differentiating his model (more focused on subjectivity and emotion in the development of identity than on cognition and reasoning in cognitivist theory).

• You may be interested in "Cognitive Posrationalist Psychotherapy: what is it and how does it help patients?"

Death and legacy

During the late 1990s, Guidano began to deepen the study of psychosis, researching and working on this type of disorders and trying to develop specific techniques and therapies for this type of disorders based on his model. However, he would not be able to complete it: Vittorio Guidano died of a sudden Heart attack in Buenos Aires on August 31, 1999.Vittorio Guidano died of a sudden heart attack in Buenos Aires on August 31, 1999, at the age of 55, where he had traveled to attend a congress.

The death of this important psychiatry professional left his work unfinished, but his contributions throughout his life have left a wide legacy: post-rationalism is a school of psychotherapy that serves as inspiration for many authors within the cognitive constructivist current.