The Experience of Things: Memory, Photographic Representation and Emotions in Psychiatric Field Research

Taking as its starting point a number of photographs of a former psychiatric patient – a relative of mine – who was placed in various mental health institutions in Italy for over forty years of his life (between 1945 and 1991), this chapter explores the relationship among memory, photographic representation and emotions. In doing so, it regards field experience as a fundamental tool for the critical investigation of the ways in which, as researchers, we construct forms of knowledge. Indeed, in order to move beyond a reductionist view of mental illness (a view that still has a surprising amount of currency today), those involved in the training of healthcare professionals must not only understand such illness as a ‘complex’ web of biological, social, cultural and economic factors, but also define it in relation to the implicit meanings that are part of their emotional world and through which they construct their own professional biographies.