Nuovi studi sul Genio II di Cesare Lombroso (Italian Edition)

This idea goes back to Aristotle Klibansky etul. The development of this hypothesis has been summarized elsewhere Mora, Lombroso was deeply concerned about social life. They were Sephardic Jews who emigrated first to Tunisia and then to Italy. Apparently he was such a sensitive child that he even had mystical visions Gina Lombroso-Ferrero, Perhaps this explains why Cesare isolated himself, spending his time writing poems and a tragedy, later lost. While attending high Downloaded by [2. Because of his rebellious character his parents removed him from school and educated him privately, a special emphasis being placed on humanities, to which he seemed to have a strong inclination.

His interests in linguistics led him to review a work by Paolo Marzolo, a physician who had written a handbook about the origin of languages and about comparisons between them. Although Lombroso probably already knew Marzolo, his hagiographers recount that, impressed by the review, Marzolo asked to meet the young author Baima- Bollone, While still a medical student he entered into correspondence with F. Maury, the author of a well-known book about dreams.

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Jerome Cardan was a sixteenth-century Italian physician, philosopher and outstanding mathematician. He supported the biological equivalence of men, and argued against the death penalty and torture. In his numerous publications he maintained a distinction between the behaviour of the abnormal personalities, the mentally ill, those in emotional and passionate states, and the habitual and occasional delinquents. Cardano had an oniric and unstable temperament Grieco and Mancia, ; Grieco, And it is in the article on Cardano that Lombroso writes first about the link between genius and madness, a link that, in his opinion, can be detected especially in dreams.

O n returning to Pavia in , he began to study cretinism, concluding that it originated from a disease of the thyroid glands. Lombroso graduated in medicine in at Pavia University, and in surgery in at Genoa. He then entered the medical corps in the Piedmontese army, and participated in the Second Italian War for Independence. As he had successfully treated wounds with alcohol compresses, he was asked to re-enlist in the army. While stationed in Calabria, where the army was involved in the fight against banditry, Lombroso remained deeply shocked by the poor standards of hygiene in the region.

In , back in Genoa, he worked on homeopathy with Gaiter, a doctor from Verona. In April, the Downloaded by [2.

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He left the army in Lombroso published a series of clinical observations, describing, in particular, two forms of mania found in patients with diphtheria. Suggesting that diphtheria might affect organs other than the larynx, he foresaw the possibility of a vaccine Baima-Bollone, From Lombroso concentrated his attention on pellagra, which at the time was endemic in the maize-growing areas of northern Italy, and a major health problem.

H e became convinced that the disease originated from a toxin-producing alteration of maize grains. Throughout his academic life Lombroso was embittered by a controversy, which was partly connected with his pellagra theory. This conflict influenced his professional career choices, eventually persuading him to leave Pavia and accept the chair of legal medicine in Turin in Bulferetti, Even though Lombroso never succeeded in identifying the true causes of pellagra his studies and his fights on this matter had a strong social influence. In Italy passed a law which prohibited the sale or possession of unripe or damaged maize and forbade trading in it.

His work persuaded public opinion that the disease could be prevented De Bernardi, In Lombroso became full professor of psychiatry in Pavia. In April he married Nina De Benedetti, the marriage being celebrated with both Jewish and civil rites. In their first child, Paola Marzola, was born, followed 18 months later by Gina, then Arnaldo in , Leo in and Ugo in Leo died of diphtheria at 6, and Arnaldo of typhus fever at In Lombroso was invited for a year to direct the psychiatric hospital in Pesaro, where he enjoyed the close collaboration of the public authorities.

As director of the hospital, he notably improved the environ- ment, organized recreational activities for the patients, and started a mental hospital newspaper. During that period, Lombroso examined more than criminals, collecting their family histories, their biographies, anthropometrical data, physiognomic components and psycho-physical characteristics. In after he won the university competition for a chair in legal medicine in Turin he moved there. In he was appointed prison physician, and in became professor of psychiatry.

In Turin he organized a laboratory of criminal anthropology and started a museum, to which he gave all the material he had collected for years, and where he also kept the skulls that began arriving from all over the world. In Lombroso had organized an exhibition of skulls, drawings, masks, tattoos, weapons, marked playing-cards and works by the inmates.

Cesare Lombroso - Nuovi studi sul Genio (Da Colombo a Manzoni) - - Catawiki

The exhibition was enlarged and repeated on the occasion of the first Congress of Criminal Anthropology in Rome, in In Lombroso Downloaded by [2. In Lombroso published Penriero e meteore Thought and Meteors , in which he discussed relationships between meteorological phenomena and criminal activities; later he also took a great interest in hypnotism. In , after publishing an article in which he criticized belief in spiritualism, Lombroso was invited to Naples to meet the famous medium Eusapia Palatino. H e accepted with reluctance. Despite the fact that the scientific content of these articles was low, they aroused the interest of the scientific and social community, because Lombroso was known to be utterly against all kinds of irrationality.

In Lombroso went to Moscow for a congress, and on that occasion wanted to meet Tolstoy. Gina Lombroso-Ferrero describes the encounter as follows: The meeting was not very dramatic; the two men did not understand each other. While pertaining to the same generation, both being intuitive, sensitive, artistic and idealist, Lombroso and Tolstoy were morally poles apart. O n the other hand Tolstoy, biased against Lombroso and fearful that he might declare him crazy, did not let him penetrate into his soul.

At his wish, a few days later his body was submitted to autopsy and his skeleton donated to the criminal anthropology museum. His ideas lie buried amid a multitude of somehow confused data; his sources often remain unreported, and his observations and statistics pile up in a disorganized fashion. According to Gina Lombroso-Ferrero, her father used to keep at hand a copy of La donna delinquente for jotting down research data, chance observations, discussions with colleagues and any event he considered interesting.

Others Aschaffenburg, commented on his lack of critical sense and on the haphazard way in which he collected the material for his works, indiscriminately mixing statistical data, anecdotes and proverbs, inscriptions from prison walls, individual and collective data. Not until , at the age of 36, did Lombroso become interested in criminality. According to his daughter Gina, it was only when he became director of Pesaro Mental Hospital in that year that he had some of the rooms Downloaded by [2.

When teaching in Pavia, he wrote: Only figures and precision instruments have allowed science to make the enormous advances we admire, advances which have allowed us to dominate nature. Why do we not apply this magnificent method also to psychiatry, for the mental insane is made up not of the spirit alone, but also of the body.

For all changes in psychic forces, hence of the spirit, must be accompanied by changes in the body. In the first two editions , , his analysis of criminality is centred basically on a single type: In the fourth edition Lombroso perfected his personal typology. Together Downloaded by [2. The fifth edition had more or less the same structure as the fourth.

Publications in various languages of the third volume of the fifth edition as a separate work Crime: Its Causes and Remedies have created confusion in the sequence of his writings. As mentioned before, Lombrosian theory is based mainly on three concepts: Lombroso had elaborated this idea in , while examining the skull of Vilella, a year-old brigand from Calabria. Instead of the internal occipital crest, the skull had a smooth-bottomed cavity. In the opening session of the sixth International Congress of Criminal Anthropology , Lombroso stated: These ancestral characteristics simply demonstrate that for those individuals development stopped at a previous stage of evolution.

Lombroso thought his idea had been confirmed when he gave an expert opinion on a year-old peasant, Verzeni.

According to Lombroso such brutal behaviour could be explained only by atavism, i. Thus Lombroso defines the delinquent as a non-progressed creature, aperson whose development stopped in the past. Moreover, he considered tattoos a clear sign of intrinsic atavism, of a tendency to conform with wild and primitive behaviours. In some of Downloaded by [2. Besides, Lombroso remained convinced that neither crime nor punishment was peculiar to humans. They were present also in the animal and vegetable kingdom.

Lombroso thought that prognathism, facial asymmetry, an attitude of face similar to that of the opposite sex, a sparse beard, a deformed nose, thick hair, protruding cheekbones, a squint, a receding forehead and pointed ears, were all criminal traits. These elements may combine to set up various distinct somatic types, each related to a particular form of criminal activity. For example, a thief will have a lively facial mimickry, a small beard, small mobile eyes, thick close eyebrows, a twisted snub nose and a small receding forehead. A rapist will have brilliant eyes, delicate features, swollen lips and scroll ears.

A murderer will have wide cheekbones, a sparse beard, well-developed canine teeth, thin lips, a cold and motionless look, a bloody eye, a large, hooked nose, strong jaws and thick frizzy hair. A fraud will be fat and pale, with a long twisted nose and small, downward-looking eyes.

Lombroso thought that the left-handedness frequently found in delinquents corresponded to the ambidextrousness found in children and primitives. In the second volume of the fifth edition Lombroso also elaborated a classification of criminals. It is this concept which originally paved the way for forensic psychiatry Galzigna, This description corresponded to selfish, lazy and immoral delinquents who were indifferent to imprisonment and had no feelings of guilt for the crimes they had committed.

In some ways similar to the atavism theory, it hypothesized the existence of the primitive mentality, a kind of common ground, far from rational thought and scientific mentality Manuel, ; Rossi, H e thought that moral insanity was confirmed by the behaviour of children, who also spontaneously act in a violent, obscene and cruel manner, behaviours which are controlled only by fear of punishment, habit and convenience.

Later he gradually and progressively gave up the moral madness thesis, in favour of the epileptic thesis, which he thought was based upon more solid and reliable organic evidence preface to Criminal Man. Gina Lombroso-Ferrero states that the connection between epilepsy and criminality is derived, not identical. According to Lombroso, the symptoms in subjects suffering from that kind of epilepsy are similar to those in subjects suffering from overt epilepsy.

But, unlike overt epileptics, criminal epileptics do not present tonic-clonic seizures convulsions. Lombroso was writing before the invention of EEG, at a time when knowledge of epileptic syndromes was scarce. In the second edition he deepens his analysis of environmental factors to encompass direct and indirect hereditary factors, as well as meteorological and climatic variables. Too much food would increase sexual stimuli, while alcohol and drugs would increase crimes against the person, indecent behaviour and rebellion.

Sex and age influence the genesis of crime crime is more frequent in men, especially men aged between 20 and 30 years , while education and profession affect the type of crime. These incite men to be criminal because they put them in a condition where it is easier to commit crimes and not be punished. Prison detention also promotes crime, because it increases the chance of meeting other criminals. In the third volume of the fifth edition, Lombroso reviews the environmental causes of crime. Among possible methods of crime prevention he suggests avoiding living in huge urban agglomerates, a better distribution of wealth and elimination of torture.

He exhorts banks to exercise their functions and says that the privileges of the political class have to be eliminated. Lombroso foresees a better selection of public officers and a more efficient fight against corruption. For the prevention of alcoholism he outlines a social programme envisaging the establishment of special deintoxication centres. He underlines the importance of the family in the prevention of criminality.

Rather than serving as a corrective, the detention of minors encourages them to emulate the criminal behaviours of their elders.

The Italian Way to Eugenics

Lombroso supports individual treatment in prisons, and criticizes the isolation regimen. Nevertheless, he thinks that correction of an inmate in a prison environment is an artificial measure that will never allow the individual to be amended. In the same volume Lombroso makes suggestions for juridical reform. According to Lombroso, abortion and adultery are not to be considered crimes. Lombroso verifies that few delinquent stigmas are present in women.

In women, prostitution is the equivalent of crime and degeneration, an opinion already given by Locatelli Baima-Bollone, Italian criminal anthropology identified the base cause of innatism to crime as arrested development. Therefore, the primary objective of the discipline was not to intervene in the reproductive process, but rather to isolate dysgenic types antisocial delinquents and segregate them from the rest of society. It was above all in relation to this latter measure that the eugenic intent was explicit:. While it is correct to consider that the roots of certain evils cannot be overcome with the death of a few felons, it is however true that crime has diminished in intensity and ferocity in the last centuries thanks in part to the death penalty.

Distributed so widely and with much publicity, if it has contributed to a share of new crimes with a spirit of imitation and ferocious public spectacle, it must also have diminished many others, preventing every evasion, every relapse and heredity in criminals, doing that which nature does in the selection of the species, when, from inferior beings, it gives us the grand dominators of the globe. While Galton maintained that natural selection needed to be reinforced with an artificial eugenic selection, for Lombroso, eugenics was a part of the same evolutionary mechanisms of natural selection, even in its degenerative aspects.

It was not by chance that genius—carrier of degeneration, but innovator and creator of progress—represented only one aspect of the positive transgression of the norms theorized by Lombroso: On many occasions, the refusal of negative eugenics above all, sterilization was inspired by the Lombrosian idea that biological degeneration could in reality generate genius; that the deformed or epilepsy sufferers could be hiding a Leopardi or a Manzoni in their midst.

In these pages, it is possible to notice the distinctive Lombrosian interpretation, and the attention with which the development of the international eugenic debate was followed is also evident. From its inception, the Archivio dealt with eugenics, informing its readers about the legislative initiatives on sterilization and castration introduced, in those years, in the United States and Europe.

For the transition of the Lombrosian school to eugenics, the London Congress had a double importance. In the first place, the Italian delegation was a synthesis of those disciplines—anthropology, psychiatry, criminology, legal medicine—on which Lombroso had exerted a powerful influence. A glance through the names reveal intellectual figures—such as, in particular, Giuseppe Sergi, Raffaele Garofalo, Alfredo Niceforo and Enrico Morselli—whose scientific and personal links with Lombroso are well-known.

Senator Raffaele Garofalo did not present a specific paper, but appeared as an honorary member of the Congress, implicitly revealing how important eugenics was for the Italian positivist school of criminal law.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lombroso, Cesare

From in fact, the jurist had loudly supported the custody of the perpetrators of crimes against people in criminal asylums for indeterminate periods. This artificial selection had to be characterized by a double objective: Morselli, founder of the Rivista di filosofia scientifica [Review of scientific philosophy] and illustrious exponent of Italian anthropological psychiatry, offered an original interpretation of eugenics. This was based substantially on two elements: There were very few re-educated feeble-minded who were able to re-enter the social circuit, and they usually regressed and ended up in asylums.

When one talked about the Latin race, or the Germanic race, etc. The races which were exposed to certain influences, to certain illnesses, ended up resisting them victoriously, precisely because the elements that did not resist were eliminated from selection. A race that is removed from these influences for a long time and is then suddenly exposed could be destroyed, because, not having operated the selection, this race will not have any resistance to the danger that threatens. The problem to resolve is the following: Following from this, if it is not possible to decrease these births, if the increase of the number of these individuals becomes a danger for society, how can we eliminate them, with a minimum of error in their choice and in the suffering inflicted on them, and without overly upsetting the humanitarian sentiments, which it is useful to develop?

We consider it useful to see where this path ends up, which, beginning with State monopolies and keeping on with obligatory unions, obligatory insurance, collective organization of production and the constitution of a welfare state, is leading to the destruction of every individual initiative, the annihilation of all human dignity, and the reduction of men to the level of a flock of sheep.

This community voluntarily placed itself under rigorous discipline, and also practiced a community of goods. As was to be expected, this did not endure for long; after 33 years of existence, it had been transformed into a simple holding, and had no appreciable effect on the improvement of the race. If the foresight of the results of the sexual act could become one of the principles of individual morals, it would be a great step towards the possible improvement of the species.

This foresight would encourage the individual to not bring children into this world, if there were reasons to believe that he would transmit to them some illness or defect, and if there were no means to conveniently relieve it. In a letter from December , Pareto acknowledged the influence of Ammon and Lapouge in the formulation of his theory: I have however taken much, a great deal, and I have clearly stated so [ The scholars can moreover see how I partly dissent from them, and have added things.

Ammon and De Lapouge specify too much when they wish to give us the anthropological characteristics of this elite, these eugenic races, identifying them as dolicocephalic blonds. For now, this point remains obscure, and lengthy studies are still necessary before we will be able to establish whether the psychical qualities of the elite are translated into exterior, anthropometric characteristics, and before we can know precisely what these characteristics are.

If, in fact, it were possible to recognize the character and attitudes of people from some exterior signs, such as form of the cranium, hair color, eye color, etc. Unfortunately, these theories have uncertain relationships with reality, and for the moment, there are no other means to select men, if not that of testing what they can do, and putting them in competition, one against the other. This has a place, albeit a very imperfect one, in our societies, and history shows us that their progress is intimately linked to the extension of this use. In one passage of Cours , which focused on the opposition between the stability of the income curve and the internal mobility of the defined area of the curve, Pareto compared the social organism to a living organism:.

The social organism in this way resembles a living organism. The external form of a living organism—for example, a horse—is almost always constant, but internally, there are ample and sundry movements. The blood circulation rapidly moves certain molecules; the processes of assimilation and of secretion incessantly modify the molecules of which its tissue is made up. It seems highly probable that the rigorous selection that occurs in the inferior classes, above all for children, has a more important action.

The rich classes have few children and almost all survive; the poor classes have many children and lose great numbers of those who are not particularly robust or well endowed.

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It is the same reason for which the perfected animal and plant races are very delicate, in comparison with the ordinary races. Both solutions ended in altering the perfect eugenic equilibrium of the circulation of the elite:. If the rich classes in our societies were to have many children, it is likely that almost all would survive, even the frailest and least endowed. This would proportionately grow the degenerate elements in the superior classes and retard the access of the inferior classes to the elite. If selection were to no longer exercise its effects on the inferior classes, these would cease to produce elite members, and the average quality of society would be considerably lessened.

These are like the roots of a plant, while the elite is the flower. This flower fades and must fade, but it is immediately replaced by another, if the roots are not damaged. Modern authors, in the search for something new, have developed a great love for the institution of the Indian caste system. These authors cannot explain how this excellent system has not prevented the Indians from becoming prey to numerous conquerors, lacking all caste, nor how some thousands of British were enough to maintain British dominion over a country that counts around two hundred million inhabitants.

Economic superiority is by no means an index of superior psycho-physical aptitudes, whether because many of those who now possess that position do not acquire it by virtue of the possession of elevated mental capacity, or because all the others who have inherited these positions from preceding possessors are completely devoid of such aptitudes. Thus, economic superiority cannot in any case be assumed to be the measure or reflection of psycho-physical superiority. Although an exponent, in those years, of the nascent neo-Malthusian movement, at the London Congress, socialist Michels propounded the general criteria of a eugenics based not so much on birth control as on the organization of the mass party.

According to Michels, the organization of modern parties favored the selection of a new psychoanthropological type—that of the political leader—characterized by oratory ability and physical good looks, and additionally, by a series of psychological endowments:. The first chapter of this essay was specifically devoted to eugenics. No longer a supporter of birth control and sterilization, but of the eugenic and demographic value of Italian emigration, in the s, Michels did not hesitate to protest against E. If the stimulus to procreation has lost its intensity, that is due above all, I believe, to the diffuse economic well-being, the decreased physical activity, the broadening and accentuating of that complex of characteristics that we call civilization, the final limit of which is a beatific state, in which every desire is sated and every effort suppressed.

In a bad environment, a selected race will worsen, in spite of the most active selection; in a good environment, a race improves, even if subjected to reverse selection. This phenomenon has been ascertained for plants, and seems to hold true for all organisms, and, in particular, for man. In contrast to the beliefs of British mainline eugenics, the poor classes did not in fact constitute a biological threat, but rather a necessary resource:.

The great mass of population is constituted by those whom we call the poor classes; from them, as if from an immense breeding ground, the elect originate, in relatively small numbers, either through personal merit or through force of circumstances. They originate, arise, shine and are extinguished, like rockets; only insignificant traces fall to earth. Having a measurement of homogeneity for eye or hair color of the inhabitants of a region is no less important, to be able to make a judgment on the purity of races, or on the influence of the environment on human characteristics and other anthropological problems, than having a measurement of homogeneity for certain quantitative somatic characteristics, such as thoracic perimeter, stature, weight, etc.

Similarly, it could be interesting, in many aspects, to have a measurement of homogeneity for religion, for marriage status, for nationality, for profession etc. The pillar of this theory was the differential fertility and birth rate between social classes. Instead of artificial selection, he proposed the return to the state of nature; instead of biological protection of the elite, the necessity of social exchange; rather than neo-Malthusianism, a pronatalist policy.

Until it is shown that the children of the lower classes—if they were brought up from conception in the same surroundings as the children of the higher classes—would turn out inferior to these, it is not proved that, by stimulating the reproductiveness of the higher classes, one would improve the race more than by leaving their place to be occupied by the children of the working class.

On this theoretical basis, he positively welcomed the rapid crisis of aristocratic blood:. Artificially to stimulate the reproduction in the higher classes, and check that of the lower ones would be equivalent to trying to improve society by increasing the duration of the life of the old and preventing new generations from taking their place. A first particular aspect reconnected the rise of eugenics to the last stage of society—that of senility—as an extreme attempt to slow down decadence:. Nations would produce, at the beginning of their civilization, stronger, more intelligent, and happier children; but these advantages would slowly be lost with the progress of the nation and with the rise of marriageable age.

Progress in medicine and hygiene, greater care at home, a higher and more intensive and rational education would be more than sufficient to compensate for such physiological impoverishment of the race: It is a common custom to speak of young populations and of old populations; and we all feel that in such a phrase there is more than a simple metaphor.

The biological metaphor adopted by Gini in to describe the eugenic role of emigration was, from this point of view, enlightening. The average man, and the average soldier, and the average child, and the average newborn, as they respond to the needs of the systematic average, also respond to the facts: What is there more repugnant for us than the long, pug nose of the Negroes or the Australians, and more distant from the long, straight nose of the Anglo-Saxons?

Therefore, when the English disembarked in Australia, the indigenous there derided them for their sparrow-hawk noses. And what is uglier than their swollen lips? The fact that all the populations who have come into contact with European civilization have, sooner or later, more or less completely abandoned their national costume, to adopt our monotonous clothing, is further proof of the influence that the imitation of a superior race exercises on the formation of the aesthetic ideal.