WTI Magazine #80    2016 June 17
Author : Giovanni Verde      Translation by:

Mara Selvini Palazzoli's childhood testifies to the extraordinary ability of this woman to respond to the tragedies of life, to treasure them and to go further up to create new human and professional horizons. Mara was born in Milan on August 15, 1916 from Daniele Palazzoli and Italia Faccioli who were busy dealing with many activities such as trading of livestock and fishes, cold cuts production and management of a chain of stores. Mara is the last of four children: her brothers Costante and Peppino, respectively 9 and 8 years older than her, and her sister Alba, three years older.

Her early life is chaotic and complicated. Daniele is an authoritarian father and a workaholic, while Italia is his crucial business partner, but she's also terrified by her husband's crazy expenses. Bering that stressed and thus at risk, and in a period of war, Italia's gynecologist recommends her an abortion: Italia, strongly Catholic, strongly refuses but is forced to entrust the baby in the care of Rosa, a peasant from an agricultural village on the Varese Lake.

Mara is virtually forgotten until after the end of the war when, in the spring of 1919, almost three years old, she goes back to live in Milan, in a house in front of the Duomo. At her new home, as a matter of fact, family and servants are strangers to her and she ends up "building" her own refuge ... under a desk, until in a few days her parents decide to bring her back to Rosa.

The family atmosphere was in fact very heavy. The numerous medals won by Mara as Best Student of the school do not excite very much her parents who just seem not to be very involved or interested in her life. Even so, her brilliant vows and her strong memory for the classics, the poems and the songs cause the huge admiration by her teachers.

Mara graduates in Medicine in 1941. In that year Italia, her biological mother, gets breast cancer and Mara decides not to break away from her bedside. Before to die her mother confesses all her emotion to this gesture, that she does not feel to deserve from her daughter, tearfully apologizing for being such a distant and not very attentive mother and promising that, from heaven, she could always count on her.

Her paper "L'anoressia mentale" (Anorexia nervosa) in 1963 is fundamental for her career and for the scientific literature regarding this topic: Mara is recognized as one of the most important scholars in the world and establishes important clinical and professional links with national and international researchers. Among these, stands out the friendship and the professional relationship with psychoanalysts like Luigi Boscolo, Gianfranco Cecchin and Giuliana Prata: the four of them are soon known all around the world as the "Four of the Milan school" (or the creators of the "Milan Approach").

Since 1970, first in the whole world, Mara introduces - within her course of Psychotherapy at the Graduate School of Psychology at the Catholic University – the teaching of Psychotherapy of the family.
Contrary to her colleagues' invitations to continue to devote herself to teaching, at the beginning of the 80s Mara returns to apply full time to clinical practice. Towards the end of her career, she postulates theories and techniques that integrate individual and familiar psychotherapy, whose results will be posted in "Ragazze anoressiche e bulimiche" (Anorexics and bulimics girls) in 1998. With other researchers, in 1993 Mara also opens the School of Psychotherapy of the Family.

Mara Selvini Palazzoli dies in Milan on June 21, 1999. Her works and those of the Milan school will be recognized by the world psychological community, and her books and papers will be translated in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish and Japanese; she will be quoted and will inspire dozens and dozens of students and fellow researchers.

In 1986 the "American Association for Marital and Family Therapy" awards her with a prize in recognition of her research activities in the field of family therapy. Throughout Italy, several Mara Selvini Palazzoli centers have been opened through the years for the care of anorexic and bulimic disorders, helping literally thousands of girls.