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

Currently, 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 not enough 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.

Another great school of thought, which has integrated elements of the above 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 are going to make a small biography of Vittorio Guidano , with the main stages of his life.

A short biography of Vittorio Guidano

Vittorio Filippo Guidano was born on August 4, 1944 in Rome, Italy. His father was a pharmacist and he spent most of his adolescence in Caracas, Venezuela, before returning to the city where he was born to continue his academic training. There, he would study the Bachillerato at the Liceo Giambattista Vico, which he would finish in 1964 with a degree in arts.

He then enrolled and studied medicine at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He took a doctorate in medicine and surgery, which he completed in 1969. The protests and social movements of 1968, however, led 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 involvement with psychiatry

In 1970 he was granted a scholarship by the Italian administration to enter the Institute of Psychiatry at the same University “La Sapienzia”, directed by Professor Reda. At this stage Guidano started to carry out his first researches in the field of psychiatry , focusing on trying to understand the human psyche.

Later, in 1972, he would carry out 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 Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy) and later appointed president of the same (a position he would hold until 1978). While in office 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 researches focused on personality factors and on the effects of the cognitive-behavioral therapy of the time, at that time 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 that of 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 cognitive, experimental and relational paradigms.

The beginnings of post-rationalism

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

The centre grew rapidly and would gain a great reputation. In 1981 he was hired as a researcher at the University of Rome , a relationship that would last until 1986, and he held numerous conferences in universities around the world.

During those years he began to work with Giovanni Liotti, together 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 he begins to integrate elements of constructivism, Bowlby’s theory of attachment and Piaget’s theories on development within his own model, in which emotions begin to transcend and become increasingly important in the formation of identity, above and beyond cognition.

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

Thus, he observed that we actively build our own personal experience from what we live, something along the 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 normotipathy and psychopathology.

He published Complexity of the Self in 1987, and another work, The Self in Process , in 1991. In these works he already began to talk about the post-rationalist concept as a way of differentiating his model (more centred on subjectivity and emotion in the development of identity than on cognition and reasoning in cognitive theory).

Death and Legacy

During the last years of the 90s, Guidano started to study psychosis in depth, researching and working on this type of disorder and trying to develop techniques and therapies specific to this type of disorder 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 , at the age of 55, where he had traveled to attend a congress.

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

Bibliographic references:

  • Jaramillo Ruiz. A. and López Gómez, D. (2017). Brief description of Vittorio Guidano’s Post-rationalist Cognitive Model and its current presence in psychology scenarios in Antioquia. Poiésis Magazine, (32), 53-66.
  • León Uribe, A. and Tamayo Lopera, D. (2011). Post-trationalist cognitive psychotherapy: an intervention model focused on the process of identity construction. Katharsis, 12: 37-58.
  • Nardi, B. and Pannelli, G. (2001). A Tribute to Vittorio F. Guidano (1944-1999). European Psychotherapy, 2 (1).