Marcella Balconi

Marcella Balconi (8 February 1919 – 5 February 1999) was an Italian child psychiatrist, member of the resistance during World War II and a Parliamentary politician. She pioneered the practice of psychoanalytic infant observation in Italy.

Biography Balconi enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Pavia and was introduced to her future profession while working, during the holidays, with her father who was a physician in a medical clinic nearby.

In 1943 she graduated from medical school and went to work with the clinician and pediatrician Pietro Fornara (1897– 1975), a pioneer in the field of child neuropsychiatry as well as a fervent anti-fascist and head of the resistance movement in Novara, Italy.

Researcher After the war, she helped organize the child neuropsychiatry service offered by the charity hospital in Novara. Balconi served as deputy director of the National Motherhood and Childhood Work (ONMI) from 1945 to 1948 and organized a pilot research effort modeled after the French and Swiss medical-pedagogical centers she had seen.

During her work, even as late as the 1970s, Balconi introduced to her Italian colleagues the practice of psychoanalytic infant observation and used it to train social and health professionals. It also became a standard diagnostic practice in Italy. In doing so, she confirmed theories of the Polish researcher Esther Bick (1901–1983), and she earned recognition as one of the "pioneers of Italian child neuropsychiatry."

Personal life She was born 8 February 1919 in Romagnano Sesia in northern Italy, the daughter of a physician Giuseppe Balconi.

Founder of the first Child Psychiatry Service in Piedmont Founding Member of the Italian Society of Child Neuropsychiatry (SINPI) Founding Member of the Italian Society of Psychoanalysis (SIP) Ordinary Member and Teacher of the World Society of Psychoanalysis

Selected works M. Balconi, Difficult children, "Abnormal childhood," n. 1, 1953, pp. 20–29 M. Balconi, The drawing applied to the fables of Düss, "Abnormal childhood," n. 3, 1953, pp. 432–480 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Diagnosis of structure in child psychiatry, "Abnormal childhood," n. 23, 1957 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Method of statistical processing. The first elaborations: connections between the "personal characters" and some mesological and hereditary factors, n. 23, 1957, "Abnormal childhood," n. 23, 1957 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Statistical-clinical study on a group of 1000 children reported for difficulty in adapting to school. First part, "Abnormal childhood," n. 25, 1958, pp. 42–89 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Statistical-clinical study on a group of 1000 children reported for difficulty in adapting to school. Second part, "Abnormal childhood," n. 28, 1958, pp. 411–463 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Statistical-clinical study on a group of 1000 children reported for difficulty in adapting to school. Third part, "Abnormal childhood," n. 30, 1959, pp. 42–92 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, Statistical-clinical study on a group of 1000 children reported for difficulty in adapting to school. Part Four, "Abnormal Childhood," n. 32, 1959, pp. 309–333 M. Balconi, ME Berrini, On school maladjustment in the first grade. Part five. Concluding notes, "Abnormal childhood," n. 36, 1960, pp. 7–42 M. Balconi and G. Del Carlo Giannini, Primary experiences and personality development. Studies on child drawing, in Psychology and Personality, edited by LM Lorenzetti, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1995 M. Balconi, Listening to the child: images, stories, fantasies, with the collaboration of ME Berrini and F. Fornari, edited by R. Dionigi, Cesena, The old bridge, 1999