Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RETROCHILD (Children, trauma and political violence in Italo-Slovene Borderland (1945-1960))
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2026-03-31
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
RETROCHILD explored the psychological impacts of war and other forms of political violence on children (aged 0–18) in the Italo-Slovene borderland during the postwar period (1945–1960). In order to examine the processes through which notions of childhood trauma, children’s psychological needs, and the “child mind” were universalized, the project adopted a novel “retrograde approach.” Rather than beginning with events presumed to have produced psychological distress, the research worked backwards from three subsequent forms of social, medical, and legal intervention: care for orphans and abandoned children, psychiatric treatment of children, and the management of juvenile delinquency.
Through the analysis of sources related to these case studies, the project generated original insights into children’s experiences of war and postwar conditions, the construction of socialist childhood, the functioning of political power, and the broader development of disciplines concerned with the “child mind” .
By focusing on a non-Western and borderland context, RETROCHILD challenged established paradigms surrounding childhood, innocence, and victimhood. In addition to questioning universalized Western understandings of trauma and victimhood, the project used childhood narratives from the border region to reconsider the conventional divide between socialist and non-socialist (or Eastern and Western) approaches to social welfare, education, and mental health.
Through the analysis of sources related to these case studies, the project generated original insights into children’s experiences of war and postwar conditions, the construction of socialist childhood, the functioning of political power, and the broader development of disciplines concerned with the “child mind” .
By focusing on a non-Western and borderland context, RETROCHILD challenged established paradigms surrounding childhood, innocence, and victimhood. In addition to questioning universalized Western understandings of trauma and victimhood, the project used childhood narratives from the border region to reconsider the conventional divide between socialist and non-socialist (or Eastern and Western) approaches to social welfare, education, and mental health.
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
The project involved extensive archival and literature-based research conducted in archives and libraries in Italy and Slovenia, including Trieste, Nova Gorica, Ljubljana, Kranj, Izola, and Koper. The research focused on patient records, court files, ego-documents, conference proceedings, institutional reports, and publications produced by welfare institutions, mass organisations, and international organisations such as UNESCO. Additional materials were obtained through interlibrary and postal services, while oral interviews were conducted with experts and with individuals connected to the professional and institutional networks examined in the project. Particular attention was devoted to tracing processes of knowledge transfer and the circulation of concepts related to child mental health, using approaches from transnational history, the history of emotions, microhistory, historical anthropology, and the medical humanities.
The research confirmed the project’s initial premise that concepts of the “child victim of war” and children’s psychological suffering were historically and politically shaped rather than universal categories. Significant differences emerged between Italy and Slovenia (Yugoslavia) regarding the timing, forms, and intensity with which children’s wartime experiences entered expert and institutional discourses. In Italy, including the border region, several institutional solutions aimed at addressing the psychological consequences of war on children were established, or at least actively discussed, immediately after the war. In Slovenia (Yugoslavia), children’s psychological needs also became the subject of expert debates during the postwar period, although these discussions emerged somewhat later and, with some important exceptions, rarely referred explicitly to wartime trauma.
The project demonstrated that these differences were partly rooted in distinct pre-war psychiatric traditions. In Italy, postwar initiatives concerning children in need of psychological care could build on a longer pre-war tradition of child psychiatry, which had developed through close connections between psychiatry, pedagogy, and educational institutions. Before the Second World War, Italian child psychiatry focused especially on children with intellectual disabilities and evolved alongside the expansion of public education and medico-pedagogical institutions. This institutional and professional infrastructure remained influential after 1945 and facilitated the development of psycho-pedagogical and child guidance initiatives in the postwar period.
The research showed that pre-war Slovenian psychiatry relied predominantly on biosomatic interpretations of mental illness and devoted relatively little attention to environmental and social factors such as war experiences or family conditions. Children were frequently institutionalised together with adults, and specialised child psychiatric services remained underdeveloped before the Second World War. This, however, partially changed during the war. Institutional and intellectual continuities nevertheless partly explain why children’s psychological suffering did not immediately become a central topic within Slovenian postwar expert discourse. The field of child psychiatry developed more slowly in Slovenia after 1945 than in Italy, which also shaped initiatives in the border region.
The analysis further demonstrated that wartime experiences and their effects on children were initially interpreted predominantly in moral, social, and educational rather than medical or psychological terms. Nevertheless, patient files, petitions, and court records on both sides of the border revealed recurring references to nervousness, irregular sleep, emotional distress, and behavioural disturbances among children affected by war and postwar instability. These findings led the project beyond a narrow trauma/resilience framework toward a broader analysis of the institutional, political, and scientific processes shaping the treatment of orphans, abandoned children, and juvenile delinquents.
Despite following different temporal trajectories, developments in child welfare and child mental health in both Italy and Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) were shaped by similar international scientific and organisational models originating in Switzerland, Great Britain, France, and the United States, as well as by the growing influence of international organisations, particularly the WHO. In both contexts, the child guidance clinic movement served as an important point of reference.
In Italy, comparable institutions known as centri medico-psico-pedagogici addressed, often directly, the psychological suffering of children affected by war and its aftermath. In Slovenia, the Educational Counselling Centre, established during the 1950s, became a key institution for children with behavioural, emotional, and learning difficulties. However, references to wartime experiences were considerably less pronounced, partly because the war was already becoming more temporally distant and because postwar social and political priorities increasingly shifted toward broader questions of education, adjustment, and child development.
The project also demonstrated that in both countries the immediate postwar period was primarily concerned with the care and control of abandoned children, orphans, and juvenile delinquents within closed institutional settings. By the 1950s, however, critiques of institutionalisation increasingly emerged, emphasising the potentially harmful psychological and social effects of long-term institutional care and promoting more individualised, family- and community-based approaches. The findings suggest that “psy” experts, welfare institutions, and mass organisations played an important role in initiatives aimed at reducing excessive institutionalisation and promoting alternative forms of care. These initiatives drew extensively on Western authors and experts who, informed by wartime experiences, critically reassessed institutional care and its psychological consequences for children. The project demonstrated how such models and theories, which in some Western countries were used to restore traditional conservative values, were selectively adapted to socialist contexts and reshaped in accordance with the specific social, political, and ideological conditions of Yugoslav socialism.
The research confirmed the project’s initial premise that concepts of the “child victim of war” and children’s psychological suffering were historically and politically shaped rather than universal categories. Significant differences emerged between Italy and Slovenia (Yugoslavia) regarding the timing, forms, and intensity with which children’s wartime experiences entered expert and institutional discourses. In Italy, including the border region, several institutional solutions aimed at addressing the psychological consequences of war on children were established, or at least actively discussed, immediately after the war. In Slovenia (Yugoslavia), children’s psychological needs also became the subject of expert debates during the postwar period, although these discussions emerged somewhat later and, with some important exceptions, rarely referred explicitly to wartime trauma.
The project demonstrated that these differences were partly rooted in distinct pre-war psychiatric traditions. In Italy, postwar initiatives concerning children in need of psychological care could build on a longer pre-war tradition of child psychiatry, which had developed through close connections between psychiatry, pedagogy, and educational institutions. Before the Second World War, Italian child psychiatry focused especially on children with intellectual disabilities and evolved alongside the expansion of public education and medico-pedagogical institutions. This institutional and professional infrastructure remained influential after 1945 and facilitated the development of psycho-pedagogical and child guidance initiatives in the postwar period.
The research showed that pre-war Slovenian psychiatry relied predominantly on biosomatic interpretations of mental illness and devoted relatively little attention to environmental and social factors such as war experiences or family conditions. Children were frequently institutionalised together with adults, and specialised child psychiatric services remained underdeveloped before the Second World War. This, however, partially changed during the war. Institutional and intellectual continuities nevertheless partly explain why children’s psychological suffering did not immediately become a central topic within Slovenian postwar expert discourse. The field of child psychiatry developed more slowly in Slovenia after 1945 than in Italy, which also shaped initiatives in the border region.
The analysis further demonstrated that wartime experiences and their effects on children were initially interpreted predominantly in moral, social, and educational rather than medical or psychological terms. Nevertheless, patient files, petitions, and court records on both sides of the border revealed recurring references to nervousness, irregular sleep, emotional distress, and behavioural disturbances among children affected by war and postwar instability. These findings led the project beyond a narrow trauma/resilience framework toward a broader analysis of the institutional, political, and scientific processes shaping the treatment of orphans, abandoned children, and juvenile delinquents.
Despite following different temporal trajectories, developments in child welfare and child mental health in both Italy and Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) were shaped by similar international scientific and organisational models originating in Switzerland, Great Britain, France, and the United States, as well as by the growing influence of international organisations, particularly the WHO. In both contexts, the child guidance clinic movement served as an important point of reference.
In Italy, comparable institutions known as centri medico-psico-pedagogici addressed, often directly, the psychological suffering of children affected by war and its aftermath. In Slovenia, the Educational Counselling Centre, established during the 1950s, became a key institution for children with behavioural, emotional, and learning difficulties. However, references to wartime experiences were considerably less pronounced, partly because the war was already becoming more temporally distant and because postwar social and political priorities increasingly shifted toward broader questions of education, adjustment, and child development.
The project also demonstrated that in both countries the immediate postwar period was primarily concerned with the care and control of abandoned children, orphans, and juvenile delinquents within closed institutional settings. By the 1950s, however, critiques of institutionalisation increasingly emerged, emphasising the potentially harmful psychological and social effects of long-term institutional care and promoting more individualised, family- and community-based approaches. The findings suggest that “psy” experts, welfare institutions, and mass organisations played an important role in initiatives aimed at reducing excessive institutionalisation and promoting alternative forms of care. These initiatives drew extensively on Western authors and experts who, informed by wartime experiences, critically reassessed institutional care and its psychological consequences for children. The project demonstrated how such models and theories, which in some Western countries were used to restore traditional conservative values, were selectively adapted to socialist contexts and reshaped in accordance with the specific social, political, and ideological conditions of Yugoslav socialism.
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
The project moved beyond existing historiography by challenging universalising interpretations of children’s psychological responses to war and political violence, while also offering new insights into the relationship between “psy” sciences and the “child mind” in both countries and within a broader European context. The research demonstrated that post-war understandings of children’s experiences — and of how these experiences affected their development — were shaped by specific institutional, political, and epistemological contexts rather than by universal models of trauma.
Methodologically, the project combined approaches from transnational history, the history of emotions, microhistory, and the medical humanities, while drawing on previously underexplored archival materials, including patient files and, especially, court records. The research also highlighted the important role of international organisations, particularly the WHO, in shaping post-war child psychiatry and childcare practices in socialist Yugoslavia.
The influence of shared international models and concepts, such as child guidance clinics, encouraged the establishment or further development of similar institutions in both countries.
The research conducted so far suggests that the sources identified in the original project proposal contain relatively few explicit references to war and to children’s wartime psychological suffering. This preliminary finding points to the possible marginalisation of such experiences within the institutional and expert discourses examined thus far and highlights the need to broaden the empirical basis of the research.
The next phase of a possible future project will therefore focus on additional categories of sources that have not yet been systematically explored, particularly literary and artistic materials, as well as school-related sources. These materials may provide further evidence regarding the representation of children’s psychological suffering during and after the war, while also helping to verify or refine the preliminary thesis concerning the relative absence of these themes in the professional and institutional contexts under study. This expanded source base is expected to strengthen the project’s analytical framework and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the transfer and adaptation of child mental health concepts across different political and social systems.
Methodologically, the project combined approaches from transnational history, the history of emotions, microhistory, and the medical humanities, while drawing on previously underexplored archival materials, including patient files and, especially, court records. The research also highlighted the important role of international organisations, particularly the WHO, in shaping post-war child psychiatry and childcare practices in socialist Yugoslavia.
The influence of shared international models and concepts, such as child guidance clinics, encouraged the establishment or further development of similar institutions in both countries.
The research conducted so far suggests that the sources identified in the original project proposal contain relatively few explicit references to war and to children’s wartime psychological suffering. This preliminary finding points to the possible marginalisation of such experiences within the institutional and expert discourses examined thus far and highlights the need to broaden the empirical basis of the research.
The next phase of a possible future project will therefore focus on additional categories of sources that have not yet been systematically explored, particularly literary and artistic materials, as well as school-related sources. These materials may provide further evidence regarding the representation of children’s psychological suffering during and after the war, while also helping to verify or refine the preliminary thesis concerning the relative absence of these themes in the professional and institutional contexts under study. This expanded source base is expected to strengthen the project’s analytical framework and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the transfer and adaptation of child mental health concepts across different political and social systems.