Altri maestri. L’istituto di “Via dei Sabelli” e la scuola romana di Neuropsichiatria infantile

In this contribution the authors try to highlight the contribution that Italian child neuropsychiatry, especially the Roman school founded by Giovanni Bollea, has offered to special pedagogy. As is known, the proponents of Italian child neuropsychiatry, such as Clodomiro Bonfigli, Augusto Tamburini, Giuseppe Ferruccio Montesano, Giulio Cesare Ferrari, Maria Montessori and Sante de Sanctis – author of the first organic treatise on this disciplinary field – had a great influence on Special Pedagogy. In particular, Giovanni Bollea represented the pinnacle (also in terms of notoriety beyond the circle of professionals) of the relationship between the medical field and the pedagogical dimension, soon becoming a national and international point of reference. In fact, the Institute of Child Neuropsychiatry, also known as the "Via dei Sabelli" Institute after the name of the street that hosted it, is located in the same district of San Lorenzo where the "Children's Home" in Via dei Marsi had previously stood, it was certainly a place of "care" (with a view to taking global charge), but also of research, a meeting place for numerous generations of scholars and of training. In this sense we wish to recall here three extraordinary figures, which are Adriano Giannotti, Arnaldo Novelletto and Andreas Giannakoulas who, together with Bollea, have provided a fundamental contribution to the development of the “Roman school” of child neuropsychiatry but also a valuable contribution to the understanding of the childhood and adolescence from an educational perspective. We can therefore consider them “other teachers”, due to the fact that Italian child neuropsychiatry has not only dialogued heuristically with Special Pedagogy but in some moments of our history has held an important role of hinge and intervention capacity in the field of child psychopathology and disability, open to the themes of treatment, prevention, health from a global and not only purely neuropsychic side.