Leonardo vitale infiltrated the sicilian mafia at the age of 19 by killing a boss of a rival clan. He continued his violent career as a mafioso for the next 12 years until his arrest in 1972 and being transferred to a maximum security prison when, after a week of solitary confinement, he began to self-harm and show signs of depression. tone.
Overwhelmed by remorse for the criminal acts he committed, Vitale had a nervous breakdown. The former boss felt “guilty” and “unclean” to the point that, upon his release from prison a year later, he voluntarily went to the police station in Palermo to confess to two murders. He also provided the names of dozens of other bosses involved in criminal activity. Diagnosed with diminished capacity and schizophrenia by doctors, he was placed in a psychiatric hospital. When he was released, the mafia had already sentenced him to death. Vitale was killed on 2 December 1984 with two gunshots to the head.
The case of Vitale was the first of its kind studied by Prof. Girolamo Lo Verso, a psychotherapist and author who more than two decades ago started teaching a course at the University of Palermo on the psychology of the mafia, in the heart of a city where the shadow of Cosa Nostra – the Sicilian criminal organization – once loomed large. Today it boasts dozens of students and research findings that highlight the psychiatric impact experienced by current and former mafia members, their family members and their victims.
“The mafia is not just a criminal organization,” Lo Verso said, adding that upon joining members renounce their sense of self and begin a psychological process to insulate them against remorse. “The new affiliate is taught that the only rules that matter are those of the clan. Everything else, including the rules of the state, count for nothing […] “Becoming part of Cosa Nostra is like entering a cult in which members have to leave their own identity behind,” he said. “As long as they remain part of the mafia, they experience no remorse or regret. They don’t feel pain or sorrow, even when it comes to killing.”
He said the goal of the university course, the first in Italywas “to delve deeper into these themes, to research the damage the mafia does to the mind, to understand it better.”
Everything changes, Lo Verso said, when something disrupts the gangsters’ lives. “As long as they are integrated into the mafia family, the bosses show no form of psychological suffering,” he said. “Their own ‘selves’ are suppressed because they identify completely with the mafia and their thoughts match those of the clan. However, things change when there is a break, a detachment from the mafia, for example, when an arrested mafioso decides to cooperate with the authorities.
“It is then that the mafioso, like Vitale for example, are forced to face their own ‘self’ and the problems that arise after spending a life as a criminal. The former gangster has a real identity crisis. He experiences himself as weak, without values.”
Those who are turned against the mob, the so-called pentiti, are those who suffer the most among the mafiosi: relocated to secret locations in northern Italy and cut off from their previous lives, psychologists who have worked with them describe them as one of the most devastated individuals they have encountered. Alone, rejected and branded as traitors by their former tribes, many are dependent on medication.
“During my research, I had the opportunity to meet a Sicilian mafia killer from the Marchese clan,” said Lo Verso. “He lived in a secret place, in a small town far from Sicily. He suffered from depression and insomnia. He killed more than 100 people, and 50 of them he strangled. He had enormous hands. Nevertheless, when he told me that his only companion was a dog, I felt sorry for him.”
But the impact of mafia violence on mental health is felt most strongly by victims and the relatives of the victims: the mothers, brothers and sisters who have lost husbands, children and fathers to the brutality of the mob.
“These people remain stuck in those tragedies and struggle to move on with their lives,” said Cecilia Giordano, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Palermo. “I met a woman whose son and husband were killed by the mafia. She suffered from dissociative disorders. Their traumas affect future generations, and the saddest thing is that the Italian state offers no psychological support to these people who urgently need it.”
Psychiatrists and psychologists have also noted that an increasing number of the relatives of gang members suffer from mental illness. When the Italian state began to dismantle the clans and persecute their members in the 1980s and 1990s, their children in particular began to experience profound existential crises. Their fathers were no longer, as according to mafia lore, regarded as men of honor, but as heartless criminals who were forced to flee from the police or spend decades in prison without any possibility of seeing them.
“In the mid-1990s, we noticed that dozens of patients with mental problems, who were children, wives or relatives of mafia bosses, started arriving at Sicilian hospitals,” Giordano said. “They showed symptoms of identity problems and personality disorders. Many of them were very young, and their fathers were either refugees or in prison. We also noticed that the phenomenon of mafia psychology is highly influenced by the role of the mother. If the mother also comes from a mafia family, it will be very difficult for the son of a boss to escape the trap of the mafia mentality.”
From the bosses themselves, as long as they remain part of their tribe, Lo Verso and Giordano cannot imagine themselves seeking the help of a therapist. The actions of fictional mafia bosses such as Tony Soprano from TV’s The Sopranos, played by James Gandolfini, who went to his analyst to treat his depression and panic attacks, or Paul Vitti, played by Robert De Niro in the movie Analyze This, who relied has taken care of therapist Billy Crystal, belongs only to Hollywood’s imagination, they suggest.
“They don’t need it. Bosses, as long as they remain in command or play a role within the organization, even if they are in prison, do not suffer from any mental problems,” said Lo Verso. Their lives, say the psychologists, are characterized by pure psychopathology, specifically delusions of omnipotence and a lack of trust towards others.
Bosses who claimed mental illness, including entering courtrooms in straitjackets, were frequently found to fake their alleged conditions in order to gain acquittal or release from prison. Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, two top bosses of the Sicilian mafia who underwent psychiatric evaluations, spent their last days in prison.
The Palermo research also looks at the impact of the mafia on society as a whole. “There are places in Sicily, even today, where the discussion of the mafia is done cautiously, with a low voice,” says Giordano. “Omerta is one of the many psychological effects that the mafia has on society. Understanding these aspects of Cosa Nostra can help us recognize it and therefore, why not, fight against it.”
