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It is a significant event when the Swedish publisher Dualis presents a translation into Swedish of Gaetano Benedetti's book Der Geisteskranke als Mitmensch (Göttingen, 1976), dealing with psychiatric and therapeutic work of a deeply serious character with schizophrenic people.
The author is a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist living in Basel—furthermore he is a scientist and supervisor, still active in spite of his age. Benedetti is, I would say, a central figure in European psychiatry and in the treatment of schizophrenia and he is much respected internationally. For several decades he has also been the prime mover of the international conferences on psychotherapy of schizophrenia.
In his psychiatric work he continues a tradition from Bleuler, Binswanger and Jaspers. His thinking is characterized by great understanding of the difficult task of the psychiatric institutions as well as by great openness to the psychoanalytic and existential thinking and to the whole tradition of thought which has roots deep in classical antiquity and in the Christian heritage.
Comparatively little attention has been paid to Benedetti in Sweden so far. An earlier work by Benedetti, Klinisk psykoterapi, was published in Norway in 1974. A small book by Benedetti, Den farliga kärleken, was published in Sweden in 1990. Den själssjuke som medmänniska is—in spite of its limited size, 136 pages—a very important book with a far-reaching purpose and a text-book of great value. It contains an integrated and extremely significant knowledge, mediated by a stylist. It has a pedagogic structure but is nevertheless demanding,