In Vieste there’s a beach club psychologist

The initiative by Foggia-based psychologist Alessandro Iacubino, who moved his practice from a traditional office to the beach, has even gained space in the pages of the authoritative London daily The Times. At the Lido Fuori Rotta in Vieste, he offers free beach consultations “among children playing in the water and gentlemen in swimsuits intent on a card game,” as reported by Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno.

He was met during his practice by British journalist Tom Kington, to whom Iacubino asked: “What’s worrying you this morning?”. Kington confesses to having experienced his first psychological session this way, “among women in bikinis lying in the sun and the sound of waves,” highlighting the contrast between the informal setting and the seriousness of the topic addressed.

In its story, The Times doesn’t limit itself to describing the seaside atmosphere. It traces the media attention that accompanied the initiative: one hundred consultations in fifteen days, dozens of interviews in newspapers and on television, ultimately transforming the Puglia psychologist into a national phenomenon. But also into a target: the Order of Psychologists strongly criticized the experiment, deeming the choice of such an informal stage “inappropriate,” fearing it could devalue the profession.

This very rigidity, Kington observes, seems to surprise people across the Channel. “The first question the journalist asked me – Iacubino recounts through social media – was: why so much controversy in Italy over something so beautiful?”.

The British piece also focuses on the political and economic context that frames the Italian summer.