REGGIO CALABRIA, Italy — The mafia boss was having a dreadful time dealing with loss. But he wasn't struggling with the loss of lives, or even the loss of his freedom.
"Doc, it's my hair," the mobster from the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate confessed to his psychiatrist in jail. "I'm afraid of losing my hair.
"And look at these spots on my arm. See them?" he half-pleaded as he rolled up a sleeve and thrust out his arm.
"But your hair is fine. Absolutely fine. And there aren't any spots," Dr. Gabriele Quattrone tried to reassure his patient — who had tied himself into a knot of anxiety over the hair he believed to be falling from his head and the imaginary blotches popping up all over his arms.
Quattrone is one of a tiny corps of psychotherapists who have treated Italian organized crime bosses or their family members. Patients include dons haunted by nightmares, turncoats tormented after ratting, wives left frigid by rigid codes of loyalty.
In exclusive interviews with The Associated Press, granted on condition that the identities of the mobsters not be revealed in line with doctor-patient confidentiality, the doctors offered rare insights into the secretive, increasingly strung-out world of Italy's centuries-old criminal organizations.
Quattrone, a neuropsychiatrist, treated his jailed 'ndrangheta patient with tranquilizers — and made some attempts at nurturing introspection.
"It's the stress of 20 years of being a fugitive, of going on trial," he told the man, a top boss in Reggio Calabria, the toe of Italy's boot.
"Yeah, I'm stressed, all right. I'm stressed because I'm innocent,'" the boss retorted.