The well known case of the Collegno absent-minded Man, an absolute key player of Twenties’ and Thirds’ Italian chronicles, adjusted in the past decades to the most various interpretations. It certainly was an extremely intricate judicial case, with implications bond to the fascist Italian political situation, but also a first test bench for the arising Italian forensic psychiatry. Nevertheless the clinical angle can not be ignored and nowadays we can identify it also as a cruel "crime" against name and identity. Father Agostino Gemelli, founder of the Catholic University in Milan, found himself variously involved in this event and, exactly as many others of his contemporaries, he did not acknowledged its intrinsic tragedy.
Keywords: Agostino Gemelli, Collegno absent-minded man, identity, name, clinical case, history of psychology.