Excavating the Psyche: A Social History of Psychiatry in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria | Изравяне на Психиката
Red House Center for Culture and Debate (2015)
Червената Къща, София
Excavating the Psyche was a 2015 exhibition and installation examining the social history of psychiatry and psychotherapy in state-socialist Bulgaria, and a foundational model for my subsequent scholarly and artistic research.
The project emerged from ten months of fieldwork and archival research conducted in Bulgaria as a U.S. Fulbright grantee in 2014–2015. Through original scholarship, archival photographs, and an immersive installation, it investigated how the Soviet-mandated adoption of Pavlovian materialism in the 1950s restructured Bulgarian psychopathology—suppressing psychoanalytic, psychosomatic, and individual-centric therapeutic approaches in favor of an aggressively empirical framework oriented toward the body and behavior. The exhibition traced how this restructuring narrowed both the means by which individuals could articulate psychological distress and the interpretive frameworks available to the clinicians treating them.
Excavating the Psyche was a foundational project for two major strands of subsequent work. The Fulbright research became the basis of a published article in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (2018) and, later, a chapter of the dissertation The Clinical Studio: Art, Attention, and the Mind Sciences (Princeton University, 2026), which argues that the Soviet turn in Bulgarian psychology foreclosed the conditions under which art could function as therapeutic mediation—a Cold War counterpoint to the American case studies at the dissertation’s core. The exhibition itself—an experiment in using installation to convey histories inaccessible through conventional scholarly forms—was a first step toward the practice-based methodology that would develop into The Neighbours, the collaborative multimedia installation that represented Bulgaria at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Interviews & Responses
History in Between Archive (EN/BG)
Center for Advanced Study Interview (EN)
Fulbright Interview (EN)
Military Television Coverage (BG) / Военна Телевизия Программа
Radio Bulgaria Article (EN/BG) / Радио България
Bulgarian National Radio Interview (BG) / Интервю на БНР
Kapital Magazine Interview (BG) / Капитал Интервю
American University in Bulgaria Article (EN)
Webcafe Interview (BG)
Culture out the Box Interview (EN)
Project Team
Julian Chehirian – concept, research, installation, exhibition.
Sara Mahan supported project development and edited curatorial texts.
Boris Pantev translated exhibition texts.
Dylan Burchett composed sound for the installation.
Jorge Rubiera shot and edited the documentary film above.
Excavating the Psyche: A Social History of Psychiatry in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria | Изравяне на Психиката
Red House Center for Culture and Debate (2015)
Червената Къща, София
The project emerged from ten months of fieldwork and archival research conducted in Bulgaria as a U.S. Fulbright grantee in 2014–2015. Through original scholarship, archival photographs, and an immersive installation, it investigated how the Soviet-mandated adoption of Pavlovian materialism in the 1950s restructured Bulgarian psychopathology—suppressing psychoanalytic, psychosomatic, and individual-centric therapeutic approaches in favor of an aggressively empirical framework oriented toward the body and behavior. The exhibition traced how this restructuring narrowed both the means by which individuals could articulate psychological distress and the interpretive frameworks available to the clinicians treating them.
Excavating the Psyche was a foundational project for two major strands of subsequent work. The Fulbright research became the basis of a published article in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (2018) and, later, a chapter of the dissertation The Clinical Studio: Art, Attention, and the Mind Sciences (Princeton, 2026), which argues that the Soviet turn in Bulgarian psychology foreclosed the conditions under which art could function as therapeutic mediation—a Cold War counterpoint to its American case studies. The exhibition itself—an experiment in using installation to convey histories inaccessible through conventional scholarly forms—was a first step toward the practice-based methodology that would develop into The Neighbours, the collaborative multimedia installation that represented Bulgaria at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Project Team