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
An experiment in historical practice, Excavating the Psyche examines the social history of psychiatry in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Spanning original scholarship, archival photographs and installation, the exhibition interrogates how psychological crisis was experienced in a social, cultural and political environment dominated by materialist ideologies of the body and self.
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)
From Center for Advanced Study Interview:
Julian Chehirian, a Bulgarian-American scholar, presented his research on an understudied field in Bulgarian social sciences: the social history of psychiatry and psychopathology under communism. His lecture, The Body Speaks: Excavating Psychological Crisis in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, was based on the findings of his ten-month period of fieldwork and archival research conducted in Bulgaria as a US Fulbright grantee in 2014–2015.
What are the human and cultural consequences of a government’s standardisation or suppression of approaches to mental healthcare? The lecture co vered a critical inquiry into the social history of psychiatry and psychotherapy in Bulgaria. In 1950, a meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences catalysed a totalising transformation of psychiatry in the Eastern Bloc. An aggressively empirical, materialist and bio-physiologically oriented Pavlovian framework was declared at that meeting to be the only scientic approach to the study of psychology and the treatment of mental illness. In Bulgaria the decree was mirrored by a local Pavlovian committee and a re-orienting of national mental healthcare institutions and practices. ‘Western’, ‘bourgeois’, psychoanalytic and individual-centric therapeutic methods were suppressed. Theoretical and pedagogical materials were censored.
The lecture examined how a communist-era restructuring of Bulgarian psychopathology a ffected individuals-in-crisis seeking help and understanding about distressing psychological and bodily experiences. It explored how the suppression of an integrated psychosomatic approach to diagnosis and therapy led to a theoretical and experiential shift in the perceived locus of an individual’s psychopathological symptoms. The lecture demonstrated how from the 1950s and onward the body increasingly became a surface for symptomatic ‘idioms of distress’ that narrowed both individuals’ means of articulation and psychiatrists’ methods of interpretation and diagnosis.
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
From Center for Advanced Study Interview:
Julian Chehirian, a Bulgarian-American scholar, presented his research on an understudied field in Bulgarian social sciences: the social history of psychiatry and psychopathology under communism. His lecture, The Body Speaks: Excavating Psychological Crisis in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, was based on the findings of his ten-month period of fieldwork and archival research conducted in Bulgaria as a US Fulbright grantee in 2014–2015.
What are the human and cultural consequences of a government’s standardisation or suppression of approaches to mental healthcare? The lecture co vered a critical inquiry into the social history of psychiatry and psychotherapy in Bulgaria. In 1950, a meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences catalysed a totalising transformation of psychiatry in the Eastern Bloc. An aggressively empirical, materialist and bio-physiologically oriented Pavlovian framework was declared at that meeting to be the only scientic approach to the study of psychology and the treatment of mental illness. In Bulgaria the decree was mirrored by a local Pavlovian committee and a re-orienting of national mental healthcare institutions and practices. ‘Western’, ‘bourgeois’, psychoanalytic and individual-centric therapeutic methods were suppressed. Theoretical and pedagogical materials were censored.
The lecture examined how a communist-era restructuring of Bulgarian psychopathology a ffected individuals-in-crisis seeking help and understanding about distressing psychological and bodily experiences. It explored how the suppression of an integrated psychosomatic approach to diagnosis and therapy led to a theoretical and experiential shift in the perceived locus of an individual’s psychopathological symptoms. The lecture demonstrated how from the 1950s and onward the body increasingly became a surface for symptomatic ‘idioms of distress’ that narrowed both individuals’ means of articulation and psychiatrists’ methods of interpretation and diagnosis.
Project Team