PIPOL NEWS FLASH 20
Questions posed to Bilyana Mechkunova, who will present a paper at the Simultaneous Sessions of PIPOL 6
PN* : Bilyana, je suis chez toi, à Roussé, ville de province bulgare sur la rive du Danube face à la Roumanie. Nous y sommes pour un séminaire de la New Lacanian School et un module CIEN. Quatre-vingt personnes y participent sur trois jours ! Comment en sommes-nous arrivé-là ?
Bilyana: The Seminar of the NLS and the module of the CIEN Laboratory « The Child and His Symptoms » are activities of the Bulgarian Society of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (BSPL), our group affiliated to the NLS. Until now they had only taken place in Sofia, gathering together many people working in medico-social-educational field. In that sense the number of participants isn’t surprising, but for the first time the Seminar and the module were held outside of the capital and it’s obvious that no matter where, it is precisely Lacanian psychoanalysis that attracts people to come. It’s also true that « Rousse isn’t chosen by chance » as said in the NLS-messager announcement for that event. In Rousse we have our local group of people who have chosen Lacanian psychoanalysis as their main professional point of reference, since 2009 we participate in every BSPL activity, presenting cases, reading and working on texts. The choice of our town as venue for the latest events of the BSPL is due to the desire of everyone of us.
PN : Tu es pédo-psychiatre. Parle-moi de ton travail, ici.
Bilyana: As a child psychiatrist I work in a service – Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre, that we created in 2001. It’s still the only one of its kind in the country. It happened that our encounter with Lacanian psychoanalysis occurred through an encounter with the unbearable mental suffering that we met in an institution for mentally handicapped children and adolescents. The small team of the Centre faced the task assess the young people who were brought there. That made it possible to inscribe my clinical work as a child psychiatrist, mainly with psychotic children and adolescents, in a manner of having no preliminary knowledge, which opens the interest to the tiny details, to the uniqueness in the manifestations of mental suffering, as well as in the inventions that everybody creates. All this led to the creation of a place for clinical work, called « Child’s Place for Development » – a service attached to the Centre, having the functions of psychological–psychiatric consultation and which is working entirely oriented by Lacanian psychoanalysis.
PN : Roussé, cette ville, me touche. La crise économique y est bien entendu palpable. Les traces indélébiles de la période communiste déchue aussi. Pourtant, les deux ne sont pas arrivés à effacer, à éradiquer quelque chose de l’âme de cette ville qui résiste, persiste et a visiblement traversé cela. Tu me disais spontanément que c’était… féminin. Explique-moi encore, si tu veux bien.
Bilyana: In order to explain I’ll use the words of Elias Canetti, the famous writer and Nobel Prize winner, born in Rousse. In the autobiographical book « The Tongue Set Free » he described the first years of his childhood in Rousse, where « seven or eight languages were spoken in our town alone. Everybody understood a little of them, everybody counted the languages he knew. It was particularly important that many languages were spoken. Through the knowledge of them one can save one’s life or the lives of others. » This quotation expresses the unique spirit of this place, a spirit of tolerance, hospitality and interest in difference that is transmitted through the years and was very well noticed during these days of mutual work.
PN : Tu me disais que c’était finalement… bulgare. Il y a des manifestations actuellement en Bulgarie. C’est lié ?
Bilyana: Many Bulgarians are in the streets these days because they refuse to accept the way the politicians in this country are speaking to them. The discourse of the Master is disgusting. The protest is an effort to get the respect for the individual human being to be restored.
* interview réalisé sur place par Yves Vanderveken
