MENTAL
International psychoanalytic journal – l’EuroFédération de Psychanalyse, no. 37
by Dr Nina Krajnik
« At the time of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, Slovenia was the place of a particular case, which has not been widely disclosed until 2017. The female poet Ada Škerl, a pioneer of the literary movement called “Slovenian intimism,” published a book of her poems. The book addressed the topics of love and suffering. But the book was published at the time of socialist politics, which is why it was in opposition with its time and space. Therefor the communist party censured the book and the young poet was proclaimed “an enemy of the state.” Soon she fell into oblivion and was threatened with prison. Feelings of melancholy, loss and loneliness without any hope for the future were not in accord with politics that demanded the neglecting of singularity in the name of the universal goals of history. “How can you feel so alone in our socialist unity?” the Party asked her.
Soon after this, the communist Party officially recognised the new literary genre – Slovenian intimism, which was officially announced with the book by four male poets. They expressed intimate topics with the permission of the socialist regime. The book’s title was Poems of the Four. That was their way to acquire “the best of both worlds.” But in the following years, Lacanian psychoanalysis was forfeited in the same manner.
Not only was this form of “theoretical psychoanalysis” well placed in the politics of Yugoslav socialism, it also dragged on in the Slovenian democratic world. Furthermore, it pleased all the other systems around the globe. Why? Because its promise was to realise the dreams of every politics: “You are allowed to have intimism, but it is an intimism under control. You are allowed to have psychoanalysis, but only psychoanalysis without the intimate.”