Нестинарството като психодрама
Nestinarism as a Psycho-Drama

Summary/Abstract: The basis on which this analysis is grounded consists of the following standpoints: 1. What is viewed as a miracle by the other people is not a miracle for the people in the villages of the Bulgarian nestinars; 2. The community needs the manifestation of the phenomenal personality of the nestinar in order to experience through him a shaking catharsis and to get in contact with the sacred, while the nestinar does not need a public; 3. What the nestinars do is not a play but a drama (in spite of the elements of a play in nestinars’ rituals). Thus, the paper puts forward the hypothesis that nestinars’ rituals could be viewed as a psycho-drama with psycho-therapeutic functions. Its main feature is that the nestinar is the director (the charismatic person in the community) and not the main character in the psycho-drama. This type of the interpretation of the nestinar allows to analyse this specific psycho-drama and to describe the nature and depth of the dialogue between the charismatic personality of the director (the nestinars) and the other participants in the psycho-drama.

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