ABSTRACT
The “dead father” is a clinical experience that I’ve often encountered with analysands in various forms that resonate with my countertransference. My personal experience of this was especially strong when I lost my own father under dramatic circumstances in September 1989. He died in my native Bulgaria, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, murdered in a supposedly socialist hospital where experiments were performed on elderly patients; family members were forbidden to visit for “fear of germs.” Since bodies of practicing Christians who died were cremated to prevent religious gatherings, while mourning I could only talk about this through writing a novel.
