Dr Kameliya Slavcheva
A psychotherapist in logotherapy and existential analysis, family therapist, mediator and lecturer.
She trained in law and holds a doctorate in theology from Sofia University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’. This rare combination of disciplines brings together a view of the whole person: law offers the skills to resolve conflicts, theology considers questions of guilt and meaning with respect, and logotherapy provides the therapeutic path. In complex family or personal situations, this allows you to find both legal certainty and compassionate therapeutic support in one place.
Why I chose this path
Law was my first choice. For years, I worked with matters that could be put in order through rules. I learned to listen carefully and not to rush to conclusions. But I also learned the limits of that profession: law can say who is right, but not how to go on living.
Theology followed, all the way to a doctorate. There, the questions were larger than any legal case: questions of guilt, suffering and what remains of a person when everything else has been taken away. Yet the answers were being written in books, and there was still no actual person sitting opposite me.
Logotherapy brought these two searches together and added what I had been missing: a method. A way to sit opposite a person who is suffering and walk alongside them, step by step.
I work with Viktor Frankl’s approach — meaning-centred psychotherapy. Hundreds of people have come through my practice. I believe that what happens in a consulting room is too valuable to remain confined to it.
Why mediation too?
Law has not been left in my past — I also practise as a mediator registered with the Ministry of Justice.
In an inheritance dispute, a divorce or a division of property between relatives, two things always collide: a legal question and old family pain. A lawyer sees the first. A therapist sees the second. It is rare for one person to see both at once — which is precisely why so many disputes are formally settled while the people involved do not speak to each other for years afterwards.
Mediation gives a dispute a chance to be settled without court battles and without severing what little connection may remain between people.
What I believe when I sit opposite you
Viktor Frankl says that a person is never entirely determined by their body, character or circumstances. They always retain the freedom to take a stance — towards illness, loss or a past they cannot recover. He calls this freedom ‘the defiant power of the human spirit’.
This has a very practical implication for every meeting we have: our trust in life can be shaken, sometimes brutally. But it cannot be destroyed completely. That is why I never assume that someone has come too late. Nor do I see anyone as beyond repair.
On values
Values are among my favourite topics. Not as a list of virtues, but as a living practice: what truly matters to you, how you place those things in order — and where the life you are living diverges from that inner order.
Most people come with a sense of emptiness, unable to say exactly what is missing. Often, what is missing is not something new and external, but something of their own that they have put off for another time. Our work is to discover what it is — and how it can regain its place in your life.
Faith and the method
Theology and logotherapy speak about the same thing in two different languages. Both see a person as far more than a body and a psyche. Both hold that our dignity is given, not earned — that a person has value simply because they exist, regardless of their successes or failures.
The method I use, however, is professional rather than religious. Logotherapy works just as deeply with people of strong faith as with atheists. What enters my consulting room is not religion, but your particular question about life.
Education and qualifications
- Psychotherapist in Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis — European Academy of Logotherapy and Psychology (2023)
- Counselling psychologist in logotherapy and existential analysis — European Academy of Logotherapy and Psychology (2021)
- Mediator — entered in the Unified Register of Mediators at the Ministry of Justice (2023)
- Doctorate in theology (church law) — Sofia University ‘St Kliment Ohridski’ (2013)
- Master’s degree in law — University of National and World Economy (1997)
Further specialisations: International Baptist Theological Seminary (Prague), Wheaton College (Chicago), Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College (Dublin), Haggai Institute (Maui), and Atlanta (USA).
Member of the Bulgarian Association for Psychotherapy and the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria.
My books:
- Human Rights: Church-Law Aspects (2015)
- The Christian Understanding of Human Rights — Some Difficult Questions (2015)