Vanden Driessche, Luc <br/><br/>
Le Bourgmestre de Furnes and the Parallel Child 

 -  2004.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 69 
<br/><br/> Le Bourgmestre de Furnes clearly concerns certain aspects of parenting disturbed by a child’s disability. In some clinical situations, the parents’ discourse shows (aside from denial) the emergence of a group of representations that point to the image of a child other than the real one—a “parallel” child. This figure of varying clarity, combining near-reality and idealized elements, often uses the association between the disabled child and another sibling as a support, as is shown in the clinical case described here. These representations facilitate projections onto the child and the identification with him. This narcissistic moment accompanies the psychical separation intrinsic to parenting. This process is made more difficult in cases of disability, and parental self-representation may withdraw into fusional relationships. This is the situation at the beginning of the novel for the burgomaster, confronted with his daughter Emilia’s disorder. He is only able to accept Emilia’s admission to a psychiatric institution when he manages to reconstruct his own narcissistic image with the help of the association between Emilia and Lina, the young woman he visits regularly in the neighboring town. His well-known dream will reveal to him the place Lina holds in his representations of a parallel child.