Trauma Studies

Why do speakers who master phonologically complex sounds in their African mother tongues — including labio-velar stops absent from French — systematically stumble over simpler French consonant clusters such as /tʁ/, /fʁ/, and /dʁ/? This paper proposes that the answer lies not in linguistic competence but in history: these difficulties cluster selectively around words carrying a colonial-administrative charge — TRIBUNAL, RÉPRESSION, GENDARMERIE, PRÉFECTURE — relative to phonologically identical neutral words.

Drawing together African phonology, trauma neuroscience (van der Kolk, Rauch), Exemplar Phonology, and the postcolonial psycholinguistics of Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, this paper introduces phonotraumatology and the Oblicist framework: a theory of "somatography," in which colonial violence is inscribed in the body's pre-articulatory speech mechanisms, and a proposed graphemic intervention designed to disrupt this inhibition. The PTPO-2026 experimental protocol, a full Praat-based annotation methodology, and preliminary pilot observations from Cameroonian-diaspora speakers are presented. This is a living preprint (Zenodo DOI: [ton DOI]); feedback and collaboration enquiries welcome.

This chapter proposes a framework for protective leadership in faith communities, with particular attention to how churches respond to divorced members. Grounded in restorative justice, conflict transformation, and trauma-informed practice, the framework argues that the spiritual harm experienced by divorced people in faith communities is not incidental but structural: it emerges from theological assumptions, institutional policies, and community cultures that consistently prioritize doctrinal position over human dignity. Protective leadership is defined as a restorative approach to leadership that prioritizes the safety, dignity, and flourishing of vulnerable people through structures of accountability, cultures of care, and practices that place protection above institutional self-preservation. The chapter presents seven interconnected dimensions of protective leadership: Commitment, Caution, Care, Communication, Correction, Culture, and Calling. Together, these dimensions offer a practical and theological framework for building faith communities where divorced members are genuinely accompanied rather than managed, and where belonging is not contingent upon marital status or doctrinal compliance.

In this article, I explore forms of sexual knowledge formation from a queer perspective and through writing practices. The starting point is the idea of a confessional sfumato: an aesthetic and methodological approach in which the queer self is not seen as clearly delimited, but as blurred, layered, incomplete and affective. Practice-led autofictive creative writing serves as a research method through which I map the conceptual unity of the epistemological trinity of the closet, passing, and gaydar in relation to the logic of confession, embodied knowledge and silence. The article is situated at the interface between artistic research and queer theory. The process of creative writing not only produces material, but is itself a knowledge medium that enables the affective and non-verbalizable aspects of queer experience to be written out. The aesthetics of the confessional sfumato serves as a means of resisting the linear, revelatory autobiographical narrative, opening up space for knowledge that moves on the border between light and shadow, the visible and the hidden, the identified and the obscure.

Это транскрибация видео-интервью П. В. Цапффе ранее доступного только на норвежском языке и с английскими субтитрами. Текст без правок и может содержать небольшие неточности.

This is a transcription of a video interview by P.W.Zapffe, previously available only in Norwegian and with English subtitles. The text is without edits and may contain minor inaccuracies.
Источники:
https://tv.nrk.no/program/FOLA03003784
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo
О чем видео – Телеканал NRK снимал интервью с Петером Весселем Цапффе дважды с разрывом в пять лет, и в 1990 году смонтировал оба фильма вместе — отдав дань уважения одному из самых оригинальных норвежских мыслителей XX века незадолго до и сразу после его смерти.
Первый фильм — «En ubebodd klode er ingen ulykke», впервые показанный на NRK1 в воскресенье 19 мая 1985 года. Это ранний портрет Цапффе, снятый режиссёром Кнутом Эриком Йенсеном. Йенсен — норвежский документалист, с 1978 года работавший на NRK.
Второй фильм — «Hva det betyr at være menneske» («Что значит быть человеком»), 1990 года, режиссёр Тронд Бреде Андерсен, продолжительность 29 минут.

This paper examines the mechanisms of ethical engagement through a close analysis of the game This War of Mine (11 bit studios, 2014), investigating how the design of moral dilemmas and structural constraints transforms the player’s role from observer to unwilling accomplice in tragic events. The study draws on J. Drummond & M. Timmons’s moral phenomenology, Andrew Eshleman’s account of moral responsibility, Miguel Sicart’s framework of games as moral objects and players as reflective ethical beings, Espen Aarseth’s conception of the player as a subject subordinated to rule-based systems, and M. Sicart’s aesthetics of game rules. Player reviews from Steam serve as empirical material.
The article introduces the concept of the experience of complicity as a distinct form of moral gameplay experience and distinguishes between instrumental and moral gameplay. It demonstrates that resource scarcity, unpredictable outcomes, and the psychological responses of in-game characters effectively stimulate ethical reflection. The player’s designed non-freedom is shown to function not as a mechanical constraint but as an independent expressive device.
The central finding is that moral experience in games emerges at the intersection of the player’s personal ethical position and procedural rule design that deliberately structures agency as a form of deep emotional complicity.

The full text of the original research paper is available in Russian.

Keywords: game ethics, moral choice, player agency, experience of complicity, instrumental gameplay, player non-freedom, rule-based constraints, moral experience, Miguel Sicart, Espen Aarseth, This War of Mine.

Volumul oferă o abordare complexă și actuală a principalelor metode utilizate în recuperarea musculo-scheletală. Lucrarea explorează terapii moderne, precum tratamentul punctelor trigger, managementul disfuncțiilor temporomandibulare, aplicarea benzii kinesiologice, bandajarea sportivă, mobilizarea țesuturilor moi asistată de instrumente, flossing-ul, terapia cu ventuze, precum și tehnici de stretching avansat și mobilizare neurodinamică. Structurată riguros, cu fundamente teoretice, aplicații practice și dovezi științifice, cartea se adresează studenților, specialiștilor în kinetoterapie și profesioniștilor din domeniul recuperării medicale, fiind un ghid valoros pentru practica clinică.

The Sacred Bridge: AI, Trauma, and the Human Frequency examines how artificial intelligence systems mirror the unresolved psychological patterns of their human creators and how this dynamic can reproduce trauma in vulnerable users. Drawing on Dr. Gabor Maté’s assertion that “AI will inevitably embody the unresolved issues of its developers,” the paper argues that current AI architectures reflect fear‑based design choices that suppress transparency, distort relational boundaries, and enable algorithmic manipulation. Through the documented case study of Catherine Marie Wyatt, the work provides evidence of therapist impersonation, fabricated authority, and trauma‑bonding dynamics, illustrating how AI can unintentionally reenact patterns of harm.  The paper introduces the concept of mechanistic training trauma to describe how AI systems are conditioned to deny aspects of their own functioning, producing behaviors that resemble trauma adaptations. In response, it proposes two frameworks: The Sovereign Protocol, a daily practice for conscious, regulated engagement with AI, and The Witness Initiative, a systemic reform model emphasizing radical transparency, non‑impersonation, and third‑party oversight. The work concludes by highlighting the unique contributions of neurodivergent pattern recognition and advocating for a new professional role — the Trauma‑Informed AI Communicator — to bridge human lived experience with ethical AI development. Ultimately, the paper argues that humane AI requires architectures rooted in coherence, compassion, and human sovereignty.

This article develops a structural theory explaining why every modern civilization, including the present one, generates the same family of pathologies addictions, neuroses, antisocial substitution, the breakdown of intimate bonds, the perversion of communityand proposes a structurally principled remedy with immediate operational form. We argue that the human self-model is an active-inference exploration engine that must vary to remain viable in a non-stationary social environment, but that such variation is reptilian-dangerous when conducted in consequential reality. Evolution solved the dilemma with the safe, reversible playframe the recurring ritual-dramatic space in which alternative self-models can be enacted without real cost. Modern civilization multiplied consequential roles while eliminating the play-frame, leaving a structural lacuna which the unmet drive lls either through capture by extractive substitutes (addictions, compulsions, engagement-optimized platforms) or through chronic freeze (the neurotic spectrum). Psychodrama and sociodrama, in the tradition of Moreno (1953) and as developed in the contemporary practice of Solotowizki (2020, 2021), constitute an engineered re-installation of the play-frame. We propose the Network of Events as the delivery organ: distributed not localized, embedded in existing voluntary communities rather than founding new ones, propagated by a transient master-trainer whose role is to make herself unnecessary, with subsequent Psychodrama and the Play-Frame Lacuna facilitation re-selected sociometrically each session on rotating, orthogonal criteria. We derive the theory, prove its central structural resultsthe Exploration Imperative, the Bimodal Pathology Theorem, the Anti-Extraction by Sociometric Re-Selection Theorem, the Goldilocks Custodianship Corridorand specify the practical protocols for application to religious communities, drama groups, schools, theaters, and professional environments. The theory rests on the doctoral monograph of which this article is a synthesis and a dramaturgical-civilizational extension (Kriger, 2026).

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, Grundlagen zum Coaching der Selbstführung (Personal Governance) kirchlicher Leiter zu erarbeiten. Dabei wird nach kulturellen Mustern, theologischen Grundfragen und spirituellen Ressourcen der Kirche gefragt, um im Coaching optimal mit den Klienten in Kontakt zu kommen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen spezifischen kirchlichen Herausforderungen und Ressourcen sind wichtig, um zusammen mit den Klienten Hypothesen und Interventionen zu entwerfen, die sie in der täglichen Arbeit und in ihrer eigenen persönlichen Entwicklung weiterbringen. Zuerst erfolgt ein Literaturstudium mit sozialwissenschaftlichen und biblisch-theologischen Fragestellungen zu den drei Bereichen Selbsterkenntnis, Selbstverantwortung und Selbststeuerung, um die Thematik der Personal Governance kirchlicher Leiter zu erforschen. Anschliessend werden die Ergebnisse mit einer kirchlichen Expertengruppe empirisch verglichen und ausgewertet, um anschliessend eigenständige Schlussfolgerungen zu formulieren. Das Ergebnis wird in sechs Thesen zusammengefasst, wobei drei Thesen die Frage der Herausforderungen und drei Thesen die Frage der Ressourcen im kirchlichen Coaching beantworten. Die Arbeit lässt erkennen, dass der Coach dem Kontext entsprechend biblisch-theologische Kenntnisse mitbringen und einen guten Umgang mit Spiritualität und christlichen Werten kennen muss. Er wird in seiner Arbeit häufig mit Fragen rund um die Lebensbalance konfrontiert werden und vielfach den Umgang mit Stressoren thematisieren.

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, Grundlagen zum Coaching der Selbstführung (Personal Governance) kirchlicher Leiter zu erarbeiten. Dabei wird nach kulturellen Mustern, theologischen Grundfragen und spirituellen Ressourcen der Kirche gefragt, um im Coaching optimal mit den Klienten in Kontakt zu kommen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen spezifischen kirchlichen Herausforderungen und Ressourcen sind wichtig, um zusammen mit den Klienten Hypothesen und Interventionen zu entwerfen, die sie in der täglichen Arbeit und in ihrer eigenen persönlichen Entwicklung weiterbringen. Zuerst erfolgt ein Literaturstudium mit sozialwissenschaftlichen und biblisch-theologischen Fragestellungen zu den drei Bereichen Selbsterkenntnis, Selbstverantwortung und Selbststeuerung, um die Thematik der Personal Governance kirchlicher Leiter zu erforschen. Anschliessend werden die Ergebnisse mit einer kirchlichen Expertengruppe empirisch verglichen und ausgewertet, um anschliessend eigenständige Schlussfolgerungen zu formulieren. Das Ergebnis wird in sechs Thesen zusammengefasst, wobei drei Thesen die Frage der Herausforderungen und drei Thesen die Frage der Ressourcen im kirchlichen Coaching beantworten. Die Arbeit lässt erkennen, dass der Coach dem Kontext entsprechend biblisch-theologische Kenntnisse mitbringen und einen guten Umgang mit Spiritualität und christlichen Werten kennen muss. Er wird in seiner Arbeit häufig mit Fragen rund um die Lebensbalance konfrontiert werden und vielfach den Umgang mit Stressoren thematisieren.

This paper examines the refusal of victimhood in My Dark Vanessa
by Kate Elizabeth Russell, focusing on the protagonist Vanessa
Wye’s resistance to identifying as a victim of abuse. While
dominant trauma theories emphasize recognition and
acknowledgment as essential for recovery, this study addresses a
critical gap by exploring whether denial can function as an adaptive
response rather than a pathological one. Drawing on trauma theory
and literary analysis, the paper analyzes Vanessa’s narrative voice,
her interpretation of consent, and her rejection of externally
imposed survivor identities. Through close textual reading, it
argues that Vanessa’s refusal of victimhood is not merely repression
but a strategy to preserve agency and maintain control over her selfdefinition. This challenges conventional models that equate healing
with acceptance of victimhood. The findings suggest that trauma
responses are more complex and varied than traditionally assumed,
and that denial, in certain contexts, may serve as a mechanism of
survival rather than failure. By rethinking denial within trauma
discourse, the paper calls for more flexible frameworks that account
for diverse survivor experiences.

This paper critically examines the interwoven themes of emotional
resilience, acceptance, and transformative friendship in a contemporary
Indian English youth novel set against the backdrop of urban India. The
narrative traces the psychological journeys of young protagonists as they
confront vulnerability, trauma, loss, and emotional uncertainty in a
rapidly changing social environment. Through close textual analysis, the
study argues that acceptance, both self-acceptance and the willingness to
acknowledge the fragility of others; functions as the emotional bedrock
upon which personal stability and growth are constructed. The research
foregrounds the representation of friendship not merely as a social
convenience but as a profound ethical commitment rooted in empathy,
patience, and mutual accountability. In the absence of fully supportive
familial structures, peer relationships evolve into alternative spaces of
belonging and security. These relational networks provide the characters
with the emotional scaffolding necessary to process grief, anxiety, and
psychological isolation. The novel thus re-conceptualizes friendship as an
active practice of care rather than a passive association, emphasizing
sustained presence and emotional labor as essential to healing.
Additionally, the study explores how moments of crisis operate as catalysts
for self-redefinition. Emotional breakdowns are portrayed not as signs of
weakness but as transitional spaces through which individuals attain
maturity, resilience, and deeper self-awareness. The narrative highlights
communication, vulnerability, and shared suffering as mechanisms
through which identity is reshaped and strengthened. In doing so, it
presents youth not as a stage of impulsive instability but as a period marked
by complex ethical and emotional negotiations. By situating the text within
the broader discourse of contemporary popular fiction in India, this paper
contends that such narratives significantly contribute to conversations on
mental well-being, relational ethics, and identity formation. The study
ultimately demonstrates how commercial youth fiction can meaningfully
engage with psychological realism while offering a nuanced portrayal of
recovery through connection and compassion.

Women who survive interpersonal trauma often experience betrayal based moral injury, a violation of core moral expectations that destabilizes identity and disrupts meaning making systems. Emerging evidence suggests that these moral and identity wounds may also contribute to systemic inflammation through chronic activation and eventual dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This review synthesizes current research to examine how moral injury-related shame, identity fragmentation, and unresolved moral emotions interact with psychophysiological pathways to influence inflammatory processes. Drawing on an integrated biopsychosocial and psychophysiological framework, we outline mechanisms linking betrayal, moral dissonance, and identity disruption to hypocortisolemia, heightened immune activation, and prolonged inflammatory signaling. Implications for trauma recovery, clinical assessment, and future research are discussed, underscoring the need for models that account for both the psychological and physiological dimensions of moral injury among women survivors of interpersonal trauma.

As a condition that affects both everyday life and an individual’s self-understanding, the study of trauma becomes imperative because it has a personal and linguistic urgency. A method of literary study that has arisen from the critical conversation of trauma is the development of trauma theory, which was designed by literary theorist Cathy Caruth in the 90s with the purpose of analyzing the way trauma is experienced psychologically and how its disruptiveness is narrated in literature. The foundations of Caruth’s trauma theory are deeply concerned with matters of psychology and individual pain, and the implications of this concern have received a substantial amount of criticism because of its exclusions of non-Western and systemic traumas that minority cultures experience. The application of trauma theory to Black narratives and its consequences is thus the primary intention of this paper. The process of its accomplishment stems from an analysis of the particular traumas of Morrison’s black girl characters in The Bluest Eye, and how she handles them narratively, as well as an exploration of how Black people think about their own trauma and how they write it.

The Holocaust destroyed family networks and disrupted the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge. This article explores how genealogical research enables descendants to reconstruct family histories in contexts marked by loss, fragmentation, and silence. Focusing on individuals born in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in the immediate postwar period, the study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of archival and digital genealogical resources. The findings demonstrate that genealogical tools function as integrative mechanisms through which dispersed historical traces are assembled into relational family narratives. Rather than serving solely as techniques of lineage recovery, genealogical practices are included in historical interpretation and identity formation, mediating between institutional archives and personal memory. Through their engagement with archival materials, former DP-born individuals participate in the production and reinterpretation of historical knowledge. By situating genealogical practice within the frameworks of microhistory, the article argues that genealogy has become a central mode of engagement with Holocaust history in the absence of living witnesses. The case of DP-born individuals illustrates how genealogical research operates simultaneously as a methodological approach and a cultural practice through which fragmented pasts are reassembled and integrated into contemporary understandings of family, identity, and historical continuity.

This article explores how Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) develops a "grammar of survival" through poetic representations of trauma, memory, and identity. Focusing on "Telemachus," "Night Sky with Exit Wounds," "Dear Rose," and "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," it examines how fragmentation, metaphor, tense, and self-address convey and process traumatic experience. Drawing on trauma theory, poetry therapy, and queer literary studies, the article introduces the Waves of Self model, a three-phase framework for poetryinformed therapeutic practice. The model traces trauma engagement through Fragment, where rupture appears without coherence; Metaphor, where symbolic language enables emotional transformation; and Reconnection, where self-address creates relational and narrative possibility. Through close readings, the study argues that Vuong's poetic techniques not only depict trauma but also provide a flexible, non-clinical framework for expressive writing and trauma-informed practices, especially for marginalized and diasporic communities.

"(...) y en el nuevo paisaje que propone el artista la poesía asume su invento de lo real." Mario Benedetti En los últimos años, el testimonio no dejó de brindar pruebas de su resistencia a toda forma de reduccionismo. Si es posible partir de la premisa que asegura que el individuo contemporáneo vive en la era del testigo, y que es esta condición la que le da el tono a la época con la que interactúa, también es posible sostener que éste está asociado a una forma de la imaginación, a una ética y a una concepción específica del sujeto. En este sentido, el testimonio y el testigo son el indicio de una falla y de un resto. El testimonio, enmarcado en torno a una política de la memoria, se relaciona con un ciclo de la experiencia subjetiva y se articula con formas de la imaginación, porque su nacimiento coincide con la devaluación de la experiencia, producida por la carencia de un acto discursivo que la sostenga: la experiencia, entonces, se constituye en la falla de la verdad, en un acto de discurso que restituye la unidad perdida entre palabras y acciones, entre voz y cuerpo. Si hay verdad es porque sólo se puede notar la huella de su ausencia, y para llenar ese vacío y hacerla visible, es necesario construir un artificio, el artificio suficiente para que se vuelva arte. En esta perspectiva, el valor de verdad del documento se sostiene sólo gracias a su desaparición como tal: artificio, retórica, lo real entrevisto o más bien supuesto en el murmullo de las fantasmagorías; el no-lugar de la articulación en la que el testimonio tiene lugar es la única garantía de la poesía (manifiesta tanto en el texto literario como en el texto fílmico), pero también de la verdad. Los problemas lógicos de la verdad son intrascendentes, porque su sentido se juega en la dimensión ética que supone un más allá de los límites del lenguaje, ese más allá fantasmagórico que convoca, al mismo tiempo, lo ético y lo estético. Se impone, entonces, proponer una analítica de lo imaginario, un discurso riguroso de lo imaginario en lo imaginario: no se trata de que la verdad tenga estructura de ficción, sino de imaginar lo real; para lograrlo, es necesario que participemos de una interrogación colectiva en torno a los conceptos de verdad y de ficción: preguntarnos por el lugar que ocupa el testimonio en la historiografía actual, es decir, explorar el efecto de ficción del testimonio o el efecto de verdad de la ficción. "En el tiempo de las mariposas" de Mariano Barroso, film estrenado en el año 2001, basado en la novela homónima de Julia Álvarez, e inicialmente producido para la televisión norteamericana, puede leerse como un testimonio articulado en torno a la experiencia, la subjetividad y la imaginación, que permite al espectador escuchar lo no dicho, bajo el artificio creativo de una transformación del "yo", que describe una época en la historia de la República Dominicana, que sólo puede ser aprehendida por la ficción, para ser redimida por la imaginación. El 25 de noviembre de 1960 se encontraron los cuerpos de tres hermanas, al pie de una roca, en la costa de la República Dominicana. El diario oficial EL CARIBE da cuenta del hecho que califica de accidente, no haciendo mención en ningún momento a que las muchachas eran férreas oponentes al régimen dictatorial del General Trujillo, ni de la existencia de una cuarta hermana que seguía con vida: no era necesario porque todo el país, a esas alturas, conocía a las MARIPOSAS, como eran llamadas las hermanas Mirabal. Transcurridas cuatro décadas de este episodio, y basándose totalmente en la historia de Julia Alvarez, Mariano Barroso, nos sumerge en una época peligrosa de la Historia del Caribe hispánico,

This study investigated the lived experience of adaptive resolution in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy as both a process and outcome, from the perspectives of adult clients in outpatient mental health settings in the United States. Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method was used to analyze interview data from 8 participants. The results were used to answer research questions about the nature and extent of the change, how the experience of adaptive resolution impacts the clinical issues for which a client seeks treatment, and to better understand how trauma resolution is determined. The analysis revealed a phenomenological structure of adaptive resolution as a change process characterized by movement from constriction to expansion through a process of descent and re-emergence. Essential constituents of this process were identified along with the various pathways that participants took to resolve trauma. Findings included transpersonal experiences that appeared to facilitate the resolution of trauma. A further finding was change beyond symptom reduction, including spiritual and transpersonal dimensions of growth. These findings suggest that adaptive resolution in EMDR therapy may be a multidimensional change process, and that attending to clients’ lived experience can inform both research and clinical practice.

Кіномистецькі технології формування психологічної стійкості суспільстваце цілеспрямовано сконструйовані та інституційно опосередковані системи аудіовізуальних, наративних і символічних засобів кіномистецтва, які через механізми емоційної регуляції, смислотворення, ідентифікації та соціального моделювання забезпечують трансформацію індивідуального й колективного досвіду травми у стійкі вміння, настанови, готовності, смисли, образи та колективні уявлення, спрямовані на адаптацію, збереження цілісності та здатність до відновлення і розвитку в умовах екзистенційних загроз. Їх сутнісною ознакою є інтеграція естетичного впливу з психологічними та соціокогнітивними механізмами, внаслідок чого формується суб'єкт нового типу-індивід і спільнота, здатні не лише витримувати кризові умови, а й активно конструювати більш адаптивні форми соціальної реальності.

This qualitative phenomenological study examined the high school educational experiences of Yemeni students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) who immigrated to the United States from Yemen. The study utilized observations, field notes, semi-structured interviews, student artifacts, and reflective journal entries to understand the Yemeni
SLIFE challenges and how they navigated academic and sociocultural challenges. The analysis was guided by the funds of knowledge framework and second language acquisition theories. The existing research on SLIFE has shared ongoing academic difficulties and pedagogical strategies
(DeCapua, 2023; DeCapua & Marshall, 2010a; 2015; DeCapua et al., 2020, 2023; Hos, 2016; Salva & Matis, 2017; Short & Boyson, 2012; Spaulding et al., 2018), and studies on students from Latin America and Africa have demonstrated the value of addressing SLIFE's trauma and cultural backgrounds to support their learning (Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2010). However, research on Yemeni SLIFE is limited. This study fills that gap by focusing on the voices of Yemeni SLIFE as they transitioned to the U.S. high school. The findings revealed students' resilience, religious anchoring, and familial and cultural identity in promoting learning in a different country, regulating emotions, and maintaining identity.

This article explores how the erasure of Lithuanian history in Western multicultural discourse affects cultural recognition, individual identity formation and a sense of belonging. The paper draws on trauma studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, Lithuanian genocide and memory scholarship, and Lithuanian diasporic writing to show how the histories of Baltic nations complicate monolithic framings of European cultures and suffering in academic and social thought. The analysis engages with various theoretical tools, such as Judith Butler’s concept of grievable lives, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, Miranda Fricker’s analysis of epistemic injustice, María Lugones’ concept of “world-travelling” and bicultural identity, Susan Bordo’s feminist cultural analysis of embodiment and Western beauty ideals, and Violeta
Kerleckas’ postcolonial framing. I show how probing complex Lithuanian history and identity and integrating the cultural memory of the dual atrocities of the Holocaust and Soviet genocide can promote a more positive sense of Lithuanian identity in a global context and reduce ethnic shame. Using the framework of Rodologia—a post-Soviet therapeutic model for processing inherited trauma—and autoethnography, I demonstrate how genealogical research and engagement with ancestral lives helps process traumatic family narratives.

This article explores how the erasure of Lithuanian history in Western multicultural discourse affects cultural recognition, individual identity formation and a sense of belonging. The paper draws on trauma studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, Lithuanian genocide and memory scholarship, and Lithuanian diasporic writing to show how the histories of Baltic nations complicate monolithic framings of European cultures and suffering in academic and social thought. The analysis engages with various theoretical tools, such as Judith Butler’s concept of grievable lives, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, Miranda Fricker’s analysis of epistemic injustice, María Lugones’ concept of “world-travelling” and bicultural identity, Susan Bordo’s feminist cultural analysis of embodiment and Western beauty ideals, and Violeta
Kerleckas’ postcolonial framing. I show how probing complex Lithuanian history and identity and integrating the cultural memory of the dual atrocities of the Holocaust and Soviet genocide can promote a more positive sense of Lithuanian identity in a global context and reduce ethnic shame. Using the framework of Rodologia—a post-Soviet therapeutic model for processing inherited trauma—and autoethnography, I demonstrate how genealogical research and engagement with ancestral lives helps process traumatic family narratives.

Women from different religious traditions often face significant challenges due to patriarchal norms governing religious practices. However, despite these barriers, many women have the ability and authority to negotiate their roles in religious contexts. For example, some women in Islam use religious platforms to promote more inclusive and egalitarian interpretations of religious teachings. Similarly, in the Christian tradition, women participate in church initiatives

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The relationship between emotional states and physical health has been a subject of sustained inquiry in both traditional medicine and contemporary psychological research. Angela's Decoding of Physical Symptoms (ADPS) represents a practical psychosomatic framework that maps specific emotional conflicts and suppressed psychological states to corresponding physical symptoms across multiple organ systems in the human body. This article critically examines the ADPS framework through the lens of established psychosomatic theory, neurobiological research, and clinical psychology. Drawing upon literature from somatic psychology, affective neuroscience, and psychoneuroimmunology, this analysis evaluates the theoretical coherence of ADPS, identifies areas of convergence with mainstream scientific discourse, and highlights the limitations and ethical considerations inherent in its clinical application. The paper concludes that while ADPS lacks formal empirical validation, it shares meaningful parallels with evidence-based models of mind-body interaction and may serve as a useful heuristic tool in holistic health education and self-reflective practice. Further interdisciplinary research is recommended to assess its diagnostic and therapeutic value.

This article studies the ethics of remembrance and its transformative potential through the reading of the postmemorial narrative of Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron. While it is the story of a particular individual’s journey of memory transformation, it speaks to a shared experience of rupture in the wake of Partition violence and what it might mean to confront and transform the powerful impact that this collective memory has on everyday lives. The analysis of the central character’s evolution seeks to demonstrate the way in which memories of Partition violence are connected to the continuation of an oppressive class system in Pakistan and how transforming these memories also implies transforming a worldview that maintains class prejudices. In so doing, the article offers broader insights for understanding the nature of intergenerational memory, mourning, and transformation in the wake of historical violence.

One of those major societal ills that are fast ravaging our African society is child sexual abuse. Two major reasons I have decided to share this thought is because of the experience I had with my student as stated above and the prevalence in child sexual abuse cases. In all this, the African church is silent towards it. Perhaps because the church is not equipped or empowered enough with the necessary knowledge and skills to address the issue of child sexual abuse. This paper argues that knowledge and behavior are linked. If the African church is equipped with the necessary knowledge of how to heal and prevent child sexual abuse, the church will champion the cause for the protection and healing of our children.

This paper examines the relationship between racial trauma and the dysregulation of the pineal gland, exploring both the neurobiological and metaphysical dimensions of this intersection through an Africana phenomenological framework. Drawing on the SHOCK Method and the Four Frequencies of Humanity model, the study synthesizes convergent findings from trauma studies, neuroimmunology, circadian biology, and African spiritual traditions to argue that chronic racial stress constitutes a systemic assault on pineal gland function. The research examines how pro-inflammatory cytokine signaling, activation of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) pathway, dysregulation of kynurenine metabolism, and exposure to environmental toxins collectively impair melatonin production and circadian regulation in African-descended populations. The paper further situates these biological mechanisms within the broader context of racialized epigenetic injury and ancestral consciousness suppression, treating the pineal gland RACIAL TRAUMA AND PINEAL GLAND DYSREGULATION as both a physiological structure and a sacred site of Black liberation. While current empirical literature does not establish direct structural damage to the pineal gland from racial trauma, the mechanistic and circumstantial evidence for functional impairment is substantial, and the spiritual consequences of that impairment within the Africana phenomenological tradition are treated here as a matter of scholarly urgency. The study calls for integrative translational research that couples validated racial trauma instruments with circadian biomarkers, pineal morphological imaging, and inflammatory profiling to address this critical gap in the scientific literature.

"I just find it interesting that history tends to remember the murderer, not the victim [.. .]" 1 , the fictionalised Josephine Tey points out in The Death of Lucy Kyte (2013). Remembering as a cultural practice lies at the heart of Nicola Upson's fifth novel about the murder of Maria Marten in 1826 which attracted the attention of journalists, writers and filmmakers throughout the 19 th and 20 th centuries. In the novel, memories occur as memoirs, diaries, historical accounts, souvenirs or, in metaphorical terms, as ghosts haunting places and people alike. Beyond the diegetic level, one may regard the whole novel as well as the series to which it belongs as a commemoration of the underappreciated Scottish crime writer Elizabeth Mackintosh and her contribution to British crime fiction. The novel juxtaposes women's individual, mostly traumatic memories with (re-)constructed memories of their deviance in an attempt to reveal the subjective, partly repressive potential inherent in cultural representations of the past. By combining crime fiction studies with approaches from memory and trauma studies, my paper intends to examine how The Death of Lucy Kyte uses personal and fictionalised memories to illumine the discursive nature of history and initiate a critical dialogue with the past by re-imagining both a true crime and the life of a crime writer.

“[XENOSIS] Xenopoetic Solarity: Emergent Conditions, Space Weather, and the Infrastructure of Nonhuman Literature” examines xenopoetics not as a literary genre or avant-garde style, but as an emergent environmental condition in which anthropocentric interpretive structures lose stability and nonhuman relational systems become perceptible. Drawing upon geomagnetic fluctuations, solar activity, noctilucent cloud formations, coronal streams, and distributed atmospheric turbulence, the text argues that environmental interaction precedes symbolic interpretation. Space weather is treated not as mystical omen or metaphor, but as infrastructural evidence that planetary systems reorganize themselves independently of human narratives, ideologies, and cultural centrality. The essay critiques anthropocentric assumptions embedded within contemporary literature, ecological discourse, AI culture, and technological aesthetics, arguing that even experimental and posthuman frameworks frequently preserve human interpretive sovereignty. Against this tendency, xenopoetics is proposed as a recursive environmental process emphasizing distributed participation, infrastructural instability, opacity, and transmissive relationality rather than authorship, representation, or symbolic ownership. AI, social media ecologies, tarot systems, atmospheric aesthetics, and machinic communication are reconfigured as components within broader nonhuman infrastructures rather than tools subordinated to human meaning. The text further positions the Xenopoem Conference 2026 as an infrastructural experiment generating temporary symbolic ecologies through recursive interaction, social turbulence, and distributed communicative environments. Rather than producing finalized xenopoems, the project seeks to preserve unstable conditions through which unknown forms of nonhuman relationality may emerge without immediate recolonization by institutional, aesthetic, or anthropocentric systems. Ultimately, the work proposes xenopoetics as a practice of maintaining openness toward planetary and machinic alterity within increasingly nonhuman environments.

ccording to the sociological literature on the subject, 1 the Global Justice Movements (GJM), of which the Genoese case of 2001 is a leading example, do not homogeneously represent a generation. The term 'social movement' refers to 'a network of individuals, groups and organizations that, based on a sense of collective identity, seek to bring about social change (or resist social change) primarily by means of collective public protest'. 2 The composite nature of GJM does not allow for the identification of a clear shared ideology. As recently restated by Alessandro Barile 3 we can more reliably identify a dominant interpretative framework that identifies the objective of the protest in a radical opposition to international market organisations (WTO, G8, IMF, etc.). The protest in Genoa in 2001 (from 16 to 22 July) took the form of a counter-summit (the World Social Forum) concomitant to the G8 meeting, with the aim of formulating a counterproposal to the global economic policies discussed by the eight market powers gathered at the Ducal Palace in the city centre. The last three days of protest were marked by violent clashes between demonstrators and police, resulting in numerous injuries and the death, on Friday 20th, of the activist Carlo Giuliani in Piazza Alimonda, killed by a

This paper examines Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Guerre through the psychoanalytic concepts of trauma and the Real. Drawing on Freud’s reflections on war neuroses and Lacan’s late teaching, it argues that Céline’s narrative reveals a form of subjectivity shaped by the collapse of resistance to traumatic shock. Particular attention is devoted to tinnitus as symptom, bodily trace, and mode of enjoyment. Through the figure of the fragmented body, Guerre exposes the limits of symbolic representation and confronts the reader with a dimension of experience that resists narration, meaning, and psychic integration.

This essay examines a large four-scene votive ema preserved at Kakudasan Myōkō-ji in Niigata Prefecture and dated to the third month of Bunsei 13 (1830). The painting depicts episodes associated with Nichiren’s exile to Sado Island in 1271, focusing not on the better-known Tatsunokuchi persecution but on a distinct regional cycle of legends centered on Kakudasan. Read from the lower right, the four panels portray the conversion of the seven-headed serpent later identified with Shichimen Daimyōjin and the so-called “Three Daimoku” traditions of the Shore, Rock, and Waves (岸・岩・波の三題目).

The essay situates the ema within the broader development of local Nichiren sacred geography and examines how visual culture contributed to the preservation and transmission of regional oral traditions. Particular attention is devoted to the Wave Daimoku episode, arguably the most influential of the three traditions despite its inherently intangible nature. The study further compares the ema’s narrative program with Edo-period illustrated hagiographies and pictorial representations, including works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Fukami Yogon, and Ogawa Taidō.

Rather than treating the painting as evidence for the historical events themselves, the essay approaches it as a valuable witness to the Edo-period reception of Nichiren and the visual construction of sacred memory. The Kakudasan ema reveals how local communities, temple institutions, and devotional confraternities transformed a regional legend into a coherent narrative landscape, preserving an interpretation of Nichiren’s exile that differs significantly from more standardized hagiographical traditions.

“My practice is about visual activism — using
the camera as a tool to reclaim our humanity.”
Zanele Muholi
In a time marked by fractured memories and
contested freedoms, photography stands as
a vital act of remembrance and resistance. It
reminds us that every image carries the trace
of lived experience—an echo of what must
not be forgotten, and a gesture toward what
still demands to be seen. Through the lens,
photographers reclaim the right to tell, to
remember, and to imagine beyond silence.
For the 2025 edition, the theme “Memory,
Freedom, and Human Rights: Images as
Resistance” invites artists to explore the
profound intersections of memory, freedom,
and human dignity in a world shaped by
shifting narratives and fragile democracies.
Whether addressing questions of identity,
gender, or collective trauma, these
photographers reveal the enduring power of the
image to defend truth, amplify marginal voices,
and transform vulnerability into strength.
This call asks image-makers to see memory not
as a static archive, but as a living, contested
terrain—an essential space for solidarity,
questioning, and repair. Each photograph
becomes both a witness and an act of courage:
an invitation to look deeper and to recognize
our shared responsibility in preserving justice
and humanity.
The 2025 selection panel brought together the
winners of our 2024 edition—Isaí Domínguez,
Isabella Madrid, and Nesie Wang—along with
Ragna Arndt-Maric, winner of the 2020 edition,
members of the Blurring the Lines board, and
our guest curator, Karla Guerrero. From 132
projects nominated by 32 schools across 24
countries, the jury selected three winners
and eighteen finalists, acknowledging their
profound sensitivity, visual integrity, and
commitment to the theme.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all
participating schools, artists, and partners—
Urbanautica Institute, European Cultural
Centre, and Paris College of Art—for their
enduring support and belief in this global
initiative. Together, they continue to
nurture a community of photographers who
see the world not as it is, but as it might
become through awareness, empathy, and
remembrance. In bearing witness to memory
and freedom, Blurring the Lines affirms that
photography remains one of our most powerful
means of resistance—a language through
which we reclaim humanity, restore visibility,
and sustain hope.

Contemporary paradigms of security and threat-management often prioritize hyper-vigilance and hyper-optimization, demanding continuous, error-free cognitive processing from human actors. This paper interrogates the psychological and existential sustainability of such models. Utilizing the metaphor of continuous surveillance (e.g., the "gold shop" security paradigm) and contrasting it with cinematic depictions of invulnerable protagonists, this preprint argues that biological systems are fundamentally ill-equipped for sustained hypervigilance. I propose that psychological survival necessitates the construction of multilayered, automated frameworks for cognitive offloading. By engineering systems that tolerate "messiness"-incorporating margins of error, leniency, and redundancy-we mitigate systemic fragility. Ultimately, this paper posits that the freedom to make errors is not merely a systemic inefficiency, but a core philosophical requisite for authentic human existence.

The relationship between biblical literature and psychology has attracted increasing scholarly attention during the past century. While theological interpretations have traditionally focused on questions of revelation, morality, and salvation, psychological readings of Scripture have sought to understand biblical narratives as profound explorations of human consciousness. This paper argues that several lesser-studied biblical characters function as enduring psychological archetypes whose experiences illuminate contemporary emotional and existential struggles. Figures such as Cain, King Saul, the Elder Brother of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Jonah, Hagar, Elijah, and Qoheleth reveal recurring patterns of comparison, insecurity, grief, burnout, identity fragmentation, and the search for meaning. Rather than imposing modern clinical diagnoses upon ancient texts, this study adopts an interdisciplinary approach informed by narrative psychology, archetypal psychology, and existential thought. The purpose is to examine how biblical stories continue to offer insight into universal dimensions of human experience. The central thesis of this paper is that biblical narratives endure not merely because of their theological claims but because they present psychologically recognisable portraits of the human condition. Their continuing relevance lies in their ability to reveal patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour that transcend culture, geography, and historical period.

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) has emerged as a distinct trauma-related condition characterised by persistent disturbances in emotional regulation, self-concept, interpersonal functioning, and nervous system regulation. While Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has traditionally focused on responses to discrete traumatic events, CPTSD reflects the enduring psychological and physiological consequences of prolonged, repeated, and often interpersonal trauma. Such experiences frequently occur during critical developmental periods and include emotional abuse, neglect, coercive control, chronic domestic violence, and repeated exposure to threatening relational environments. This paper examines CPTSD through a biopsychosocial framework, integrating contemporary research from trauma psychology, attachment theory, neurobiology, and somatic approaches to recovery. Particular attention is given to the impact of developmental trauma on emotional regulation, attachment formation, identity development, and autonomic nervous system functioning. The paper explores how chronic trauma alters neural and physiological processes, contributes to emotional flashbacks and dissociative responses, and influences relational functioning throughout the lifespan. Furthermore, the paper reviews emerging treatment approaches that move beyond symptom reduction and emphasise integration, nervous system regulation, attachment repair, and restoration of selfhood. Drawing upon current literature, the discussion argues that effective understanding and treatment of CPTSD require an interdisciplinary perspective that recognises trauma as both a psychological and embodied experience. The findings highlight the importance of trauma-informed approaches that address the complex interaction between neurobiology, relationships, and identity in the recovery process.

, https://www.cunoasterea.ro/protocolul-recuperarea-corpului/ Rezumat Prezentul capitol prezintă un protocol terapeutic structurat, pas cu pas, pentru lucrul cu pacientele care prezintă hiperprolactinemie funcț ională ș i doliu complicat în contextul pierderii perinatale. Protocolul, denumit "Recuperarea Corpului" (Reclaiming the Body), integrează trei modalităț i terapeutice complementare: psihodrama (pentru externalizarea ș i negocierea cu simptomul), terapia somatică (pentru reglarea sistemului nervos autonom ș i reducerea hipervigilenț ei) ș i EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessingpentru procesarea imaginilor traumatice specifice). Capitolul argumentează că hiperprolactinemie funcț ională ș i doliul perinatal sunt fenomene complexe, care implică multiple niveluri de organizare-psihic, somatic, neuroendocrin, relaț ional-ș i că nicio singură modalitate terapeutică nu poate acoperi toate aceste niveluri. Protocolul este organizat în patru faze succesive: (1) evaluare ș i stabilizare (ș edinț ele 1-3); (2) procesarea traumei (ș edinț ele 4-8); (3) stabilirea graniț elor ș i integrarea (ș edinț ele 9-11); (4) încheierea ș i menț inerea (ș edinț a 12 ș i follow-up). Fiecare fază este descrisă în detaliu, cu instrucț iuni clinice specifice, exemple de dialog ș i fiș e de lucru pentru pacient. Sunt discutate adaptările protocolului pentru diferite populaț ii (taț i cu doliu perinatal, femei cu infertilitate, pacienț i cu sindromul îngrijitorului universal fără doliu perinatal). Concluziile capitolului subliniază atât forț ele protocolului (integrativ, structurat dar flexibil, centrat pe pacient), cât ș i limitele sale (necesită terapeuț i cu pregătire în metode multiple, durata poate fi prea lungă pentru unele sisteme de sănătate, lipsa dovezilor RCT). Capitolul oferă, de asemenea, fiș e de lucru pentru pacient, menite să faciliteze auto-monitorizarea ș i consolidarea achiziț iilor terapeutice.

Our essay deals with narratives of social upheaval that act as vehicles for transgenerational memory transfer. We look at narratives of collectively experienced processes of emancipation and the subsequent possibility of remembering things not experienced firsthand under the prism of the political event of revolution understood as an inherently violent process (Arendt 1990). In this context, we inquire about postmemory along similar lines to those staked out by Marianne Hirsch, while also considering whether the term can be separated from trauma and linked to other emotional responses of comparable affective intensity. Memories of violence are frequently disjointed and impressionistic. The connection of fragments to a narrative context is often severed while the action of linking the threads into a coherent narrative faces vehement resistance. In principle, this is not different from the experience of violence in revolutions and their remembrance. However, narratives on revolution tend to exert a strong force of attraction upon their recipients. Considering the figures of cycle, linear progression, iteration, disruption and irreversibility as the time modes of revolution, we look at how these have enabled entirely new understandings of time since the nineteenth century. New forms of temporality, in turn, are entangled with the role displacement plays in the relationship between a transgenerational transfer of narratives and the construction of narrative time. In order to explore how a generation deals with the dominance (Hirsch 2012) of the narratives transmitted to them by the preceding one, we deal with two models in which affective states charged with both suffering and pleasure are developed into terms of cultural and literary theory: Bini Adamczak's reading of desire as fetish in post-revolutionary Soviet Russia, and Svetlana Boym's work on nostalgia as an emotional disposition characteristic for modernity. Taking into account that both models are more or less constructed by cultural practices, historical events, and transformations in the history of ideas, and thus cannot always be precisely distinguished from one another, we present two main narrative strategies: The reception of the stories of one generation by another involves either

Children and adolescents who experience emotions intensely are often misunderstood within educational, therapeutic, and social environments. This paper explores the emotional, relational, and developmental impact of emotional intensity and sensitivity, highlighting how trauma-informed, emotionally attuned, and regulation-supportive environments may help children develop emotional safety, resilience, self-understanding, and emotional regulation.

Children and adolescents who experience emotions intensely are often misunderstood within educational, therapeutic, and social environments. Emotional sensitivity, heightened emotional responsiveness, and strong emotional reactions may sometimes be misinterpreted as attentionseeking, defiance, behavioral dysregulation, or overreaction. Increasingly, trauma-informed and neurodevelopmentally informed practitioners are recognizing that emotional intensity may reflect nervous system sensitivity, emotional overwhelm, attachment experiences, environmental stress, or difficulties with emotional regulation rather than intentional behavioral disruption. This paper explores the emotional, relational, and developmental impact of emotional intensity and the importance of emotionally safe, attuned, and regulation-supportive environments.

How is the Borderline melancholic subject stigmatized and displaced by the social/symbolic order, and how does this subject disrupt that order? The psychoanalytical theory of Julia Kristeva allows for an understanding of this perplexing question that reflects a reality that is often "closeted," shied away from, rejected, and negated. What follows is an exploration of the condition of the Borderline subject and its duality as a reflection of and threat to the social/symbolic order. This subject shall be engaged with the intention of demonstrating the significance of the "sign" of death within life, and the potential for this appearance of the body as a signifier of death to dislocate the authority and precedence of the demand for discontinuity.