The growing emphasis on “positionality” in academic research—where authors disclose personal characteristics thought to influence their work—has sparked significant debate. In this article, we critically examine the concept of positionality, tracing its assumptions, implications, philosophical roots, and potential pitfalls, particularly in psychology. We conclude that positionality statements lack theoretical support, may reinforce biases, and risk fragmenting scientific discourse. Instead, we advocate rigorous, transparent methodologies and critical evaluation of research, independent of authors’ identities. Discussing solutions, we suggest that if positionalities are unavoidable in research, they must be considered as part of the knowledge claims, considered as auxiliary elements to be tested like other auxiliary (or measurement) hypotheses. Also, we briefly discuss anonymity or pseudonymity as alternative solutions for other sources of positionality biases. Our aim is to contribute to open and critical science and improve upholding ideals of critical science.
In this paper, we examine two early and underexplored texts: Fanon’s 1951 thesis and Lacan’s 1946 presentation ‘On Psychical Causality.’ Their theoretical understanding of madness and freedom in these texts has important clinical consequences and resonates in the clinical testimonies of people experiencing psychosis today. To contextualize their ideas, we consider both authors’ understanding of alienation in psychosis. Rather than taking sides, we explore the tensions within and between their work, as well as their overlaps to develop a more nuanced and responsive framework beyond a simple progressive/conservative binary for thinking about psychosis.
Code Psychology extends Marcello Barbieri's Code Biology paradigm to psychological phenomena, proposing that mental processes operate through organic codes-arbitrary rule-based mappings between neural signals (signs) and subjective experiences (meanings) mediated by adaptors. This theoretical framework addresses persistent epistemological challenges in psychology, including mind-body dualism, the debate between reductionism and holism, and the tension between universal and subjective experiences. I propose to integrate Code Biology's triadic structure with contemporary neuroscience, particularly the free energy principle, affective neuroscience, and biogenetic structuralism's neurognostic structures. The framework reconceptualizes psychological disorders as disruptions in metacode organization, exemplified through autism spectrum disorder, where distinct neural adaptor configurations create systematic cognitive variations rather than deficits. Drawing on thermodynamic principles, we propose that the psyche minimizes variational free energy through codepoiesis-the ongoing generation and conservation of codes that assemble adaptive meanings. This synthesis unifies insights from Marcello Barbieri, Carl Jung, Ross Ashby, Karl Friston, and Jaak Panksepp, revealing the mind as a predictive system that bounds uncertainty via action-oriented inference. Code Psychology offers testable hypotheses for empirical validation through neuroimaging, genomic modeling, and high-dimensional cytometry, providing a mechanistic yet holistic account of mental phenomena that bridges the metaphoric and material at the interface of code, energy, and matter.
Research investigating the practices that reinforce women's lower status and power is growing rapidly. Yet, examinations of these practices are scattered across diverse literatures under different conceptual labels, with little intellectual cross-fertilization. We integrate these literatures under a hierarchy reinforcement model of misogyny, which defines misogyny as the social, physical, and economic penalties imposed on women that reinforce hierarchical gender relations. This conceptualization of misogyny has significant benefits for psychology: it unifies interrelated phenomena that have traditionally been studied in siloes; differentiates misogyny from related psychological phenomena; focuses attention on both interpersonal and institutional penalties towards women; and recognizes misogyny within its socio-historical context. By integrating psychological, sociological, and organizational research, we develop a theoretical framework that outlines the key causes of misogyny. Critically, we argue that misogyny is particularly likely to be enacted after threats to the gender status quo. This can help to explain the pernicious nature of gender inequality, as misogynistic penalties become most pronounced when gender hierarchies face disruption. Understanding the many forms of misogyny as interlinked also emphasizes the need for gender equality interventions to be multipronged, as tentative initiatives with a singular focus are at risk of merely displacing misogyny into other arenas.
In this paper, we explore the possibility of radical behaviorism to respond to the challenges posed by Merleau-Ponty to scientific psychology. According to this philosopher, modern dichotomous thinking places every psychological project in a stalemate: it adopts either mentalism, distancing itself from science, or physiologism, distancing itself from psychology. For Merleau-Ponty, the notion of behavior could be a way to avoid this impasse as long as behavior was taken as a phenomenon in its own right. However, the first behaviorist proposals did not follow this path. But what about radical behaviorism? To answer this question, we begin with different understandings of the notion of behavior found both in B. F. Skinner's works and in the behavior-analytic literature. Considering the diversity of positions, we adopt the Merleau-Ponty stance that sees ambiguity as a constitutive characteristic of the behavioral phenomenon. From there, we present an understanding of behavior based on a relational ontology that could respond to the challenges posed by Merleau-Ponty. This proposal updates the philosophical potential of radical behaviorism, allowing it to dialogue with other traditions that have historically attempted to overcome the alternatives of mentalism and physiological reductionism.
Health inequalities remain widespread in marginalized communities despite decades of research on the social determinants of health. This paper introduces the Ecologies of Exposure and Resistance (EER) framework to better explain how culture, community, and psychological processes shape health outcomes in contexts of structural disadvantage. Rather than relying solely on biomedical universalism, EER examines how culturally grounded meaning systems, collective resources, and identity processes mediate the relationship between structural harm and embodied health. The framework integrates three core concepts. First, Exposure Fields refer to the multidimensional and intersecting risks that marginalized groups face, including poverty, discrimination, and environmental hazards. Second, Resistance Ecologies describe the collective systems of cultural support, meaning-making, and action that buffer these risks, including family networks, spiritual practices, and community organizations. This concept recognizes both protective and potentially harmful dimensions of collective resistance. Third, Health Transmutation captures how exposure and resistance interact over time through psychological and biological pathways to produce health trajectories. EER addresses theoretical gaps by integrating structural analysis with cultural insight and psychological mechanisms, moving beyond static models to examine cumulative, dynamic processes. Real-world applications including Indigenous youth suicide prevention, the Latino health paradox, and high-effort coping under racism demonstrate the framework's explanatory value. This interdisciplinary theory offers a culturally responsive approach to understanding health disparities through the lens of lived experience, community resilience, and symbolic meaning while explicitly theorizing the psychological processes through which social conditions become embodied.
This article presents a field-oriented framework for understanding subjective experience through the dynamics of the experiential field. The experiential field is conceived as a morphogenetic space that continuously shifts its states, giving rise to forms of experience. Signification is described as the primary structuring force of this space: through it, the subject organizes perceptual flow and modulates the interplay between presence and absence, understood as two co-implicated topological domains of the field. Presence anchors meaning, providing stability and continuity, while absence opens up a generative dimension that can prompt transformation. Absence is thus understood not as an ontological void but as a force capable of reorganizing meaning trajectories, reshaping the field, and fostering change. Three conceptual propositions are presented to illustrate how presence and absence interact to shape the uniqueness of subjective experience. Clinically, the framework aims to provide a structured lens for framing meaning-making dynamics in therapeutic contexts. A case example illustrates how the integration of absence can open up new possibilities for change.
Jean Piaget developed his constructivist theory from an epistemological and psychological perspective to understand the development of logical-mathematical knowledge. Aiming to extend the research program inherited from his thought, this work delineates the various types of objects in the social domain that have been investigated from this perspective in recent decades, with a focus on analyzing social representations as objects of knowledge. Based on available evidence, we argue that studying the psychogenesis of some abstract social objects is, in most cases, equivalent to studying the ontogenesis process of social representations. Then we delimit the characteristic features of both the object of knowledge and the psychosocial subject, as well as the constructive interaction between them. In this vein, we provide reasons and evidence supporting the potential of dialectical inferential processes to explain the reconstruction of collective meanings awaiting appropriation by individuals within their culture. Finally, we emphasize that in this ontogenetic process, the subject's constructive activity is directed towards the social representations available within their social group. Hence, the Piagetian thesis on critical realism does not allow us to interpret this ontogenetic process, as the validity of a social representation does not depend on its degree of proximity to the real object but only on social consensus.
Delta Empathic Intelligence (Delta EI) is a clinical and conceptual framework for describing patterned variation in empathic capacity as it operates within psychological functioning. Drawing on attachment theory, affective neuroscience, and evolutionary perspectives, the model situates psychological harm and distress within everyday forms of psychosocial meaning-making through which belonging, difference, and in-group orientation are implicitly organized. Delta EI maps empathic orientation across a four-tiered span structured by processes of otherization, ranging from constricted, in-group-bound recognition to wider configurations capable of sustaining engagement across profound difference. At its upper range, empathic functioning reflects an expanded capacity to remain engaged with complexity and asymmetry without retreat into exclusion or simplification. Framed as a contextual lens rather than a diagnostic category, Delta EI offers a structured vocabulary for examining how individuals navigate implicit self-other orientation, recognition, and exclusion across ordinary relational life. Variations in empathic capacity are consequential under conditions in which individuals are embedded in powerful sociocultural, religious, or geopolitical frameworks-including authoritarian or intensively traditional formations-where asymmetries in empathic framing can strain, reorganize, or fracture relational bonds. The framework is designed to clarify configurations of empathic aperture without reducing them to pathology, ideology, or moral stance.
This article presents a new theory of hate: REal Hate In Context. The theory has five subtheories. The first is a triangular subtheory of hate comprising three components: negation of intimacy, passion, and commitment. The second is a subtheory of stories of hate. The third is a subtheory of the real-world contexts that generate, encourage, or discourage hate; the fourth is a theory, FLOTSAM, of how hate is propagated; and the fifth is a subtheory of reactions people can have to the spread of hate-to join in the hate, to oppose the hate, and everything in between. Instigators seek to spread hate by encouraging stories of hate and creating, through these stories, strong triangles of hate. The instigators use a number of techniques to propagate hate through different levels of the environment. And people then can react to the propagation of hate in a variety of ways. Hate can be combated through understanding of the machinations of toxic leaders, critical thinking, wisdom, love, and the study of history. Whether or not we hate is our choice. We all can decide not to hate and to fight it wherever and whenever we can.
This article proposes a transdisciplinary human science that integrates psychology and anthropology, moving beyond the reductionistic axioms of mainstream psychology to establish a dialogical and systemic framework. It argues for a culturally sensitive, person-centered approach that recognizes individuals as active agents in meaning making, connecting them to their environments through idiosyncratic yet culturally embedded processes. The proposed framework rests on five key principles: (a) the irreversibility of human development, emphasizing gradual and permanent change across the life course; (b) the self as a complex system of diverse, often contradictory representations shaped by internal and external dialectics; (c) a shift from Cartesian multiculturalism to polyculturalism, viewing cultures as interconnected and identities as negotiated through dynamic, overlapping cultural-semiotic fields; (d) meaning making as an emotional process, where affective semiosis bridges individual and cultural domains; and (e) a systemic approach rooted in irreversible developmentalism, likening the self and culture to a decentralized, interdependent "global cultural blockchain." This blockchain metaphor illustrates how selves co-construct meaning within a distributed, evolving network. Given the conceptual fragmentation in cultural psychology, the article introduces anthropological psychology as a unifying framework. Positioned closer to psychology but grounded in anthropological contextualization, it emphasizes the irreversibility of development as the foundation for human subjectivity, balancing universal mental regularities with situational uniqueness. Anthropological psychology offers a path toward a transdisciplinary human science that bridges psychology and anthropology while prioritizing cultural sensitivity and systemic interconnectedness.
The replication crisis has led to more focus on methodology in psychological research. Meta-researchers urged for more direct replications, larger sample sizes, and preregistration of research plans. In this paper we point to two other aspects of research: the ontology of the research phenomenon and the emotions that are part of scientific work. We present an ethnographic case study of a replication in psychology and argue that these three aspects-method, ontology, and emotions-are inextricably linked. By analysing the emotional concerns of the replication researchers, we show that they are especially concerned about fidelity in the various relations in and around the replication study: the reliability of a connection, the trustworthiness of partners, the validity of an inference from one statement to another, the truth of a representation, etc. Their emotions worked as affective entanglements between these various fidelity relations. Central to this tangle of fidelity relations is the relation between the replicators and their object of study. During the replication process, the replicators' view of what the phenomenon actually is fundamentally changed, eventually nearing a performative approach in which the ontology of the psychological phenomenon is understood as a process, enacted in the underlying praxis.
This article examines the concept of nondirectiveness-introduced by Carl Rogers to describe his therapeutic approach-and its relevance to psychoanalysis. It argues that nondirectiveness can be seen as an essential element of psychoanalytic practice, not only for ethical reasons but because it is required by the very process that analysis seeks to initiate. In Freud's early work, the belief that psychoanalysis could address the true causes of suffering, rather than merely the symptoms, depended on the analyst's neutrality as a safeguard against suggestion. Over time, however, Freud shifted toward a more directive stance, driven by the universalization of the psychic schemas he believed analysis had uncovered. Although this universalization has since been widely questioned, many post-Freudian accounts of the analyst's role still overlook the rationale behind Freud's metaphor of the analyst as a mirror, which initially cast psychoanalysis as a nondirective therapeutic practice. Jean Laplanche's understanding of the analytic process is presented as a way to revisit this issue. The focus is placed on Laplanche's positioning of the analyst on the side of deconstruction and on recognizing synthesis as the spontaneous process on the side of the analysand, as well as on "hollowed-out" transference which, in his view, reproduces the conditions of early conscious and unconscious knowledge formation rather than fostering suggestion. Engaging psychoanalysis with the idea of nondirectiveness may reorient the concept from ideology to methodology, while making Laplanche's notions-such as "enigma," "hollowed-out transference," and "originary seduction"-more accessible for those interested in nondirectiveness.
The question of hope is arguably most pressing where it is most ephemeral or ostensibly the least reasonable response to a world confronting the polycrises of climate catastrophe, multiple geopolitical conflicts, and deepening inequality. Hope is typically future-orientated, framing both political and personal possibilities in developmental terms and strongly invested in the promise of youthful potential. Narrative temporality disrupts this linear notion of progress, attending to the ways in which the past and future collide and coincide in the present, rendering the inner-outer terrain of human life unstable and much more difficult to navigate. This paper adopts and adapts Teo's approach to theorizing subjectivity in relation to the concept of hope, offering 1) a critique of thin versions of hope or optimistic positivity; 2) narrative resources of memory and imagination for reconstructing hope; and 3) possibilities for creative subjectivity and practices of hope in the present. Narrative psychology offers ways for rethinking subjectivity in temporal, embodied, and relational terms, providing threads of theory-method to articulate hope as a constitutive concept in re-storying self- and world-making.
Historically, media have been one of the key networks of power and influence in societies largely as a consequence of their utility in channelling information flows and, in doing so, persuading populations. However, the rapid expansion of social media platforms has revolutionised how such mediated persuasive power is wielded. Many nation states have engaged in sophisticated social media campaigns to influence how others understand economic, social, political, and, importantly, security issues. In some cases, these campaigns have undermined the legitimacy of democratically elected governments and threatened security at local, national, and global levels. Developing theoretical understandings of how these campaigns are undertaken is, therefore, essential. While there has been some excellent research undertaken towards advancing understandings of such campaigns, conceptual challenges remain in theorizing persuasion in contemporary social mediascapes. We propose that, although social media provide innovative and unique features that enable revolutionary changes in how communication and persuasion occur, a look to the past can be instructive in conceptualising contemporary acts of persuasion. More specifically, we argue that drawing on Aristotle's rhetorical framework and reframing its canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery to contemporary mediated worlds can deliver new insights into the theoretical processes of persuasion via social media.
Intersectionality has become a central concept in feminist theories and movements worldwide. Coined initially to understand how Black American women were rendered invisible in U.S. American anti-discrimination law around 1990, it has since traveled to both political activism and social scientific research worldwide. In this paper, we argue that there are challenges in transferring the concept from its origins in a late-20th-century liberal democratic and capitalist society to a different historical and socio-political context. We employ the epistemological operation of "strangification" to reflect on the potential and limitations of applying intersectionality to understand mechanisms of overlapping oppressions in the authoritarian socialist one-party regime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; 1949-1990). We ask what needs to be considered when "estranging" intersectionality from its context of origin and applying it in a context-sensitive manner to the GDR. Drawing on an empirical analysis of biographical interviews with individuals from different social backgrounds, including lesbian, migrant, and Jewish communities, and on a theoretical examination of the preconditions of the concept, we theorize that "politically conformist behavior" with the Socialist Unity Party was the central principle determining relations of inequality and oppression in the GDR. We present this article as a call for a context-sensitive use of intersectionality, highlighting the need to examine its original assumptions and to consider whether the categories and overarching principles of social organization suggested by theorists of intersectionality require adaptation; without such reflection, uncritical application risks overlooking key dimensions of oppression or obscuring the complexity of intersecting power structures.
Recent advances in the field of personality pathology have increasingly emphasized the relational and interpersonal dimensions of personality disorders. However, these frameworks often fall short in capturing broader, systemic dynamics that transcend the individual level. Taking the case of narcissism as a prototypical example, we argue that personality pathology should not be understood solely as an interpersonal phenomenon but also as a transpersonal one. We propose a new conceptual model which assumes that personality traits can be conceived of as scripts which may operate at the level of individuals, dyads, groups, and/or larger social entities. The transpersonal view is fully compatible with trait and interpersonal models, but, beyond that, it provides a framework for understanding variation, regulatory dynamics, and changing phenomena at larger levels. This expanded framework offers a novel lens for understanding the embedding and co-constitution of personality pathology-specifically narcissistic pathology-beyond the individual. Our approach foregrounds the clinical insight that any individual pathology must also be addressed in terms of its social-pathological conditions. Thus, we advocate for a diagnostic and therapeutic model that integrates the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and sociocultural aspects of personality pathology.
This article contributes to critical psychological scholarship by proposing a framework through which psychologists might study whiteness not as a personal characteristic but as a sociohistorical formation that continues to organize social interactions, spaces, emotions, and conceptions of personhood. We begin by profiling emergent scholarship premised on theories of sociohistorical whiteness and extend this perspective by offering a tripartite conceptualization grounded in whiteness's original economic and legal justifications. We then present a series of illustrative contemporary outcroppings, or observable social phenomena, in which the legacy of sociohistorical whiteness becomes visible in its present-day cultural operations. We suggest that these moments comprise a metaphorical archive of practices and spatial arrangements through which whiteness is reproduced-and which psychologists are well positioned to investigate using qualitative and critical methods. Ultimately, such lines of inquiry can serve to deepen our understanding of the operations of whiteness in everyday life, which in turn promises greater insight into the social and relational processes by which racial meaning takes shape.
In mental health and substance use, assessment and the resulting diagnosis determine the choice of treatment or therapy to be used with the individual client. In health policy today, treatment should be evidence based and standardized. Health care thus draws on New Public Management principles, where only those methods and practices considered to be evidence based are accepted in the "market" of public health care. However, we view psychotherapy and mental health work as a meeting between persons that in the spirit of standardization might well be labelled "an individual case." Psychiatric diagnoses are subject not only to standardization but also to a focus on identity and similarities, as more generally seen in Western science and philosophy. Difference arises when comparing identities; difference is secondary to identities. In this article, we draw on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to explore whether an ontology of difference could be helpful in therapy. An ontology of difference speaks to our experience as therapists, researchers, and teachers that there will always be difference, and that identities are secondary to difference. Rather than providing standardized answers, knowledge is useful for speculating, experimenting, and bringing forth innovative suggestions as to what could be helpful therapy in the individual case. We do not know what psychotherapy and mental health work can become and we need tools for experimentation, suggestions, and visions of what could be helpful. This must be based on collaborative relationships with those who seek help and support. The central question is, then: What can therapy become?
Stenner and Zittoun's application of the chronotope to the psychology of time is considered as an academic and artistic breakthrough for theoretical psychology and beyond. This commentary is presented as a discussion of a triptych and an imagined tour through the three pictures it paints. The first (the mirror) considers & Zcaron;i & zcaron;ek's presence in the psychology of film from within a mirror chronotope-as a useful counterpoint to Stenner and Zittoun's undertaking. The second (the portal) highlights the art-life bond in created, creating, and creative chronotopes and the potential of this bond to re-shape our understanding of time but also of cognitive processes, learning, and aesthetics. The third, "the resurrection," discusses the relationship between polyphony and the chronotope as a type of "syncrisis" where re-embodied Beings in alternative chronotopes move between art and life; author and "hero." The radical potential of this re-imagining of time for psychology more generally is briefly discussed.
