This narrative review examines compassion, empathy and altruism in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD), arguing that difficulties in these domains, often described in clinical literature as empathic or relational ‘deficits’, are better understood as psychosocial responses to trauma, invalidation and relational adversity. Drawing from personality psychology, clinical research and lived-experience scholarship, the review explores how prosocial capacities are shaped by emotional dysregulation, relational trauma and systemic invalidation within social contexts. Rather than framing impairments in compassion, empathy or altruism as fixed intrapsychic traits, the review reconceptualises them as context-dependent adaptations to adversity. Particular attention is given to fear of compassion, disruptions in cognitive and affective empathy, and altruistic behaviours motivated by insecurity. Examining how these constructs interact and contribute to relational functioning and recovery, this review builds a conceptual foundation for more person-centred, trauma-informed care. By situating empathy and compassion within lived social contexts rather than within presumed personality deficits, the article reframes BPD as a psychosocial condition shaped by relational experience.
This article explores the psychosocial development of resourcefulness in Anthropocene adolescents through child focalisation in select novels. By examining how adolescent protagonists navigate a climate-ravaged world, the study sheds light on the ways in which the acquisition and application of resourcefulness is shaped by the interplay of the inner and outer world as well as their affective interactions. The study positions children as agentic forces thereby challenging dominant cultural perceptions of them as a liability in the context of climate change. The study draws from Jaclene Zauszniewski's theory of resourcefulness and quality of life and psychosocial concepts from Kath Woodward's book Psychosocial Studies to focus on personal and social resourcefulness, showing how high and low resourcefulness impact the adolescents' quality of life. The article analyses four American climate fictions-The New Wilderness by Diane Cook, A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet, American War by Omar El Akkad and The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi-as source material to study the non-binary nature of psychosocial resourcefulness and the role of affect in shaping resourcefulness skills. The study argues that resourcefulness is a dynamic psychosocial process, vulnerable to environmental stressors and affective experiences instead of a fixed trait.
The article introduces the concept of claustrophobic fieldnotes, developed through extended ethnographic fieldwork in Danish kindergartens, afterschool clubs and schools. The concept builds on psychosocial, psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives, and highlights how pressure, silence and emotional entrapment are intertwined with wider social structures. Furthermore, in contrast to approaches that treat the researcher's emotions as unimportant, claustrophobic fieldnotes position embodied reactions such as unease or constriction at the centre of knowledge production. Through detailed examples from children's everyday lives, I will in this article demonstrate how claustrophobic fieldnotes can illuminate overlooked dynamics-from overheard judgements to unrecognised efforts and discriminatory remarks. By transmitting both events and the atmosphere surrounding them, claustrophobic fieldnotes create space for empathy, critical reflection and the possibility of social change.
In a world of administratively perfect yet emotionally exhausted development, this study introduces the Theory of Psychosocial Regional Development to rehumanise Indonesia’s post-decentralisation landscape. Beyond economic and institutional lenses, it frames regional development as a psychosocial ecology, a dynamic interplay of emotion, legitimacy and imagination. Using qualitative interpretive analysis of governance indices, the study reads these as moral texts revealing affective resonance. Findings show regions vary not only in performance but in felt dignity: empathic, participatory governance fosters belonging; proceduralism breeds alienation. The Theory of Psychosocial Regional Development integrates affect theory, interpretive institutionalism and post-development critique via three logics: psychosocial, institutional and cultural, positioning emotion as reform’s epistemic core. Practically, it reframes decentralisation as moral-affective co-creation of meaning and hope. Humanising development means restoring feeling to governance.
This is based on an invited talk given at the Annual Conference of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS), 9-10 June 2025, titled 'Hope and Despair: Crisis and Opportunity'. This talk is a personal account of the struggle to find hope in these despairing times. When faced by the grim reality of a world overrun by right-wing populists pedalling their politics of hate, violence, malice and greed, is it even worth the effort to look for hope? Where is the light in this ever-darkening world-or has it already been extinguished? This talk is my attempt to work my way towards hope. It is not certain that I will get there. It is a work in progress.
This article offers an introductory overview of psychosocial thematic analysis (PTA), a reflexive methodology that integrates psychosocial inquiry into thematic analysis. It outlines the ontological and epistemological implications of working within a psychosocial paradigm, which foregrounds fractured, affect-laden subjectivity and the influence of unconscious processes in both participants and researchers. PTA departs from more conventional approaches by treating analysis as layered, interpretive and necessarily imperfect. Rather than privileging the text (manifest content), PTA attends to how unconscious dynamics may surface, often indirectly, through language, affect and narrative form, revealing latent tensions shaping both participant narratives and researcher responses. Akin to clinical work, PTA acknowledges that the researcher’s interpretations, shaped by unconscious investments and theoretical positionality, may diverge from participants’ subjective meaning-making. Hence, the methodology is inherently reflexive, requiring attention to questions of authority, interpretation and the status of knowledge. We argue that this necessary orientation grounds psychosocial research in epistemic humility, keeping it attuned to the complexities of lived experience and the multiple, often elusive forms of knowing that may resist full articulation or conscious grasp.
This article presents a psychosocial study of men unable to work due to mental illness and their encounters with the UK's social security system, using the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) method. Drawing on interviews with 17 men in North-West England, it highlights the central yet often overlooked role of women, particularly mothers and partners, in male participants' narratives. It explores how these relationships serve as a form of relational legitimacy, offering emotional and practical support in the face of an increasingly punitive and neoliberal social security system. The analysis firstly locates the broader socio-political context before situating the relational dynamics, arguing in the context of declining community and mental health services, and increasingly punitive welfare reforms, those needing to claim benefits, specifically those with mental health difficulties, are becoming ever more reliant on the support of female family members, as a substitute for a welfare state which has been defunded and delegitimised. The article concludes by reflecting on how the FANI method served to both elicit the data and facilitated keeping in sight the psychic and social forces which interpenetrate, shaping the lives of the participants. This article foregrounds the importance of attending to unconscious processes and relational entanglements when analysing the impact of structural changes on individual lives. A psychosocial approach, it argues, reveals how structural reforms and personal lives are deeply intertwined in shaping experiences of mental illness and welfare 'dependence'.
This article explores topics related to psychosocial health, human rights, the sanitation of political behaviour and male-dominated colonising power structures. Afraid of Oedipal castration, both Putin and Trump took obedience to their father to the extreme of anticipating it, equating conscious emotional life with the life of a girl in her Foucaultian 'docile body'. And hatred of the father is repressed as eternal grudge. In paranoia, this hatred leads to a desire for generalised destruction/ misinformation. Here, some anti-democratic/empirical evidence includes, regarding Putin, the convenient, sudden and obscure killing of his political opponents (for example, the suspicious death of Alexei Navalny in 2024); on Trump's side, his public manifestations encouraging the attack and invasion of the Capitol, the US Congress building, with the aim of blocking the confirmation, on 6 January 2021, of Joe Biden's electoral victory.
This article focuses on migration-related diversity in contemporary European migration societies by applying an interdisciplinary lens that integrates psychotherapeutic and sociological perspectives. Drawing on the conceptual groundwork of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project analysing first therapeutic encounters in an institutional outpatient setting in Vienna, as well as on recent empirical research from Germany, the article examines persistent structural and relational barriers to psychotherapeutic care. We argue that integrating sociological perspectives into psychotherapeutic theory provides both a robust foundation for further research and a more differentiated knowledge base for practitioners and other stakeholders seeking to identify and address structural barriers to psychotherapeutic care. Starting from a decolonial and intersectional approach, the article highlights how microaggressions and processes of othering shape everyday social realities and become embedded within psychotherapeutic institutions and therapeutic encounters. These dynamics are not external to psychotherapy but are mirrored within its social structures and clinical practices. By foregrounding these interconnections, the article contributes to a clearer theoretical understanding of migration-related inequalities in psychotherapy and informs future directions in psychotherapeutic research, training and practice.
This article investigates the contribution of Bion's notion of O to Foulkes' concept of the matrix. As a foundational element of group analysis, the matrix has maintained its importance; yet its elusive nature creates theoretical obstacles that require close examination. The integration of Bion's concepts about the unformulated and truth without a container provides an essential epistemological system to study the deep and inexpressible dimensions of the matrix. This article reviews the matrix by revisiting its different levels and evaluating important critique, including how reification and nature-nurture dichotomy affect the concept, and the elaboration of the personal matrix by Hopper. This article examines the potential of Bion's ideas to improve both the practical application and conceptual depth of the matrix through an in-depth analysis of their encounter. Bion's negative capability theory, along with his concepts of reverie and transformation in O, are used to enhance understanding of the matrix as an unconscious communicative field. Bion's O is proposed as a potential theoretical structure to study the inexpressible elements of group interactions which cannot be directly symbolised. The integration of matrix and O becomes clearer through the conceptual metaphors of Winnicott's transitional space and Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome theory. Clinical illustrations show how matrix-O integration may play out in therapeutic practice. The article concludes by arguing that this theoretical encounter not only strengthens the conceptual foundations of group analysis, but also invites practitioners towards a more nuanced engagement with the profound unknowing that characterises therapeutic group work.
In this article, I present a psychosocial analysis of queer* trauma within Turkey's LGBTQIA+ communities as I examine how structural violence and minority stress manifest in the everyday experiences of sexual and gender minorities. Drawing on 13 in-depth interviews conducted in Turkish between May 2023 and June 2024, I employ a phenomenologically informed narrative methodology to explore how queer* trauma is produced and experienced within Turkey's complex sociopolitical milieu. Centred around the concept of queer* trauma, I situate individual testimonies within Turkey's specific socio-historical trajectory of LGBTQIA+ presence and aggravating anti-gender politics. Since classical trauma scholarships have long treated personal and collective traumas as separate things, I draw on queer affect theories and critical trauma studies to create a transdisciplinary framework that extends the existing critiques of the traditional individual/collective divide. Queer* trauma, I argue, is the product of ongoing structural violence through the complex interplay of historical silence and social abandonment, manifesting as internalised psychological distress and collective memory. My interlocutors' narratives reveal how external violence becomes etched into psychic structures by creating chronic, 'low-intensity' yet omnipresent conditions of precariousness. In conclusion, I argue that classical trauma paradigms, particularly the biomedical and psychiatric PTSD models, fail to account for the relational complexities and embodied realities of queer* experiences in authoritarian contexts. By foregrounding the psychosocial dimensions of trauma, with this work, I aim to contribute to developing more nuanced understandings of how systemic oppression shapes both individual subjectivities and collective memories within queer lifeworlds.
Objective: Mental health awareness in India has been steadily increasing; however, mental health literacy and treatment is still lagging. India hosts the largest population dealing with mental health struggles in the world. India has been identified as a country prone to traumatic events. However, little research study exists about this group's mental health. The purpose of the qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis study was to explore and understand the role that Indian culture plays in the experience of past trauma. Methods: The present study focused on the account of Indian therapists' understanding of their clients' trauma and cultural betrayal trauma theory was used to understand the phenomenon of cultural trauma within the participants clients' experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 11 Indian therapists. Results: The ongoing tension between collectivistic values and the emerging desire for individualism emerged as a result. The pressure to conform to societal norms, especially regarding relationships and marriage, affects mental wellbeing. The study pinpoints various obstacles hindering access to psychological help, from the normalisation of trauma to unequal gender dynamics and patriarchy. Conclusion: This study underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive understanding of trauma's pervasive effects.
The contemporary religious landscape has seen an uptick in religious nationalism, rightist politics and other phenomena related to what prominent social thinkers Charles Taylor and Michele Dillon have called the 'post-secular'. This article briefly summarises continuing research on such a branch of Catholic practice, known as Radical Traditionalism. Embracing pre-modern notions of ritual and related expressions of Catholicism, 'Rad-Trads' are increasingly vocal and present in the domains of social and political life. In this piece, the authors investigate some of the psychosocial dynamics of Rad-Trads and their implications for understanding religious strains of authoritarianism.
A significant contributor to the rise in populism and authoritarianism has been the alteration in modes of interpersonal relations brought about by the increasing mediation of social relations by social media scaffolds. Using 4E cognition's concept of niche construction and Erich Fromm's social psychology we argue that social media functions to form and gratify necrophilous personality types attracted to populism, authoritarian leaders and political violence.
Why do some men sexually assault women? Can their behaviour be explained exclusively through reference to inadequate understandings of consent? Or are more complexly gendered power dynamics in play? In this article I reflect on the narrative accounts provided to me over the last 27 years by men who have disclosed sexual assaults they have perpetrated on women and girls: assaults often perpetrated with impunity, the tellers evading detection, arrest, conviction and, in some cases, without any acknowledgement that what they had done was wrong or illegal. The article calls for a more dynamically psychosocial analysis of how insecurities and trauma inform misogyny and masculinities, alongside an intersectional analysis of which men get criminalised for sexual assaults. It advocates for public engagement strategies that ask men to reflect upon the benefits of being brave and curious enough to ask prospective partners not just what they will consent to, but also what they really want.
How do we-scholars in the academy-hold ourselves, each other and the practices of intellectual work in times of entangled multispecies, geopolitical and educational crises? This article presents and reflects on a two-year writing experiment that involved a regular, virtual, group-writing practice among four academics situated in the global North. The writing and resulting discussions evolved into a shared archive and a recursive archiving practice where material was re-encountered and revisited. The whole enterprise, including the writing and editing of this article, became an approach of collective thinking and analysis informed by traditions of psychosocial group analysis of data, memory work and auto-ethnography. In this article we present an account of our work together, characterising it as a knowledge practice, constituted through a combination of writing, reading aloud, listening, responding, archiving, revisiting and writing again. The article is illustrated with examples of our process and our multi-vocal writing. The article invites the reader into live archiving practices, academic companionship and intellectual work. At the centre of the article is the claim that our work can be understood as a sanctuary/ing practice, that enabled us to bear and continue to bear the deep worries for higher education and the frictions and demands of research and teaching in unsettling times. Writing for and with each other, building an archive from these common goods and working iteratively with that archive is offered as a tender knowledge practice for such toxic times.
This article forms part of a special issue on a psychosocial method of group data analysis characterised as Many Minds. In this article, we aim to democratise and render transparent the Many Minds process and outline its affordances as a method for analysing evocative and provocative data. The article begins with an acknowledgement of our own positionalities. We move on to explore the specific context in which our experiences were located, how the Many Minds approach operated in this space and the methods we devised for writing this article. Through sharing our understanding and experiences in three discrete Many Minds roles-the facilitator, the sharer and the participant-we reflect on the characteristics, responsibilities and practices associated with each of them. We consider how attending to these roles is pivotal to the creation of a containing and generative environment that maximises the opportunity for the unbearable to be borne, the unthinkable to be thought and for unconscious knowledge to be surfaced and voiced. Attending to these roles, we argue, is essential for a space to be created in which participants' research experiences can be honoured, respected and better understood. Many Minds offers a generative approach that has rich potential for researchers, including practitioner researchers, who seek deeply reflexive psychosocial methods for data analysis.
This article offers a brief psychosocial reflection on the relationship between authoritarianism and the family today. Taking as its starting point populist authoritarianism's attachment to the family, the piece explores the relationship between the family form, gender polarity and authoritarian tendencies, drawing on the work of Robyn Marasco and Jessica Benjamin. Arguing that there is an intimate relationship between these phenomena, it then briefly hypothesises a connection between the rise of authoritarian tendencies and the return of gender traditionalism under neoliberalism. Ultimately, it suggests that authoritarian tendencies are, at least in part, 'oedipal monsters', which can only be challenged through a rearticulation of symbolic and social relations beyond the terms of paternal law.
