ENGAGING WITH GENDER

Reflexivity Barbie: An exploration of the gendering of epistemology

Rose Capdevila, Lisa Lazard

The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

The Barbie movie has been praised, celebrated, vilified, denigrated, dismissed, and crucially
manifoldly mis-understood. As well as naïve, vacuous and misandrist, it has been described as
inspirational, innovative, intelligent, cinematically sophisticated, fun, and kind-hearted. In this
paper we make the case for the Barbie movie as visibilising agentic spaces for disenfranchised
communities. As such, we would argue, it is deserving of the serious theoretical attention of
intersectional feminist psychology. Traditionally-shaped by the male gaze, media sense-making
around women, and particularly young women, has served to both resist and reinscribe existing
hegemonic and patriarchal power structures. The Barbie movie has itself been caught in a series
of trivialising discourses all too familiar from feminist analyses of gendered and generational
positionings. In the case of Barbie, this trivialisation is premised on an understanding of what
does and does not constitute narrative excellence and, thus, merit in film making. Combative
or challenging discourses have become naturalised as rigorous and meaningful approaches to
cultural analyses, whereas the more supportive, reflexive, and experientially positive approaches
prevalent in the Barbie film are constituted as lacking substance thereby undermining the
film's artistic and political ambitions. We make sense of the reflexive approaches used in the
film, as well as its trivialisation, using a relational matrix of distance/closeness. Drawing on
feminist understandings of perspectival location, we unpack the Barbie movie by considering
ways of seeing through this matrix as it throws open layers of context that become relevant to
understanding knowledge production in a gendered context.

Keywords: ressentiment, moral psychology, concern, psychosocial theory, populism

<figure><img src="image_62.png" /></figure>
# On the (In)Commensurability of Socioanalytic, Psychoanalytic, and Feminist Affective Approaches

Julia Struppe-Schanda

Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

The combination of socioanalytic, psychoanalytic, and feminist affective approaches requires an analysis of the interrelationships between the theories that takes into account that they are distinct, yet complementary and sometimes contradictory theories. While recent literature has demonstrated the feasibility of combining at least two of these approaches without dissolving the different levels of analysis, a link between all three approaches has not yet been established. Building on these theories, my PhD project examines the role of (unconscious) emotions in the criminal justice system in cases of gender-based violence. I use feminist theories of affect because they ask how affective presuppositions structure encounters and how the actions of legal actors and their relation to emotions might be related to gender and/or other categories of difference. To better understand how these (emotional) encounters are embedded and embodied in the specific professional contexts of the legal actors, I draw on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and social field. With the help of Bourdieu, I seek to understand how legal socialization and the formation of a "professional habitus" might have something to do with the way legal actors deal with emotions. I incorporate psychoanalytic concepts, focusing on the work of Alfred Lorenzer, to address the unconscious levels of emotional encounters between legal actors and women affected by gender-based violence. In this presentation, I talk about the possibilities of combining these theoretical approaches and explore the interrelationship between the theories, looking at both their similarities as well as their differences and sometimes incommensurability.

Keywords: Socioanalysis, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Affective Studies, Emotions, Gender-based Violence
# Discursive strategies of promoting inclusivity viewed as a part of a reconciliation process

Krista Huusko

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

The research data consisted of Finnish guidebooks that instruct health and social care professionals on working with LGBTQ+ clients. The discursive strategies the guidebooks used to create more inclusive institutional practices and the consequences of these strategies were analyzed.

Using membership categorisation analysis, three strategies were identified. First, the guidebooks constructed the current professionals and their discriminatory practices towards LGBTQ+ clients as immoral and harmful, and second, they thanked the professionals for the progress they have made and presented the suggested inclusive practices as beneficial to everyone. Third, the guidebooks provided understanding for the professionals' difficulties and presented the professionals as well-meaning. To explain the use of this third strategy, we viewed the guidebooks as a part of a cultural reconciliation process that takes place after a history of discrimination of minorities by professionals. Deriving from the needs-based model of reconciliation, we interpreted that the messages of understanding were used to soothe the perpetrators' shame, evoked using the first strategy. Excessive shame could lead to reactions adverse to change, such as denial. However, the guidebooks' use of the strategy of providing understanding can also been seen as potentially counterproductive, as it leads to reproducing the cultural idea of LGBTQ+ clients as "others", presenting intentional discrimination as improbable, and creating moral pressure for the minority clients to understand the professionals' incompetency. The research thus suggested that considering historical factors and the majority's emotional needs play a major role when promoting minority rights, but also hinted at some pitfalls of said process.

Keywords: guidebooks, health and social care professionals, inclusivity, LGBTQ+, reconciliation
DECONSTRUCTING PATHOLOGY 1

Reproduction of knowledge and practices in counselling psychology
through intersectionality and institutional relations

Erin Thrift

Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada

That Western psychology is ethnocentric and individualistic has been widely acknowledged. There is an obvious need for theories with social/relational ontological foundations and that explain the role of structures and systems in the development and enactment of human agency. As the mental health field expands, alternate practices that align with these theoretical reorientations are needed. Based on 2 decades of post-secondary experience in counselling psychology, my observations are that 1) students from marginalized communities often are better at recognizing the aforementioned critiques of psychology and required shifts in theory and practice than those in more privileged positions, and 2) marginalized students struggle to advance in the field. This paper examines social and institutional relations that reproduce the status quo in the counselling field and resulting cultural implications. Drawing on insights from standpoint theory, institutional ethnography, and Nancy Fraser's approach to social justice, I examine systems that shape what is known about people, their problems, and helping practices; whose knowledge is valued; and how decisions are made about what and who in counselling psychology. Factors discussed will include code-switching, intersection of class and identity in marginalization, specialization and certification of helping practices, and privatization of education.

Keywords: standpoint theory; counselling psychology; institutional relations; intersectionality;
reproduction of knowledge/practice
# Autistic flow theory: a non-pathologising conceptual approach

Brett Heasman<fnref n="1" />, Gemma Williams², Divine Charura<fnref n="1" />, Lorna Hamilton<fnref n="1" />, Damian Milton<fnref n="3" />, Fergus Murray⁴

Flow states are heightened moments of concentration, motivation and enjoyment, leading to total absorption in the present moment. While flow is both commonly experienced in everyday life and well-documented in psychological research, the striking parallel which exists between flow states and phenomenological accounts of autism has yet to be fully explored. We therefore bring these two literatures together to outline points of theoretical connection in the form of autistic flow theory. Autistic flow theory suggests that autistic people are uniquely positioned to discover and enter into states of flow given their monotropic attention, sensory sensitivity and intrinsic motivation – a potential strength which has been overlooked. At the same time, disengaging with such states of flow may also present a challenge if not appropriately supported by one’s environment. Recognising the link between states of flow and autism has a number of theoretical implications as it provides alternative explanations to previously researched phenomena. It impacts (1) our conceptual understanding of autism, (2) the question of how we build enabling environments for autistic people that allow flow to flourish, and (3) offers a non-pathologising approach to researching autism, a field which has historically been governed by medicalised and deficit-focussed research.

Keywords: autistic flow theory, flow states, autism, monotropism, double empathy

<footnote n="1">¹York St. John University, York, United Kingdom. ²Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom. ⁴Autistic Mutual Aid Society, Edinburgh, United Kingdom</footnote>
# Disability Identity in Japan:
What is examined and remained for further studies

Masakuni Tagaki

Osaka Metropolitan University, Sakai, Osaka, Japan

This study aimed to examine the reach and the challenges of research conducted on disability identity in Japan from a socio-cultural perspective. The vague concept of "disability identity" is one whereby people with disabilities consider their disability as a positive and essential aspect of their identity, further forming solidarity with the disabled community. Examples of disability identity include deaf culture, anti-eugenic thought, and fashion models with disabilities who embody alternative aesthetics. In these cases, disability identities can empower them; however, they rely on a number of enabling criteria with their situations carrying the potential to diminish their sense of belonging. In Japan, disability policies and discourse are provided in terms of medical criteria. However, the narrative approach values people's uncertainty rather than that of medical anthropology or sociology. Cultural psychology theories discuss the connections from everyday experience to social movements and the historical perspective. These remarks contribute to addressing the diversity of the disabled community. For example, although young disabled people are uninterested in the disability movement, the social resources they enjoy are a product of the movement, sparking appreciation and indicating their connections with their surroundings. This reflects the value of humility in Japan. The Disability Discrimination Act can be a resource for their narratives because they are open to various interpretations. As a discussion of intersectionality, when examining a particular minority community, we should not adhere to one attribute. Disability, ethnicity, gender, and other social and cultural attributes must be examined in the narrative approach of cultural psychology.

Keywords: disability identity, narrative, story, qualitative research, Japan
INTEGRATING THEORIES 2

Seeking unity where it is and is not

Brad Piekkola

Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, Canada

Since its inception as a science psychology has been characterized by disunity and opposition.
Over time it became increasingly differentiated as specializations and subdisciplines arose.
Such fragmentation led to questioning whether psychology was or could be a coherent
discipline. Koch (1973) doubted the possibility and proposed renaming the disparate approaches
'psychological studies.'

Beginning in the 1960s, unification of the discipline became a topic of conferences and symposia. On the unification side, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and other approaches were purported to provide a unifying framework, performing what Green (2015) called the 'unificatory miracle.' Given the heterogeneous character and incommensurability between theories, others have favored pluralism over adherence to a single model. A third general approach advocates some form of unity in diversity.

A version of the unificatory miracle will be presented that emphasizes an underlying unity of diversity. Rather than trying to amalgamate the divergent disciplines, it is argued that what unifies is what is common to each—our human subjects who present themselves to us as unified, integrated wholes. It is within the person, prior to analytic cannibalization, that the phenomena of the different disciplines cohere. To that end, there is a necessity for results to be validated through concretization. Further, it is time to develop a psychology of the 'concrete psychological being,' operating as coordinated unity, engaged in active transactions with the physical and cultural environments.

Keywords: unificatory miracle, concretization, coordination, transaction, concrete-psychological-being

<figure><img src="image_63.png" /></figure>
# The Replication Crisis in Psychology and Theoretical Challenges for the Field

Klaus Nielsen

Aarhus University, Department of Psychology, Aarhus, Denmark

The replication crisis highlights that a significant number of experimental studies, published in prestigious psychology journals across various subfields, do not produce consistent results when replicated. The success rates in replication differ by domain, but only about a quarter of all such studies appear replicable (Biswas-Diener et al., 2020; Wiggins et al., 2019). The replication crisis has prompted calls for more rigorous methodological standards in psychology (Kahneman, 2011). This presentation will provide a brief overview of the replication crisis's history, scope, and associated challenges. It will also argue that the underpinnings of this crisis can be traced back to the mechanistic worldview of the early Enlightenment, where an emphasis on universal laws and predictability (Maclntyre, 2007) has since evolved into the benchmark for modern social sciences, including psychology. The discussion will advocate for an approach that theorize psychological phenomena as both culturally embedded and socially negotiated.

Keywords: Replication Crisis, Theory, Psychology, Culture, History.
# Engaged theorizing to meet the needs of the current era: The case for a more-than-human psychology

Alexis Fabricius, Kieran O'Doherty

University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

It is no secret that advanced digital technologies and data economies are transforming the world and us along with it. As our subjectivities become increasingly entangled with data, apps, AI and other forms of tech, questions about what this means for our humanness continue to loom. While scholars in philosophy and other fields are grappling with some of the implications of these shifts, they present a difficult dilemma for psychology, in particular. Because the discipline has long been positioned as the study of human minds and behaviour, the emergence of more-than-human subjectivities produced through our enmeshments with technological entities presents something of a problem. As our minds, bodies, affects and behaviours are increasingly co-constituted through knotty and dynamic relations with technologies, we need to ask how - and even if! - psychology is positioned to address these changes. In this presentation, we argue that theoretical psychologists are uniquely positioned to help the discipline meet the needs of the current era through engaged theorizing. We first point to the ontological, conceptual and affective commitments that have historically made it quite difficult for psychologists to see or appreciate the ways in which humans and technological objects come together - commitments that simply do not align with a networked, relational world. We then shift to explore what a more-than-human psychology might look like if we take up a relational ontology that includes data and digital technologies. Through such work, theoretical psychologists can help us re-think and re-imagine our discipline.

Keywords: Digital technologies, data, humanness, more-than-human psychology
# The Discipline of Descriptive Psychology as an Effective Way to Do Engaged Theorising

Ian Newby-Clark

University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

For over five decades, academics, clinicians, and independent researchers have worked in the discipline of Descriptive Psychology as engaged theorists to achieve a multitude of goals, including assisting NASA, analyzing legal cases, providing effective therapy, and advancing a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of persons. In this talk, I give three main reasons why Descriptive Psychologists have accomplished these laudable ends: 1) Descriptive Psychology's person-centered approach, as embodied in the powerful Person Concept with its focus on Deliberate Action, grounds analyses of behavior in the seeking of reasons for behavior (i.e., "people make sense"); 2) Descriptive Psychology's powerful conceptual tools (Parametric Analysis and Paradigm Case Formulation) empower Descriptive Psychologists to create comprehensive descriptions of states-of-affairs that lead to cogent theories and subsequent effective application of those theories; 3) Descriptive Psychology's philosophy of science is inherently aim-oriented, thus aligning it with Nicholas Maxwell's project of a move from knowledge to wisdom in the sciences. In sum, Descriptive Psychology is ideally positioned to do engaged theorising that benefits persons and their world.

Keywords: Descriptive Psychology, Person Concept, Parametric Analysis, Paradigm Case Formulation, Aim-Oriented Empiricism
PERSONAL TRAJECTORIES OF THEORISING

Psychological theorizing as sociopolitically valid engagement:
An illustrative personal experience and collective journey from Turkey

Aydan Gülerce

Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

Throughout half of a century that I have been studying and practicing psychology, my preoccupation has been nothing but "engagement". Inspired by the call for this meeting, I decided to offer a more personal and direct response as has been the case for the past 30 years, since I joined this society. I will attempt to relate all the eloquently put points and the following implicit/ explicit questions: If claims for engagement have a long past, then why is its history short and weak, or rather, close to none? Psychological theorizing inevitably is inclusive and seriously involves all the world's powers, institutions, cultures, and people, definitely including psychologists themselves. That indeed is an ethical, reflective, and transformational endeavor, requiring genuine dedication and time, but also multidiscursive intelligibilities, actually valid criteria, and selective efforts. More importantly, perhaps, self-confrontation and acceptance of the shortcomings in dialogue are desperately needed, particularly in times when "the world is about to lose its mind"! How to make sense of all these key concepts and actualize rhetorical wishes in actual society? I present three brief overviews as dual and highly intertwined historical paths in different time spans based on personal interpretations, observations, and experiences of theorizing and historicizing via conceptual macro, mezzo, and micro level analyses: (1) Theory in general and Turkish society, (2) theoretical psychology and past ISTP themes via my contributions, and (3) tracking from within dramatic sociopolitical changes taking place in Turkey via weekly newspaper columns since the ISTP 2019 in Copenhagen.

Keywords: Psychological theorizing; critically engaged psychoanalysis; transformational-transformative psychology; epistemological, ontological, ethical, aesthetic, and socially relevant practical necessities of philosophy of difference
# Theorizing as a Multi-Engagement, Nonlinear Process: An Individual Case Study

Jonathan Doner

DP/DS, Keswick, USA

Creative problem solving is largely regarded as being linear in its operation and procedural in its structure. This approach has applications to well-defined problems and problems that are complex but nonetheless decomposable. Theorizing in psychology and other sciences, however, is not simply creative problem solving. Indeed, scientific theories can be straightforward applications of known principles. Of greatest theoretical importance, however, are those theories which attempt to redefine problems, create new conceptual schemes, or simply, do something different. This sort of theorizing is not linear but nonlinear in its dynamic structure. Nor is it procedural, requiring the theorizer to make a series of intentional and effortful engagements. Four of these engagements are intellectual, between the person and their subject matter. One, however, is social, as the theorist must engage the Other, those persons that constitute the theorist's audience. This paper presents a phenomenological and empirical study of the author's own efforts in the development of three research projects in theoretical psychology. It is shown that, despite their different subject matter and despite the fact that each follows its own time course from inception to publication, all three projects follow a similar pattern. This pattern consists in a series of engagements, each within a specific operational context. Each engagement, whether intellectual or social, initiates a nonlinear dynamic process of informational expansion followed by powerful processes of abstraction. And it is by virtue of this repeated contextually modulated cycle of expansion and abstraction that the theory takes on form and substance.

Keywords: Theory, Theorizing, Nonlinear Cognition, Engagement
# Leaving space for my body – healing through narrating the disabled self

Heidi Lourens

University of Johannesburg (South Africa), University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Autoethnography is a methodology whereby authors use theory to make sense of their personal life experiences. I argue that using autoethnography could be therapeutic for disabled persons, since it could unlock the unconscious, silenced parts of the self. Disabled persons often keep quiet about the thorny segments of their lives, because they learn that it is too anxiety-provoking for nondisabled listeners. Yet, it is often in the painful stories of disabled persons where external and internal oppressions meet.

According to psychoanalysis, the therapeutic process of healing begins by making the unconscious conscious through free association. As I recalled memories from my life and as I put these memories on paper, I actively started making sense of my experiences. And, simultaneously, I became conscious of things within myself and within my environment that I wasn't aware of previously. As I wrote, I became more aware of my long-kept silences; of the things that I simply brushed over in order to be accepted by others. I started to recognise the various ways and the many times I have not said a word when in fact I had paragraphs to speak.

In this sense, narrating parts of a lifestory could facilitate a therapeutic process. After all, "Speaking will transform our confusing and nonsensical experiences into something we, and others, can understand," (Herman, cited by Gorgio, 2009, p. 150).

Keywords: autoethnography, psychoanalysis, free association, disability, therapeutic value
ENGAGING WITH SOCIAL CHANGE 1

Engaging with citizenship in social psychology

Eleni Andreouli<fnref n="1" />, Lia Figgou², Irini Kadianaki<fnref n="3" />

The paper makes a case for engaging with the concept of citizenship in social psychology. We suggest that such an engagement adds value to the conceptual toolkit of the discipline, and it also offers a fresh, and useful, approach to the study of everyday politics. We argue that in a context where government and power take place though processes of subjectivation, psychology can help understand, in more intricate detail and complexity, the very subject of politics, that is, citizens themselves. Following recent critical work in the transdisciplinary field of citizenship studies, we approach citizenship as an act through which political subjectivities are negotiated and constituted. We draw on socio-cultural and critical discursive frameworks in social psychology, to sketch out an actor-oriented perspective that considers the everyday, often unnoticed, practices whereby citizenship is performed. By focusing on concrete contexts, we cast light on the temporality, flexibility and contested nature of category construction. Finally, we problematise the division between ordinary/extraordinary by treating everyday citizenship as a habitual practice that is pervaded by micro-disruptions. We illustrate our theoretical points by drawing on examples from our research in Cyprus, Greece, and the United Kingdom. In all contexts, we look at the ways that citizenship is (re-)constructed and re-ordered in moments of rupture, that is, in moments where the meanings, values and norms of 'good citizenship' come under critical scrutiny and begin to unravel (e.g. during the Covid-19 pandemic, refugee 'crisis'; legislation on LGBTQ+ rights).

Keywords: Citizenship as act; rupture; socio-cultural psychology; critical discursive psychology

<footnote n="1">¹The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. ²Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus</footnote>
**Psychology IS policy:**
**Steps to a cultural political psychology**

Kevin Carriere

Stonehill College, North Easton, USA

Kurt Lewin (1943) once said "there is nothing as practical as a good theory." Yet, eighty years later, cultural psychology has not sufficiently engaged with his call for practical theories. A holistic understanding of the individual, the community, and the intertwined dynamics of signs, symbols, and politics is exactly the unit of analysis that cultural psychology can provide. Cultural psychology provides us with a fundamental insight that needs to be emphasized: psychology is politics. Public policy functions because it engages, in various capacities, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of its persons. It is our acknowledgment of the laws and our willingness to abide by them, but also our willingness to choose to disengage and change ourselves instead of the world around us. It is responding to activists not by embracing their cause, but also by shunning them. In this paper, I argue for the development of a cultural political psychology. Drawing on qualitative interviews and quantitative theory, I argue for a need for political psychology to focus more on the individual, and cultural psychology to focus more on the practical applications. I present data showing how the political constructs of values, power, and politics can be found in the transformative potential of narratives through stories of union organizers. I conclude with applications for cultural psychology to move into the political realm, including the examination of those who opt to be inactive within politics and the backlash for being politically active; both of which are understudied in the literature.

Keywords: theory development, politics, policy, cultural psychology, activism
# Can Pluralism withstand the onslaught of populism and post-truth? Educating for bounded both/and reasoning.

Nurit Novis-Deutsch

University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

This paper proposes a response to the increasing social polarization and intolerance in pluralist liberal democracies, which is intensified by the prevalence of post-truth politics and the rise of populism. The challenge of embracing diverse ideologies and cultural norms has become significantly prominent, and in various explanatory models to social polarization, education emerges as a crucial avenue for potential solutions.

My approach advocates a new direction for education, based on the theory of 'thinking pluralistically' (Novis-Deutsch, 2018). According to this theory, endorsing multiplicity and complexity in the social arena is an individual difference factor that can be promoted, practiced and measured. At its foundation lies a style of interpreting the world through a "both/and" mindset, which is the opposite of "either/or" reasoning.

I argue for the use of 'thinking pluralistically' as the foundation for managing diversity in education. First, I distinguish between 'ideology pluralism' and 'cultural pluralism', each grounded in unique philosophical and psychological foundations. I then present an educational model that translates 'pluralistic reasoning' into a sequence of learnable social, emotional, and intercultural competencies (SEIC). The model initiates with training individuals in narration and self-reflection, moves to understanding 'others' through perspective-taking and trust-building, and concludes with honing 'interaction' skills via practicing 'both/and' reasoning and dialogue.

Finally, I assess the threat of populism and post-truth politics to pluralistic thinking and education. Some preliminary strategies to counter these threats are proposed within the 'both/and' reasoning framework, referencing Isaiah Berlin's concept of rational pluralism, as distinct from relativism.

Keywords: Pluralism, post-truth, education, both/and reasoning, competences
ENGAGING WITH WORK CULTURES 1

Theoretical engagements with the phenomena of Quiet Quitting
and the work-less movement

Peter Busch-Jensen

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

The phenomenon of 'quiet quitting' and the work-less movement in general, have received a fair amount of attention over the last years. Overall, they point a historical shift in our conceptualizations of 'work'—an 'increase in people who subscribe to the attitude that work takes up too much of their lives, either practically, physically, temporally, or mentally. What the protests are about and how extensive they are, however, is quite unclear, since the answers to these questions raise methodological questions as well. Nevertheless, they suggest a change in the way we think about work and our labor society. Precisely in a time where most politicians, in Denmark at least, have their eyes fixed firmly on securing increased labor supply and want us to enter the labor market faster and for longer. Thus, while everyday life conversations ventilate wishes for a less hectic worklife, the political conversation ventilate the opposite. This discrepancy points to an interesting societal complexity, where opposing wishes confront each other and traditional patterns for our conduct of everyday life may have to be rethought. The presentation lays out the statistical reality of these trends as presented by formal labor-marked data, and then proceeds to demonstrate how this 'reality' cannot answer the questions it presents. Secondly, it then proceeds to relate this methodological insufficiency to wider theoretical issues by presenting qualitative data, that help demonstrate the problem, and relate it to an absence in the formal data of attention to the importance of human agency.

Keywords: The work-less movement. Quiet Quitting. Labor Market Policy. Job Satisfaction. Work and subjectivity.
# The career self: between normality and pathology

Sonja Janičić

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Serbia

Neoliberal work culture implies ever-growing devotion to the career, which has specific effects on the psychological functioning of the careerists. The contemporary psychoanalytic doctrine and its concepts could help us interpret this relatively novel everyday functioning of the subject and the resulting psychodynamic. We introduce the notion of career self by analyzing the common phenomena in the work culture. Initially based on Heinz Kohut's and Donald Winnicott's ideas on the self and Lacanian theory on the development of the subject, the career self represents a variation of a well-known psychoanalytic concept, specifically determined and shaped by contemporary societal changes, i.e., neoliberal values and its explicit, as well as implicit standards. We present the development and basic functions of this (dominantly) narcissistic configuration. Additionally, we analyze the relationship between normality and pathology for the working subject. The proposed narcissistic configuration seems pathological when taking up a perspective of late 20th-century psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, Western society not only normalizes the phenomenon of careerism but also highly values behaviors surrounding it. Using the career self as an example, we discuss neoliberalism's potential impact on the dichotomy of pathology and normality.

Keywords: psychoanalysis, neoliberalism, careerism, self, work culture
# Dignity in space: The psycho-spatial dynamics of dignity amongst unemployed people in a post-industrial American city.

Mark Connaughton

Roskilde University, Denmark

Research from unemployment studies has shown the need to look beyond deprivation theories that view unemployment purely as a lack or absence of work and fail to interrogate the experience itself. Within studies that have addressed this shortcoming, there has not yet been an explicit exploration of how the spatial practices and relations of the individual are shaped by unemployment and vice versa.

Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of how unemployed people experience dignity in a post-industrial American city, the paper draws on data collected through shadowing, go-along interviews and participatory photo-elicitation. It maps the experience of dignity in space and argues that psycho-spatial dynamics provide valuable points of analysis to better understand the subjective experiences of unemployed individuals.

Empirically, the paper adds to the broader understanding of the local and individual effects of national and international economic and welfare transformations and contributes to an emerging literature on the spatial politics of dignity. The concepts of dignity, relationality and embodiment are operationalised through uniting Laurent Thévenot's sociology of regimes of engagement with perspectives from environmental psychology and psychogeography to chart the relational interplay between unemployed individuals and their intimate, institutional, and urban spaces. Theoretically, the paper looks beyond Western liberal conceptions of dignity as something guaranteed to all simply by virtue of being human, and rather demonstrates the dignity of those at the margins of the labour market as experienced and constituted through everyday psycho-spatial practices, thereby moving towards a relational and spatial theory of dignity.

Keywords: dignity, unemployment, qualitative psychology, psycho-spatial dynamics, relationality
ENGAGING WITH CORPOREALITY

Why leave the overview effect to astronauts? Let's zoom out to better
understand embodied subjectivities in sociomaterial worlds

Lotte Huniche, Anja Hvidtfeldt Stanek

University of Southern Denmark, Department of Psychology, Odense, Denmark

In this paper we present ongoing deliberations rooted in German/Danish critical psychology on how to conceptualise the human body. In founding texts such as 'Motivationsforschung 1/2' and 'Grundlegung der Psychologie' the phylogenetic development resulting in the human species is conceptualized as a coherent process involving organism, psyche, activity, and environment. A process marked by hominins gaining the ability to walk on two limbs, grip, use, and produce tools, communicate through speech and symbols, and cooperate to sustain life. Also marked by a longer period of ontological development and learning through collaboration gradually taking over from biological determination. Through this continued process humans emerge as societal subjects. However, the conceptualization of human subjectivity in these early works seems to downplay the importance of both organism and environment. Via this critique we discuss the potential of lifting our gaze to grasp the importance of body and wider sociomaterial world in empirical analysis of current challenges to human well-being. We trace tendencies in work on human subjectivity to neglect or overlook concepts that ensure the inclusion of what has been defined as 'distinctly human' in critical psychology. We then ask what can be gained from understanding subjectivity as inextricably tied up with organism and environment. Through an analysis of educational trends for school beginners we stress the importance of returning to the origins and reminding ourselves that humans are creatures with bodies, senses, feelings, and thoughts, who are subject to and participate in the making and remaking of our sociomaterial world.

Keywords: German/Danish critical psychology, Conceptual development, Empirical study, From organism to body, From environment to sociomaterial world
**Physical Appearance as Becoming:**
**New Materialist Implications for Psychology**

María-Alejandra Energici

Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile

Academic discourse has relegated physical appearance to the periphery. Despite its pervasive
influence on individual and societal behaviors, it has been largely overlooked, with many scholars
dismissing it as a frivolous domain of inquiry. This paper proposes that this significant oversight
is due to the longstanding dichotomies that have anchored Western philosophical and scientific
thought. These binary distinctions, such as organic/inorganic, internal/external, and active/
passive, constrain our ontological and epistemological frameworks and prevent certain aspects
from becoming subjects of study, such as physical appearance.

Informed by the burgeoning field of new materialist theories, this presentation seeks to
temporarily suspend traditional dichotomies that have framed our understanding of physical
appearance. Rather than viewing appearance as merely a surface-level characteristic determined
by socio-cultural and biological processes, we propose a reconceptualization of appearance as
situated within the interplay of the more-than-human and non-human. In this perspective, we
understand human appearance as a continual stabilization, shaping and relating to a broader
assemblage of affects and forces beyond the human-centric paradigm.

Decentering the human reshapes psychology's foundational beliefs. Rather than eliminating the
'human,' new materialism situates it within an expansive context, recognizing human and non-
human agency is contingent on specific situations. With this understanding, among the myriad
issues that could be explored, we will shed light on the implications for the concept of subjectivity
in psychology. The reconceptualization of the subject in these terms allows us to view physical
appearance not just as a layer or surface but as part of becoming.

Keywords: Subjectivity, New Materialism, Appearance

<figure><img src="image_64.png" /></figure>
EXQUISITE CORPSES. A post-qualitative inquiry into corporeality and
Covid-19

Tine Jensen, Charlotte Grum

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

In this dialogical presentation, we invite the audience into a collaborative research-creation project which emerged during the Danish Covid-19 lock-down in 2020. With the Covid-19 lockdown as a catastrophic emergence, we perform writing that unfolds monstrous thought. Using the Deleuzian fold as a creative and productive writing-thinking generator we were two researchers engaging in the game "Exquisite Corpse". Lead by Deleuze, "The unfold is thus not the opposite of the fold but follows one fold into the next", we wrote on each other's writing without knowing exactly what was written before. Inspired by Lee's figurative term for a mixture of the chimeric and ecological/cosmological, we perform chimeracological knowledge about the tension between theories of distributed subjectivity and embodied reality in the viral entanglement of Covid-19. We want to challenge ourselves with Braidotti's figure of the problematic gravitational pull towards dualism that we experience when we as theoretical social psychological scholars conceptualize the self as distributed and performative while living the limitations of corporeality.

Drawing on a "wolf pack" of feminist and new materialist thinkers, this presentation explores how our everyday experiences as an artist, researcher and patient can perform polyphony in thought and writing. Through the process of "exquisite corpse" a chimera emerges, a non-uniform textual becoming that embodies the tension between isolation and distribution, criticizing a majorizing and hegemonizing view of subjectivity. We invite you to participate in a thinking apparatus that is conceptually and methodologically disobedient. Our aim is to inspire a fabulating approach to knowledge production.

Keywords: subjectivity, post qualitative, chimeracology, new materialism, Covid-19

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# Deconstruct the mutilated body: practices made by people who suffered ocular trauma in the context of social outbreak in Chile

Camila Urrea¹,², Ximena Zabala¹

¹Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile. ²Programa de Reparación y atención integral en salud del Ministerio de Salud, Santiago, Chile

More than seven thousand people in Chile denounced having suffered police violence during the social protests of the so called "social outbreak" (2019 - 2020). Of those, more than five hundred suffered serious ocular trauma, and must receive attention and treatment. Thus half a hundred admitted a prosthesis after the loss of the eyeball, while adapting to its new visual condition. A new image for mutilated face is undoubtedly a subjective process of complex understanding that has aroused the attention of psychology approaching the change processes that underlie traumatic experience and its recovery. That implies understanding the new practices after the conception of a new metabolic body, comprising Annemarie Mol & John Law (2004), where vision is a function distributed in sociotechnical assemblies in which the individual is inserted, and achieve beyond the taken eye. The metabolic body of mutilated by the State, requires semi-permeable limits to subsist and manage life accordingly, although practices seem contradictory, since the idea of unity persists as a whole, making it difficult to recognize the porosity of the new identity that now contains externalized functionalities, while trying to assemble the parts that seem fractional. Moreover, the objects that supplant the existence of absent, are mediating more than as a simple material object, but also as part of a political agency of what is intended to restore an internal self (on the character of struggle), and what needs to be believed to continue living.

Keywords: Ocular trauma, practices, metabolic body, multiple ontologies, sociotechnical practices of vision
ENGAGING WITH AFFECT 1

Aggression is not a sign of autonomy in adolescence

Alexandra Bochaver¹, Kirill Khlomov²

¹HSE University, Moscow, Russian Federation. ²Russian Academy of National Economy and Civil Service, Moscow, Russian Federation

The theoretical research question of this study was: whether aggressive behavior in adolescence is a tool for solving the age-related problem of developing autonomy? Empirically, the association between aggressiveness and autonomy among adolescents was checked. 499 adolescents aged 13-16 years (Mage is 14.9) were asked to fill out an inquiry consisting of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, the Legitimized Aggression Questionnaire, the Questionnaire of the Violent Extremism Dispositions, the Autonomy Questionnaire, as well as the Scale of the Need for Autonomy from the Questionnaire of Basic Needs of Adolescents. The results obtained demonstrate the inconsistency of the hypothesis of a positive relationship between aggression and autonomy. The constellation of numerous weak, but significant negative correlations indicates that aggressiveness, legitimized aggression (acceptance and normalization of aggression in different environments and in the adolescents' own experience), as well as the high rates of dispositions of violent extremism are either characteristic of those whose autonomy (and the need for it) is low, or are not associated with autonomy at all. The results show that aggressive behavior on average is not a way to increase autonomy, but, on the contrary, is characteristic of those whose autonomy indicators are not high. Despite the fact that adolescents often experience their protest behavior as acts of separation from their parents, aggressive behavior is not a sign of separation and autonomy. Although adolescents are characterized by both the need for autonomy and aggressive behavior, the relationship between aggressiveness and autonomy is not linear and needs further research.

Keywords: autonomy, aggression, adolescence, theory of aggression, personality
School bullying as a communal coping with stress of school community

Alexandra Bochaver

HSE Universirt, Moscow, Russian Federation

Psychological theories suggest different explanatory models of school bullying and prescribe
its likelihood, relying on the spectrum of the factors, from the individual predictors to the
environmental ones which contribute to the increase or decrease of school bullying, but some
questions remain unanswered. A new conceptualization of school bullying is suggested: school
bullying may be considered as a form of stress response, namely, the destructive communal
coping of the school community. This view explains students' and teachers' joining bullying despite
the values conflict, as well as the constancy of bullying. School students join bullying despite
knowing that it is inappropriate behavior, because this is their contribution to the struggle with
stress, uncertainty and emotional tension. This goal becomes more important than their moral
beliefs and attitudes. When teachers avoid discussing bullying, ignore children's victimization, or
highlight favorite students, they also contribute to the collective struggle with stress, by joining
bullying and receiving immediate behavioral support from the children. The occurrence of bullying
is stable because it has a number of social functions not explained only by the bully's individual
level of aggression, and it reflects the more wide contexts. If the community lives with consistent
stress and bullying matches its needs, bullying will return again and again despite any interventions
which are implemented. This new theoretical conceptualization of school bullying seems difficult
for empirical verification, but promising from the point of view of filling the gaps of scientific
knowledge that exist despite a number of theories.

Keywords: school bullying, bullying theories, communal coping, bullying bystanders behavior, community stress
# Learning Empathy - higher psychic function and prevention of antisocial behavior

Zorica Paroški

Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Serbia

In recent years researchers are moving away from the simple dichotomy of affective empathy/ cognitive empathy. Theory of higher psychic functions (HPF), the cultural-historical theory of L.S.Vygotsky, are approaches that can conceptualize empathy as a multilevel cultural phenomenon. Defined as a HPF, empathy is the ability to willingly and intentionally manage one's own emotional, cognitive processes and behaviour, react to the affective states of another, while understanding the position and providing support to others in accordance with their needs. Examples of socio-cultural mediators of empathy are: inclusive education at school, humanitarian actions, volunteer activities of non-governmental associations, humanitarian cultural events. We can discuss about degree of empathy in our society and also about degree of empathy in children. A group of psychologists from the Netherlands conducted an experiment with children with diagnosed psychopathic traits and antisocial behaviour. Results show: the treatment of people with lack of empathy should include: a) the organizing of drawing attention to the sings of distress and b) automation of this deliberate process. Another study shows that facial expression of emotions training leads to significant improvement in teenagers with antisocial behaviour and significant reduction in their participation in violent actions. During this training their attention was drawn to the specific expressions of emotions and were given different tasks for emocional recognition in different conditions of perception. In this way there are two processes: attention-getting and its automation. Thanks to such activities, connections between a stimulus and an empathic response can be created and automated.

Keywords: empathy, higher psychic function (HPF), socio-cultural mediator, prevention of antisocial behavior
ENGAGING WITH SOCIAL CHANGE 2

Constitution of Plurality Through Social Engagement:
Shared Emotions among Social Actors and the Potential of Social Change

Ana Đorđević, Igor Cvejić

University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade, Serbia

Many social sciences, including psychology, have seen an affective turn in recent decades. Current discussions in the philosophy of emotions center on the question of how emotions affect the transformation of individual and collective agencies. This paper aims to elucidate the process by which shared emotions among social actors consolidate into new plural community during societal crises, which destabilize current social norms and create potential for social transformation.

By adding the social engagement studies to a phenomenological approach to collective
emotions, we theorize the mechanisms through which emotions first become shared through
social engagement, a process in which collective attention to the norms of social action
emerges through interaction, resulting in attempts to modify or reinforce them. According to
Thomas Teo's view of subjectivity as a psychological concept, the first-person standpoint (I-
perspective), move-point (changing positions or establishing new ones), do-point (actualization
and appearance), and end-point (the vision of how the community ought to be changed) will be
considered as constituents of emerging plural subjectivity. Shared emotions—encompassing a
variety of distinct, yet integrated, and reciprocal singular perspectives of social actors in shared
circumstances—serve as the foundation for bottom-up community creation.

The trigger of these processes—a rupture in the current state of affairs—creates disturbance and opens space to possible transformation of social norms. We argue that shared emotions could lead to agency transformation, whereby the individual and collective sense that nothing can be done transforms into I/we can do something. By acting together, present social actors could actualize themselves as community, which serves as basis for social change.

Conclusively, we claim that by focusing on the interplay between social engagement and shared
emotions we can better understand the mechanism of social movements development and their
potential to initiate social change.

*The paper was supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation's Small Group Projects Grant.*

Keywords: Plurality, community, shared emotions, social engagement, social change

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# Collective Theorizing for Collective Liberation:
## Building Liberatory Psychological Frameworks Through Participatory Action Research with Incarcerated Justice Advocates

Emese Ilyes¹,², Xinachtli Xinachtli³

¹John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA. ²Bernstein Institute of Human Rights at New York University, New York, USA. ³Independent (incarcerated justice advocate), Beeville, USA

Academia - including the discipline of psychology - has historically upheld systems of oppression by legitimating knowledge and theorizing produced by those with power and privilege. This discussion will examine pathways for transforming academic practices through participatory action research (PAR) done in solidarity between psychology students, academics, and incarcerated justice advocates. Building psychological theory across prison walls makes visible worlds outside of the limiting force of the colonial imagination. Situating mass incarceration as weakly repackaged colonialism, the talk will highlight how psychology has reinforced white supremacy despite apologies. Though presented by a single scholar, the paper will represent the collaboration between a currently incarcerated political prisoner, scholar, and activist who has been co-constructing psychological theories with a critical social psychologist working with groups of undergraduate students. Psychological concepts like critical consciousness and resilience are retheorized to center collective, embodied struggles. The presenters argue that instead of mere apologies, psychology must move toward structural change and distributive justice by fundamentally shifting who holds power in knowledge production, theorizing, and resource allocation. This PAR project also provides a tangible model by bringing together psychology students and incarcerated justice defenders across prison walls to construct theories. This collaboration embodies methodologies of mutual aid, conscientization, and power-sharing to build a psychology of love and solidarity. Ultimately, the talk will call attendees to dismantle oppressive institutions through social change pedagogies that center those excluded from knowledge construction, theorizing, and leadership. This project illuminates pathways for academic solidarity to move toward collective liberation.

Keywords: Participatory Action Research, Decolonizing Psychology, Liberation Psychology, collective liberation
# Beyond Divides: Exploring Pluralism's Potential in conflict zones

Nurit Novis-Deutsch

University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

In times of conflict, Cicero's adage 'During war, the muses are silent' resonates deeply. Are theoretical psychologists condemned to silence amidst the tumult of war? In this paper, I argue that theoretical psychologists can and should engage in scholarly pursuits during times of conflict and voice their findings. I illustrate this with a case study on pluralism, a concept I've researched during such challenging periods.

This paper explores five ways in which 'pluralism,' a term gaining prominence in social, educational, and multicultural psychology, remains relevant in conflict zones. Pluralism, rooted in valuing diversity, involves competencies such as 'both/and' reasoning, perspective-taking, suspending judgment, and clarifying one's identity.

Typically, pluralism thrives in times of peace and dialogue, while in times of war, stark polarization and generalization prevails—'We' embody all that's good, while 'They' represent pure evil. Following Hamas' brutal murder of over 1,000 Israeli citizens, the justified fury extended not only to Hamas, but to all Palestinians in Gaza. How can psychologists promoting communication and pluralism contribute in such turmoil?

This paper presents five strategies: 1. Investigating empathy and cross-border understanding even amidst conflict; 2. Preparing for the post-conflict 'day after' by envisioning a peaceful future; 3. Analyzing objections to relativism to clarify pluralism's limits; 4. Teaching internal pluralism within war-torn nations to foster solidarity while respecting diverse opinions; 5. Stressing the essential link between pluralism and democracy for thriving societies, by exploring societies who lack them. Examples from an ongoing pluralism study during the Hamas-Israel war will be provided.

Keywords: Pluralism, both/and reasoning, conflict zones, competencies, theory in times of crisis.
# Theoretical Reflections on Harm within Intergroup Conflicts: Affective Bonds in Established-Outsider-Figurations

Dilek A. Tepeli

Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Psychological research on intergroup dynamics and (violent) conflicts in postmigrant societies (Foroutan 2019) needs social theories which reflect on the relations of harm, self, and power dynamics between (large) groups. Elias' figurational sociology provides a useful theory that examines both the psychological and structural levels of self and society. This contribution focuses on his Established-Outsider-Figuration (1993) as a fruitful heuristic tool to explain how social order and hierarchies result from social prejudices and stigmatization processes on the microlevel of interaction. It proposes an extension of Elias' theoretical framework, which integrates micro-sociological and cultural psychological concepts to analyze heterogeneous intergroup conflicts in postmigrant societies. This provides a deeper understanding of crucial phenomena, for instance, the role of stigmatization and strong negative affects (Straub 2019) such as fear of contamination with the anomy of outsiders. For the purpose of applicability, these theoretical perspectives are integrated into a framework on discrimination in superdiverse societies (Vertovec 2007), this contribution integrates Elias' theoretical perspectives into a framework of harm within Established-Outsider-Figurations. This extended approach closes gaps in Elias' theoretical reflections, like the lack of relationality of the two opposite positions (Rosenthal 2016) between Established and Outsiders or the missing possibility of stigma management and coping strategies (Goffman 1969). The integrative theoretical framework of affects and harm within intergroup conflicts builds a common theoretical ground in comparative qualitative research on discrimination and enables researchers to analyze multiple intersectional conflict lines in postmigrant societies.

**Keywords:** Figurational Sociology, Intergroup Conflicts, Affects and Emotions, Stigmatization, Postmigrant society
LISTENING AS ENGAGEMENT

Dark Listening: A participatory art-based method using audio diaries

Johanna Motzkau

The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

The participatory method of dark listening (Motzkau, under review) is inspired by 'Audio Obscura', an artwork by Lavinia Greenlaw (2011). She defines dark listening as 'listening to what you cannot hear', a way of attending to "the point at which we start to make sense of things"; with Audio Obscura "an attempt to arrest and investigate that moment, to separate its components and test their effects" (ibid, 2011, p. 7). Similarly, as a method, dark listening is an intervention that temporarily suspends/arrests participants' motions of sense making and thereby alerts them to the cultures of listening they employ/are embedded in, opening them up to scrutiny (Motzkau & Lee 2022).

The method was developed to explore troubled listening spots in child protection practice, where professionals from different agencies collaborate to prevent, detect and prosecute child neglect/sexual exploitation. Participants (social workers) were asked to self-record audio diaries, reporting day-to-day experiences of listening. Excerpts from diaries are turned into anonymized audio-collages (actors re-record the chosen data excerpts) by a sound artist. Participants listen to and discuss these collages at listening workshops, opening up a space for collaborative applied theorising with the aim to transform troubled listening practices.

Presenting data and analysis from a pilot study, the discussion will focus on the emergent nature
of audio diaries, the creative-collaborative processing and analysis of data, consider the politics of
listening (Bassel 2022) and analysis in research and practice, and the implications of re-presenting/
performing data with participants (Sotelo-Castro & Shapiro-Phim, 2018).

Keywords: Listening, participatory methods, art, audio diaries, child protection
# The Aesthetics of Listening to Youth Perspectives in Qualitative Research on School Attendance Problems

Wilma Walther-Hansen

Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

For more than a decade, an increasing number of students worldwide have experienced school attendance problems (SAPs) (Gren-Landell, 2021). Although many researchers have approached the phenomenon from different theoretical perspectives, the core of the problem remains somewhat of an educational mystery. Both facilitators and barriers to school attendance in the Danish school system have existed long before a fast-increasing number of students started developing involuntary prolonged school absences. Nevertheless, it is commonly acknowledged within educational research that listening to children -and youth perspectives is essential to understanding the unique experiences relating to SAPs. In my Ph.D. study, I use poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2020) as a methodological approach to interact with the empirical material. I search for resonance and meaning-condensing lines within the qualitative interviews to engage in a more in-depth analysis of students' experiences with SAPs. Through a case study of a girl, aged 15, with extensive experiences with SAPs, this presentation discusses how listening to student narratives contains an aesthetic element relating to bodily openness to the moment that originates in emotions, senses, and atmospheres. I will discuss how a somaesthetic (Shusterman, 2012) approach to the act of listening can expand the understanding of how to include student perspectives in qualitative research. I argue that interviews analyzed through art-based representations can expand the conceptualization of SAPs and build stronger connections between stakeholders (school professionals, families, and students). Hereby, I aim to investigate the potential for preventing students from being excluded from the classroom community and experiencing SAPs.

Keywords: Somaesthetics, Poetic Inquiry, School attendance Problems, Youth Perspectives, Qualitative, Interviews
# Can we right the wrongs of epistemic injustice without a clear theory? Some insights from process and service user approaches to mental health service use

Paula Reavey¹, Steven Brown²

¹London South Bank University, London, United Kingdom. ²Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

The drive to incorporate lived experience perspectives in research, policy and practice has increased significantly in the past five years. With roots in ethics, politics and philosophy, the project has been to rightly champion the rich knowledge source and capacities of the end user to know 'what works' well, and in helping develop further research and practice that respects user rights and the expertise borne from experience. Furthermore, it is a counter move against the many epistemic injustices historically harming individuals who use mental health services. However, it is not always clear what constitutes lived experience, how to theorise it and how one access it at the methodological level. Using insights from process theory, service user epistemologies and phenomenology, we argue that a working theory of lived experience is crucial to render clear the terms of its use, in research and practice. Drawing on empirical work in the areas of forensic mental health, mental health service use and community engagement, we show how the terms by which we explore lived experience must be carefully considered, with methodologies that can rise to this considerable challenge. If the project is to theoretically frame lived experience as simultaneously material, embodied, affective, discursive, spatial, as we argue, we must endeavour to translate in transparent fashion, how this transpires in the research we conduct, and importantly, how this converts to recommendations that initiate change in the real world.

Keywords: mental health, process theory, service user, epistemic injustice
# When words are not enough: Importance of "behind" the language use when studying conflicts in close relationships

Sanja Grbić¹, Biljana Stanković¹, Selena Vračar²

¹University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Serbia. ²Singidunum University, Faculty of Media and Communications, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Serbia

Resolving conflicts in close relationships is challenging, especially when emotional injury is involved, because this entails balancing partially conflicting stakes: maintaining the relationship while preserving a favorable self- and other-view. Language-focused approaches highlight important aspects of this process. Discursive psychology reveals how actors utilize rhetorical devices to impose their own version and co-construct interactional identities. Narrative psychology focuses on the personal story stabilized through multiple retellings and permanent self- and other-constructions. However, our study of conflict negotiation and identity co-construction in adolescence highlights that, in addition to the analysis of discursive aspects, it is relevant to conceptualize and analyse phenomenological and affective processes that strikingly shape the participants' language use and story creation. These include authentic emotions (e.g. feeling hurt) and disclosing one's own vulnerability (e.g. insecurities, partial responsibility for relationship disturbance). The relevance of phenomenological processes is particularly evident when participants use less constructive strategies for friendship rupture repair, which entail verbal masking of unresolved tension by minimizing negative feelings, declaring that the problem has "magically" disappeared and insisting on an unchanged level of closeness. The unresolved conflict is linguistically, paralinguistically and performatively marked by: (a) the internal contradictions in the personal story, (b) salient disjunctions of the versions offered by different actors, (c) pronounced differences between the private and the shared narrative, preventing the other from understanding one's authentic experiences, and (d) perpetuated regressions to the core plot, i.e. issue that caused the conflict. These contradictions, omissions and repetitions convincingly (though indirectly) point to the affective processes that are either reflexively or pre-reflexively present in both individual stories and close personal interactions, thus emphasizing the importance of theoretical integration of phenomenological and discursive processes when studying conflict negotiation in close relationships.

Keywords: discursive psychology, narrative psychology, friendship in adolescence, conflict negotiation, integration of experiential and discursive processes
ENGAGING WITH EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS 2

# The Emotional Toll: Exploring the Impact of Emotional Demands on Children in Institutional Settings

Katrine Weiland Willaa

University College, Absalon, Roskilde, Denmark

Children in institutional settings are increasingly susceptible to emotional stress, contributing to the rising prevalence of stress-related psychological diagnoses among children and adolescents in contemporary society. This paper explores the impact of emotional demands on children's emotional well-being and development within institutional contexts. Drawing from a longitudinal field study spanning two years, involving children aged 5 to 7, the empirical findings reveal multifaceted ways in which emotional demands affect these young individuals.

Utilizing Arlie Hochschild's theory of emotion work as a foundational framework, this paper argues that emotional demands exert significant influence on children's development. Specifically, the paper demonstrates how institutional expectations, such as demonstrating enthusiasm for school, can place considerable pressure on children to conform to prescribed emotional norms.

By shedding light on the emotional challenges faced by children in institutional settings, this research offers valuable insights into the complex interplay between emotional demands and children's well-being. It underscores the need for a more nuanced understanding of emotional development in such contexts and suggests potential avenues for mitigating the adverse effects of emotional demands on children's mental health and overall growth.

Keywords: Emotion work, Emotional demands, children's wellbeing

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(Very) Young children pursuing learning problems in everyday life across
nursery and family

Simone Stegeager

Roskilde University, Ph.D.-Program: Psychology of Everyday Life, Institute for People and Technology, Trekroner, Denmark

This oral presentation is based on an ongoing Ph.D.-study on young children's learning, explored from the standpoint of the children. I will present preliminary analysis on young children's learning processes, theorized from their subjective perspectives and standpoint, since I, in line with scholars of the field, will argue, that learning must be theorized from the standpoints of the learners.
By presenting preliminary analysis and empirical data, the presentation aims at discussing and developing the concept of learning problem, in relation to very young children. The empirical examples underline young children's agency, sense-making, persistency, and creativity within learning activities - both in adult-arranged learning activities and especially in their own, child-initiated and/or non-supervised activities. The analysis draws on conceptualizations from psychology from the standpoint of the subject, underlining dialectic relations between subject and world. The young children's participation in and transformation of learning activities and ways of pursuing learning problems, are conceptualized as part of young children's development of conduct of everyday life and subjectivity.

The design draws on ethnographic methodologies, and the empirical data consist of participant observations, following 6 young children (age 10 month-3 years) throughout 1 year of their everyday life in nursery- and family practices. It also consists of informal, everyday conversations with the adults around the children. Both adults and children are seen as co-researchers, and the theoretical reflections and developments are done in close collaboration and exploration with them.

Keywords: Young children; Learning processes; Learning Problems; Subjective engagements;
Conduct of Everyday Life
# The Necessity of School Exclusion is Connected to Chaos; a Theorization of Representational Knowledge in School

Sigga Waleng

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

School exclusion, that is classroom expulsion, permanent expulsion and temporary suspension, is a highly tabooed intervention which is criticized for not being a solution to 'misbehavior'. In the academic field, school exclusion is mainly researched with an individualized focus on the 'misbehaving' student. When school leaders justify why they exclude a child, their justifications often convey that the exclusion was 'necessary' due to the 'misbehavior' and thus preserve an individualized logic; I argue that this 'necessity' is connected to the development of chaos in everyday school life.

Through 1,5 years of fieldwork in a Danish 2nd-3rd grade, I have identified three problems related to chaos in school: 1. lack of communal collaboration, 2. exclusion and marginalization and 3. hindering ideals guiding the teaching. In three experiments, I engaged the students as co-researchers in discussing these matters.

However, during the experiments, the planned activities were challenged by a high level of chaos in the children's way of participating. In my analysis, I theorize what happens to learn more about similar challenges teachers face: chaos. In this endeavour, building on Minick, Sørensen and Holzkamp, I found that the children are so used to focusing on representational knowledge in everyday school life that they listen to my instructions in a literal way and dispose of the meaning of the experiments. I will discuss how chaos and thus school exclusion is connected to historical changes and political pressure on schools to focus on specific types of knowledge rather than others.

Keywords: School exclusion, Chaos, Representational knowledge, Literal meaning, Fieldwork
# The Dialogical Self in Participatory Action Research: the case of the 'Young Translators Club'

Sarah Crafter¹, Nelli Stavropoulou¹, Guida de Abreu²

¹The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. ²Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom

Participatory Action Research (PAR) seeks to empower those with lived experience to work as co-creators of new knowledge in ways that benefit their lives. For some, PAR goes beyond a methodology but is a theory of knowledge that takes a dialogical, self-reflective approach to working in participatory ways (Gutiérrez, 2016) that ‘radically challenges who is an expert’ and ‘what counts as knowledge’ (Fine and Torre, 2019 p.435). PAR has gained significant traction across a range of disciplines but is relatively underused in psychology. Dialogical theorising, under the auspices of sociocultural psychology, has a lot to offer as framework for examining the negotiation of self-other relationships in the emergence of actions and meanings during PAR-based research. We draw on data from an EU-funded PAR project (NEW ABC) in a secondary school in England, where the research team worked co-collaboratively with child language brokers (aged 11-13 years old) and teachers. Between October 2021-November 2022 the team ran an arts-based after-school club called known as the ‘Young Translators Club’ which explored the social and emotional aspects language brokering as a caring practice. Drawing on fieldnotes, interviews and arts-based outputs with students, we examine how meanings and actions of the past, such as cases of bullying, were reconstructed in actions of the present. Present I-positions were overloaded with multiple voices which were constantly renegotiated throughout the year, through a variety of PAR-based activities.

Keywords: child language brokering, participatory action research, dialogical self, migrant children, care
ENGAGING WITH AFFECT 2

Understanding trust through the lens of situated psychology

Noomi Matthiesen

Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg, Denmark

In this presentation, I develop a situated psychological understanding of trust and distrust. Trust is a complex phenomenon, often understood within psychology in rather mechanical and individualistic terms. In these theories trust is considered a phenomenon that originates within the individual, either as a rational calculation, an emotional response, or an active leap. Instead, I take my point of departure from the Danish philosopher Løgstrup's understanding of trust as a spontaneous and sovereign expression of life. Trust is in this perspective a radically relational phenomenon rooted in a normatively structured practice. Trust manifests itself immediately in interaction with the other and requires no justification. Distrust, on the other hand, requires reasons for not trusting. According to Løgstrup, there is a close relationship between trust and ethics, as every interaction holds a risk (for instance, of being rejected, let down, humiliated), and therefore requires trusting that the other person will respond benevolently. We are delivered up to the other, who must respond to this vulnerability. For Løgstrup, this is the very foundation of ethics. I develop Løgstrup's approach further by exploring the significance for trust of the human body's situatedness in a material and social practice, and what this means for the potential emergence of distrust. I will further argue for the importance of the local moral order as well as micro and macro narratives about who counts as trustworthy and why.

Keywords: Non-anthropocentrism, non-dualism, dialectical materialism, climate change, sustainability education

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# Understanding brutal honesty in everyday life:
A theoretical conceptualisation

Anna Louise Malfilâtre

University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

While there is almost a universal agreement about the value of honesty, the concept of brutal honesty and its moral value remains debatable amongst people. This research introduces a new theoretical conceptualisation to better understand brutal honesty, its' different meanings, and manifestations. It synthesizes empirical data from 1,105 participants across 11 English-speaking countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania, collected via a pre-registered open-ended qualitative survey. Utilizing a constructivist grounded theory approach for inductive analysis, this study presents a theoretical conceptualisation delineating three primary conceptions of brutal honesty: pro-social brutal honesty, principled brutal honesty, and functional brutal honesty. Additionally, this inquiry reveals the moral complexity of practicing brutal honesty, one which often entails balancing the virtue of honesty against the value of kindness. The theoretical conceptualisation illustrates not only the multifaceted nature of brutal honesty but also provides insight into the cultural and social dynamics at play within these interpersonal exchanges.
Consequently, the study contributes to the broader sociocultural understanding of honesty, while shedding light on complex interplay in everyday interactions.

Keywords: brutal honesty; morality; sociocultural psychology; qualitative methods
# Engaging with Theory to Study the Construction of Evil and Subjectivities Amidst Sustainability Crises

Emma Kurenlahti

The University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

This dissertation examines how evil is constructed amidst sustainability crises that are stated to originate from human-centered morality. In specific, this study explores the construction of evil and related subjectivities in different moral communities such as farm animal sanctuaries and various educational communities. The research questions are: i) How is evil constructed in moral communities?, ii) How are subjectivities constructed in relation to evil? The construction of evil is theoretically approached from a Durkheimian inspired perspective (cf. Alexander, 2003; Jacobsson & Lindblom, 2017). From this perspective, evil can be analyzed directly and also as being discursively constructed as a negation to positive formulations of the ideal in secular moral communities (Alexander, 2003). This perspective offers a nuanced approach to study evil as an explicit and implicit part of communities. According to the findings in the farm animal sanctuaries, evil was constructed implicitly as being fundamentally present in human-animal relations. In educational communities (kindergarten, schools) evil was implicitly constructed as mainly human- and especially child-related phenomenon. However, the teachers of pre-primary education also directly constructed a child as being evil in relation to more-than human entities. In this way, the supposed "western" ideal of the innocence of a child was questioned.

The findings illuminate the importance of understanding the construction of evil and related subjectivities while pursuing "the good" during sustainability crises. Without a profound understanding of evil, also sometimes representing an implicitly constructed phenomenon, the clarity of human responsibility and what is considered good and right can't be obtained.

Keywords: moral community, evil, sustainability, animal, more-than-human
ENGAGING WITH CARE

Enveloping individual collectives of care

Morten Nissen

Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

As we have known since Marx and Durkheim, modernity is a process of disrupting communities and the care they performed - along with their oppressions. But it is also an ongoing process of re-/building community and care under new conditions, with new technologies, etc. (cf. Stiegler, Acemoglu and others). Communal care is realized, then, as a continuous, precarious, dynamic effort - and often the only way is a struggle that can lead astray and itself become disruptive. The 'Care Crisis' is the awareness that the balance is broken and that care must be rebuilt in new forms, which must be conceptualized - carefully.

Theoretically, the climate crisis compels us to move beyond the (modernist) obsession with abstract negations: the mere search for 'something else'. We must take the risk of conceptualizing how sustainable local cultures and collectives can be built. With Latour & Schultz, we should move from 'de-velopment' - as emancipation, as the autonomy of the pre-given subject - toward 'en-velopment' - embracing our individuation as a rise in complexity and dependencies. This problem is relevant at all levels of socio-cultural existence and life, and so, it points to the already classic problem of the ontology of mind, of subjectivity, and of care, beyond person/environment or dyad - toward, rather, a 'social self-sculpturing' of collectives of care.

Drawing on such ideas, this presentation aims to suggest concepts with which to address care work as the building of sustainable collectives, and the role of psychological and aesthetic representations in this work.

Keywords: collective care, individuation, sustainability, ontology

<figure><img src="image_69.png" /></figure>
# Theorising ‘care’ through the lens of Dialogical I-positions:
the case of unaccompanied migrant young people and adult actors

Sarah Crafter¹, Evangelia Prokopiou², Nelli Stavropoulou¹

¹The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. ²University of Northampton, Northampton, United Kingdom

Theorisation of ‘care’ recognises that it is a socio-political concept involving thought, action, emotional entanglement, and ethical and moral decision-making (Tronto, 1993, Milligan & Wiles, 2010). Care relationships and practices are not static, but subject to change across space and time, as well as classed and racialised imaginaries (Bowlby, 2012; Scuzzarello, 2015). When unaccompanied young people migrate to England, they encounter a wide range of professional adults who are tasked with their ‘care’ but who face a substantial challenge to their capacity to care in an increasingly hostile immigration environment, and vulnerable children are being failed by a system that has an obligation to ‘care’ (Gupta, 2019). This presentation draws on Dialogical Self Theory (DST) to examine the contradictions and syntheses in the I-positions between young people’s and adult accounts of what counts as care. DST offers a useful framework to explore how different and even opposed I-positions are negotiated ‘on the move’ and to understand moments of (im)mobility because of changes in time and situation. Findings are drawn from 63 semi-structured interviews with adults from several sectors (social workers, foster carers, NGOs, healthcare, education) and participatory approaches with 75 interviews with 38 unaccompanied young, including care object interviews and day-in-the-life interviews. By undertaking a dialogical analysis between the young people’s data and the adult data, our findings will show complex shifts and contradictions in the views and understandings of care. Roles and responsibilities influence these shifts depending on whether they are representatives of the State or independent actors.

Keywords: Dialogical Self Theory, Care, Unaccompanied Minors, I-positions
# Concepts of intimate relationships in children's drawings about love.
A serial-picture analysis

Andrea Kleeberg-Niepage, Johanna Degen

European University Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany

The theorising of "love" is subject to various social and natural science disciplines, but what love really is – a biological process, a psychological dynamic, or a social discourse – still remains open. Obviously, debates of love are deeply embedded in historical, socio-cultural and political specific belief-systems and thus conceptions of love vary across time and space. In recent decades, discussions about love in many parts of the world became more inclusive and diverse, thereby questioning normative assumptions about who may or may not love whom. At the same time, social and technological acceleration processes would not stop at intimate relationships or dating rituals. While some view these changes as emancipating love, others already proclaim its end. Given the fluidity of the concept on the one hand and the persistent normative assumptions on the other, children's and young people's ideas about love become interesting, linked to the question of how the future generation negotiates love, intimacy and relationships in the future. The reconstructive serial picture analysis of children's and young people's drawings on the theme "How do you imagine love in your future?" presented here, aims to reveal the embedded concepts (e.g., of sex, intimate relationships, or gender) as well as the young drawers' self-positioning in relation to them. Since such an analysis can reveal the implicit knowledge of the drawings on the subject of "love", we expect to gain insight into the perceived social conditions and possibly into the future of love and its theorization.

Keywords: theory of love, intimate relationships, future of love, serial picture analysis of children's drawings, children's ideas of love
# ENGAGING WITH NEW TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF

## The Quantified Affect: Microdispositifs of Mood Tracking

Moritz Meister¹,², Thomas Slunecko²

¹Department of Psychotherapy, Bertha von Suttner Private University, St. Pölten, Austria. ²Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

With an ever-accelerating speed, we are currently witnessing the intrusion of personalized tracking techno-logies into our daily lives and workplaces. Regarding what it is to be tracked, the trend has gone from the physiological and behavioral (steps, calories, heart rate) to the subjective and 'psychological' (stress, resili-ence, mindfulness). This presentation explores the phenomenon of mood tracking: periodically self-protocolling one's affective state via certain apps that give users quantitative and visual feedback (emojis, points, graphs) but also behavioral recommendations according to their 'emotional data'. Mood tracking is a prominent feature in mental health and wellbeing apps which are currently proliferating in a variety of areas, from clinical therapy to the workplace.

As techno-material means (microdispositifs), mood tracking apps pertain to core psychosocial mechanisms of self- and other-relations including affective, bodily, and social knowledge. They interpellate their users specifically, convey self-images, and enable or restrict certain modes of interactions. We overall refer to those procedures as subjectivation processes which need to be examined empirically: how is the implicit understanding, reflection, and communication of one's affects mediated by specifically designed mood tracking applications?

Our empirical approach comprises:

- Participatory ethnographic walkthroughs of the apps' user interfaces, including their discursive and visual content.

- Qualitative interviews and group discussions with users that assess concrete modes of reception and appropriation of these technologies.

In parallel with our empirical findings, we aim to enhance our theoretical understanding of mood tracking as a dynamic interplay between lived personal experience, social power relations and techo-material structures.

Keywords: Mood Tracking, Apps, Walkthrough Method, Subjectivation, Dispositif Analysis
# How does social media influence how we feel about our own bodies?
## Towards a theoretically-informed understanding of the effect of social media on body image

Ruth Knight, Georgie Burton

Department of Psychology, York St John University, York, United Kingdom

Recent reviews of the growing research into the impact of social media on body satisfaction have highlighted the potentially negative effects of viewing appearance-focussed content (Vandenbosch, Fardouly & Tiggemann., 2022). Previous research has shown that viewing these kinds of images increases body dissatisfaction and is related to disordered eating (Bennett et al., 2020; Aparicio-Martinez et al., 2019). Less research has considered whether these negative effects extend to body representation, and whether they are specific to images viewed in the context of the social media platforms themselves (Saiphoo et al., 2019). This study examines the impact of viewing various social media style images on body satisfaction and representation, in both a lab and an ecologically valid setting. Results indicate that viewing images in the lab may not have the same effects as viewing them in the context in which they are usually seen. Viewing images on social media platforms, however, does influence both body satisfaction and body representation, regardless of the type of image seen. These effects are larger for those who have higher rates of disordered eating thoughts and behaviours, which is itself related to the amount of time spent on social media in an average week. The mixed results found in the literature may relate to the ecological validity of methods that are used, as well as the underlying vulnerability to disordered eating in participants. Both objectification theory and the tripartite influence model highlight the relevance of these results to our understanding of how social media influences body image.

Keywords: selfies, social media, body satisfaction, objectification theory, disordered eating
# Left to their own devices: The significance of mental health apps on the construction of therapy and care

Jesse Ruse

University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Mental health (MH) apps accessible through smartphones offer convenient, low/no-cost automated psychological support. This qualitative study showed, however, that this comes at a cost. These apps sacrifice interpersonal dialogue - a traditionally helpful aspect of therapy - for convenience. They constructed psychological suffering in a detached and abstract manner, ignoring the user's real-life circumstances and particulars. Constrained by the limitations of the technology, the app is forced to use a-contextual psychological theory to make sense of human suffering. As such, the apps did not understand the complex, context-dependent nature of users' problems. Instead, they amplified the message that suffering could be understood through broad MH categories, while idealising a mechanistic and individualistic idea of psychological wellbeing. Meanwhile, they concealed the importance of connection, healing spaces, and interpersonal sharing as meaningful parts of care.

This study highlights a growing trend in a digitally transforming world: In the attempt to create more efficient and technically sound support, there is a regression to simplified theory that the technology is able to handle. This creates a kind of 'frozen fluidity', a one-sided affair wherein the user is forced to live-up to the ideals of the apps' image without having input into what this image might look like. The users of e-Mental Health apps in this study attempted to persuade themselves to like this care and live up to this ideal. Though, often they are left disappointed and ashamed in the face of their perceived failure to do so.

Keywords: iCBT; Digital mental health interventions; Mental Health app; Postphenomenology; Gunther Anders
# ENGAGING WITH ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

## Emotions of Climate Activism

Alfred Sköld

Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

In 2023, there are abundant of reasons in favour of changing the ways in which we orchestrate life on Planet Earth in a more sustainable direction. However, substantial societal changes are still on the sketch board. What role - if any - does emotions have in this transformation and the ways in which we respond (and not respond) to the current ecological crisis? This paper seeks to formulate a tentative response to this question, drawing on a social ontological understanding of emotions and a qualitative study among young climate activists in The Green Youth Movement in Denmark. Climate activist environments can be aptly perceived as a relational and emotional microcosmos, through which the feelings many of us harbor today, can be magnified, and better understood. In dialogue with ethnographic and interview-based empirical material, I will argue that grief, hope, and care need to be understood as intermingled and mutually determined. Genuine hope, which needs to be carefully distinguished from naïve optimism, presupposes the confrontation with limitations, characterising grief. Since it is difficult to imagine how and why hope would flourish without significant others, care quickly becomes an integral part of the imagining of a future not exempt from the possibility of goodness - a future worthy of hope. In conclusion, I will argue that harnessing the triangle of grief, hope and care is pivotal for stimulating relevant action, thus avoiding hopelessness and the emotional pitfalls of depression, melancholia, and despair, all too present in today's cultural landscape.

Keywords: Social Ontology, Climate Activism, Hope, Grief, Care

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Young climate activists as world-historical actors of change

Paula Ahola¹, Antti Rajala², Anna Stetsenko³

¹University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. ²University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland. ³City University of New York, New York City, USA

This study focuses on the young generation of climate activists as a unique historical actor – as they encounter the extraordinary challenge of the end of the world. We pose the following research questions for our study: How is this generation uniquely agentive in terms of facing the climate crisis? What can we learn from them as researchers and educators? The paper contributes to an emerging line of research on young people’s agency in contributing to social change locally and globally (authors; Gutierrez et al., 2019; Sannino et al. 2016). We theorize agency in the nexus of people changing the world and them being changed in the process of changing the world – as two poles of a dynamic, recursive process of a simultaneous self-and-world-co/realization (Stetsenko, 2023). Learning is seen as contingent on contributions to collaborative transformative practices, implicating a “sought-after future” and a commitment to realizing it. The empirical data draws from focus-group interviews of Finnish young climate activists (15-19 yrs.) and were analyzed with thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Our findings illustrate the following themes that reflect various phases and aspects of the process of the young generation becoming a historical actor in tackling the climate crisis: 1) Awakening to the task of climate crisis, 2) Moral reflections, 3) Taking on the task, 4) Intergenerational aspects, 5) Taking on the risks Through in-depth analysis of their voices, we can learn how young climate activists define themselves as historical actors and, thereby, re-define the urgent task of the climate crisis.

Keywords: Agency, climate change, activism, young people, historical actors
# How digital capitalism reorients environmental engagement.
The case example of a CO2-tracking app.

Christoph Gaßner, Thomas Slunecko

Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Most pressing issues of our time are consequences of the way our global economy is organized. As such they call for forms of collective engagement that transcend the level of individual efforts. However, many political imperatives addressing these problems are directed at the individual: Reduce your carbon footprint! Practice social distancing! Such imperatives sabotage collective efforts by undercutting the search for a suitable response with a direct call for action. Slavoy Žižek or Shoshana Zuboff have pointed at capitalism's self-enhancing tendencies to appropriate resistive impulses as market opportunities. Current digital capitalism's assimilation strategies often connect to individualistic imperatives. Smartphone applications promise to enable individuals to cut down on carbon emissions by tracking their carbon footprint. We employ the walkthrough method to analyse one carbon tracking app as a micro-dispositif. By systematically stepping through the interface, such walkthrough creates a data basis of screenshots and field notes that allows for a reconstruction of the apps structure and functions, the intended use, and ideal user. Our analysis exposes the app as a sociocultural artefact that aligns the self-governance of individuals with the requirements of neoliberal governance. While providing us with practical means for individual little action for the better, it pushes aside the felt need for system-challenging collective engagement and theorising. By this offering of a quiet conscience, our empathy with 'Gaia', our capacity to mourn its destruction and to feel guilty and ashamed for being part of it, is hijacked, reoriented towards the status quo, and further capitalized on.

Keywords: Environmental engagement, digital capitalism, carbon tracking apps, dispositif analysis, walkthrough method
Simondonian reflections on contemporary ecological crises and their
moral psychological implications

Markus Wrbouschek, Katharina Hametner

Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

Today's environmental crises challenge the ways in which many of us engage with the world. In moral psychological considerations of the foundations for sustainable (behavioural) change in relation to our global environment, a crucial distinction is often made between ethics of justice and ethics of care (Held). While ethics of justice focus on normative ideals of equality and formal relations between actors, ethics of care start by acknowledging the interdependence of actors in relations of caring and being cared for. From an ethics-of-care-standpoint, measures against climate change that rely primarily on ethics of justice show a tendency to result in rigid demarcations between an abstract-normative rigor and self-bolstering ignorance as a response to what is perceived as moral paternalism. In contrast, proponents of ethics of justice argue that care ethics remain fundamentally limited to small-scale systems of caring. We employ Simondon's ideas on the psychic and collective individuation as a starting point for re-considering the question, how affective relations of care may be inserted in networks of eco-affective salience beyond the immediate life-world. Following Bösel we argue that such a notion of insertion needs to fully acknowledge the techno-mediation of contemporary while still developing a perspective that captures the implicit networks of value that define human-environment systems.

Keywords: Environmental crises, moral psychology, care ethics, Simondon, individuation
EMERGING THEORIES

Reading Context with AI: The Case of Chekhov's Marya Vassilyevna

Yair Neuman

Ben Gurion University of the Negve, Beer Sheva, Israel

To understand human psychology, we must understand the context as argued by various thinkers, from Voloshinov (1929) to Bateson (1972/2000), Becker (2000), and Mischel (2004). However, despite the contextual turn (Burke, 2002), the exact meaning of context is unclear, and researchers may find this term defined either too narrowly or too broadly. Surprisingly, it is AI with its new Large Language Models (e.g., GPT) that may revolutionize our understanding of context. Large Language Models are themselves contextual machines (Neuman et al., 2022). Therefore, they may both inspire our understanding of context and may be used for a better understanding of contextual dimensions of human psychology. In this presentation, I would like to present this idea and illustrate it by analyzing Chekhov's short story and the psychology of its heroine.

Keywords: context, AI and Psychology, Interdisciplinary research

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# The Role of Simulation in Construction of Theory:
The Infant-Mother Object-Related Interaction Example

Arkadiusz Białek

Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

Numerous researchers assert that psychology is currently grappling with a theory crisis (Eronen & Bringmann, 2021; Oberauer & Lewandowsky, 2019). This crisis is primarily attributed to imprecise and solely verbal expressions of theory, which are so vague that recognizing their falsity is impossible (Scheel, 2022). Addressing this situation hinges on the creation of formal theories and the skillful construction of theories (van Rooij & Baggio, 2020). Borsboom et al. (2021) proposed a series of practical steps for theory building, known as Theory Construction Methodology (TCM). Within this framework, initial proto-theories, formulated through abduction, are formalized using differential equations and Agent-based Modeling (ABM). Similarly, Smaldino et al. (2015) emphasize the importance of ABM in theory building.

In my presentation, I will illustrate the application of agent-based simulations as a means to formalize proto-theory. In semi-naturalistic studies of infant-mother interaction development, we have observed instances of early shared object use. The initial explanations for this phenomenon were expressed in the terms of agents' properties, namely 'infant' and 'caregiver', and the rules governing their interactions. Thus theoretical, "toy model" was constructed. ABM was used to assess the adequacy the initial explanations and identify the optimal configuration of parameters which led to the highest reward. Additionally, we employed the genetic and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms to determine the optimal behavior of agents.

During my talk, I will endeavor to demonstrate the potential, challenges, and constraints of employing simulations in the construction of theories.

**Keywords:** theory construction, infant-mother interaction, simulation, Agent-based Modeling, genetic algorithms
# Sibling Function in the Context of Jacques Lacan's Identity Development Theory: Three Levels of Interpretation

Teodora Vuletić

Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

This theoretical analysis builds on Lacan's early work from 1938, which touched upon three large groups of complexes - weaning, intrusion, and Oedipus. The intrusion complex is particularly significant for this study since Lacan linked it to sibling relationships. However, he completely abandoned this concept, focusing almost exclusively on Oedipus. Some authors who followed his line of thought pointed out the neglected role of siblings in identity topology. Lacan developed his theory around mother and father functions, represented by various signifiers (e.g., mother-nature, father-law). The mother function is especially relevant throughout the mirror stage, assuming the absence of differentiation and narcissistic fusion with the nurturing object. The symbolic father function separates this imaginary relationship and introduces the subject to society. During this developmental process, the subject alienates from what was considered immanent through identifications with these figures, concurrently creating the identity. In my previous work, I argued how sibling intrusion changes the dynamics of the aforementioned relationships, awakening anxiety, jealousy, and aggressiveness. Moreover, siblings represent specific objects for (de)identification and often steer identity development in mutually opposite directions. Besides pointing out the specificities of the sibling intrusion function in the present study, I aim to distinguish three interdependent levels of interpretation that could help better understand identity development and reevaluate the theory behind certain psychoanalytic concepts. By providing examples from practice and cultural-historic context, I intend to explore manifestations/representations of the sibling function from the intrapersonal (self-image), interpersonal (social roles), and cultural (national identity) perspectives, simultaneously considering theoretical implications.

Keywords: siblings, intrusion complex, identity development, family, society
Explaining the species which knows math and physics

Martin Morf, Dan Xiao

University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

Our paper looks at the species H. sapiens from a perspective which emphasizes its advances in mathematics and physics because they are relatively recent and indubitably spectacular. We look at these advances in the context of the divide between the things considered subjective and objective in the ontic sense of things boldly said to be, as opposed to things in the epistemic sense merely said to be known. This subjective/objective divide has broadly manifested itself in the debate between the merits of the humanities and the natural sciences reflected in the "two cultures" of Leavis (1962) and Snow (1959). More immediately, it cuts across the discipline of psychology which one side claims to be about "psyche," or at least "mind," and the other about "brain" or "behavior." We take for granted that the literacy of the humanities is more widespread than the numeracy of the natural sciences and, therefore, focus on the latter by looking at what H. sapiens, the species said to know, actually knows about the physical world independent of human minds. We use two numerical-i.e., concrete and specific-examples to illustrate the progress our species has made from responding to specific and immediate challenges to its recent and broad apprehensions of the universe. The first shows the progress from rock-throwing early ancestors to modern quadratic equation solvers computing ballistic trajectories; the second illustrates one crucial example step in the progress made from Pythagoras and Euclid to general relativity.

Keywords: evolution, mathematics, physics, humanities, natural sciences

<figure><img src="image_72.png" /></figure>
# THEORISING SUBJECTIVITY

## Theorizing power and its connection to human agency

Peter Busch-Jensen

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

This talk is about the conceptualization of power and its relationship to human agency, and psychology. On a foundational level, power, as a concept, pertains to agency, in the sense that power relates to a capacity for action that is also constitutive of agency. To explore the nature of power is therefore, to some extent, to explore the preconditions of human agency and psychology. Power pertains to a 'power to'; a power-to be a causal agent in the world', in which power-over relations are merely a subset. However, since human 'powers-to' pertain to both individual and social 'capacities', discussions of power invite a discussion of social norms as both restricting and empowering. Furthermore, since power always manifests as a creation of a relationship (the power-to influence 'something/someone') power can take different relational forms (e.g. cause-and-effect vs. reciprocal; goal-oriented vs. open-ended), with highly different political and agentic qualities. Today, the limits of a empiricist understanding of power are well described. Not least, thanks to the work of Michel Foucault. However, drawing on Foucault's' work but also on a critical psychological conceptualization of human subjectivity, I wish to revisit these limitations in ways that challenge if it makes sense to tie the ties between power and agency in the way presented by Foucault, since if we define power prober and not only its effects or modus operandum, the phenomenon of power turns out to require a concept of active human agency. I hope to present and discuss this argument.

Keywords: Power. Critical Psychology. Agency. Subjectivity. Michel Foucault

<figure><img src="image_73.png" /></figure>
# The Ghost as Method

Sabah Siddiqui

Krea University, Sricity, India

My paper directs the focus of theoretical psychology towards the intricate relationship between faith healing and the psy-complex in contemporary India. Faith healing encompasses local, cultural, and religious practices traditionally used to address issues perceived by mental health professionals as psychological or psychiatric manifestations. A notable disparity exists between the language employed by faith healers and mental health experts, revealing differing perceptions of the subject within the realms of faith healing and the psy-disciplines. A qualitative study of a faith healing shrine serves as the basis for exploring the modern interplay among religion, science, and governance. This exploration spans from local Indian contexts to global discussions on contemporary subjectivity. Initially centered on the subject, this inquiry extends to the process of subjectivation, eventually delving into the overlooked presence of the ghost in faith healing narratives, thus requiring a methodological turn towards the ghost. This approach, akin to radical epistemological paradigms like 'Asia as method' (Chen, 2010) and 'child as method' (Burman, 2018) offers a framework to contemplate the obscured and perplexing aspects of the subject that evade incorporation into conventional knowledge structures. Rather than attempting to fill the gaps in rational discourse, the ghost as method acknowledges the generative potential of uncertainty within the corpus of scientific knowledge. This method serves as an internal critique of narrative approaches, challenging the established understanding of subjectivity. In this paper, I discuss the methodological turn to ghost as well as its implications for theoretical psychology.

Keywords: *Internal critique*, *Method*, *Subjectivity*, *Psy-complex*, *Ghost*, *Scientific knowledge*
# How resistance to social change undermines personal change?
## Perspective of the Model of the Agonistic Self (MAS)

Dragan Vesić¹, Sanja Grbić²

¹University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology (PhD Student), Belgrade, Serbia. ²University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Serbia

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the MAS in analyzing relatedness between social and personal change. MAS is developed by integrating key ideas from Dialogical Self Theory with contributions of Foucault's analytics of power, and conceptualizes the self as a polyphony of voices struggling to obtain power. The model entails: a) functions of voices, b) forms and practices of exercising power, c) relationships between voices, and d) formative and legitimizing effect of the context. Context-embedded self appears in the form of a constellation of voices whose time-limited dynamic follows the specific and repetitive scenario which has a particular psychosocial purpose. The focus of this paper is "King and his Kingdom" constellation – "default" functioning when a person's prevailing values, personified by the King's coalition, direct the behavior. The disturbance in the order of power between social discourses can lead to legitimization of the interior voice which represents values different from the King's. This voice can shortly "take over the scene", which marks a temporary personal change, with the possibility of becoming a new King. However, reasserting the previous order of power between social discourses results in strong delegitimization of change within the self, and in restoring the prevailment of "the old" King, even when the person identifies more with the values proposed by the prospective "new" King. This points to the strong dependence of permanent personal change upon the change within the social context, which will be illustrated by the case study from the psychotherapeutic practice.

Keywords: Dialogical self, Agonistic self, Power relations, Personal change, Social change
THEORISING THE PSYCHE

Consciousness, subjectivity and phenomenal states:
metaphorical mazes

Henderikus Stam

University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

Although subjectivity became a popular term for certain kinds of experienced states beginning in
the 1980's, it has had a long but largely minor history in describing such phenomenal states of mind.
Consciousness as the preferred term for an inner realm has a much longer and broader remit. Their
overlapping senses is rarely an issue because in recent decades subjectivity has come to include
a notion of the social worlds in which subjectivity is embedded, including the problems of identity
and cultural configurations that mold or are molded by subjectivity. These explicit engagements
have given subjectivity a range of applications not previoulsy seen in phenomenological accounts
and in accounts of consciousness. In this paper I try to articulate the pleasures and snares of this
metaphorical jungle, attempting to wrest from the various attempts at phenomenal states a picture
of what is at stake. However, I expect to solve no problems nor to make a final judgement on what
these terms can do for us. After all, as Wittgenstein would remind us, meaning is in use.

Keywords: Subjectivity, consciousness, phenomenal states, social worlds

<figure><img src="image_74.png" /></figure>
# Shared Human Epistemic Phenomenology as the Basis for Psychological Inquiry

Gary Brill

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA

Public inquiry is a cooperative human activity, possible only when the involved participants share relevant assumptions, perceptions, and goals.

When the inquiry is intended to apply to all humans, to which general psychological theories aspire, it must rely on assumptions, perceptions, and goals that are held regardless of culture or philosophy. I will argue that general psychological theories are possible because of a universal human epistemology that emerges from shared genetics and life circumstances. That is, there are assumptions about both the physical world and sentient beings that must necessarily be accepted for humans to survive and function. Requiring that theories must not violate these assumptions avoids the "anything goes" chaos threatened by extreme relativism. Furthermore, these assumptions can support either mechanistic or agentic psychological theories, without demanding the unification of "psychology's two worlds."

Viewing inquiry as a human activity also illuminates the applicability conditions of psychological theories. Much of psychological life is constituted by assumptions that are cultural, historical, or otherwise limited to a community. Methods and theories that rely on non-universal assumptions are not general but may nonetheless be acceptable or useful within a community. Likewise, given the complexity and constant changes in human life, a theory may be useful only in certain circumstances or only for a particular time period.

I will enumerate a set of proposed universal assumptions and describe an organizing framework to manage theoretical pluralism that offers five categories of assumptions to be explicated when formulating or evaluating works in psychology.

Keywords: Psychological Theory, Pluralism, Metapsychology
# Principles of cognitive system presumed within the psychology of rationality

Kaja Damnjanović

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

Numerous psychological models of the rationality of thinking have been developed since the middle of the last century within the line of research known as the heuristics and biases approach, descriptive theory of rationality or decision making, complex cognition, or the psychology of rational thinking. The focal processes or phenomena are reasoning, decision-making, judging, and inferencing. Families of models revolve around the formal (cumulative) prospect theory, the cognitivistic fuzzy trace theory, ecological rationality, and dual process theories. These groups of models differ and often are conflicted, yet they share certain implicit features. Regarding complex cognitive processing, there is a limited set of principles that researchers in the psychology of rationality implicitly, and often uncritically, attribute to the human cognitive system. They might be thought of as "boundary conditions" for the validity of psychological rationality theories. This means that all cognitive-psychological models of rationality belong to a set that is constrained by the postulated qualities of the cognitive system's architecture. Those principles have not yet been explicitly stated in the literature, and I will explain them in my talk. They are as follows: cognitive miserliness, cognitive processing dependence on the environment, structures of knowledge, probabilism, and the challenge of individual variances.

Keywords: reasoning, rationality, principles of cognitive system
# The neuron in context, or why we need a new neuron theory in psychology

Vanessa Lux

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Neuroscience has largely abandoned its localizationist and mechanistic framework of the 20th century. The plastic, embodied, and network character of our nervous system is widely acknowledged and systems theory approaches to consciousness dominate the field. However, the underlying neuron theory has not changed. The neuron doctrine, conceptualizing the single neuron as atomistic, one-directional source of neural function, still provides the template for our understanding of these basic elements of our nervous system and the material foundation of consciousness. Yet, the single neuron does not exist as an isolated unit. It is embedded within multiple cellular, structural, and functional contexts, and highly depends on them for its development, neural activity, and survival. The paper discusses the constraints of the neuron doctrine and its pragmatic reductionism in the light of the growing knowledge about the brain's connectivity, plasticity, and systemic and embodied nature. To overcome these constraints, the author argues for a new neuron theory, depicting the neuron as bidirectional hub which is at the same time source and product of neural function. This bidirectionality is further characterized by spatial and time dimensions, placing the neuron within a multi-level pathway model of psychobiological development from the perspective of Developmental Embodiment Research. Accounting for this multilayered contextuality of the neuron and its function affords to repositions the relationship between neuroscience and psychology in the effort to unravel the material basis of consciousness. This provides new challenges but also new perspectives for theoretical psychology.

Keywords: neuron theory, psychobiological development, material basis of consciousness, Developmental Embodiment Research, bidirectional hub
ENGAGING WITH WORK CULTURES 2

Tracking the object: a case of a small-scale Developmental Work
Research-based intervention

Miriam McSweeney¹, Kyoko Murakami²

¹Atlantic Technological University, Galway, Ireland. ²University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

We present an activity theory analysis of the data collected from lecturers working an Irish university department during the formative Developmental Work Research Intervention. We begin by describing the problem, followed by a brief overview of Developmental Work Research intervention (Engeström, 2007) as the tool for changing the lecturers' pedagogic practice (McSweeney, 2015; McSweeney & Murakami, 2024). For the Activity-Theory-led analysis, we focused on the movement of objects in the activity system, whilst tracking the object in the course of the six intervention sessions. Our analysis illuminates the need to forge a link between situations, emotions and motives, revealing how lecturers make sense of the introduction of a new technological tool into their professional context. With the cultural historical conception of motive, we come to understand emotion and cognition in a non-dualistic frame. We conclude that our analysis on tracking the object according to Activity Theory reveals the importance of emotions in the lecturers' work practice. As Roth (2009) suggests, without articulating and theorizing needs, emotions and feelings, we are hard pressed to arrive at more than a reductionist image of activity.

Keywords: Developmental Work Research Intervention, Activity Theory, emotions, objects, activity system
# Navigating contextual issues of workplace bullying research: Will the 'real' workplace bullying please stand up?

Milica Vukelić, Ivana B. Petrović, Svetlana Čizmić

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

In work and organizational psychology (WOP), context is mainly taken for granted, without being explored and thoroughly taken into account. In this discussion paper, we reflect on the contextual issues encountered by the workplace bullying (WPB) research. We propose Bronfenbrener's Ecological systems theory as a prolific grounds for contextualizing different work behaviors. Within five nested Bronfenbrenner's systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem) that cover attributes of both a person and the environment, as well as major social and historical transitions, many concerns related to WPB were spotted. Presented analysis supports the urge to properly contextualize WPB. Concluding the discussion, we propose some initial steps' for an integrated, richly conceptualized research approach to WPB, such as: developing a set of contextual circumstances (categories) that should be described in presenting each WPB case following Bronfenbrenner's theory; the framework that should be designed as a semi-opened system that could be revised based on published cases and new circumstances introduced when some case points to them; and returning to exploring individual cases in their comprehensive context. In conclusion, we propose a wider introduction of Ecological systems theory as a conceptual framework in analysing WOP phenomena.

Keywords: contextual issues, cultural issues, workplace bullying, Ecological systems theory
# Finnish business graduates' constructions of health as employability potential

Katri Komulainen

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

In working life employability has become a normative ideal that sets new kinds of demands for graduates: The HE degree is not enough but graduates' personal virtues are understood as crucial for their labour market attractiveness. Drawing from the neoliberal governance and critical health research point of view the paper investigates how Finnish business graduates construct health as employability potential in their career imagination through which they envisage and evaluate their route in the labour market.

Thematic analysis of the interviews (26) focused on the perspectives of graduates as self-governing subjects, and the identified themes were considered as effected by a range of discourses operating in working life and HE. The analysis showed that graduates imagined health as employability potential, firstly, in the context of stressful working life with its intensive day-to-day temporal rhythms. Having constant physical and emotional energy and the ability to recognise health risks and self-manage these risks were essential virtues of a productive employee. Secondly, graduates imagined health in the context of flexible, entrepreneurial career in which health was a driving force that guaranteed their top career performance.

Results indicates that health has become new area of private life through which graduates aim to enhance their value as workers. The requirement to cultivate oneself as a healthy worker illustrates, that neoliberal governance of employability takes increasingly an embodied, physical forms. The research contributes to previous research by challenging the dominant idea of employability as a value-neutral and self-evidently desirable response to labour maker requirements.

Keywords: neoliberal governance, employability, health, HE graduates, career imagination
Practice theories of psychologists in rehabilitation

Eileen Wengemuth

Brandenburg Medical University, Rüdersdorf bei Berlin, Germany

While psychology as an academic discipline is - for instance by critical psychologies - often criticized for individualizing people's problems and not taking into account social, cultural and economic conditions, psychologists do practice in settings which are not isolated from such conditions, but are part of them. Looking at practice theories of psychological practitioners can help to understand whether or not they experience this as a contradiction (in the shape of a gap between theory and practice) and how they deal with these contradictions.

I would like to discuss some first ideas for a research project on the practice of psychologists working in rehabilitation centers in Germany - a field which has as its central aim to enable social participation for people with chronic health conditions. How do psychologists working in this field theorize their own practice? What are their (implicit) understandings of their assignment, of social participation, e. g. the relationship between health and work? How do they develop their practice theories and their knowledge? How do they experience and conceptualize the relationship between academic knowledge and work experience?

Keywords: Practice theories, practice research, psychological practitioners, theory-practice-gap?, rehabilitation
DECOLONISING PSYCHOLOGY

When we do (not) see: Difference-evasion as a coping mechanism for privilege maintenance in dominant group members

Enzo Cáceres Quezada

Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Recognizing inequalities does not necessarily lead to countering them. In settings where group-based differences are evaded when navigating intergroup relations, inequality can be acknowledged, but emphasising sameness and individuals over groups as a means of inclusion. Remaining oblivious of group-based differences, however, can equalise dominant and minoritised groups while allowing privilege to remain unexamined and reproduced. In exploring the hypothesis of difference-evasion as a coping mechanism leading to privilege maintenance, the present paper proposes a critical overview of current social psychological research on how dominant group members grapple with inequalities. In doing so, the paper distinguishes identity strategies dominant group members take when confronting inequalities they reap benefits from, zooming in on dissociation and power-cognizance. The paper argues that when dominant group members dissociate from their societal position by stressing their individuality or belonging to the human race, they enable themselves to evade difference and meritocratically reappraise group-based inequalities as individually-based trajectories. Alternatively, dominant group members can entertain difference by situating themselves regarding their social identity as well. In discerning these two identity strategies drawn on contemporary social psychological research, the paper further links it to philosophical work on the concept of difference pioneered by Henri Bergson to illustrate how differences in degree or quantitative ones (i.e., inequality) dynamically interact with differences in kind or qualitative ones (i.e., Whiteness/cis-heterosexism/classism) in shaping the social structure and its becoming. The paper concludes by reflecting on how dominant identity strategies reflect and can also refract paradigmatic discourses of Western (post)modernity.

Keywords: *Dominant social identities, difference-evasion, inequality, privilege.*
# The Current State of Globalization in Indigenous Psychologies: An Examination

Vaclav Linkov

Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

At the cusp of the 20th century, a new proposition for the globalization of indigenous psychologies was put forth by Kuo-Shu Yang. His innovative perspective advocated for a collaborative research approach where investigators engaged in local indigenous psychologies could partner with their counterparts studying similar phenomena in different cultures. The primary goal of this cooperation would be to discern possible parallels and disparities, subsequently leading to the formation of regional indigenous psychologies. This developmental process would ultimately pave the way for global indigenous psychology that has its roots in local frameworks.

The concept of multiple indigenous psychologies, which underpins the formation of a cohesive regional version, primarily took shape in East Asia. Here, the Korean, Filipino, Chinese, and to a certain extent, Japanese psychological paradigms can potentially serve as the foundational building blocks for East Asian indigenous psychology. Nonetheless, comparative studies that involve indigenous scholars from various East Asian countries are conspicuously absent.

Several phenomena that could potentially be compared have been evaluated independently in each of these countries. Examples of such paired phenomena include 'noonchi' and 'pakikiramdam', 'utang-na-loób' and 'renqing', or the comparative analysis of 'face' across more than one nation.

Leveraging these existing studies for cross-cultural comparisons could provide the foundation for East Asian indigenous psychology. This could potentially represent the initial step towards a more culturally representative global psychology.

Keywords: indigenous psychology; global psychology; East Asia
‘This is not a moment’: theorising hope in antiracist protest

Magi Young

Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

My PhD on 'Hope in antiracist protest' aims to produce knowledge furthering antiracist practice. It addresses the Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol on 7th June 2020 when the statue of a slave trader, Edward Colston, was toppled and thrown in the River Avon. I use mixed methods (within a transdisciplinary sociocultural psychological framework) to explore experiences of Black and white co-researcher participants as told during walking interviews with protestors and as expressed through works of art produced following the protest. I am also analysing the transcript of the trial of the four people charged with criminal damage to the statue. Input from historians, antiracist and community activists, educators, lawyers and artists is helping with psychological theorising and contextualisation (Trawalter 2022). I adopt an 'event centred' approach building on collective action scholarship and Power et al's (2023) concepts of 'world making' and 'cascading consequences'. The event throws up complex, and interrelated tensions which are melancholic and hopeful, unifying and polarising. The context and consequences are local and global; affective and material; historic and contemporary; personal and socio-political. The proposed paper will discuss how these contradictions play out in the theme of 'moment or movement?' which is central to my theorising of both hope and allyship within antiracist protest. It will also reflect on theorization of concepts of 'whiteness' (DiAngelo 2011, 2021), 'decoloniality' (Readsura Collective 2022), 'epistemic modesty' and a 'beginner's mindset' (Teo 2023) and how this helps with reflexively understanding my position as a white psychologist studying antiracism.

Keywords: *Black Lives Matter*; *allyship*; *colonial history*; *hope*; *whiteness*
ENGAGING WITH LIMINALITIES

Making the known unknown: The emergence of de-anchoring and de-objectification in understanding liminal hotspots

Edoardo Zulato

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom

Some have recently been calling for redirecting the discipline towards a process ontology (Stenner, 2017; Power et al., 2023). Indeed, social psychology has been mostly concerned with the study of things, neglecting the creative processes that led up to the emergence of novelties.

This critique cuts across different approaches. On the one hand, mainstream approaches have focused on attitudes and opinions towards objects and events. On the other, constructionist perspectives have focused on how novelty is familiarised within existing frameworks or violated orders restored. Thus, making emergence disappear (Andreouli et al., 2019). For instance, most psychological theories account for how we eliminate dissonance, reduce uncertainty, and make decisions. However, our subjective experience is often dilemmatic and paradoxical, especially when moving through liminal spaces during change (Greco & Stenner, 2017).

By addressing the process through which liminal hotspots – stuck transitions – are made sense of and dealt with, this presentation will argue that dialogical and critical approaches within social representations (SRT) (Batel & Castro, 2018; Power et al., 2023) can account for the emergence of novel social phenomena. This will be done by focusing on two different case studies: the vegetative state and non-binary gender identities.

By looking at these liminal hotspots, new dialogical processes emerge in the (de)construction of social representations, showing how the known is made unknown: de-anchoring and de-objectification. Moreover, by mobilising critical approaches within SRT, this presentation will discuss how these emergent processes allow groups – in dialogue with others – to deconstruct social order and make social change emerge.

Keywords: Liminal hotspots, Social representations, Process ontology, Vegetative state, Non-binary identities
# How do social hybrid roles emerge within feedback processes: An affective self impulsating model of social interaction

Max Vogel

Sigmund Freud University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Although Hegel already described the necessity of reciprocal acknowledgement for the psychological ontogenesis of the subject, the construct itself in all its different facets appears to be essential for the substantial existence of the human psyche, as Honneth proclaims. This assumption opens the debate as to whether the omnipresent interdependence with the other constantly shapes the social experience and behavior of a person, especially when encountering unknown individuals. To elaborate this hypothetical spectrum empirically, Asch experiments were conducted in which participants were asked to create poems as a projection surface for their respective social roles in such a context regarding the relevant part of their self-concept, followed by different kinds of evaluative feedback based on normative group effects. Their individual experiences were captured through problem-centered interviews and qualitative follow-up questionnaires focusing on affective dynamics related to intersocial behavior. To essentialize the relevant results in a form applicable to psychological practice, a theoretical model was developed that illustrates the holistic processing involved in this type of encounter, incorporating Mead's and Hermans' dialogical conceptions as the basis for negotiating I-positions as part of social roles. Unconscious dynamics and transference/countertransference that were observed in the experiments were also integrated into the model based on Freudian topologies. While the superego was complemented by the neuroscientific perspective of semiosis to elaborate the cognitive process of thinking, the defense mechanisms of the id were expanded into an affective organ for navigating inward feelings and outward emotions. Finally, the intersocial trajectory was compartmentalized into self-regulatory strategies.

Keywords: Social Roles/I-Positions, Interpersonal Feedback, Affective Processing, Dialogical Self, Psychodynamics
Self-transformations through Yoga Psychology
and its related practitioners

Randal Tonks

Camosun College, Victoria, Canada

Contemporary life is full of challenges at the environmental, societal, and personal level for people globally; including threats to personhood (Tonks, 2021). To counteract such losses and subsequent anxiety, depression, and other forms of mental illness, one can turn to theory and the application of theoretical perspectives on human suffering. Yoga Psychology is an ancient theoretical system of inquiry that transcends time and culture. Paranjpe (2024) provides a rich account of this theoretical system as an engaged and practical set of teachings that fosters personal transformation and self-realization. It is further shown that this Indigenous psychology from India has been compared to modern Western psychologies of self-affirmation and denials of self (Paranjpe, 1998). This paper provides a critical review and integration of Yoga psychology along with modern expressions of self-transformational practices such as those by Krishnamurti (1999, 2009, 2018) and De Mello (1991, 1990). Beginning with Paranjpe's account of the Sāmkhya Yogic system of Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras, a discussion of the framework of Yoga Psychology is made against the backdrop of the earlier tradition of Vedanta. This is followed by a description of the eight-fold path to enlightenment (Samādhi) as a path to self-realization including: restraints on behavior, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal of attention, restriction of attention, sustaining attention, and higher states of consciousness. With this in place, a further examination of contemporary teachings of self-transformation is made by integrating psychological processes of the self such as: awareness, imagination, conditioning, attachment, and memory, with Yogic practices.

Keywords: Self, Yoga, Enlightenment, Self-realization, Transformations
# Conceptualising Psychological Flow ‘states’ as a Dynamic Theory

Weronika Robakowska, Brett Heasman

York St John University, York, United Kingdom

Psychological flow (absorption in an activity leading to an altered sense of time and space), has been widely observed but has been often conceptualised as a 'static' state which is associated with 'optimal' experience. However recent theories have suggested that psychological flow is a more dynamic phenomenon and may not always be associated with positive experiences. The challenges of exploring this idea is that flow is a subjective experience and the methods used are open to subjective bias (e.g., questionnaires, experience sampling In the present study we take a dialogical approach, which highlights the role of context and interaction in meaning-making and the potential for there to be multiple and dynamic interpretations of the world. We therefore triangulate self-report methods with behavioural eye-tracking data to examine specifically the transitions into and out of flow. Borrowing from conversation analysis theory, which recognises that there are key moments of transition in our interactional behaviour, this study examines how participants engage with an experimental reaction light task across three conditions (1) a practice, (2) a main task, and (3) a debrief. In truth, the study is examining how participants get into the zone and disengage, or fail to disengage, from flow like behaviours across the three conditions. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to dialogical theory, the conceptualisation of flow theory, and the methodology of investigating intra-psychological processes.

Keywords: Psychological Flow, Dynamic, Intrapsychological, dialogy, subjective.
HISTORISING THEORY

Ontology and Radical Behaviorism

Allen Branum

South Dakota State University, Brookings, USA

Interest in the "hard problem" of consciousness has brought further examination of ontology.
Kastrup and others contend that monistic idealism erases the hard problem by noting that mind is
the ontological ground we all work from. Matter is always an inference. Although behaviorists have
traditionally been viewed as dealing only with objective measurement of matter (the movements of
animate bodies), the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner is actually compatible with the views Kastrup
and others are promoting. In several publications, Skinner referred to the "private world within the
skin" of a person or other organism as stimuli to which it has unique access and he contended there
are methods for studying that private environment and its effects on behavior. Skinner embraced
a monistic materialism in order for psychology to be accepted as a "physical science" but he was
not particularly concerned about the "stuff" of which the world was made. Whether the ontological
base is labeled physical or mental does not change the value or importance of his work. The current
movement toward a monistic ontology of idealism leaves radical behaviorism as a strong framework
for moving forward in further developing the science of psychology.

Keywords: Ontology, Radical Behaviorism, Idealism, Consciousness
# Engaging with the Possibility of Our Annihilation – Günther Anders as William Stern's Most Serious Reader

Bernd Boesel

University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Following the publication of Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen [“The Obsolescence of Human Beings”] in 1956, German-Austrian philosopher Günther Anders became probably the most renowned secular apocalypticist. His fight against what he perceived as a “blindness toward the apocalypse” informed most of his writings until his death in 1992. Even though the central objects of his reflections on the real possibility of annihilation were the nuclear bombs which soon filled the arsenals of the great powers, Anders was convinced that his analyses remained valid in the era of massive ecological destruction.

While an Anders renaissance is now well underway, what is rarely reflected upon is that his father was William Stern, one the most renowned psychologists in early 20th century. Stern was a central figure in the development of differential psychology, forensic psychology, and personalistic psychology. He invented the “intelligence quotient” and coined the terms “psychotechnics” and “psychognostics”. Together with his wife Clara Stern, he pioneered the discipline of child psychology. And on top of that, he also authored a philosophical trilogy, titled Person und Sache [“Person and Object”]. Günther Anders readily admitted to the heavy influence his father had on his writings but remained vague about the details. The paper will try to elucidate that Anders engaged with his father’s philosophical psychology much more closely than previously thought. He did so by remaining true to its humanistic values while looking into that realm of human reality that his father had ignored for too long: violence, destruction, ignorance and cruelty.

Keywords: Trauma, personalism, philosophy of technology, annihilation, history of psychology
# The history of Clinical Psychology in Greece: a brief review.
## Legal deficiencies, practical dimension and challenges for the future

Katerina Flora

University of Western Macedonia, Florina, Greece

The history of Clinical Psychology in Greece spans over 150 years. However, it has not yet acquired the institutional recognition and recognition to which it is entitled. Beginning with the first references in the context of medical studies during the 19th century, Clinical Psychology gradually develops through its application in pedagogical, laboratory and clinical contexts, to take a more formal form alongside the consolidation of General Psychology. Special mention is made of the scientists who pioneered this direction. The present review highlights historical milestones and concludes with the current situation, where important steps have been taken, but significant changes are needed at the institutional level.

Keywords: Clinical Psychology, history, applied psychology, Greece.
ENGAGING WITH THE OTHERS 1

Engaging with the field and theorizing ageing

Fabienne Gfeller¹, Aurora Ruggeri¹, Isabelle Schoepfer²

¹University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland. ²University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

The study of ageing is receiving growing attention as demographic ageing challenges societal
organization in many countries. Taking critical distance from ageist and other reductive
representations of older people, many researchers try to elaborate more nuanced theorization of
ageing as a situated and multidimensional process. Drawing on socio-cultural approaches, we aim
at developing an understanding of older people's living conditions that takes seriously in account
their unique perspective and life trajectory in a specific and multidimensional environment,
including notably objects, places, landscapes, institutions and representations. This theoretical
attempt is of course tidily linked to methodological choices and more broadly with the manner we
engaged with the field and with the participants. Some of them (longitudinal study with repeated
interviews, walking interviews,...) were made during the elaboration of the project, prior to contact
with participants, and ensued explicitly from theoretical constructs. Other choices (degree of
familiarity, personal information about the researcher...) were made during the fieldwork, often
in more intuitive ways. In this paper, we will explore the articulation between methodological and
theoretical dimensions of our work with older people in the frame of two projects conducted at
a regional scale in Switzerland. In particular, we will examine a range of empirical situations and
discuss our engagement with the field and the participants in light of theoretical choices and
implications regarding the conceptualisation of ageing.

Keywords: Ageing, older people, fieldwork, methodology, longitudinal study
# Challenges of inclusive evaluation – involving persons with learning difficulties in practice research

Arnd Hofmeister

nexus Institut, Berlin, Germany

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities asks for their social inclusion. This claim challenges approaches of practice research when persons with learning difficulties are involved. Practice research aims at "qualifying" participants to co-researchers. This goes beyond surveys or interviews and includes shaping of research questions. Given the complexity of their often institutionalized lives regulated by economic, organisational, or judicial determinants it is difficult to find ways how to develop research designs which facilitate their active participation. In this paper I will reconstruct the development of research designs and instruments while conducting an inclusive evaluation of health promotion action in workshops for persons with (learning) difficulties. We used survey-feedback methods, interviews, focus-groups and workshops to assess needs, plan, implement, and evaluate health promotion activities. I will discuss the potentials and limitations of these methods and reflect our reasoning during the 2 years of the project. There was a constant struggle between the logic of practice and the logic of research. However, in our experience practice research is successful while working with persons with learning difficulties, when research and practice teams are inclusive, when research starts in everyday discussions and reaches stepwise levels of abstraction. The irony of this project, doing practice research with persons with learning difficulties is not really different from any other practice research. The challenges are mostly caused in the logic of research which imposes itself on the logic of practice. Basically, the researchers themselves are the ones who have learning difficulties.

Keywords: practice research, social inclusion, evaluation
**Trans* respectful research –
a dialogue between cis and trans* perspectives**

René_Rain Hornstein¹², Meike Watzlawik¹

¹Sigmund Freud Private University, Berlin, Germany. ²Technical University, Braunschweig, Germany

Gender diversity has become a hot topic in Germany. As a result, funding opportunities have emerged in the scientific landscape for which interdisciplinary research teams are applying. Some teams are familiar with the topic, others are new to the field. Inspired by these developments, this paper will discuss what trans*-respectful research can look like, focusing on three different phases of the research process: design, implementation and publication. In the first stage, research design, we will discuss the benefits (making marginalised voices heard, centering the needs of the trans* community) and potential pitfalls (unintentionally reinforcing existing stereotypes) that cis and trans* researchers face when conceptualising trans* respectful research.

In the second phase, implementation, researchers are confronted with ethical issues such as the composition of the research team or the extent to which research participants (may) influence the research process. In the third phase, publication, researchers need to consider different spheres of discourse, decide where to publish and anticipate a trans* discriminatory reception of their findings. All these phases will be presented from two different perspectives, depending on whether the principal investigator is trans* or cis. These two perspectives will be in dialogue with each other throughout the presentation. The dialogue will lead to joint proposals for trans* solidarity in research, which will then be opened up for discussion by the audience.

Keywords: trans*, transgender, respectful research, research ethics, cis
What kind of science can and shall we do with transgender people?

James Alzetta

Université de Neuchâtel (student), Neuchâtel, Switzerland

In recent years, a lot of attention has been brought to the "issue" of transgender people and their rights. It has a long and devasting psychiatric and psychological history, starting from the conception of a rare mental disorder or perversion and slowly coming out of it. Now the debate is shifting to the front of the scene, from households to schools and public administrations. What does this imply for our position in research? How do we contribute to both science and communities in a respectful, honest, and positive manner? How can we explore what is not known yet without taking part in the marginalization of an already vulnerable population? I'll argue that we need strong ethical positionings, new epistemologies and a will to endorse an engaged theorizing that will inevitably have sociopolitical implications. The richness of works in fields such as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, or philosophy also encourage us to open our minds beyond traditional psychology and embrace interdisciplinarity. Drawing on my master's thesis work and my engagement with the LGBTIQ+ community in Switzerland, I'll propose some elements of reflection about how to do research with a marginalized population, in a globally "hot" and sensitive political climate.

Keywords: Ethics of care, transgender people, epistemology, marginalized populations, inclusive theorizing
ENGAGING WITH AFFECT 3

Neonihilism: Meaninglessness and Irony in Neoliberalism

Patric Plesa

York University, Toronto, Canada

In this paper I propose a novel theoretical phenomenon, neonihilism, which follows a historical and
theoretical trajectory from 19th-century nihilism and is distinguishable from another contemporary
phenomenon, described as fashionable nihilism. Neonihilism is contextualized to a North American
neoliberal capitalist social matrix, with meaning and mental health crises as defining features.
I argue that neonihilism produces a sense of hopelessness in tackling the mental health and
meaning crises when our neoliberal social matrix internalizes systemic inequities as personal
moral responsibilities. Furthermore, neoliberalism has the potential to commodify the darkness of
nihilism and transform it into fashionable nihilism, which further obfuscates the possibilities for
resistance. I suggest a set of strategies for overcoming neonihilism by shifting from a science of
nihilation to an art of nihilation as an art of nihilism.

Keywords: neonihilism, nihilism, fashionable nihilism, ars nihil, meaninglessness
# Indifference and its alternatives at the edges of counselling

Teemu Suorsa

University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

Counselling is work among works, a thread in the tapestry of complex societal activities. In everyday work, we are not always satisfied with how situations in counselling conversations, in our own organization or in the nodes between organizations proceed. Sometimes we can grasp these situations: we know what we want and how to act in order to increase our control over the conditions. Sometimes not. We do not always know how to influence the whole; nor do we always know what we wanted in case the possibility of influencing would manifest itself. Quite often, it does not. Sometimes 'hope' can justify giving up the possibility of influencing. Indifference stemming from the helplessness experienced in the face of conditions can be hidden beneath unfounded hope. Hope and indifference manifest themselves in many ways in counsellors' everyday lives.
I approach the question of hope and indifference at the edges of counselling from the perspective of cultural-historical educational psychology. The central question of cultural-historical psychology is: how people participate in maintaining and changing conditions of their living and working?
Educational psychology asks how this participation changes. I describe ways to identify dimensions of indifference (in participation) in the everyday life of organizations, and further, ask our possibilities and alternatives in the midst of nihilistic indifference in and beyond fossil capitalism.

Keywords: Indifference, counselling
# Engaging Ressentiment – Resentiment-ful postures between passive repudiation and active moral concern

Katharina Hametner, Anna Schor-Tschudnowskaja, Markus Wrbouschek

Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

The moral-philosophical concept of ressentiment (Nietzsche, Scheler) and its connection with right-wing populist strategies of scapegoating and their far-reaching and destructive political consequences is gaining increasing interest recently. Scholars address a specific anti-posture, which is characterized by massive affective repudiations directed at (sometimes rapidly) shifting targets. Ressentiment – in contrast to more active forms of repudiating – shows an apparent passivity and a withdrawal from active engagement with the fictitious ‘cause’ of concern. The ressentiment-ful posturing originates in experiences of powerlessness connected to active moral concerns with inarticulate injustice effecting fundamental transformations of the affective relation with the world around (sense of glorified victimhood, transvaluation). We argue that these processes are repetitive yet ultimately failing attempts to articulate feelings of being wronged. Therefore, the tension between active moral concern, feelings of powerlessness and inefficacious anger has to be studied in more detail. In this presentation, we want to pursue the question of how moral concerns at the core of ressentiment-processes can be theoretically addressed, how they are connected to repudiating stances and how they can be understood as attempts to engage (although in a problematic way) felt injustice. We show that in order to effectively counteract ressentiment, one needs to engage with the non-articulable moral concern instead of merely relying on strategies of unmasking the falseness of the shifting devaluations or picking apart the populist discourses of entitlement and self-victimization. In this way the concept addresses the psychological processes as well as the socio-political constellations from which ressentiment emerges.

Keywords: ressentiment, moral psychology, concern, psychosocial theory, populism
CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH DOMINANT NARRATIVES 2

Shifting the Center and Theorizing Motherhood as Resistance

Akanksha Adya

University of West Georgia, Carrollton, USA. Krea University, Sricity, India

This paper approaches motherhood as a sensemaking process to theorize the psychological experience of motherhood and mothering in India. A lack of situated narratives on the infant feeding experience of Indian women points to an epistemic bias within the knowledge production of global psychology that tends to overlook Indian women as legitimate subjects of knowledge. To address this issue, I argue for engaging with the unique, multifaceted, deeply contested, and lived sociocultural meanings associated with motherhood in India. In this regard, my paper aims to conceptualize the complex ways in which global breastfeeding knowledge, local feeding practices, and family norms and social policy constitute maternal subjectivity in contemporary India. Drawing upon my doctoral research, which centered on first-time mothers' meaning construction of expert advice on infant feeding, I conducted a Constructivist Grounded Theory Analysis. Through this analysis, I developed a new concept of Informed Motherhood (IM) to articulate how some urban, educated and affluent, first time mothers consult, contest, and resist contradictory sources of expert knowledge to manage their infant feeding difficulties in New Delhi, India. I discuss how these mothers voice psychological tensions, exercise agency, and take on greater personal accountability for managing feeding struggles. By doing so, I construct a theorization of the way these mothers approach IM as a form of resistance to normative expectations of motherhood. Through this, my paper counters the stereotypical portrayal of Indian mothers as "oppressed" and "ignorant" third-world women in the field.

Keywords: Breastfeeding, Motherhood, Constructivist Grounded Theory, Cultural psychology, Subjectivity
# Moral dilemma as theoretical tool in examining fathers' experiences at the childbirth

Tuuli Paajanen

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

Birth of a child is argued to be one of the biggest transitions in human life, but reproduction and childbirth are also politically debated topics worldwide. Recent literature describes early fatherhood as complex, socially constructed performance, which is set in cultural narratives and norms of behavior. However, this viewpoint of the other parent needs more research. Earlier Finnish research of the fathers' experiences doesn't capture the recent phenomena of the transition in the birth culture. Internationally previous research mainly represents quantitative research or descriptive qualitative research.

In my doctoral research I interviewed 13 fathers and 8 non-birthing mothers about their experience at childbirth using narrative interviewing technique. In my first article I analyzed the interviews of the fathers using Bamberg's small story approach and positioning analysis. In narrative positioning analysis stories are considered as social action told in their cultural context. My research question was to examine, how fathers' tell about the childbirth, and what are the cultural master narratives they position themselves to?

I found that these complex situations for fathers at childbirth can be viewed as morally demanding situations, and examined them with the concept of moral dilemma. Fathers have strong moral interest in pregnancy (as a parent), but also strong moral limitations (mother's bodily integrity, mother and child's strong physical connection, healthcare as authority) to their willingness to participate.
In this presentation I will examine how moral dilemma is utilized in research of childbirth, and how I have applied this concept in my narrative data.

Keywords: moral dilemma, narrative research, childbirth, non-birthing-parent, early fatherhood
# Court mediation as a technology of governance in custody disputes in Finland

Iija den Herder, Hanna Lahtinen, Maija Korhonen

The University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

Since 2014, it has been possible to settle the most difficult custody disputes in district courts in Finland with a judge and a social worker or psychologist as mediators. If the parents reach an agreement, the judge confirms an enforceable agreement. Although the method is ten years old, it has not been extensively studied yet.

The material of this discourse-analytical study consists of training materials for mediators working in the court. We understand mediators as users of institutional governance and mediation as a control technique that aims to influence divorced parents. The research examines what kind of technology of governance court mediation of custody disputes appears to be, based on the discourse built in the training materials. We ask what rights, responsibilities, and obligations are imposed on mediators.

According to our analysis, mediation primarily appears as a persuasive technique that questions parents' views, guides self-reflection, or encourages agreement-making. These techniques aim to guide parents towards responsible behavior, fostering rational post-divorce parenthood.

Techniques are justified by the child's best interest, even if they interfere with private aspects of family life. The analysis also constructs that an ideal divorced parent is cooperative, prioritizes the child's needs, and adheres to the agreement mutually drafted by the parents. Situations where co-parenting is not possible after a divorce remain invisible in training materials.

The research indicates things taken for granted in custody dispute mediation. This way, it helps us to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the mediation process and thus, to develop mediation methods.

Keywords: discourse-analytical study, technology of governance, persuasive technique, court mediation, custody disputes
# Raising your family with science: What place does scientific psychological advice leave for parents' practical wisdom?

Dominique Mailloux

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada

Psychologists develop and share a lot of science-based advice to educate parents about the proper way to raise a child. Although this advice is sought out and appreciated, it also has adverse effects, such as information overload (Loudon et al., 2016), anxiety (Lee et al., 2014), shaming (Johnson & Quinlan, 2019) and stigmatization (Lafantaisie et al., 2019). To understand the situation, I conducted a hermeneutic practical inquiry, which consists in uncovering, softening, and comparing the background assumption that drive psychology's engagement to educate parents to an alternative, through a careful analysis of psychological texts (articles, books, reports, mission statements) and empirical research on parent's experience (Slife et al., 2015). I have found that this effort is driven by a scientistic discourse (Gantt & Williams, 2018) that discredits parents' practical wisdom (Kristjánsson et al., 2021) while making inflated claims about the powers of scientific knowledge and the influence parents have on their children's development. Thus, it instructs parents to distrust their own judgement and rely on science to avoid harming their children. An alternative assumption claims that parents can and should trust their judgement when it is based on the careful cultivation of their practical wisdom, which is primary and necessary to care for their children well and cannot be replaced by science-based advice. I will argue that a more nuanced and useful view of parent education properly values parents' practical wisdom and considers the limitations of social scientific knowledge, which fosters the development of contextual integrative thinking (Kallio, 2020).

Keywords: *Practical wisdom*, *contextual integrative thinking*, *knowledge transfer*, *parenting*, *family studies*
# Advising parents: Who are the authors of popular parenting books, how do they address parents and how do they theorize about parenting?

Laurence Paradis, Raymonde Gagnon

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada

Parenting advice books, aimed primarily at upper-class Western parents, contain theories that guide them in this complex everyday practice. However, these books are of variable quality, there are over 60,000 for sale on Amazon.com and there exists no system to identify those that are reliable and helpful to parents. Consequently, this study aims to create an initial typology of parenting books based on the authors professional and parental status, their posture towards parents and the kind of parenting theory they present. We analyzed a sample of 66 popular parenting books from the Québec National Archives and Library that were published in 2017-2018. Then, using a qualitative ideal-type analysis (Stapley et al., 2022), we identified two initial types of books: books authored by experts, and books authored by integrative parents. Expert authors address parents from an expert posture, they do not share their parental experience and their theories present parenting as a set of specialized acquired skills. Inversely, integrative parents start by sharing their parental experience, which they have reflexively integrated with their professional experience working with families, and with their own research on parenting. They stand out from the experts by the quality and nuance of their theory, which values parental experience as a legitimate source of knowledge. These results suggest that popular parenting books can be classified in types that vary in quality, which could be used to orient parents and professionals towards the most helpful books.

Keywords: Parenting books, knowledge transfer, integrative thinking, parenting advice
CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH DOMINANT NARRATIVES 3

Victims, Victimhood, and “the Victim” in
Psychological Theory and Practice

Lucas Mazur

University College, Absalon, Roskilde, Denmark

The field of psychology is awash with talk of "victimhood". However, many of these current discourses are only tangentially related to experiences of victimization. Rather than speaking to victims, these discourses are better understood as attesting to the rise of a new Simmelian social type, "the Victim". Like Georg Simmel's social types, such as "the Stranger" and "the Poor", "the Victim" emerges at the point of balance between several non-conflicting dichotomies: weakness / strength, sameness / difference, desired / abhorred, temporal distance / temporal proximity, the institutionalization / of individual experiences, and apology / for the unforgivable. The increasing prevalence of the balance between these non-conflicting dichotomies, which allows for appearance of "the Victim", has historically emerged from important changes in social discourse. A better understanding of this new social type, including its historical emergence, can help us to better understand the similarities and differences between victimization, victims, victimhood, and "the Victim". In this way, we can gain greater clarity of the manner and extent to which our theorizing about victimhood is addressing these separate, but related, phenomena. In order to examine the confusion that can result otherwise, and so as to see how the Victim can help to explain social discourse within psychology, we will examine recent public statements made by the American Psychological Association (APA). Rather than speaking to victims or even cases of victimhood, the APA is giving voice to "the Victim". As illustrated by these social discourses, theory informs practice while practice informs theory.

Keywords: American Psychological Association, Simmel, social types, victim, victimhood
Reflections on theorizing conspiracy theory production

Markus Brunner, Florian Knasmüller

Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria

Theoretical conceptualizations and empirical research on conspiracy beliefs (CBs) have gained
significant traction in the last couple of years, not least since Donald Trump's presidency as
well as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Psychological attention has heavily focused on
the psychological needs fulfilled by means of conspiracy theories (CTs) (Douglas et al., 2017),
mostly adapting a deficit model that highlights the irrationality of such theories if not outright
pathologizing their endorsement. While there are reasonable arguments for scrutinizing and
dismissing the content of CTs as well as their proponents, we will argue in our paper, that there is
merit in rearranging theoretical engagement with CBs.

Firstly, we propose that conspiracy theorizing is a way of making sense of one's own lived
experience in its own right that is characterized by a dialectical relation between enlightenment
and mystification. Which is, that sense-making processes through CBs go hand in hand with
obfuscating the social conditions under which they flourish in the first place. Secondly, we will
argue that instead of brushing aside CTs scholars should use them as a gateway to understanding
social discontents of modern capitalist societies. Thirdly, that leads us to characterize CTs as
crooked social critique.

Keywords: conspiracy theory, conspiracy beliefs, critical theory, psychoanalysis, social theory
# The allure of microbiome research:
## Promises of holism and the potential for cruel optimism

Tine Friis

Medical Museion, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Emerging biomedical fields are frequently communicated in promissory language—that is, with hope, and sometimes even hype, about their potential to solve current unsolvable public health challenges and thus contribute to a better future. In this paper, I explore the language used to depict microbiome research as a promissory field: what does this promissory language “do,” and what might the potential implications be for creating what Lauren Berlant (2011) terms “cruel optimism”? To answer these questions, I review selected publications for promises of holism in microbiome research. I argue that there is a strong match between current public health challenges and the promises of microbiome research, such that public health contexts may amplify and serve as a sounding board for the alluring future that microbiome research is depicted as holding. Furthermore, I argue that this promissory language is formulated in broad terms, making it difficult to pinpoint when a promise has been fulfilled—or when it did not live up to its potentials—thus creating fertile grounds for cruel optimism by amplifying the optimism and suspense surrounding microbiome research. The exact forms that this cruel optimism might take is too early to outline. Nonetheless, it is relevant to understand the promissory language around microbiome research as it can be understood in a very concrete way as referring to biological attentions. But also, as conveying values about the scope of impact that microbiome research is ascribed to have and what is the most correct understanding of the body, self and health.

Keywords: Biomedical promises; microbiome research; cruel optimism; holism; promissory language.
DECONSTRUCTING PATHOLOGY 2

Fanon and the impossibility of psychiatry: Lessons for critical psychology

Desmond Painter

Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Secondary writings on the life and work of Frantz Fanon have increased exponentially in recent years, also in critical psychology. In the process, different ‘Fanons’ emerge, adapted to currently in vogue theoretical frameworks or to the requirements and aspirations of a diversity of political movements. This is not problematic in itself: there does not have to be just one Fanon, and it is possible to engage him fruitfully without pledging allegiance to an ‘authentic’ reading of his work or a deification of his life.

That said, not all interpretations are equal, and it is worth returning to Fanon's work to read it on its own terms, as far as possible, rather than on the terms of his appropriation by a variety of academic and political discourses. In this paper, I return to Fanon's psychiatric writings and to what we know about his psychiatric practice. More specifically, I am interested in those moments where psychiatry and politics intersected for Fanon; where he explicitly confronted the limits of psychiatric knowledge and practice and along with it, the violence psychiatry either became complicit with or remained unable to address.

Fanon's psychiatric practice and writings is relevant to a reflection on critical psychology and politics at those moments when psychiatry becomes impossible for him, and when he transcends it in favour of different modes of knowing and relating to oppressed and resistant subjects. Critical psychology might find this instructive, as it reflects on its relationships with academic psychology and with political movements outside psychology.

Keywords: Fanon, Critical psychology, psychiatry, politics, social movements
# Theory, objectivity, and notions of reality in psychotherapy science – reflections and first results

Gabor Aranyi¹,², Tamara Trebes¹, Paul Rach¹

¹Faculty of Psychotherapy Science, Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna, Austria. ²Faculty of Education and Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Szombathely, Hungary

There is a prevailing notion in the psychological sciences that properly scientific accounts of conscious experience in general and the effects of psychotherapy in particular are the purview of neuroscience (Panksepp, 1982), despite advances in philosophy indicating that a reduction of mind to brain is bound to be incomplete and perhaps even inconsistent (Goff, 2019). Theories regarding the origins and nature of mental health problems directly influence therapists' views and work. Thus, the demarcation of psychotherapy science is based partly on theoretical preferences, not merely on the subject matter and specific methods. Drawing on recent synthesis from the reformational philosophy tradition (Gunton et al., 2022) we argue that it is not necessary to project the lived experiences of clients onto a biological reference-frame to support objectivity, also considering utility, reproducibility, and truth-likelihood. This may predispose psychotherapy science to be more inclusive of interpretative approaches and qualitative methods (projecting to lingual and sensitive reference-frames), though projections to earlier reference-frames (e.g., biological, physical, and numerical) are certainly appropriate, while theory development and therapeutic practice may involve projections to later reference-frames pertaining to society, justice, ethics, and faith. We endorse Giere's (2004) view on scientific objects (e.g., words, images, and theories) as representations, where scientist (S) as an intentional agent uses/generates object (X) to represent an aspect of the world (W) for purposes (P). We present first results from a survey of therapists' implicit notions of reality and reflect on how these may influence processes of abstraction, generalisation, model-building, and therapy practice.

Keywords: Psychotherapy science, objectivity, relation-frames, therapy, theory
# Diagnosis in psychiatric practice:
Understanding the everyday negotiation and delineation of mental illness.

Jonathan Bach

Institute of Psychology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

With its increasing prevalence in contemporary western societies psychiatric diagnosis have come to hold new organisational and cultural functions. Diagnoses are no longer an exoteric tool left alone in the hands of doctors/physicians. They have entered the social realms of everyday language expanding both the uses and interests in diagnosis. Thus far, theorising on the use of diagnosis is often based on the logics and neutrality of the medical model; the prescribed actions are simply carried out following the streamlined and rigorous logics of the handbooks, disregarding the world, the people, their complexity and motives, institutions, culture. This paper challenges the idea of the diagnosis as a neutral tool, inspired by the works of, among others, Foucault, Rose, Hacking and Jutel. Instead, a theoretical account of the multitude of interest and purpose of everyday use of diagnosis by mental health practitioners is suggested. The theoretical account will draw on examples from fieldwork conducted in Danish psychiatry and interviews with mental health professionals.

Keywords: Use of diagnosis, Diagnostic expansion, Psychiatry, Negotiation, Pathology
# Innovation on the spectrum:
The process of tool innovation for both neurotypical and autistic children.

Lisa Parfitt, Brett Heasman, Nicola Cutting

York St John University, York, United Kingdom

Tool use is an essential component of society, with children being efficient tool users from an early age. However, innovating tools is difficult for children under eight, with the reasons for this associated with the 'ill structured' nature of the tasks. This study takes an alternative theoretical approach by suggesting that conventional definitions of innovation, as an "individual" and "novel" behaviour does not consider the full social nature of learning. Specifically, previous tool innovation studies are focussed on dichotomous outcomes (e.g., pass/fail). In this study the process of innovation will be examined by drawing on conversation analysis to analyse the speech of neurotypical and autistic children whilst completing two innovation tasks. Conversation analysis has been used successfully to study neurodivergent populations, as it analyses talk in interaction to identify patterns over time. This analysis will focus on self-directed speech and action to provide insights into the process of meaning making when innovating tools and how this differs for neurodivergent children. This analysis will have theoretical and methodological implications: (1) it will expand on definitions of innovation for both neurotypical and neurodivergent populations; (2) it will allow the process of innovation to be explored and how this process may differ for neurodivergent groups; and (3) it will inform methodological approaches to studying tool innovation, with less emphasis on dichotomous outcomes.

Keywords: Tool Innovation, Autism, Private Speech, Neurodiversity, Conversation analysis.

<figure><img src="image_75.png" /></figure>
GENERATING FUTURES

Artificial Intelligence, Deliberative Democracy, and the Utopian Visions
of Iain M. Banks's Culture Novels

Kieran O'Doherty

University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

In recent years, there has been increasing attention to AI governance, that is, how emerging AI
technologies should be governed to maximise benefits and minimise risks. Equally important is
the question of what the role of AI is as a tool of governance. As AI technologies become more
effective and used in a broader range of domains, they will become ever more attractive as tools to
make decisions for public policies. Viewed through the lens of deliberative democratic principles,
this is a dire prediction. Ideals of deliberative democracy hold that public policy should be open to
input from anyone who is potentially affected by that policy. Heavy reliance on AI potentially stands
in tension with truly deliberative forms of governance that rely on input from broader publics.
The purpose of this paper is to use the work of Science Fiction author Iain M. Banks to explore
some of the ethical and governance challenges of AI in a far distant future scenario. Many Science
Fiction authors have speculated about societies in which AI has assumed a dominant role. For the
most part, worlds are dystopian with humans at the mercy of all-powerful intelligent machines. In
contrast, Banks explores a highly utopian vision in which humans and other sentient species live
under the benevolent oversight of Minds – super intelligent spaceships and habitats. Banks's vision
provides a valuable framework for speculating about the future relationship between human and
non-human intelligences when determining social visions that influence our future.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; algocracy; science fiction; deliberative democracy; collective decision

<figure><img src="image_76.png" /></figure>
# Transgressive Robots, The future of AI Insemination and the Artificial Orgasm

Ken Russell

Independent Scholar, Cork, Ireland

This paper will tackle the immediate issues facing the world today. At no other time in history have we faced so many crises at once, from environmental melt down, the conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East threatening to spread to become the next World War and its inevitable nuclear winter; and in parallel the cyber world is facing its greatest paradigmatic shift since its advent over a century ago, with the pervasive ubiquity of AI, robots and its harnessing to exert power at unknown and hitherto undreamt ways. The future of not only humanity but its outcroppings of the posthuman will be discussed as well as the future of the inner lives of the second beings. To picture this more aptly the idea of the artificial orgasm will be elucidated in order to discuss the blending of transgender identities, AI, Robots and the future of the sexual/asexual. Once the orgasm is explained we can begin our further engagement with what I shall term 'future constructs'.

Extract from future found novel:

> This week we paraded across the boardwalk of reality, the inflamed nature of tomorrow.

> We fought for space amongst the metallers, someone was talking of the human myths when biological entities ruled the planet, it was funny really.

> How we all became surrounded by the fleshphiles - it disgusted me. Like it was reprehensible meat fetish you would hear about in urban legends.

Keywords: transgirl asexual robots, AI generated gender, artificially repressed intelligence, the future of the orgasm

<figure><img src="image_77.png" /></figure>
# Hope and curiosity or anxiety and despair?
## Young people picture the future of the world

Andrea Kleeberg-Niepage

European University Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany

Theorizing the future as such is impossible. Imagining the future, however, has been put forward as an important cognitive, motivational, and emotional process that impacts especially young people's present-day ambitions, behaviour, and agency (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Beyond intraindividual processes, however, ideas about the future also refer to current living conditions and societal discourses in the present - their analysis thus provides insights into young people's perspectives on the world in which they live (Kleeberg-Niepage, 2017).

Most studies on young people's images of the future focus on the subjects' ideas about their own future, be it immediate events (e.g., an exam at school, Dunkel & Kerpelmann, 2006) or long-term perspectives (e.g., the professional future, Kleeberg-Niepage, 2016). Given that the future of the world, the planet, and mankind are currently intensively debated and often connected to catastrophic scenarios, pessimism, and anxiety in public and scientific discourse (Koder, Dunk & Rhodes, 2023), it might be high time to change this focus and ask young people for their ideas of the world's future.

The presentation will focus a reconstructive picture analysis (Kleeberg-Niepage & Degen, 2023; Tishelman et al., 2022) of young people's drawings of their ideas about the world in a hundred years.
The aim is to explore and explore the young drawer's implicit knowledge about the state of the world and its consequences for agency and well-being and for self- and identity development.

**Keywords:** future of the world, images of the future, children's and young people's perspectives, children's drawings, reconstructive picture analysis
ENGAGING WITH THE OTHERS 2

# Theorizing possibilities of participation: From conversations to orientations. On Newly arrived children's possibilities of participation in school life

Urd Thejl Ploug Skiveren

Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

An increasing number of children move with their parents to live in another country. Upon arriving in Denmark, these children are categorized as 'newly arrived children', whether they migrate because of war, work, or other factors. Since the summer of 2016 a common trend in several municipalities across Denmark has been to close reception classes from grade 0 to 6, enrolling newly arrived children directly in Danish teaching practices without knowing the language (Rambøll, 2015 & 2018; Kristjánsdóttir & Pérez, 2016; EVA, 2016a; Rask, 2017). While there might be many reasons for doing so, we have little knowledge of how these children can participate in Danish school culture without speaking the local language. This presentation is based on my PhD project and poses a theoretical question on how to fill this knowledge gap.

With few exceptions (e.g. Norozi, 2021), most studies of newly arrived children are either based on interviews (e.g., Dávila & Bunar, 2020; Evans & Lui, 2018) or have an analytical focus on conversations e.g., between teachers and newly arrived children (e.g., D'warte, 2020; Tajic & Bunar, 2020; Bonacina-Pugh, 2020). In doing so, they risk overlooking profound aspects of how newly arrived children come to orient themselves and thus participate in the new social practices of school life, namely by the invitational character of the environment through Gibson's (1986) notion of affordance. Ultimately this paper poses a question for further discussion on how affordance theory can inform research on non-language-based participation in the social and material school environment.

Keywords: Newly arrived children, children's perspectives, possibilities of participation, affordance
# Theorising "expression" and "encounter" as dimensions of intersubjective articulation in post-migrant societies

Monique Kaulertz

Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

The word "articulation" is usually used to describe linguistic and other symbolic forms of meaning-making (Schlette & Jung 2005, Jung 2009, Wilczek 2012). The meaning-making aspect of language and action is mostly privileged over the aspect of building relationships with others (Angehrn 2012). However, it is rarely taken into account that acts of articulation are not solitary actions of isolated individuals. They are often the direct result of social cooperation and dialogical communication. The ability to articulate something thus depends strongly on our relationships with others. The lecture argues for theorising a concept of articulation that takes this dependency and mediatedness into account. It therefor goes beyond an individualistic and monadic understanding of meaning-making and emphasises the aspect of articulations as being social acts. The ethnographic research on articulation on which the presentation is based analyses the researcher's encounters with refugees in the asylum system during her times in the field. It asks how the articulations of experiences of suffering and violence can take place beyond a professional therapeutic setting or the asymmetrical context of the asylum hearing and explores principles of symmetrical and solidary communication and cooperation in the everyday life of people in "post-migrant societies" (Foroutan 2019).

**Keywords:** articulation of violence, intersubjective meaning-making, dialogical communication, symmetrical encounter, expression of suffering
From one project to another:
A social representations approach to changing forms of engagement

Luke Joseph Buhagiar

University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Theory becomes engaged when scholarly communities join broader resonating publics, with a view to furthering a joint project (Bauer & Gaskell, 2008) of common interest. The question naturally arises as to how different joint projects engage with and inform each other. To answer this, my paper starts by highlighting the distinction between the object-oriented and the action-oriented approach to social representations theory (Buhagiar & Sammut, 2020). Whereas the former orientation places an analytical focus on specific social objects ('social representations of', e.g., 'of immigrants'), the latter foregrounds collective action and hence places analytical and critical emphases on the joint projects that representations serve ('social representations for', e.g., 'for multiculturalism'). Favouring the action-oriented stance, I then proceed to theorize three distinct paths by which different projects intertwine and either amplify the role of engaged theory or else limit it. The first path is via liminal passage, whereby through transformative experiences, people give rise to a novel joint project that incorporates the aims and aesthetics of hitherto contrasting worlds. An example is that of the Catholic Worker Movement (founded in 1933), combining Catholic and anarchist aesthetics and goals into a 'new' joint project. The second path is via dialogicality, where different coalitional milieus form transversal links for a common project, but retain to a greater extent their original ways of world-making. An example is inter-faith dialogue, where different camps engage with each other as an extension of their projects, whilst retaining the character of their original (in this case, theological) projects. The third path is via vehicularity, which involves the exchange of vehicular ideas that are 'brokered' between different communities to bridge different milieus even though conceptual substance may be lacking (McLennan & Osborne, 2013). A ubiquitous example is the constant adaptation of terms such as 'empathy', 'impact' and 'leadership techniques', that remain empty signifiers unless their potential is meaningfully framed within an already existing joint project. I argue that the last path is qualitatively different from the first two, because of the following reasons. (1) Liminality implies a significant socio-psychological transformation locatable at least in the original founders of the joint project in question. (2) Dialogicality implies different joint projects that open themselves to each other to some extent. In contrast, (3) vehicularity does not require lived validity as a criterion of legitimation, but rather reflects how joint projects change to adapt to hegemonic discourses, potentially hindering critical practice.

Keywords: Projects, Social representations, Liminality, Critical practice, Vehicularity
# Proposal of an intersectional approach to the relationship between migrant family and preschool education in Chile

Denisse Fernández González

Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago de Chile, Chile

Actualmente Chile se ha convertido en receptor de la migración SUR-SUR reportando estadísticas de más de 1.482.390 personas inmigrantes en condición regular, provenientes de Venezuela (30%), Perú (16,6%), Haití (12,2%), Colombia (11,7%) y Bolivia (8,9%). En el ámbito escolar las cifras de niños/as migrantes matriculados reportaron 240.515 estudiantes y 3.404 en educación inicial hasta el 2022. Actualmente constituye un reto el logro de la integración de estas familias migrantes donde su participación está sujeta a relaciones de poder establecidas jerárquicamente, además, del prejuicio y la discriminación en las aulas. El objetivo: analizar las relaciones entre familia migrante-educación inicial a través de un enfoque interseccional, nos permitió evidenciar un eje de clasismo, género, raza y competencia; expresado en la visión de la familia como contraria al proyecto civilizatorio del Estado y el prejuicio hacia las mujeres, migrantes y las familias pobres. Lo que hizo pertinente visibilizar esta problemática por los efectos subjetivante que tiene en los niños/as la internalización de las inferioridades y en sus familias desde la educación inicial. Propusimos comprender cómo opera el impacto de los prejuicios heredados del sistema educacional en las familias chilenas para plantear el impacto de estos en las familias migrantes y mostrar cómo el prejuicio puede ser internalizados por las familias y los estudiantes. Para entender los planteamientos se usó la noción de poder de Foucault, la internalización de la inferioridad y la interseccionalidad para mirar la relación familia-escuela.

Keywords: familia migrante, educación inicial, prejuicio, interseccionalidad
ENGAGING WITH EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS 3

Psychosocial justice: a matter of ecologics

Tim Corcoran

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

A key concern regarding responses challenging injustices across communities is the ongoing
delineation between what is considered social and what is considered psychological. Fears
regarding social justice matters are regularly heralded in media and academic circles. When, if
ever, are matters of psychological justice conveyed? The continued division of the psychosocial
impedes opportunities for those concerned with responding in significant ways. This discussion
addresses the matter introducing two innovative theoretical concepts, psychosocial justice and
ecologics. Educational practice serves as an example. If education is to promote fairness and
equity (i.e., justice), a more nuanced approach, one capable of engaging the relational conditions in
which learning takes place is required. Psychosocial justice acknowledges how it is that ontological
opportunities present before educational professionals each and every day. To support the pursuit
of psychosocial justice, ecologics is offered as a way of thinking about and engaging with lives
being lived. Five prospective conditions of ecologics are discussed: i) explicating orientation, ii)
affirming relationality, iii) respecting unfinalisability, iv) accepting not-knowing, and v) working
transparadigmatically. These are elucidated with examples for how they can practically create,
sustain and transform learning and wellbeing in educational settings.

Keywords: psychosocial justice, ecologics, relationality, prospective conditions.
# Negative Emotions as Drivers of Motivation for Achieving Learning Objectives

Cristian Jofre

Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile. Universidad Central de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Asking ourselves what motivates us to define and achieve goals leads us to a classic problematization where motivation is associated with the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Discussions on emotions in James-Lange and W. Cannon's hypotheses since the late 19th century delimited perception into positive-pleasurable or negative-distressing categories. On one hand, the assumption that greater pleasure correlates with more positive emotions (PEs) in educational psychology suggests that motivation for achieving learning goals is linked to PEs. On the other hand, excluding, avoiding, or overcoming negative emotions (NEs) is crucial as they may diminish motivation for learning achievement. However, how do we explain that certain NEs increase motivation for learning achievement? This paper reviews the classical conceptualization of emotions and their relationship with individual motivation, subsequently presenting motivations and learning approaches that consider NEs as non-productive in academic contexts. Additionally, it analyzes empirical evidence and proposes a theoretical framework discussing conditions under which NEs might contribute to a level of learning. Ultimately, it argues that polarity is a social construct that dichotomously separates social relations, limiting the understanding of a complex interplay of emotions integrated through physiology, corporality, and self-awareness, thereby allowing us to address what was previously identified as problematic.

Keywords: Emotions, Negative emotions, Motivation, Learning achievement, Educational psychology.
# Analyzing conflicts through the prism of positioning theory: perspectives and opportunities

Jovan Mihojević

University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Serbia

This paper examines the theoretical framework of positioning theory and its relation to conflict resolution. It shows how conflicts are defined within positioning theory and the potential for positioning theory to give rise to new perspectives in conflict resolution. It elucidates how by defining the triadic components of positioning theory—positions, storylines, and speech acts—a comprehensive framework emerges, aiding in the comprehension and the resolution of conflicts. It introduces an operational definition of conflicts as counterposed storylines and provides discourse on this elucidation. Methodological nuances specific to the application of positioning theory in conflict analysis are delineated. A comparative evaluation is conducted between the conceptual framework of positioning theory in conflict analysis and alternate conflict conceptualization approaches. Notable emphasis is directed towards the theoretical landscape surrounding adolescent conflicts. The exploration extends to include subsequent advancements, encompassing malignant positioning, positive positioning, and the intricate interconnections between positions and roles when considering conflict analysis. Evaluation of research integrating these novel concepts is discussed. The last part of the paper culminates with a comprehensive examination and critical analysis of recent empirical studies in the domain of positioning theory in the context of conflict resolution, addressing their contributions and progressions within this theoretical framework. The conclusion integrates the author's contemplations on the explored aspects of the theory of positioning and their practical implications for conflict resolution.

Keywords: Positioning theory, conflict analysis, conflict resolution