Rose states that the power of psychoanalysis is the power to unsettle “all idealized, official, rhetorics, whether of nationhood, race, religion or state—its powers of resistance, one might say.” She is unequivocal about the importance of psychoanalysis in undoing the certainties and reassurances that are peddled by the sovereign. Psychoanalysis, she notes, “offers a counter-vision of identity as precarious, troubled, uneasy, which needs to be invoked time and time again against the false certainties of our times.” Roudinesco speaks of the regressive effects of the rise of wild capitalism, a surge in populism and an increasing permission to publicly advocate for racism xenophobia, and nationalism unashamedly. She also remarks on an increasing retreat from science and toward identity politics. Lacan, she notes, was acutely aware of the dangers of fascism and other totalitarian nightmares and his critical return to Freud was based on his belief that only psychoanalysis could explore how social mores and familial practices embody occlusions and foreclosures that limit individual and collective agency. Khanna and Mbembe speak of the paralyzing effects of melancholia and argue for a politics of solidarity and a critical fellowship. Is it possible to create situations of invigorating mutuality and critical relationality where transgressive performativity could “imply a dislocation of the sovereign subject” (Butler). Can we overcome the “inner exile” of which Margalit speaks to find the courage to help each other speak truth to power? If, as the Talmud suggests, “silence is like assent,” how might we meaningfully act together to call out injustice, particularly by sovereign power?

The English word crisis is cognate with the Greek for "decide" or "distinguish." Not incidentally, the earliest use of the term was to denote a turning point in the development of an illness. Far from merely signifying "catastrophe," crisis meant something like "moment of truth," with the implication that this was an opportunity for human agents to make vital decisions.

This is very much the sense of the term I'd like to retain in my examination of Kenneth Burke's treatise on humanity's strategies for engaging with massive, often unprecedented, societal transformations. In Permanence and Change, Burke draws on the psychoanalytic work of Freud and brings it into meaningful resonance with the rhetorical tradition in order to carve out a psycho-rhetorical approach to different possible orientations towards "the reality principle."

For Burke, the human being is an especially uncanny "symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal" whose primal instincts are often supplanted and rerouted by our second-order socio-symbolic drives. What Burke refers to as "occupational psychoses" are the simultaneously orienting and disorienting lifeworlds and worldviews that we inhabit by virtue of our arbitrary stations in the world. One's existential "training" as a farmer or investment banker, writes Burke, can readily flip over into a form of "trained incapacity" when the economic or ecological circumstances around which our modus operandi evolved render it misdirected or impracticable.

In this presentation, I will draw on my co-authored work with Toronto psychoanalyst Chris Vanderwees in Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric to explore the range of strategies for contending with societal and personal crises proferred by Burke. I will then endeavour to think through, with my APS colleagues, the implications of some of Burke's hybrid psychoanalytic-rhetorical "equipment for living" and ways it might help us contemplate some of the political, economic, and ecological disasters with which humanity is currently contending.

This paper presents findings of a psycho-social research conducted in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, that aimed to explore the perspective towards people with sight loss by interviewing staff members and users of rehabilitation centres for blindness using the FANI and BNIM methods.

Results show that the Mexican social unconscious plays a role in creating and maintaining associations towards people with blindness. Since the Spanish colonisation, there has been a prevalence of the Christian religion and the Charity Model of Disability that led to the creation and maintenance of the association of uselessness and less fortunate towards people with disabilities. These associations lead to the belief that people with disabilities need help, producing a saviour mentality embedded in charitable activities that enhance the ableist power dynamic that benefits able bodies under the discourse of helping to earn heaven. To maintain this charity-model positions, efforts seeking inclusion are often dismissed.

Additionally, maintaining the status quo, some people with blindness accept the perception of being useless and inferior. In a silent resistance, people with blindness take advantage of the charity system that oppresses and excludes them from society by accepting the secondary gain of being provided with a monthly fee by the government and by establishing a system for begging in the street, provoking pity in people without impairments and eliciting the unconscious desire of helping those in need and becoming a saviour.

Caregiving for children with special needs is often conceptualized as chronic stress rather than a prolonged trauma experience. This study challenges this assumption by introducing the Trauma-Crisis Caregiving Model (TCCM), which frames caregiving as an ongoing crisis with trauma-like features rather than a temporary burden. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study explores how caregivers experience recurring cycles of emotional distress, identity disruption, and adaptive transformation rather than a linear progression toward acceptance.

Findings reveal a layered trauma structure, where caregivers oscillate between four phases: (1) Crisis Onset (Trauma Exposure), initial shock, denial, and cognitive dissonance upon diagnosis; (2) Hyperarousal & Emotional Overload - persistent anxiety, hypervigilance, and exhaustion from prolonged caregiving demands; (3) Identity Disruption & Social Trauma, loss of parental identity, social exclusion, and internalized stigma; and (4) Adaptive Transformation (Trauma Integration) - emotional stabilization, meaning-making, and post-traumatic growth. Unlike stress models that assume a linear coping process, this study shows that caregivers relapse into earlier phases due to new stressors, setbacks, and unresolved grief.

The study integrates crisis theory, trauma psychology, and ambiguous loss theory to highlight how caregivers do not merely endure stress but experience a fundamental transformation of identity and well-being. The cycle model illustrates how caregivers move non-linearly between trauma phases, while the layered model demonstrates how caregiving exists within concentric levels of psychological distress and adaptation. These findings call for trauma-sensitive interventions, including mental health support tailored to prolonged caregiving distress, structured peer-based resilience networks, and policy shifts recognizing caregiving as an ongoing crisis rather than an intermittent stressor. This research contributes to discussions on caregiving trauma, post-traumatic adaptation, and the psychosocial realities of raising children with special needs.