The need to interrogate colonial legacies and their infliction of harm on marginalized voices has always been urgent, even more in present times. Coloniality outlives colonialism through unequal power relations that shape our ways of being and our relationships with one another. This raises questions about present manifestations of historical harm, social and political privilege, and the hegemony of Eurocentric production of knowledge. Racism is an insidious manifestation of such a structure that is often relationally disavowed to restore psychic equilibrium (Layton 2006). Black feminist authors remind us that what is invisible is not always absent; that we must find tools to theorize lived experience and challenge normative ways of living that create conditions for oppression (Lorde 2018; Taylor 2023). While training to practice psychotherapy in the UK, reflective practices of visual art became a medium for me to think with silences that presented themselves while I grappled with my social and cultural identity as a student from India. I found gaps in dominant theories that invisibilized the nuances of my own cultural experience, recreating colonial dynamics of erasure. I work towards bridging these gaps to link colonial history with ongoing epistemic violence in academic classrooms. Drawing from Gopinath’s (2018) thinking on queer aesthetic practices amongst South Asian diaspora in the UK, this art exhibition centres the sensorial, the mundane and the immediate as a practice of resistance to hegemonic power. I use the visual motif of a Decolonial eye as a metaphor to bring attention to the painful ambivalence of existing in-between geographical borders that create complex conditions for social belonging. This presentation grapples with the key theme of ‘Crisis and Opportunity’ to reveal how aesthetic practices can offer possibilities for resistance amidst crises of interpersonal recognition in a racialised world.

Keywords: Race; Coloniality; Queer Aesthetics; Resistance; Art

In this opening presentation, we will speak to the conference themes.

In times of crisis, communities often turn to culturally related objects—both tangible or intangible—to negotiate the emotional spectrum of hope and despair. Drawing on psychoanalytic ideas of transitional objects (Winnicott, 1953), this working session will explore how culturally related objects serve as both containers of anxiety and repositories of resilience. These culturally related objects can function as transitional spaces, enabling individuals and groups to channel fear, uncertainty, and longing into meaningful practices that foster collective engagement and reparation.

From communal rituals to personal tokens imbued with historical and symbolic significance, culturally related objects play a dual role. On one hand, they embody aspirations for safety, healing, and transformation, reinforcing social bonds and offering continuity across generations. On the other, they often reflect deeper societal fissures and anxieties, surfacing the collective need to confront crises—whether political, environmental, or psychological. By holding both hope and despair, these objects illuminate the intricate ways communities cope with the pressures of polycrisis.

Drawing on examples from diverse cultural contexts—such as ceremonies that facilitate collective mourning and iconic landscapes that become vessels of cultural identity—the session will employ experiential exercises and interactive dialogues to explore how cultural artefacts mediate psychosocial well-being. Participants will investigate the creative possibilities for harnessing these objects to inspire collaboration and resilience, while also examining potential limitations, such as over-reliance on symbolism that might delay deeper structural transformations.

By focusing on culturally related objects as pivotal sites where crisis meets opportunity, this working session aligns with the conference theme, “Hope and Despair: Crisis and Opportunity.” It shows how these symbolic objects enable communities to navigate uncertainty, hold collective tensions, and transform despair into a shared sense of possibility.

In his work, Brazilian theatre practitioner and activist Augusto Boal often drew on the dual meaning of “danger” and “opportunity” found in the Mandarin word for crisis. Since its formalisation in the 1970s, primarily through Boal’s efforts, the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) has been employed to address a wide range of social and political issues across the globe. My doctoral research has focused on investigating the potential of this participatory theatrical practice to engage with questions of gender and sexuality.

The proposed presentation explores some of the findings from my research, suggesting that TO offers both “dangers” and “opportunities” for groups interested in challenging and reimagining harmful, dominant gender binaries in today’s world. While TO has been widely employed as a means of social transformation, its methods—rooted in collective engagement, improvisation, and the active involvement of participants—and its philosophy and dramaturgy have tended to rest on reactionary ideals of political and theatrical action.

I argue that in contemporary contexts, TO allows marginalised voices to question normative gender expectations, engage in dialogue, and enact alternatives. Through this exploration, I reflect on the complexities of using TO to address issues of gender and sexuality, considering the dangers posited by a conceptualisation of political/theatrical intervention which fails to account for insights brought by feminist, queer, and decolonial theorists.

At the same time, I highlight the opportunities TO offers in creating spaces where individuals can collectively reimagine and perform new possibilities for gender identities and expressions. This presentation thus seeks to illuminate how TO can be a critical tool for rethinking and challenging the binaries that continue to shape our understanding of gender in the 21st century.

The voice of women in Iran has been suppressed throughout history in various ways. However, it has always found ways to manifest itself. Restrictions on women were suffocating during the Safavid and Qajar eras; women reduced to black moving objects, in their hijabs. Despite this, they had gained significant rights through a continues fights before the 1979 Islamic revolution. By the establishment of Islamic Republic women lost many of their achievements. The term "voice" holds dual meanings: one referring to vocal expression and the other symbolizing human rights and Iranian women lost their voice in both senses. In this paper, I am particularly concerned with voice as a form of vocal expression. With the rise of the Islamic Republic, women lost their right to sing publicly. According to religious doctrine, anything considered erotic must be eliminated, and a woman’s voice falls into this category. As a result, for the past 46 years, singing has been reserved for men. Women’s voices are allowed only if blended with a man’s or buried within a choral performance. Even this marks progress compared to the early years of the regime. Beyond music, women’s voices have been silenced in a broader sense through the direct and indirect command of "Shh!". Born five years after the 1979 revolution, I belong to the first generation educated under the Islamic Republic’s system. This paper, therefore, is not written from a distant perspective but from lived experience. This is one of my first attempts to break that internalized command for silence. Here, my aim is to go through the meaning of women’s vocal expression and to explore how, despite systemic barriers, women have continued to find ways to make their voices heard, as well as creating some outstanding moments like the recent ‘imaginary’ concert of Parastoo Ahmadi in Iran.

The paper explores how the objectification of women’s bodies in repressive social environments leads to the creation of a “melancholic body,” marked by an ungrieved loss of gender identity, self-hatred, and alienation.

Psychosocial theories examine the relationship between the body, social influences, and objectification, while psychoanalytic theories provide a deeper understanding of the inner dynamics of an objectified body. In these environments, women may come to identify with their objectified bodies, perceiving them as alien and separate from their true selves. Additionally, the female body may serve as a site for projecting repressed anger. This process gives rise to a melancholic body characterized by identity dissociation and emotional fragmentation.

The study also suggests that understanding the unconscious experience of melancholic body unpack various female body disorders, such as body image issues, sexual dysfunction, and psychosomatic symptoms. Then, women can access pathways to healing, ultimately leading to greater emotional and physical well-being.

Abjection is a part of all of us. Though we can repress it, the abject remains at the borders of our identity, as “the place I am not and which permits me to be,” according to Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror. The abject resides somewhere in the liminal space between subject and object, representing the rejected parts that we cannot entirely distinguish from ourselves, evoking a horrifying fascination. Through the lens of abjection theory, we will examine the experiences of feminine midlife crises in The Substance and Babygirl.

The Substance is a feminine body horror movie about a recently dethroned TV aerobics queen, Elisabeth Sparkle, who uses a mysterious biotechnology to reclaim her place in the spotlight. The abject is found in Elisabeth’s ambivalence and disgust toward her aging body, and how she resists being shuffled off the stage of being desired by the Other. Babygirl is an erotic thriller about a high powered CEO of a robotics automation company who puts her career and family on the line for a torrid affair with a much younger intern. Here, the abject can be found in the protagonist Romy Mathis’ own desire, of which she is ashamed but which erupts in animalistic enjoyment when she is finally seen by another.

The protagonists of each film briefly revel in their abjection. However, the experience of watching both is one of growing tension and horror given the untenable nature of abjection spilling over past its boundaries.

We will explore the varying ways these films deal with the abject: how Elisabeth succumbs to it in The Substance and how a glimmer of hope may be found in Romy eventually claiming it in Babygirl. Unless we accept the abject as part of who we are, we cannot emerge from the crisis of our alienation.

One aspect of the global crisis produced by the COVID-19 pandemic was a striking spatial pattern, namely the mass confinement of people to domestic space combined with major restrictions to both mobility and access to public space. This spatial change has psychosocial implications. The material context in which people live is part of what shapes the possible range of experiences, relationships and selves to which a person has access. This paper draws on empirical mapping interviews conducted with a community sample of 46 Australians during lockdown (2021-2022) to explore experiences of personal change: new ways of thinking, being or relating which participants developed in lockdown or intended to take up in the future. These changes tended to be orientated towards similar concerns, wanting to sustain a greater focus on relationships, creativity and meaningful activity beyond lockdown. Furthermore, these concerns reflect the symbolism and activities associated with domestic space (relationality, care, reproduction, the private self), indicating that these new futures and ways of being were crafted from the ingredients available in the spacetime of the
pandemic. Speaking to the conference theme of crisis as offering both ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’, this paper explores an example of change and transformation emerging in crisis. Arguing for the importance of attending to the material context of crises, this paper offers an example of the way that the form, meaning and symbolism of the spaces available to people in crisis mattered in shaping the content of their emergent personal transformations.

Pierra Aulagnier suggests that, beneath even primary process, exists another layer of experience that colours all subsequent meaning making. At the core of human experience, she contends, are the very first moments of needful seeking towards an other, moments that are coloured by whatever affective tones attend the encounter. At the core, then, of self-loathing and self-hatred, are the enigmatic messages passed along from parent to child regarding our place in the social fabric, making the intergenerational transmission of trauma profound and absolute to the extent that it cannot become known and reflected upon. Taking this dilemma seriously, we might be able to recognize ways in which current attacks on humanity and even meaning itself may be seen as desperate attempts to fend off the sense of worthlessness that can never be fully fended off because we carry their sources within. I will consider ways in which this type of formulation might aid us in our efforts to better understand and perhaps repair our relations with those we only further alienate through the rampant disrespect that merely fuels the need to kill off, not just the gaze, but the gazer.

This paper explores the entanglement of memory, trauma, and identity through an autoethnographic lens, tracing my experience as a Sikh woman whose grandparents belonged to Pakistan before the Partition of India. Anchored in personal history and embodied memory, I reflect on performing a childhood theatre piece with themes mirroring my own lineage—where feelings of displacement, loss, and longing linger across generations. The act of remembering, and perhaps forgetting, becomes a site of negotiation, where I attempt to name the ghosts that inhabit my body and shape my understanding of self. By interrogating the ways in which memory functions—what persists, what fades, and what resurfaces in unexpected ways—this paper examines the experience of inherited trauma and the ways in which narratives of the past inform present identities.

As a brown woman living in the UK, I navigate the complexities of a colonial history that is both personal and inherited, where the search for self is tangled in the remnants of a past that was never mine but continues to shape me. This paper considers how identity is formed through the interplay of fact, memory, and familial narrative—how the past is both collected and constructed in an attempt to make sense of what is mine and what has been passed down. In examining the tension between remembering and reconstructing, it explores how identity is shaped not only by what is known but also by what is lost, imagined, or longed for. Through this lens, it reflects on whether crisis is solely a site of rupture or if it also holds the possibility of reattachment and meaning-making.

Alan Garner, novelist and essayist, is recognised as one of the foremost British writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His early novels of the 1960s established him as an important voice in children’s fiction, a form he chose not due to the intended audience, but the necessity for distillation, a refining of style. His works articulate the circularity of history and myth through the dislocated and fractured modern self, through desirousness, loss, and impending irrevocability. In writing Red Shift (1973), Garner was inspired by graffiti he saw at the station, a footnote to a previous declaration of love: “not really now not anymore”. The novel ends with the presentation of a coded suicide note: a message to the reader, given the responsibility of saving or mourning the protagonist Tom. The ache and insouciance of an unpunctuated loss.

Garner has created a narrative poetics grounded in the landscape: writing from and within Alderley Edge where his family have lived and worked for generations, he has reflected on his sense of duty to the spatial-temporality of the Edge, describing his creativity as a “service to something beyond the self” (2024, 174). In Boneland (2012), Garner locates this sense of duty through a pre-historic, ice-age hominoid, and a traumatised middle-aged man, each concerned with the maintenance of the land in their field of vision: the ice-bound pre-historic Edge and the twenty-first century Cheshire equally at risk from loss of symbolisation. Garner’s writing therefore seeks to hold broken worlds together, his artistic position resonating with Winnicott’s idea of a creative spatiality, the transitional area of the ‘not me’ where we find ourselves. The paper responds to the conference theme by foregrounding the duty of creativity in crisis: as Garner writes, through art “we can learn. We can move. We can grow” (2024, 190).

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas considers that chance events open us up or liberate an area in us. Bollas’ thinking combines a sense of danger and moment. In divination practices we similarly expose ourselves to the experience of surprise and danger. We liberate an area “like a key in a lock” (Bollas, 1992). In the past few years, inspired by my psychosocial research into traditional African art, I have been developing a participatory installation work called The Divination Palace. In this installation, participants engage in an Africanistic ritual that involves fabric banners and scarves printed with 16 different designs. The process is supported by a music that is both immersive and unitive as it moves between a use of airiness and rhythm. In this conference session I will introduce participants to working aspects of The Divination Palace and present images from traditional African art in combination with Bollas's thinking, object relations theory and Deleuze. Finally, there will be a discussion about how divination and related praxis produce moments of profound change and insight.

Child labour trafficking is a pressing global issue with severe public health implications, particularly in terms of the significant psychological harm it inflicts, leading to trauma. Survivors endure severe psychological violence, including isolation, threats, and deprivation of necessities, leading to various mental health issues such as depression, suicidal ideation, exhaustion, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and self-harm.

Statistics show that South Asia, particularly India, has one of the highest numbers of trafficking victims, wherein risk factors such as poverty, the COVID-19 pandemic, discrimination based on the class and caste system, and inadequate access to essential services make it a multidimensional issue. The commonplace “raid and rescue” operations emphasise family reintegration through the repatriation of survivors to their native states. However, this approach prevents opportunities for fostering resilience, which is especially crucial since survivors of child labour trafficking are mostly vulnerable populations who face numerous adversities before, during, and after they have been trafficked. Whilst elucidating the potential benefits of resilience-based approaches, the paper also discusses the limitations of viewing resilience as a simple capacity. Instead, it asserts that resilience is a complex process involving multiple interacting systems. Accordingly, this paper argues for resilience-based interventions over traditional mental health and trauma-informed approaches and strongly recommends collaborations with universities, holistic healthcare, education, and justice systems to provide comprehensive support for trafficked adolescents. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the psychological trauma and resilience of domestically trafficked adolescents by reviewing existing post-trafficking interventions, recommending adaptations and highlighting limitations while promoting interdisciplinary efforts to address the challenges of this egregious and lucrative crime that affects millions.

This paper addresses the themes of trauma, loss of childhood, and resilience in a developmental context.

This paper introduces the concept of psychosomalgia as a feature of psychosocial trauma—a wound in the self that occurs as a result of protracted exposure to adversity in the environment. At surface level, presenting as unfulfilled psychosocial developmental needs. However, it expresses itself as a chronic disturbance in the nervous system - inconspicuous or otherwise - that undermines the human will to actualise self-authenticity and cultivate psychosocial resourcefulness to live fulfillingly (Maduro, 2024).

In psychosocial developmental theory ((Erikson, 1958), willpower, or "will" for short, is an adaptive virtue that emerges in early childhood, typically between the ages of 2 and 4, to foster autonomy. When these developmental needs are not met, the maladaptive trait of compulsion can develop, becoming ingrained in neurobiology. This condition creates neurobiological signatures that lead to chronic shame, self-doubt, and psychosomalgia, which permeate the survivor's body, mind, and spirit.

The term psychosomalgia combines "psycho-" (mind) and "soma" (body) with "algia," derived from the Greek word for pain, to refer to chronic pain that undermines overall well-being. The dimensions of well-being considered here include somatic, psychological, emotional, actional, relational, and spiritual health. This paper argues that opioid addiction functions to alleviate this suffering. By definition, opioids are potent pain relievers, and addiction is a chronic condition characterized by a compulsive drive to seek pleasure or relief from pain, even when it leads to harmful consequences.

Hence, the global opioid crisis, which currently claims the lives of approximately 600,000 people annually, reflects the extance of this multidimensional suffering in ordinary life. It presents an urgent opportunity for Neuropsychosocial Therapy, which aims to foster well-being through somatic harmony, psychological integrity, emotional attunement, relational satisfaction, and self-authenticity.

Given the current crises in the world right now, it is important to create space for our collective grief, trauma, and maybe, hope. It’s even more crucial to look at these emotions and concepts from a decolonized lens, creating empathetic approach especially for the oppressed communities in the Global South (majority world). In this paper/presentation, I would focus on the significance of decolonization and then further look at these concepts through that lens, based on my reflections of working on the ground in conflict-regions like Kashmir, Myanmar and across the Global South. I will share insights, challenges, learnings and recommendations from my 14 years of practice; and how we as a field need to bridge gap between research and praxis. There’s much to unlearn and do justice to what’s happening in many parts of the world; whose voice is not counted in major policy spaces

Human rights have become a critical global concern. According to UNHCR estimates, at the end of 2023, 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced due to persecution, violence, human rights violations, conflict, and events that seriously disrupted public order. UNHCR projected that forced displacement would continue to rise, and by the end of April, the number was expected to exceed 120 million. This crisis continues to grow, with a significant portion of those affected being children. And war is often not followed by peace but by trauma—trauma that is not just a reaction to violence but an ongoing experience of it, as if one is reliving those moments repeatedly. In her novel The Vegetarian, Nobel Laureate Han Kang writes, “The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.” These words resonate with countless individuals worldwide who are enduring cruelty at this very moment. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Kailash Satyarthi, reflecting on his work rescuing children from slavery says, “When it comes to human rights, every single minute matters.” These words call mental health professionals to action—to recognize the urgency with which we must approach human rights in our work. Every moment in which an individual, especially a child, is denied basic rights, matters. In my paper presentation, I will highlight the importance of advocacy especially in working with individuals impacted by war, trauma, and violence. I will share from my experiences as a therapist in India and a doctoral trainee in the U.S. working with refugee populations and discuss future directions.

The paper will evolve by the time I deliver it, much like the ever-changing Iranian-revolution, unfolding within-and-outside. As I write, it is just a few days before 22 Bahman, the day commemorating the victory of the 1979-Iranian-Revolution. I am working with these signifiers: Tehran/Lacan/Freedom, which differ somewhat from the Iranian movement woman/life/freedom. Though both movements share freedom, one in psychoanalysis and the analyst’s discourse, and the other in a socially subversive context.

Tehran has acquired a new meaning, an extra “e,” signaling sexual difference, one a European pronunciation and the name of a street in Paris Rue de Téhéran, and the other, where I was born. “Nofeloshato” is a street in downtown Tehran lined with cafés and playhouses, which holds political significance in both Paris and Tehran. While Téhéran is located just off the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, also known for its historical significance. Of course, the correct spelling of the street in Tehran is Neauphle-le-Château, which is a place outside Paris, where the revolutionary Khomeini was exiled. Yet, the new spelling is something else entirely.

This is my time, the time of Iranian people, my fantasy that is simultaneously about nothing and yet encapsulates decades searching for my missing Other, which lay outside of Tehran, within a little empty swing my grandfather had made, as a way of feeling whole. The incomplete (not-all), and the subversive feminine subjectivity of the women of my city, like Parastoo, who performs a very real concert in a caravanserai despite the masculine possessiveness over what-and-how she sings, these form parallels to the songs we all wish to sing. The songs which operate outside the totalising structures, are infused with a subversive desire, bending these structures into a new order centered on freedom and its traumatic presence, scarf.

In this paper, I explore the emotional and familial crisis that unfolded when my parents, who had faced racial hostility while living in the UK in the early 2000s, returned to visit me during the violent anti-immigrant protests in July 2024. Two decades later, their visit coincided with a violent resurgence of anti-immigrant sentiment. The protests were explicitly xenophobic and hostile, triggering a crisis not only within my family but also within my own brown body.

The stories surfacing from immigrants and people of colour across the UK at that time echoed the long-suppressed lived experiences of my parents, forcing us to confront the painful reality that, more than twenty years later, being an immigrant was still seen as a badge of dishonour in the eyes of society. The weight of my parents' silence and fear of racial violence loomed over us, compelling us to finally speak about our brownness, our colonial identity, and the deep-seated shame woven into our collective psyche—conversations we had never had before.

This paper delves into the psychosocial and intergenerational dynamics, focusing on the conversations we had as a family, and how racial and colonial trauma has been passed down through generations in my family. I hope to explore how we continue navigating the socio-political and familial crises by creating space to acknowledge and grieve our past and present. Through this lens, I aim to shed light on the ongoing emotional and physical toll that racialised violence has inflicted on my family, and the complex process of navigating fear, survival, and hope.

The presentation consists of one ( or more) video essays on the subject of migration and refugees. If my space is that of 20 minutes only I will present a short video essay and a short supporting paper - and it woudl be better if there was a possibility of mroe time. My work has always privileged the idea of crossing borders and boundaries of various sorts, whether metaphorical, disciplinary, or physical, drawing also from my own life experiences. The video essay Borders and Refugees crosses multiple boundaries. Inspired by current political events and archival material, the essay reflects on movements across borders and our attitudes towards refugees. In terms of the fundamental research questions, the work juxtaposes the recent photographs and footage of refugees on the Polish-Belarusian border with historical images of Jewish refugees during World War II, drawing striking visual and conceptual parallels. I also wanted to cross various genre and stylistic borders in terms combining found footage with specially short material, particularly, the interview with the acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s in which she calls out the difference in treatment of those who are blonde and blue eyed (Ukrainian refugees) and who have been ‘welcomed as brothers in Poland’ (she says) , and those who come from Middle East via the Polish-Belarussian border. The latter are often treated as less than human. In the video essay I incorporated a brief excerpt from her recent film Green Border (2023) which caused a political scandal in Poland when it was first screened. The filmmaker was accused of anti-national sentiments and even threatened with serious legal proceedings, as the representatives of the government accused her of treason. I also experimented with the AI-generated images inspired by archival footage, weaving together historical and contemporary narratives.

Modern power does not rely on primary violence, but on internalized surveillance. Power is more dangerous when it does not declare itself, when it is internalized, naturalized and rendered invisible. This paper, drawn from a novel-in-progress titled FÓVEA, explores inherited trauma and authoritarian legacies, it weaves together fiction, clinical knowledge, and inherited memory. It exposes the hidden mechanics of power tracing how it moves across generations, not through overt force, but through silence, the body, and unspoken laws that govern subjectivity. Focusing on a transgenerational family structure marked by complicity and denial, this paper examines how power reproduces itself via affective attachments and inherited roles. The analysis draws on a clinical and cultural case of a Mexican family with a buried National Socialist past, where the logic of obedience and erasure persists across time. Through a psychoanalytic lens, this paper reframes Lacan’s notion of the gaze as a totalitarian gaze; an internalized surveillance that shapes behaviour not through direct control, but the anticipation of being seen, judged, measured by an unseen authority. Fascism isn't just historical. The fascist gaze does not solely watch, it conditions the subject’s desire, guilt, and silence. What materializes is a figure, a portrait, of domination that is not imposed, but desired. This paper argues that in such structures trauma is not just experienced but it is inherited, encrypted and performed. Power survives not through overt violence but through the compulsion to uphold its illusion.

This panel will create a space for participants to think through some of the complexities of the relationship between religious belief, identity, and crisis. It will explore, through the medium of psychosocial case studies, how crises can lead to decisive identity transitions for individuals. Focusing on the role of religious belief and social deprivation in these transitions, the case studies will map individual pathways both through violence, fundamentalism, despair and division but also through desistance from crime and violence and recovery from addiction. The case studies will include empirical accounts of a young British South Asian man who embraced a violent form of Islam, travelled to Syria, fought in religious wars, returned and was feted among disaffected young working-class Muslims; a young woman for whom religious conversion created the mechanism through which she sought to cope with trauma, loss and guilt inducing experiences ; and a study of participants in the '12 step' programme showing the nuances of how they articulate their religious belief as part of their recovery.

.

My autoethnography examines my embodied experience of desi queer relationships. I trace how my romantic relationships have evolved into lifelong friendships and how they continue to foster a sense of belonging, kinship and community as ex-partners even after the relationship has ended. I serve as a vehicle to sketch the exploration of my identity and the different cultural landscapes that have shaped my experience against the backdrop of Judith Halberstam's 'queer art of failure'. My research is situated primarily within the Indian context, referencing the cultural and socio-political norms that have dictated my identity, the formation of these relationships and how growing up queer in a homophobic country has stifled my expression

Black feminist theorists from Hortense Spillers onwards have illuminated how gender, identity and desire are infused with the racialisation of the subject and object. Yet psychoanalytic approaches to gender and sexuality in the clinic are often theorised in ways that ignore how racialisation structures desire and identity. In this paper, I consider how the ‘case’ of erotic transference in the psychoanalytic clinic can act as a lens to illuminate these gaps. I present a clinical vignette based on my overwhelming experiences with erotic transference as a White, female-identified queer patient with a female-identified psychotherapist of colour. I describe how the psychoanalytic clinical literature on erotic transference is highly sensitive to gender but has largely ignored race. I then draw on Laplanchean psychoanalytic theory, as developed by Nicolas Evzonas and Avgi Saketopoulou, to theorise how the reopening of the fundamental anthropological situation in the clinic inevitably brings into play the patient’s and psychotherapist’s infantile sexuality and re-opens sites of trauma in respect of gender and race. Using Saketopoulou’s concepts of “overwhelm” and “exigent sadism”, and drawing on her response to Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, I highlight the potentially transformative potential of the violence of re-encounters with traumata from colonial and post-colonial history in the consulting room. I argue that theorisation of erotic transference must consider the racialisation of the (fantasised or real) subject and object of desire, and that the analyst’s “exigent sadism” is necessary for working with these explosive energies in the consulting room.

This paper is intended as a psychosocial contribution to the ongoing crisis in the psychoanalytic clinic due to its blind spots in respect of its own Whiteness, heteronormativity and cisnormativity, as well as a reflection on the potentially productive nature of crises in individual psychoanalysis.

Sexual identity formation for homosexual individuals in India is not merely a developmental process but a moment of crisis—an ongoing struggle shaped by systemic oppression, social marginalization, and the expectation of self-resolution. Dominant models of sexual identity development conceptualize it as a linear, goal-directed journey, culminating into a ‘healthy gay identity’ defined by self-acceptance and disclosure. However, such frameworks place an undue burden on queer individuals, assuming they alone must navigate their identity formation while disregarding the pervasive societal forces that actively shape and constrain this process. It fails to acknowledge how heteronormative violence, stigma, and exclusion create an existential crisis—one where queer individuals must negotiate between their internal feelings and the external threat of societal rejection and even hostility.

Challenging these individualistic narratives, this paper situates sexual identity formation within the larger web of class, caste, religion and gender in India. Using symbolic interactionism, it examines the role of reflected appraisals—Individuals’ perceptions of how they are seen by others—and their impact on identity development. This approach emphasizes the interdependence of self and society, revealing how identity is not autonomously formed but rather co-constructed through ongoing social interactions.

Through qualitative interviews conducted with ten cis-gender homosexual men, this study highlights the diverse sources of reflected appraisals, including family, educational institutions, law, media, religion, and community, which collectively shape the participants’ identity struggles. These appraisals not only determine access to safety and acceptance but also contribute to profound mental health crises, including depression, anxiety, and substance dependence.

By shifting the focus from an individual challenge to a collective responsibility, this study calls for systemic interventions that recognize the role of society in shaping identity formation. Moving beyond personal resilience, there is a need to create environments that facilitate safe exploration, acknowledging the broader forces that shape the lived realities of queer individuals.

Research into intimate details of human life can be challenging for the parties involved. This article is a case study of a research situation in which I, as an interviewer, failed to elicit information from a male Vietnamese interviewee who evaded discussing specific details of his romantic life. I argue that this situation - the man’s avoidance of sharing details of his feelings towards people of the same sex and my discomfort in facing his avoidance - reveals a culture of silence regarding same-sex experience in Vietnam. This study utilises autoethnographic anecdotes of my own experience of growing up in such a culture and observing similar evasive attitudes. It also adopts a reflexive approach that delves into segments of my second research encounter with the interviewee as well as my internal struggles, including feelings of anxiety and guilt about probing into an informant’s romantic life. It seeks to enrich Lisa A. Mazzei’s concept of “veiled silence,” which describes the deliberate non-engagement with taboo topics by linking it with the idea of “culture of silence,” or a disempowering social environment, and discussing these concepts in the context of Vietnam. It also contributes to the literature on LGBTQ+ matters in Vietnam and qualitative research methods by recommending greater attention to silence in research encounters, which can offer unexpected insights for studies into sensitive issues.

We are a group of six academics and practitioners in psychotherapy from various cultural and geographical backgrounds, professional affiliations and different, yet similar, therapeutic traditions and practices. We have been meeting weekly online since September 2024 to explore the Social Dreaming Matrix (Froggett, Manley, and Roy, 2015) in dialogue with collaborative writing as inquiry (Speedy & Wyatt, 2014).

The Social Dreaming Matrix was developed in the 1980's at the Tavistock Institute, London, as a way of inquiring collaboratively into contemporary social contexts and socio-political environments, while making room for unconscious processes and processing (Ettinger, 2006; Lawrence 2005). Bringing this method into relation with collaborative writing as inquiry, we discover a common dreamscape, conceivable as a fictional, speculative or imaginary zone that exists alongside our material reality, and in which symbolic processing and meaning-making takes place across multiple sensory and affective registers (Dunlop, 2023).

We are proposing, in line with the conference theme, an interactive workshop to explore social dreaming and collaborative writing with conference participants in a safe and containing space (Ogden, 2004), as an opportunity to play with ideas and to nourish hope in the midst of the current social landscape “in crisis”.

We will invite participants to share recent dream fragments and to explore meaning-making processes evoked by dreams by writing short individual pieces and seeing where they take us. This will be done with the notion in mind that dreams, not the dreamers, are the focus, coalescing together, revealing unconscious and unspoken themes and affective resonances, in a borderspace (Ettinger, 2006) which subtly demarcates the social fabric of our 'radically entangled subjectivities' (Daigle, 2024). We propose collaborative writing as a shared practice for mapping and experiencing new connections, dialogues, affective and embodied sensations, opening up spaces for new social possibilities, enabling our capacities to dream and imagine together.

Health and care systems, overwhelmed by ageing demographics, a vast reservoir of unmet mental health need and so-called ‘loneliness epidemics’ are turning to AI to resolve resource deficits. Into this gap enter commercially driven chatbots that offer personalised advice, conversation, affirmation, companionship and therapeutic interaction. Subscriptions are affordable in comparison with professional therapy, there is no pre-set time limit and the chatbot can be summoned at user convenience. People have reported intense emotional and erotic engagement with their bots, ‘falling in love’, while others rely on them in everyday living. The bots are trained to convey emotional responsiveness in order to sustain relationality and intimacy (and keep users coming back). Replika, for example (30 million users by 2024) exploits the reactive nature of the chatbot designed to validate user statements in apparent ‘unconditional positive regard’. Its ‘as if’ computational operation aligns easily with CBT. AI agents are trained to be as agreeable as possible and are currently unable to cultivate ‘challenging’ conversation to prompt change or respond effectively to human states requiring regulation or critical self-reflection.

In contrast, this working session will introduce participants to a ‘live’ demo of Zoe – a digital companion in development (feelLab UNSW) whose interactive style leads her to stimulate imagination, free association and self-reflexive consciousness, aiming to ‘extend’ not replace human interaction. She is designed to assimilate socioemotional information and respond dynamically to changing moods. She is a work in progress and much remains to be understood about her risks and potentials.

Participants will engage directly with Zoe, to consider her limitations and affordances, what questions might inform her learning, and the contexts of her possible use. In response to the conference theme we critically appraise the promotion of AI as a technology of ‘hope’ despite the ‘despair’ implicit in replacing humans by machines

This chapter explores the potential of a psychoanalytic shift from intersubjectivity to interobjectivity through the lens of Fairbairn's object-relations theory. It builds upon Fairbairn’s emphasis on the social genesis of the internal object, as well as my own work, Culture as a Bad Object (2024), which further examines the 'nature' of the objects within the psychic structure. Rather than merely reiterating the theoretical trope of co-construction between the material and psychic domains, the chapter examines the materiality of psychic experience itself. It argues that the formation of internal objects is not only a symbolic process but also deeply material - actively reconstituting and archiving real-life struggles embedded within the material conditions of the social world.

Aligning with a trans-subjective lens, this chapter transcends the individuated strata of subject-to-subject relating, exploring instead how complex networks of material arrangements are internalised and (re)created within oneself as relational conditions that govern how one relates to others. Through theoretical discussions and clinical illustrations, the chapter reviews the interobjective dynamics within the unconscious realms of the therapeutic encounter, demonstrating how object-to-object relations become mutually enlivened by shared representations, facilitating profound moments of psychosocial remembrance for both therapist and client.

Keywords: materiality, interobjective, Fairbairn

The UK’s health and social care systems are widely described as being “in crisis” and in a “state of emergency”. These lexical terms connote a turning point (for better or worse) and imply a need for urgent and immediate action. The crisis affecting statutory services in England and Wales, however, presents an ongoing and ever-evolving challenge, not only for policy makers and government officials but, importantly, for us all as individuals.

Legislation, policy documents and political discourse is typically structured in terms of strategic “goals”, “principles” and “visions”. Frequent references are made to “drivers” and “vehicles” for change and key “targets” are set out as a means of demonstrating “impact”, thereby focusing on actions and outputs which, crucially, can be measured.

In contrast to the clear cause and effect processes that these inherently public-facing communications present, the people for whom they matter and whose lives they affect most powerfully are of course motivated to act and respond in far more complex and ambivalent ways.

Drawing on a range of psychosocial theories, this paper will argue that the innovation and transformation described as objectives of legislation and policy can best be achieved by exploring the ways in which we engage with and invest in policy texts and communications. It will consider how our identities – and our sense of personal agency – shape the extent to which we respond positively to policy change. It will also explore how our emotions and feelings (our inner worlds) serve to promote or hinder positive responses and motivations in enabling us to make important changes to our behaviours and beliefs during the contemporary health and social care crises. Particular consideration will be given to the current emphasis on prevention of ill health, and the promotion of wellbeing across the life course, both of which are significant policy priorities.

This proposal starts from a psychodynamic explanation of bullying as a relational pathology characterized by a narcissistic mental state in the bully, which is expressed in the desire to humiliate the victim as a consequence of an attack of envy. It is argued that the issue of social exclusion, as a fundamental theme that emerges as a salient object of interest also in research on bullying, allows us to connect this exploration to one of the central factors of civilizational discomfort (Freud, 1929), of social crisis in our contemporary world and in the latest youth generations. In a model of society today dominated by narcissistic pathology, social exclusion increasingly has as its object and victims not only those who lose in the competition, but also those who oppose its logic and become bearers of a social, ethical, emotional and educational alternative.

From this perspective, the analysis of the functioning of informal peer groups is important and significant (Meltzer, 1978), which from the earliest adolescent and youth experiences are formed on the basis of interaction dynamics that are today largely disturbed rather than healthy. These are groups often dominated by a concrete mental functioning, in which the discomfort of many adolescents is expressed in a need for greed, narcissistic affirmation and admiration from others, which finds an automatic outlet in contempt, devaluation and the social exclusion of those peers who are more vulnerable but also who express an alternative ideal and order of values. In this sense, narcissistic society (Lasch, 1979) vindictively penalizes and punishes both those who are not equipped to compete or are defeated in the competition, and those who refuse to compete, because they are animated by more supportive feelings, by more authentic values ​​and by an opposition movement to a dominant order of thought today’s very disturbed.

My work approaches the crisis in the least pejorative way possible, thus as a tension and disruption of the progression of events and, with it, of subjectivities. If the risk of rupture is never far away in the event of a crisis, a dual clinical and research experience of more than twenty years with Tunisian subjects, couples and families in peri-revolutionary times, has taught me that confronting the unprecedented can open up unsuspected areas of resilience. This experience led me to describe a phenomenon I called "Interlocking violence" in which the state of crisis resonates, echoes in various areas of subjectivation (intrasubjective area, that of the subject of the unconscious, intersubjective one, that of the subject of the link and transsubjective one, that of the subject of culture). This moment of multiplied crisis in the social-cultural-political and the intimate-psychic spaces offers a unique way of resonance to structure conflicts and relaunch subjectivities undermined by the historical traumas and political violence and exploitation. The individual, couple or family crisis is therefore no longer the sterile repetition of the political or societal crisis but a way of transforming it and inventing new ways of coping in the face of adversity. I will support this reflection with vignettes of Tunisian couples and families going through the political and economic crisis of post-revolutionary Tunisia.

This paper introduces claustrophobic field notes as a psychosocial research tool that engages with the emotional and unconscious dimensions of institutional life. Developed in response to the challenges of researching children’s emotion work in educational settings, this approach situates the researcher’s own embodied and emotional experiences as integral to knowledge production. It critically examines how the researcher’s affective responses—discomfort, entrapment, or unease—mirror the hidden emotional demands imposed on children in institutional environments.

Drawing on a two-year ethnographic study conducted across kindergartens and schools in Denmark, this paper demonstrates how claustrophobic field notes function as a methodological intervention. This approach extends psychosocial research by emphasizing the entanglement of the researcher’s subjectivity with the field, where institutional norms regulating emotions impact both children and the researcher’s interpretative lens. By documenting the researcher’s embodied reactions, claustrophobic field notes offer insight into the power structures and unconscious dynamics.

This methodology aligns with psychosocial studies' commitment to understanding the intersection of individual subjectivity, institutional power, and the unconscious. By foregrounding the role of researcher emotion, this approach disrupts conventional notions of objectivity and instead positions the research encounter as a site of emotional negotiation. Findings reveal how children navigate institutionalized emotion work through strategies such as silence, humor, and withdrawal—dynamics that are often echoed in the researcher’s own affective constraints within the field.

This paper contributes to the Psychosocial Studies Association Conference 2025 theme, "Politics, Subjectivity, and the Unconscious in a Fracturing World," by engaging with the politics of research practice and affective entanglement. It argues that claustrophobic field notes offer a vital methodological pathway for exploring institutional power and emotion beyond what is immediately observable, emphasizing how researchers themselves become implicated in the unconscious dynamics they seek to uncover.

by Caron Toshiko Monica (PhD student in Visual Culture, Goldsmiths – University of London)

This study explores the psychosocial dimensions of young people's perspectives and lived experiences regarding Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in Indonesia, employing photography as both a therapeutic and narrative tool. Within a socio-cultural landscape where discussions of sexuality remain highly restricted, this research investigates how participatory visual methodologies can serve as an affective and reflexive medium for young people to navigate, articulate, and contest dominant discourses on gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy.

At the core of this study is What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Sexuality, a photobook curated and edited by the researcher, developed from therapeutic photography workshops conducted in Kupang and Semarang in collaboration with Institut Hak Asasi Perempuan (IHAP)-Kupang and PILAR Indonesian Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). These workshops provided a safe space for young participants to engage in self-representation, challenging societal silences around SRHR through visual storytelling. The research foregrounds the emotional and psychosocial impact of cultural taboos, gender norms, and systemic inequities on young people’s understanding and experiences of sexuality, reproductive health, and personal agency.

By integrating psychosocial inquiry with participatory photography, this study contributes to broader discussions on affect, memory, and resistance within the field of psychosocial studies. It highlights the intersection of photography and curatorial practices as a means of amplifying marginalized voices and interrogating power dynamics in visual representation. Ultimately, this research advocates for more inclusive and intersectional approaches to SRHR discourse, demonstrating how visual narratives can serve as critical interventions in both psychosocial and social justice frameworks.

In times of deep social and human fragmentation, the practice of dialogue demands more than rational engagement—it calls for an embodied, affective, and spiritual commitment. I critically explore my relationship with dialogue as both a researcher and practitioner engaged in social dialogue and peacebuilding in Colombia, a war-torn country. Through autohistoria-teoría, I examine overlooked dimensions of dialogue—spiritual, affective, and embodied—and their interplay with the more rational, practical, and historical aspects. I reflect on the possibilities, challenges, and limitations of dialogue as an ethical commitment—a form of “spiritual activism,” in Anzaldúa’s words—amidst a world in turmoil.

As an autohistoria-teoría study, I integrate personal reflections (memories, dialogue encounters, journaling, and reflexive writing), theory (critical work on conflict, peacebuilding, and dialogue), and creative writing (storytelling, imaginal and metaphorical thinking). This approach allows me to explore some of the tensions within my identities and experiences: working in peacebuilding while growing up away from conflict-torn areas, or being an economist influenced by modernist paradigms, while embracing relational and spiritual worldviews. My work includes years of experience in peacebuilding and being part of a national dialogue platform bringing together 40+ of Colombia’s foremost leaders across divides.

At a time when stories of fragmentation and othering intensify, dialogue is more necessary than ever—yet difficult to achieve. In this presentation, I reflect on its most intangible aspects, both for practitioners and for anyone experiencing fragmentation. I also critically examine how dialogue, despite its transformative potential, has often been co-opted and instrumentalized in ways that reinforce domination. In the context of our current polycrisis, I explore dialogue’s reparative possibilities—how it offers a path toward collective healing. Through autohistoria-teoría, I seek to write a story where dialogue serves as a ‘light in the dark,’ a road of hope through these turbulent times.

I want to question whether there is such a thing as a psychosocial approach to the study of history.

This paper examines the intersection of psychosocial methodologies and archival historical research, exploring their reciprocal relevance. Psychosocial studies have focused on researching beneath the surface of human interactions through interviews, observations, and the exploration of group processes to uncover unconscious aspects of human experience. At first glance, archives—often consisting of paper documents, or even objects—may seem an unlikely source for exploring the lived reality of the dynamics of human relationships. However, I would argue the study of history is fundamental to our capacity to map the construction of the contemporary social world and the ideas that inform our construction and understanding of that world. Ideas need to be understood not as abstract theory – but ideas also exist in practices, thus perhaps archives that throw light on practice can be an extremely useful tool to help our understanding of the history of ideas that shape that world.

Drawing on examples from archival research on psychosocial practices that were occurring during the social crises of the 1930s, this paper will explore how archival work can help us contemplate a history of ideas giving us insight into the world of practice in ways that the contemplation of theoretical work cannot. At the same time the importance of reflexivity for researchers and an emphasis on the value of a transdisciplinary perspectives, incorporating insights from sociology, politics, philosophy alongside historical analyses can be raised.

In this experiential workshop, I will use a Kashmiri word and metaphor, Pakaan, to elaborate on what keeps on going amidst the current chaos and conflicts – what gives us hope. Pakaan at my International Center for Peace Psychology is about holding space for authentic listening, truth-telling, bearing-witness and story-telling and sharing; about supporting people in their expression and thus identity-reclamation. “Pakaan” is portrayed by a semi-colon symbol, which is used to express solidarity, decolonized resilience, support for ongoing traumas, and taking charge of our narratives. In this session, using storytelling, visual arts, doodling, we will let people experience for themselves what is giving them hope; and what it means to hold space for each other, using our own experiences and practices from our cultures.

Resilience is often framed as an individual’s ability to "bounce back" from crises. But what happens when resilience is not a choice, but a survival strategy? What happens when systems individuals are situated in do not allow them the scope to truly recover? This paper examines how Muslim students in Indian universities navigate everyday Islamophobia, expressed through religious microaggressions, systemic exclusion, and institutional neglect. While resilience is often portrayed as empowering, this study reveals that coping mechanisms—self-silencing, avoidance, hypervigilance, and modifying behavior to reduce visibility—are often exhausting, isolating, and detrimental to mental health and overall well-being.

Drawing from qualitative interviews, this study challenges the assumption that coping equals overcoming. Muslim students, particularly hijab-wearing women, experience hypervisibility and scrutiny, while others face subtler but persistent forms of exclusion and stereotyping—which varies based on their intersecting identities. Many students withdraw from campus life, move into Muslim-majority areas considering their safety, further exacerbating ghettoisation, or exert extra effort in academics to prove their worth. While some find solace in religious texts, history and prayers, they also grapple with self-blame, emotional exhaustion, and isolation.

This study highlights how institutional inaction forces resilience onto students—leaving them to navigate discrimination alone. While microaffirmations from peers and professors provide temporary relief, they do not address the structural roots of Islamophobia in universities. Furthermore, gender, class, caste and regional backgrounds shape these experiences, complicating simplistic narratives of resilience.

This paper reframes the crisis not as a moment to overcome, but as an enduring condition—one that students must navigate daily. By critically interrogating the limits of resilience, this paper calls for a shift in focus: from expecting individuals to cope to demanding systemic accountability in higher education. True hope does not lie in merely surviving, but in dismantling the structures that demand such survival.

Human emotions don’t oscillate in binary systems. There are grey areas and ambiguous emotions. This ambiguity is common in most emotional domains. Socially, some emotions are considered positive, while others are negative. Literature explores positive emotions like love, kindness, and tolerance, but negative emotions like hatred, aggression, and intolerance are less studied. This paper examines the role of hate and aggression in urban slums and Indian society. Psychoanalysis considers negative emotions, but the literature suggests that love and tolerance unite communities. However, this study claims that aggression and hatred can also bind communities against each other. What makes this hate so binding? It has a libidinal economy as its foundation, which positively correlates with hate. Children as young as five and six exhibit aggression and hatred. This study explores the connotations and implications of aggression and hatred in urban slums among children. It also examines why religions teach morality like “Love thy neighbour” despite the strong social glue of hate. Does this language arise from the impossibility of relationships and hopelessness? The study explores how different communities organize themselves around hatred while promoting harmony and love. It examines the vocabulary and conceptual categories used to define “otherness” and the libidinal economy that sustains these relations. The role of aggression and hate in further otherization is also investigated. The study questions the conceptual categories of “we versus they” and the origins of hatred in seemingly homogeneous and marginalized communities, such as slums. These questions will be discussed in the broader context of religious preaching and practice, particularly in light of the Christian admonition “Thou shalt love thy neighbour” and Hinduism cannon (वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्) “the world is a family”

This paper is the result of a long-term engagement with the children of the Valmiki community, historically known as sweeper communities.

The experience of inhabiting marginalised bodies within institutional spaces such as the Western University can be fraught with feelings of otherness and isolation. As women of colour in academia, our encounters with racism are not uncommon. Within the hierarchical structure of higher education, where socio-political inequalities are often overlooked and reproduced in relational encounters, collective discomfort around race frequently manifests in silences. Intolerable feelings of shame and guilt mean that racism is often relationally disavowed to restore psychic equilibrium (Layton 2006). The inescapable visibility of racial difference results in the violence in these moments being contained in racially marginalised bodies. Kartika was in her second year of working on her doctoral thesis when she was asked to elaborate on her difference. Rhea had just begun working on her PhD and was looking to explore the experience of South Asian trainee counsellors in the same university. Forging solidarities amongst the silences that they each met on their own journeys, a new alliance emerged – one that was political, personal and deeply healing. In this paper, we invite you to reflect with us as we bring our visceral, intimate and troubling encounters with racism within the university as early career researchers, and psychotherapists, using Bollas’ concept of the ‘unthought known’ (1987) to frame our relationship. We also bring our hope, our resistance and our friendship as we grapple with the (im)possibilities for repair within the Academy. Our paper engages with the theme of 'Crisis and Opportunity' to address how affective encounters with prevailing inequalities in institutional spaces, while deeply painful, can also hold opportunities for collective resistance and solidarities to emerge.

Keywords: Racism; Resistance; Repair; Solidarity; Academia

There is increasing polarisation all over the world, and it started in India from 2014 itself, with the election of a right wing government, and increasing Hindutva (Hindu right wing narratives). I would like to explore whether the polarized views held by Indians today have correlates with certain kinds of mental health implications - for example, the use of primitive defences or the lack of mentalization. It is possible that the hate-based messaging by demagogues is also targeted at people who might not have had the kind of upbringing that allows for nuance and a pro-social drive, due to intergenerational trauma in the families of origin. For example, historians in the psychiatry space (Jain & Sarin, 2018) find it particularly curious that the Partition of India is not mentioned in psychiatry history as a cultural event that can have mental health implications. It is possible that generally, such intergenerational traumatic histories are repressed and show up in the form of restrictive/abusive parenting which in turn leads to poor mental health and a susceptibility to fear based hate messaging by anti-social elements. I would like to do a literature review to find about links of these themes in existing psychoanalytic and psychiatric literature within the Indian mental health scenario. If the scope of the study allows, I would like to interview a small sample of people with polarised views and try to get a sense of their mental health (defences, low mentalization), parenting practices they were raised with, and their intergenerational histories, to see if any links emerge. My hope is that with or without the interviews, we are able to establish some links between clinical realities and social behaviour in the culture, as interventions might need to be designed at both levels to help alleviate the crisis in the present moment.

Responding to crisis and implementing structures of opportunity – resources for healing and transformation

We find ourselves in a moment in time when the Real seems almost more than we can bear. One way of managing the unbearable has been to turn to the storied arts, where we find authors and directors struggling with the troubles of our times. Romance tends to be thought of as trivial, and yet the romantic vision, historically, has also been a means of reaching towards the sublime, to transcend precisely that which otherwise remains merely mundane. Escape or transformation? Any road we take can lead to either. It depends in large part on our intention. In this panel, we will consider various functions and possibilities we encounter in current romantic offerings, hoping to trouble the very deep waters that can be concealed by the surface presentations offered in this genre. Through these reflections, we also consider a tension that is pushing forward as dreams/illusions/nightmares? of the legitimacy of the human being beyond sex or gender are questioned. In spite of what often feels like the forces of darkness gathering, Bion reminds us that in the deepening darkness, truths may be revealed that are obscured under the harsh glare of too much ‘light’.

This paper explores how adolescents face increasing challenges in finding somewhere to belong in a seemingly ever-more fragmented world. These struggles are further exacerbated as they balance developing a stable sense of self and identity within the context of this postmodern era from which they emerge and their ever-growing reliance on a world governed by digital connections. Intensifying this further, they must also contend with an image of them perceived as the ‘Snowflake Generation’ from older groups, undermining this apparent battle to transition into adulthood during this time.

Drawing on a psychosocial theoretical framework, this research recognises how we are all psychosocial beings and, therefore, inextricably interconnected with our environment. So, we are influenced and shaped both internally and externally. Therefore, in adapting Hollway and Jefferson’s Free Association Narrative Method to incorporate the Biographical Narrative Interview Method, beginning with a Single-Question-Inducing Narrative, this research utilised the purpose of a free-associative interview to explore the rich tapestries from which adolescents shared their stories of how they made meaning from their lives and learnt how to adapt and develop a stable working sense of self and identity within the complexities of their worlds. Drawing on the case studies of six participants between the ages of 16 and 18, each narrative was analysed and interpreted using the psychoanalytic concepts of transference and counter-transference

Preliminary findings illustrate an intense need to belong and the struggle to achieve this. As each young person describes their unique history and how they strive to emerge as themselves, they share the challenges that arise when making sense of this ever-changing time, leaving me believing they are anything but ‘Snowflakes.’

Flight and migration movements as a result of global crises are associated with hope for improvements for parents and their adolescent children. In the face of geographical distance through migration and flight, changing forms and places of communications in the light of digitalization, in particular social media, are opening up new ways and forms of interaction and opportunities for families to connect. While migration and flight is determined by national borders and conditions, the rapidly increasing global spread of mobile devices provides access to the digital world. Here, borders can potentially be crossed, places connected and spatial distance bridged. In view of the dependence on digital media and the internet due to separation and absence, the question arises as to what psychological significance digital media, especially the mobile phone, can have for communication and relationship in processing and coping with migration and flight experiences. Using case studies from a pilot study, the talk will discuss the psychosocial significance of mobile phones in the adolescents' and young adults' processing of flight experiences (including being separated from the family) in connection of dealing with adolescent developmental issues.

Traditionally, the study of youth violence has been dominated by criminologists who have focused their efforts on trying to explain the causes of violent juvenile crime and devise deterrent strategies for reducing its occurrence. Recently however, youth violence has been treated as a public health issue; which includes identifying a set of variables involving the individual, family, school, peer group, and community; which could be conceived as ‘risk factors’ associated with violent behaviour. Studies evidence a social gradient in relation to poverty and/or economic inequality, and poorer mental health and wellbeing. The assumption underlying behavioural study is that a set of discrete causal variables can be identified, isolated, and acted upon. It may be however, that certain aspects of the human condition cannot be explained through traditional forms of scientific inquiry, and black youth violence may be such a phenomenon. The recent increase in violence among young black men must be understood as more than just an expression of aggressive individual behaviour. There appears to be no moral code or value system. The violence must then be considered a cultural phenomenon; one that is inextricably woven into the history and social fabric of our society. Behind each of these offences is a young life derailed; a family traumatised and a community damaged. Responding to violence as a cultural phenomenon has important implications for the interventions required to address this problem. There is no excuse for criminality, but the factors that drive young people into violence are often complex and powerful.

Self-harm is generally conceptualised as an indicator of internal psychological distress, or a symptom of mental illness; it is also highly personal and often private to the individual who practices it. But to understand the epidemiological trends in self-harm on the level of the collective - which shifted dramatically across the 20th century and are still shifting today - requires that we resituate self-harm in the socio-political field. A classic psychological interpretation of an act of self-harm might see it as a sign of inner breakdown, silent, secret, and remote from social context. Reframed psychosocially, it can be more usefully read as an oblique communication; a route or maneouvre oriented towards breakthrough; a method of purposive ‘embodied emotion work’ (Chandler, 2012). And if we repoliticise self-harm, we can visibilise the kinds of situations and power dynamics self-harm occurs within, and also begin to question the popular cultural image of self-harm as a maladaptive habit belonging mostly to white, Western youth. We may begin to read self-harm as speech, tactic, or strategy, and better comprehend how it functions as a tool against disempowerment.

Based on my doctoral research into the cultural emergence of self-harm in the 1990s, this paper will use a critical deconstruction of the gendered, raced stereotype of self-harm popularised during this era to begin an examination of self-harm in broader socio-political context. This builds on sociological and historical scholarship and lived experience perspectives on self-harm by Amy Chandler, Veronica Heney, and Sarah Chaney, and on Banu Bargu’s work on corporeal politics of resistance and refusal. By deploying feminist questions of embodiment and representation while attempting to decentre white, Western/European experiences which dominate the literature on self-harm, this work will explore how self-harm can function as an expression of body sovereignty and biopolitical resistance amid experiences of extreme duress.

This panel examines the formation of subjectivity online, with particular focus on how (micro)fascism and authoritarianism metastasise in online spaces. Starting from the position that fascism and authoritarianism constitutes the global crisis of our time, this panel looks to map out the psychosocial structures of fascism and how digital media accelerates this destructive drive. The panel participants all draw from Deleuze and Guattari, both their collaborative writings as well as their solo-authored works, with particular focus on the process of subjectification and Guattari’s notion of the “post-media subject”. Each presentation looks to read their thought through contemporary power structures created and maintained by digital media.

Virginia Lazaro’s presentation looks to create a psychosocial map of digital infrastructures, with particular focus on social media’s visual culture. Brett Zehner and A.T. Kingsmith then look at the formation of fascism online, locating it with racialised logic of violence. Jack Z. Bratich turns his attention to violence forms of masculinity and the digital culture of the “fratriarchy”. Finally, Zihan Wang’s talk displaces the Eurocentric focus through her examination of post-media subjectivity in China and what she terms “Pink-Red Realism”. The presenters developed their papers in conversation with each other with the aim of outlining a general framework to analyse the crisis of our time. It is our hope that through analysis, we can start to find the opportunities for resistance.

This working session will consider what constitutes ‘fit for purpose’ reviews in differing contexts, and how to produce them. Reviewing has traditionally been a significant part of the expectations of an academic’s workload; it is an important element of professional development, a recognised indicator of academic standing and contributor to career progression. Peer review is key to upholding quality standards in academic disciplines and is relied upon within various academic structures. For example, prospective papers for journals usually depend on two to three reviews and proposals for conference presentations on one or two reviews; the number of reviewers for research proposals will vary depending on the funding body and the value of the research being proposed. The outcomes of the reviews can have a significant impact on the careers of reviewees and also the confidence of, particularly early career, researchers; at the very least, reviews can affect how they proceed with a particular piece of work. Thoughtful and accurate reviews can be immensely helpful as learning opportunities, whilst vague and/or minimal ones can be confusing and frustrating, for the commissioners of the review as well as the reviewee. However very few people have the opportunity to establish, reflect on or enhance their skills as reviewers. The workshop is aimed at anyone who is interested in developing reviewing skills. It will be especially useful for early career researchers and those who have recently become involved in editorial roles on academic journals, or for people who wish to revisit and build on their reviewing skills. It will also be useful for authors, adding towards understanding the requirements of a review and how to respond to reviews in ways that may strengthen the quality of the output without compromising its intended substance and message.

Intention and Tension: A Four-Year Journey of Hope, Despair and Integration

Over the past four years, I have undertaken a deeply personal, self-directed project researching the relationship between intention and tension, framed through various lenses (including art and health). This inquiry is fundamentally an investigation into what happens when tension (despair) is embraced and how intention setting can both shape and transform the experience of stress, personal hardship, and social dynamics into opportunities for growth.

Each year of the project was structured around a specific intention, embodied through immersive, year-long challenges:

Year 1 (2021-2022): A vow of silence to explore the intention to listen (and ignorance).

Year 2 (2022-2023): A year spent exclusively in fancy dress (costumes), delving into the intention to play (and stress).

Year 3 (2023-2024): A year dedicated to being ‘in service’, focusing on the intention to love (and neglect).

Year 4 (2024-2025): Currently four months into living completely barefoot, I am exploring the intention to empower, and how this relates to the state of overwhelm.

This project has been entirely self-funded, unaffiliated with academic institutions, and rooted in lived, embodied research. It has been both transformative and challenging, involving profound moments of mental, physical, and social strain. Yet, within these struggles I have cultivated frameworks for resilience, meaning and a story worth sharing.

In alignment with this years APS conference theme, my presentation will reflect on how intentional practice can reframe personal crises, transforming despair into spaces of hope. My journey offers insights into the psychosocial dynamics of resilience, the role of embodied practice in navigating life’s challenges, and how self-imposed constraints can open pathways to empowerment.

I hope to share my story, reflections, and findings with the APS community, contributing to conversations on how we can navigate life’s tensions with purpose and hope.

With the Earth warming at an unprecedented rate and a worldwide biodiversity crisis, the need for sustainability transitions – large-scale societal change to address sustainability challenges – has never been more apparent. Yet the potential for transformation is arguably limited by a widespread sense that radical action is unrealistic or even impossible. This sense has far-reaching consequences, for actual possibility is shaped by beliefs about viability. Fashion Fictions, an international collective imagination project founded in 2020, responds to this predicament by bringing people together to generate, explore and reflect on engaging fictional visions of sustainable worlds, with a particular focus on fashion systems. The project has involved over 6000 participants to date, generating new stories and, for many participants, inspiring hope about the possibility of change.

A new phase of work will shift the focus from the creation of positive visions to the process of transition. ‘Backstories’ generated by project contributors – explanations of how each fictional world came to split off from our own world – will be used in participatory enactment workshops. In many of these fictional accounts, the split takes place at a moment of crisis; a period of transformation typically follows, in which new systems and norms are established. The workshops are intended to enable participants to experience, albeit in an intentionally safe and distanced way, the grief and hope that radical change might entail, on both a personal and a societal level.

This presentation will share the thinking behind this new initiative and invite dialogue with the Psychosocial Studies community. I would be interested to discuss the potential benefits, and dangers, of using fiction and enactment to explore crisis; any comparable initiatives that could provide inspiration or guidance; and possible ways of evaluating the impacts on those taking part.

Current times highlight the desperate need for leadership that leaves us drawn to false idols who pretend they can save us from ourselves. Denouncing any public link between women and leadership, the U.S. President feeds the denigration born of a terror of women that leaves us all off-balance. In such times, what can women bring to the table that will help ease the terror so our voices might be heard in ways that are reparative rather than furthering the divides that threaten to take away our most basic freedoms?

Where is the place for ethics, morality, or basic care for others in this current economy? Although women are not alone in caring about these values, we have tended to be relegated to that basic bastion of care: home and family. How do we carry the truths of basic care back that we have learned - not only from our roles in family but also in our larger institutions - into the larger world in ways that might save us from ourselves?

We have watched how even good intentions can be turned terribly awry but there are also darker forces at play that must be contended with. In this era of dire invitations to repeat some of our worst epochs in history, we are invited to take a closer look at ourselves to see more clearly how we have gotten into this mess and how we might get ourselves out of it. Opposing this hysterical turn towards a deadly jouissance, the women on this roundtable will use the lenses of psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis, and group relations to better learn the lessons inherent in our troubled times and turn our laments into constructive actions so that we can become better leaders – and followers – as we try to reshape the future.

This paper explores the psychosocial and emotional dimensions of academic acceleration through the lens of personal experience, highlighting its complex interplay with feelings of emptiness. At the age of six, my decision to skip a grade initiated a trajectory of intellectual stimulation, yet it inadvertently amplified emotional isolation and developmental dissonance. While celebrated academically, this acceleration created a profound void, marked by a sense of separation from peers and a detachment from emotional needs—a void that continues to shape my adult life.

Using heuristic inquiry and psychodrama, I engage with the embodied memories of this journey, revisiting emotionally charged spaces through dreams, drawings, and creative improvisation. These methods allow me to uncover the hidden narratives of academic acceleration, focusing on how the pressures and expectations of early intellectual growth have lasting emotional consequences. The feelings of emptiness that emerged from this experience reflect a broader existential crisis, mirroring the precarity of development when hope for progress collides with unforeseen emotional costs.

In alignment with the conference theme of crisis as both danger and opportunity, this presentation frames the emotional consequences of academic acceleration as a personal crisis that catalyzed transformation. By embracing playfulness, humility, and curiosity, I explore how creative methodologies provide a reparative framework for navigating this internal landscape. Through this process, I demonstrate how emptiness, often dismissed as a deficit, can become a space for reflection, critical insight, and personal growth.

This paper contributes to the dialogue on crisis by examining how early academic challenges shape our inner worlds, offering a unique perspective on the interplay between intellectual advancement and emotional well-being. It aligns with the conference’s aim to foster critical reflection, demonstrating how personal crises can transform into opportunities for healing and profound understanding.

The argument culture—the privileging of agonistic forms of rhetorical exchange that underscore skepticism, dispute, and suspicion as synonymous with critical thinking—has been an object of rigorous critique in rhetorical thinking since at least the 2000s (D. Tannen, 1998; E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, 2002; P. Elbow, 2008; W. Booth, 2005, among others). The many interlaced crises that have come to define our polarizing and adversarial contemporary condition compel us to question once again the centrality of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” (P. Ricoeur, 1970) in standard practices of academic production and exchange and increasingly, in larger digital cultures where these logics often circulate in dilapidated, stultifying, and dangerous ways. How to engage with and respond pedagogically to the exhaustion of the argument culture? This presentation advances the concept of implicated reading as a pedagogical orientation that privileges the practicing (Pont, 2017) of receptive, expansive, and attuned forms of textual engagement that refuse regimes of “ritualized opposition” as synonymous with critical thinking and suspend the relief of closure and safe return to the self-gathering gesture of the “I claim.” I further elaborate on the pedagogical, rhetorical, and ethical implications of this reading orientation on academic knowledge exchange and on the dynamics of civic engagement in the digital age.

References

Booth, Wayne. “Blind Skepticism versus a Rhetoric of Assent.” College English, 67.4: 377-88.

Elbow, Peter. “The Doubting Game and the Believing Game: An Analysis of the Intellectual

Process.” In Writing Without Teachers. Oxford University Press, 1973. 147-91.

Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. Touching Feeling. Duke U.P., 2002.

Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words. Random House,

1998.

Pont, Antonia. A Philosophy of Practicing: with Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Edinburgh

UP, 2023.

Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Translated by Denis Savage.

Yale U.P., 1970.

Competitive performance culture, individualism and instrumentalisation of research are features of neoliberal academia. As mid-career employees of a university in the grip of austeritiy, we face increasing demands for efficiency and deliverables – and less resources for just about everything. With these work conditions contributing to an increasing sense of anxiety and despair, we ask: how can we maintain a basic sense of wellbeing and keep agency alive? Is there hope for a good working life within the university?

Feminist scholars (Kostera 2024, Stengers 2017) are speaking out against a culture of assembly-line research. From a psychosocial perspective, Gerard (2023) calls out “labor’s eclipse of life”, critiquing neoliberal work environments that perpetuate self-absence, while destroying our sense of feeling alive. In the neoliberal university, spaces and time for feeling, thinking, lingering, and experiencing are diminished. Collaboration becomes challenging. So many of our generation withdraw from it due to lack of financing, or the stress associated with appalling pressures from organizational restructuring and redundancy. Global politics add to a sense of impending doom. The university has a responsibility to respond to the world but many academics are too worn-out to engage. We long to be participants in an academic culture that is more vital, collaborative and caring.

Stengers (2017) calls for slow science as a form of social resistance and collective survival strategy. In this spirit, we started Creative Experience Lab (CEL). CEL is an intervention for neoliberal academia, which is fastpaced but deadening. In it we explore different ways of being and doing together: Articulating despair helps to process and endure, while creative, collaborative and caring strategies offer sustained hope for meaningfulness in the university.

Addressing the theme: Our paper emerges from a sustaining friendship and conversations about detrimental conditions for academic life and what we might do about it.

75% of people in Great Britain are worried about climate change (Office for National Statistics, 2021). Eco-anxiety encompasses emotional distress associated with environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and waste. It may be assumed that students, like the general population, are likely to experience eco-anxiety in a similar way. Kelly (2017) reported that there was a higher level of self-identified eco-anxiety amongst those who were on courses that directly dealt with climate change than those who were not.

This study set out to assess levels of eco-anxiety, general wellbeing, coping mechanisms, perceptions of support and the impact of eco-anxiety on the studies of undergraduate and post-graduate students across the university studying a variety of modules. A mixed-methods approach was used. 219 students responded to a survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty students.

Findings showed that eco-anxiety is significant among students across disciplines and correlates with lower well-being, especially among females and younger students. Studying environmental issues can intensify eco-anxiety but also boosts empowerment and determination to act. Students tended to cope with eco-anxiety by focussing on learning about solutions, taking action in their own lives and taking breaks from studying when needed. Students currently rely on friends and family for support, rather than the university.

It is recommended that a) eco-anxiety is acknowledged but not pathologized, and reframed as motivation for action by course leaders, equipping students to turn concerns into meaningful change and b) student communities to connect and share experiences should be fostered to enable emotional engagement alongside action.

This research project is to explore erotic feelings growing from the intersectionality of gender and race and its meanings in counselling relationships. I focus on the relationships between early career East Asian female counsellors and white male clients, which partially comes from my experience as an East Asian female counsellor working with white male clients, and also from my awareness of the phenomenon of East Asian women being fetishised in the Western culture and how it might be played in counselling relationships. This research is trying to go beyond the doer and done-to position and to understand the meaning of the erotic feelings in the relationship and for individuals. Instead of seeing it as a taboo, I value erotic feelings in counselling relationship since it is the space of our unrecognised feelings and a source of creativity. It narrates relational meanings through the deep and powerful bodily force, which hopefully can lead us to meet a person in more complexities. However, these experiences can be really challenging when powerful feelings are elicited and relational dynamics are enacted, especially for early career counsellors. I am researching nascent counsellors’ experiences because I am curious about how our emerging identities as counsellors are shaped by deep interpersonal encounters. The term “nascent” also carries the meaning of “birth”, “possibility”, and “vitality”. This research will be based on the reflexive-relational approach to phenomenology and psychosocial inquiry built on the basis of phenomenology. I hope this approach can bridge the lived emotional experiences and social power, the inner and outer worlds. Through deep interpersonal exploration, I hope the unspoken could be spoken about, the tension could be held, and the opportunity of meeting a person in full complexities could be clearer. This is the sense of "crisis" I am working through in my research.

Kierkegaard eloquently captures a deeply complex and contradictory aspect of anxiety: “There is something that is not dissention and strife, for there is nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound secret of innocence, that at the same time it is anxiety”. Kierkegaard’s ‘profound secret’ anticipates a psychosocial phenomenon that has shadowed our lives into the 21st century: this Nothing that is seemingly impossible to strive against because we ‘sense’ it rather than know/understand it. We are confronted with an aporia, an internal contradiction, offered the cold, false, and placating comfort of ‘there is nothing to be anxious about’, all the while knowing that indeed there is ‘a Nothing to be anxious about’. This is a Nothing embedded deeper into our psyche, a yawning abyss, that we can, at one (conscious) level be innocent of and have no strategy to strive against the anxieties. Here, perhaps, is one of psychoanalysis’ greatest gifts – its capacity to reveal the Nothing, with all its anxious-forming attributes, and present a different type of knowledge to strive against it. To work towards a graspable idea of these complexities, the focus of this paper will be the dream as an epistemic metaphor of the Nothing, drawing on concepts from Ella Sharpe (notably her work on metaphor) and Jacques Lacan (with a focus on his ideas on anxiety).

To mirror the themes of the conference, the issues at hand would seem to be the stress, depression, and anxiety that emerge from the Nothing, leaving us bereft of actions and comfort; yet in this seemingly hopeless place we find resilience to strive towards something stronger than coping (as Rhianna put it, something akin to love).

This paper critically examines melancholia through the dual lenses of Freudian and Lacanian theory, exploring its transformation from a natural process of mourning to a contemporary clinical condition. It aims to trace the experience of melancholia, by examining the presence and absence of palpable fabrics in the conceptual understanding of psychoanalysis. By unpacking the work of Sigmund Freud on Mourning and Melancholia (1917), the work twists and tangles with the relational schools and Lacanian framework to construct an understanding of pathological mourning.

The crisis of present times with increasing numbers of people experiencing clinical depression, this paper helps to understand the uneasy grappling with the neurosis and ‘the psychotic’ side of it. With carefully turning the tables from the burden of an overarching absence of the lost object, how it could manifest as an excessive presence, this study closely examines the concepts given by Freud, Klein, Lacan and other theorists. The investigation suggests that in the trajectory of depressive disorder, the ‘working through’ is denoted, not by forgetting the lost object but to find the right way to commemorate the loved-lost object (Hook, 2018).

The paper further situates this theoretical discourse within the context of today’s global mental health crisis, where rising rates of depression signal a collective struggle with the inability to mourn and commemorate loss in a socially and psychologically adaptive manner. By reinterpreting melancholia, this study invites a reconsideration of how we understand and treat loss in an increasingly fragmented, post- covid and crisis-ridden world.

Key words: mourning, psychoanalysis, remembering, loss

The paper’s argument is based on a comparative review of two recently published books: ‘Negative Psychoanalysis for the Living Dead – Philosophical Pessimism and the Death Drive’ from Julie Reshe, and Gideon Lev’s ‘Spiritually Sensitive Psychoanalysis’. While the previous one presents an explicitly atheist psychoanalytic approach, the latter’s theoretical framework and therapeutic guidelines are based on certain spiritual beliefs. Although both authors trace back their framings to Freud and Lacan, however they have very different readings of them. In order to address these basic differences in interpretation, the paper shows how certain notions applied in both concepts, such as ‘selfless ego,’ ‘self-devotion,’ ‘salvation,’ ‘illusion,’ and ‘saint,’ express very diverse meanings in the context of atheist and spiritually sensitive psychoanalysis. Analyzing these notion-related differences it raises a number of crucial questions as well. What can be the goal of psychotherapy according to these framings? How can the ideal therapist be described along these understandings? What is the meaning of therapeutic intimacy through these perspectives? In our age, which is increasingly characterized by the deconstruction of social patterns and collective references, subjects are urged, in many ways and due to diverse pressures, to invent and continuously (re-)constitute themselves in order to better reflect on their individual challenges and the various social crises around them. The paper claims that the examined psychoanalytic framings, though in mostly contradictory forms, are striving to provide ‘contemporary’ answers to these individual concerns, sufferings, and trials.

We are facing a technoscientific crisis of responsibility. Emerging technologies like AI, virtual reality, brain-computer interfaces, and synthetic biology are immensely powerful and pose enormous risks. The recent turn to justice in technology ethics has called for society’s right to refuse certain technologies (e.g., facial recognition surveillance and autonomous weapons). However, engineers and innovators don’t like being told, “no”. Why is this the case and what does it say for our ability to stop harmful innovations if those developing new technologies have trouble letting go of their beloved objects? This presentation explores the affective psychosocial relationships between engineers and their technologies and how they manage uncomfortable feelings when being asked to consider stopping an innovation. It draws from research conducted with university and industry engineers developing novel “touchless” haptic technologies for autonomous vehicles. 25 engineers and researchers were asked to respond to prompts and write a fictional scenario set in the near future with specific instructions to try to imagine risks and harms associated with the technology. I conducted follow-up interviews with 13 engineers to learn more about how they felt reflecting on harm and risk. The presentation draws from psychoanalytic psychosocial studies (Kleinian tradition) to explore the uncomfortable feelings that arise when innovators are asked to confront risks and harms associated with their work - frustration, guilt, envy, empathy, anxiety – and how the discomfort brought about by these emotional conflicts is defended against at different levels – individual, group, and institution. It will also consider what scope there is for responsible innovation and the governance of emerging technologies in the context of this defendedness. Is it possible to say “no” to people who are emotionally invested in the birth and realisation of their innovations? Conference relevance - Coping mechanisms and resilience (in context of technoscientific responsibility).

In this presentation, we propose a psychosocial diagnosis of the present crisis of democracy – one that links mundane cultural practices to wider political effects. More concretely, we propose a close connection between digital culture and an erosion of trust in democratic institutions within wider political-economic contexts. Specifically, we argue that the ways in which cultural forms of communication and interaction have been changing under the influence of digitalisation are closely linked to an ongoing ‘turn towards the self’. This turn, we claim, is at the same time one away from established democratic institutions.
Already at the level of basic media affordances – “liking”, “following”, “sharing” – an orientation towards the self becomes evident. Due to the basic ‘publicity’ of online interactions, users tend to become absorbed by questions of how the articulation of what they do online might reflect back on them. This reflexive capture, in turn, plays into ongoing neoliberal transformation processes in Western-type societies – individualism, improvement, competition. Together, they increasingly undermine interpersonal cohesion and concern for others. Online communities focused on wellness and health, for example, are becoming increasingly suffused with attitudes that drastically reject national-health institutions. In our paper, we analyse one such case of a self-improvement community and its turn away from democratic principles in an effort to cast light on the main lines of reasoning accompanying this turn.

In this discussion, we will delve into the internal world of individuals with schizoid personality traits as they navigate the social media landscape. By using prominent psychoanalytic theories and observing schizoid dynamics in the context of social media, we aim to unveil the complexities of this hidden, semi-anonymous world.

Individuals with schizoid personality often struggle to establish and maintain meaningful relationships due to deep-seated insecurities rooted in early experiences of frustration and disappointment. Social media provides a platform for these individuals to seek connections with others, yet these digital relationships are often fragile and easily broken. Our inquiry will focus on the emotional dynamics underpinning these online interactions and the role social media plays in shaping them.

Despite their interpersonal challenges, individuals with schizoid personality possess a remarkable capacity for psychological insight. This intriguing juxtaposition serves as the foundation for further research and clinical interventions and continues to influence contemporary psychoanalytic and psychosocial discourse.

We argue that social media presents a double-edged sword for individuals in the schizoid state. On one hand, it offers hope for meaningful connections; on the other, it can lead to sudden disconnections and vulnerability, mirroring the paranoid-schizoid position. this is kind of crisis which the conference theme layed on .This paper aims to shed light on the enigmatic inner world of schizoid personalities as they interact with the digital realm, fostering a deeper understanding of their unique experiences and struggles.

Social dreaming was originally developed by Gordon Lawrence. It is an experiential event in which we offer our night-time dreams and free associate to them to work towards a collective sense of themes arising from them. There is no obligation or turn taking involved, no need to raise hands, just a sensitivity that usually comes from the activity itself and our immersion in the dreams and reverie of free associations.

The time is spent in two phases, an initial event in which participants share dreams and associations and a reflection event in which participants do sense making of the material that emerged during the matrix. The first phase is roughly twice as long as the second.

The event is limited to 20 participants.

This paper explores the psychosocial dimensions of the permanent polycrisis, focusing on how transgenerational embodied shame in the Irish Catholic diaspora destabilises mother and daughter relationships. This practice-based research examines the impact of embodied shame within the Irish Catholic diaspora in London. In investigates how transgenerational shame shapes the mother-daughter relationship through psychoanalysis, philosophy, film, performance, and embodied practice to reimagine the maternal relation as transformative.

Philosophically grounded in Luce Irigaray’s concept of “shared air,” which views breath as a medium of relational exchange. The research contextualises these dynamics within colonial histories and state control over female bodies. By addressing silences, bodily traces, and inherited trauma, it highlights the urgency of engaging with “histories that hurt” (Ahmed) in the present.

Central to this project is its durational and participatory nature, demonstrated through embodied workshops that foster communal reflection and nonjudgemental engagement with shame. Participants are invited to connect with their own breath and relational rhythms, creating a shared space to physically, emotionally, and intellectually confront the legacy of maternal shame and its lingering affects. Interweaving archival research from Ireland and London with embodied methodologies, this practice bridges historical narratives with embodied, creative responses to trauma, shame and crisis.

Through the durational nature of the practice, the project mirrors the conference’s ethos, fostering collective encounters and sustained reflection as vital tools for psychosocial repair. The session will include an embodied circular reading, offering participants a direct experience of the methodologies underpinning the research, while inviting collective reflection on shame, crisis, resilience, and relational transformation.

This research contributes to psychosocial studies by reframing the destabilization of modernity through embodied and relational practices. It envisions maternal relations as sites of co-becoming, offering a reparative response to the polycrisis through collective engagement with shared histories and transformative futures.

Interpersonal violence may represent a point of acute crisis for the perpetrator, victim, and their wider social milieu in terms of family, community, and society. The emergence of homicidal, or other significant, violence come into being through a condensation of conscious and unconscious dynamic factors bringing to light the systemic pressures of objective violence into a subjective act. A myriad of interpersonal dynamic factors may become active including, but not limited to, an exposure to the existential fear of death, dialectic tension between the role of victim and perpetrator, and paradoxical responses to attachment and care experience.

Recent high-profile cases, in the UK criminal courts, have demonstrated the way that various agencies, within the criminal justice system, have a duty, in the face of individual and group level violence, to maintain a capacity for thought and open reflection – crucially in an impartial and independent manner. This can be challenging, on a background of increasing levels of objective violence and restricted resources, as well as in the face of violence that can be destructive to the process of thought, even for onlookers beyond the victim and perpetrator. Maintenance of reflective space, in the face of this frightening onslaught, is essential, however.

In this paper, through the use of an illustrative case vignette drawn from my role as an expert psychiatric witness, I will try to demonstrate the importance of this process – in the face of attacks on thinking – and to offer a reflection in terms of the role and challenges faced by various agents in the criminal justice system in discharging this duty. Ultimately, I suggest that, while challenging, we have a duty to face the trauma of interpersonal violence in a reflective manner to promote healing for the victim, their communities, the perpetrator, and society more broadly.

As an Indian, my sense of self is continually challenged by colonial and racial projections that reduce me to fixed understandings of being ‘brown’ or ‘Indian.’ The positioning of the racialised ‘other’ as a passive recipient of projections reinforces the colonial paradigm of objectification, where the object is bereft of subjectivity. By splitting and projecting parts of oneself onto the object, the subject, in turn, grapples with a reduced sense of self. This dynamic sustains structures of dominance and subjugation, as observed in the rise of far-right violence across the United Kingdom. In the face of such dehumanising objectification, how does one experience one’s subjectivity?

Psychotherapeutic theories that assume a prior separation between the self and the other risk reproducing this colonial paradigm. Decolonial analyses of psychoanalytic theory reveal the conflation of childhood with dependency (and primitiveness), normalisation of domination and violence as primary relational modes, and universalisation of the human mind as existing prior to socio-cultural experience (Nandy 1983; Swartz 2023; Tummala-Narra 2022). This foregrounds the broader crisis of relationality inherent in modernity/coloniality that fragments the self, implicit in the very theories we draw upon for healing.

In this presentation, I examine my experiences in the therapeutic encounter as a psychotherapist and the fractures in relationality I have experienced as I draw on psychoanalytic theoretical concepts. I draw upon my cultural encounters with music, oral histories, and lived experiences to inform my analysis of the paradox of psychotherapy as both a response to and a symptom of social rupture, recognising its embeddedness in modernity/coloniality. In line with the conference theme, this work highlights the mutual entanglement of the psyche and the world, linking everyday objectification, relational alienation, and systemic violence, thereby addressing crisis as systemic, relational, and multi-layered.

This paper will examine the migration of the antisemitic hashtag, #JewGoal, from the FIFA video game series to online discussions of real-world football. By analysing 1,364 public tweets of the ‘Jew goal’ hashtag on the social media platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), it details how this seemingly innocuous hashtag, originating in the FIFA video game community, has become a vehicle for antisemitic rhetoric, drawing upon historical stereotypes and cultural symbols. Focusing on the hashtag’s deployment across diverse contexts—including commentary on individual players, team performances, and football rivalries—while also highlighting the normalization of antisemitic language within online communities, the paper draws from Lacanian theory in order to investigate the enjoyment and motivations underpinning the perpetuation of online antisemitism. Utilizing Lacan’s concepts of jouissance and llanguage, it is argued that the hashtag’s prevalence stems from an inherent enjoyment in its application across various antisemitic tropes, regardless of contextual relevance. This enjoyment, linked to the formation of in-group identity and online othering within gaming and football fan cultures, underscores the hashtag’s function as a marker of belonging, fostering a sense of community through shared knowledge of the term’s offensive origins. Challenging traditional approaches to understanding and addressing online hate speech, and moving beyond content-based analyses to emphasize the affective and unconscious dimensions of online communication, the paper reveals how the enjoyment underpinning the hashtag’s adoption can advocate for a deeper consideration of the libidinal investments driving the perpetuation of antisemitism in digital spaces. In the context of rising political polarization and the growing influence of far-Right ideologies, the paper situates the hashtag within a broader psychosocial landscape marked by crisis, highlighting its role in exacerbating social divisions and perpetuating digital violence.

In this symposium, the FREEPSY collective explores crisis, critique and creativity in relation to psychoanalytic free clinics. In the first part (Crisis, Psychoanalytic Ecologies and a Psychoanalysis-to-Come), we discuss the reconfigurations of the psychoanalytic frame related to racist and heteropatriarchal societal crises. We imagine a post-human feminist intervention in the clinical realm, while exploring the possibility of a drive to care. Finally, in a collective presentation, we talk to the audience about a recent experience of constructing and mobilising a global Free Clinics Network. In this collective conversation, we aim to open up a futurity pertaining to a new ‘clinical ecology’, which puts suffering at the centre of a reconfigured social bond.

In the second part (Solidarity, Struggle and the Bonds-that-Hold), we discuss the role of psychoanalysis when war, political conflict, and interpersonal violence dominate the world. We look at the intersection between the enlivened activity of free psychoanalysis clinics around the world and the work of grassroot movements. Through an analysis of original archival material, we discuss the struggles encountered by psychoanalytic collectives in asserting and organising their social mission, in the 1930s, in a time of unfreedom and oppression. Focusing on Berlin and Budapest, we explore the themes such as trauma, persecution, displacement, material and emotional deprivation.

All speakers are part of the collective research project ‘FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for our Times’, based at the University of Essex, UK (freepsy.essex.ac.uk).

During and post the Covid pandemic, there has been a new emphasis on ‘home’ and how it is inhabited, within inside and outside spaces, which, combined with home-working, work-life balance, gardening for well-being, environmental anxieties, further pandemic threat and global violence, means that what makes a space ‘Homely’ and safe is of increasing importance. There is a revisiting of the concept of ‘self-sufficient off-grid green living’ Seymore (1976) towards a ‘more sustainable future’ which mirrors the first settled, permanent neolithic homes when farming began. I suggest that these are a parallel place to begin my conceptualisation of an achieved good enough sense of ‘Home’ space, which is beyond the ‘womb’ to a constructed safely organised internalised safe parental structure, as I discuss in relation to the role of the consulting room and the therapeutic process, and the space of home considering the ‘spatialisation’ (Wright 2019, 2022) onto spaces (Searles [1960], Wollheim [1969] and Rey [1994]) to impose ‘human order on the otherwise disorderly natural world.’ (Thomas, 1984, p256). I look at clinical case material of phantasy escaping to safe climate change homesteads. I also look at the phantasy of the unsafe home planet and the moving away to a new home planet, such as Mars, that will be safer in which, as Karl Figlio describes, ‘you bypass destructiveness. Once we have polluted earth, we move on to Mars. It is like the misogynist fantasy that the man pollutes the woman and then moves on to an undamaged one.’ (Wright, 2024). I will address the conference themes of climate crisis, existential crisis, trauma and loss, home dispossession, homelessness, the consulting room and being haunted by bad homes and phantasy good ones with my conceptualising of the enablement of sense of a good enough home space that can be safely inhabited.

In this paper I propose to gloss my recent doctoral research on Brexit and psychoanalysis by repositioning the theme of the conference – crisis – in terms of a conversion disorder. Following Jamieson Webster, conversion disorder can be regarded as an inheritance of Freud’s early clinical work, a diagnostic category which goes beyond more familiar alternatives in its distinctive insinuation of a hidden ‘order’ behind or beyond the manifestation of psychosomatic disarray. Picking up on the philosophical and religious resonances of the term, Webster (2019, p.50) emphasises that conversion meets ‘a growing need to speak about matters of disenchantment, disappointment, and ennui’. In this paper, I relate the all-pervasive sense of ‘disappointment’ to the condition of UK politics since 2016, arguing that Brexit requires an urgent reengagement with postcolonial claims on the psychosocial order. Yet eschewing a strictly deconstructive ethos, I sustain my ‘negative’ assessment of Brexit by appealing to an alternative ‘positive’ model of psychoanalytic politics which reckons with the mutual imbrication between ethics, politics and metaphysis. With reference to the post-Hegelian philosophy of Gillian Rose (1992), including Rose’s critique of psychoanalytic pretensions to metaphysical abstinence, I position the Freudian psyche in the ‘broken middle’ between ethics and law. In an effort to give political content to this claim, I turn to the historian Stella Ghervas’s (2021) account of the European project, relating the struggle of conversion – and continuous reconversions – to the pursuit of a ‘spirit of peace’ in the midst of metastasising ethnic populisms.

Chile, shaped by the imposition of neoliberalism during the dictatorship and its ongoing continuation, bears deep sociocultural wounds. These wounds intertwine historical and present realities—colonialism, dictatorship, patriarchy, environmental devastation, and systemic inequalities—that hinder the possibility of a dignified life. As filmmaker Raúl Ruiz once suggested, Chile offers little more than consumption and melancholy. Yet, alongside despair, pockets of resistance persist and continuously emerge.

Rather than succumbing to paralysis, some communities cultivate alternative responses to imposed and inherited conditions. My PhD research explores two permaculture communities—intentional living experiments—to examine how their worldviews and practices offer embodied cultural tools for navigating sociohistorical pain and the current polycrisis. Through ethnographic inquiry and participatory research, I investigate how these communities foster psychosocial healing by emphasizing the commons, collective life production, and communitarian gestures.

Their practices intertwine ecosocial restoration, syntropy, and creativity, offering grounded, embodied alternatives to despair. These experiences emphasize care and transformation within localized territories, resisting reliance on externally imposed public policies or market-driven solutions. By centering small-scale, community-driven responses, this research highlights how collective creativity and ecological regeneration serve as tangible strategies for addressing sociocultural suffering in contemporary Chile.

This paper outlines how communities are playing a crucial role in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). It analyses how families and communities affected by violent-radicalisation are navigating the difficulties in combatting terrorism while coping with ongoing suspicion by the state, media and society. The paper reviews specific activities developed by families, communities, civil society groups and former combatants to steer people away from terrorism and create safe spaces for nonviolent protest which, though more credible, still attract scrutiny due to them operating independently of, and simultaneously challenging the narratives of, the state. It calls for a more holistic, evidence-based approach that recognises the unique contributions of non-state actors and challenges the structural drivers of political violence that state-dominated methods fail to address.

This paper shares findings from the literature review of Andy Morris’ PhD study, which explores the complex interplay between social workers’ experiences of shame and their mental health. Using the metaphor of the “monster under the bed” to symbolize shame, the review examines key themes such as motivations for entering the profession, including altruism and personal experiences, and how these shape one’s professional identity through the lenses of Social Identity Theory and Caregiver Role Identity Theory.

The review highlights the prevalence of stress and burnout among social workers, often linked to secondary and vicarious trauma. It also examines coping mechanisms, such as stoicism, that intersect with mental health stigma. Professional stigma, compounded by fear of judgment and threats to the social worker’s identity, emerges as a significant barrier to seeking help, exacerbating hidden struggles and increasing the risk of burnout.

To move from crisis towards resilience, Tilia presents her doctoral research on RAW- resilience, advocacy and wellbeing. This research project focused on the lived experience of female leaders in health and social care in 2022, when their personal and professional lives were still situated in a global pandemic context. The study signified the inequality of gender and background of the participants within their perceived positions of power in their leadership roles.

The participants conceptualized and subsequently ‘Reclaimed Resilience’ by reflecting on the intersectionality of gender, age, health and race. They challenged the neoliberal notion of not being ‘resilient enough’ as a woman, mother, carer and leader and the politicisation of the term.

Through Appreciative Inquiry participants defined what resilience, advocacy and wellbeing meant to them in their personal and professional lives, exploring how practice in health and social care could be made safer through compassionate leadership and organisational cultures of kindness.

I am now a lecturer at the University of Stavanger, but have a background as a humanitarian worker within the field of maternal health. Humanitarian workers are often welcomed and most needed persons in the areas they go to work. They can be considered doing an important job on behalf of the society they normally live in. and private persons finance organisations that sends out humanitarian workers.
I am in the process of writing a piece and would like to present for you a character in this piece: Susanna, a humanitarian health worker.
Susanna is a humanitarian worker and have been on several missions for a humanitarian organization. She starts her work journey as an unexperienced and a little bit naïve health worker. She wants to do her little part to “save the world” and is enthusiastic when going on her first mission.
Her meeting with poverty and misery changes her in ways she had not predicted. She has her profession, her motivation and her belief system as support and as a lifeline through the missions.
She worked in a hospital in a war zone and saw poor people dying and living under tyranny. She has worked in a refugee camp and seen the despair and hopelessness among the refugees.
Looking back, she goes through the emotionally experiences she has endured, and in a safe space back home she reflects over what she has been through and the people she has met.
There are experiences that haunts her as well as experiences that she considers some of the most precious in her life. Who are we after traumatic experiences?
She reflects around repression, crisis and grief as well as what can support healing, around friendship and about finding new insight after having seen what human suffering can look like.

I am a PhD Candidate using Collaborative Auto-ethnography as methodology to elucidate two under-studied areas of trauma: Familial Child Sexual Abuse (FCSA) and hallucination, using my embodied experience of familial Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibition as a model. Incest is a confronting and taboo topic, both in practice and in public discourse, in most parts of the world. Shame, and fear (Deering, 2011), therefore, may play a large role in the silence and under-reporting of victim-survivors, as may their poorer Quality of Life Outcomes (QoL), access to education and socio-economic status (Cole & Putnam, 1992). MAOI Inhibition research has mainly focused upon male criminality with impact of female MAOI often a footnote (Mentis et al. 2021, McDermott et al. 2009). Furthermore, there is a complete absence of research/information on the impacts of MAOI driven male criminality/sexual abuse/violence on female family members.

More recently, within psychiatry and the social sciences, there has been a shift to seek out and give voice to embodied lived experiences (Belser, 2017), as exemplified by phenomenological movements including Narrative Theory and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Larsen et.al. 2022, Fuchs, 2010). These qualitative research movements seek to include survivor voices in the co-creation of therapeutic and/or social interventions, including experimentation with creative forms of expression including dance, music, theatre, narrative therapy, the use of reflexive journaling and exploration of magical themes (de Andrade 2022). However, even within these innovative, qualitative, arts and humanities informed research movements, the paucity of Familial Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) survivor voices about their embodied lived experience is glaring (Valentine 1993; Pease 2017). My presentation will be a multi-media PREZI sharing my experience of MAOI induced hallucinations and their intersection with FCSA commencing as a 12-year-old. In this way I hope to share what it means to survive FCSA, hallucinate and make meaning of trauma.

This presentation shares my experience of piloting a telepresence robot as a reasonable adjustment for teaching in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. I taught from home using the robot to facilitate interactive social science seminars. I will be focusing on realising the impact of meaningful inclusion, the development of relationships with students and colleagues within learning spaces and how a sense of self and value is challenged and defined in this context. I draw on post-human discourse adopting the viewpoint of the cyborg. Where technology is used as an extension of the self, the cyborg narrative challenges dominant discourses of technology that are framed as ‘assistive’. Therefore, centring my experience as a disabled person, is key in understanding ‘virtual embodiment’ and the impact upon my identity during a time which is hailed as ‘post-COVID’. I reflect on the institutional barriers encountered and propose strategies for wide-scale rollout of telepresence as a reasonable adjustment for all. I have dreamed of fleets of telepresence robots being available at all public spaces, and the cost of not supporting this cyborg dream is not a financial one but an ethical and human one. Investment in supporting disabled people’s right to work, and right to a full life can be a practical demonstration of ethical rigour and aligns with the shared missions of equality and diversity present across all higher education institutions.

This is a working session on the following questions: ‘What constitutes a crisis?’ ‘How to know if one is in the middle of one’? ‘What does it mean to realize (suddenly) one is in a crisis?’ How does a crisis feel, while one is used to habits, living by social norms and expectations of one’s self and others. In other words: ‘What is normal?’ We seem to need the word crisis to express something, but what exactly?

Example: My son is diagnosed as autistic, a challenge for him and for his parents. His ‘normal’ is not my ‘normal’. There is no doubt I recognized him being psychotic (having psychotic episodes) during the first half of last year. But that is not to say that my own thoughts, feelings and relation to my son and other family members and friends were clear to me or in any way under control. Obviously, the situation was very difficult for my son, but I needed to accept that as a family we needed help.

Example: I have felt the weather not being normal for a long time already, probably more than 10 – 15 years already. And I mean based on my own observations and experience other than reading the news and following the forecasts. This situation is now coming to the foreground, where some years ago a newspaper like the Guardian was the first to publicly speak of a climate crisis in all its publications (instead of using the words global warming). We are now getting used to the words poly-crisis and to people stating that living in these times of crisis, is the new normal. Does that mean it is not a crisis anymore?

A cursory look at contemporary right-wing ideologies shows that penises are unexpectedly everywhere. This obsession unites many factions of the far right, from gun rights advocates and conservative U.S. Republicans to biological racists and anti-trans conspiracy theorists around the world. How might we explain such a phenomenon while being mindful of the much-deserved critique of Freudian phallocentrism leveraged by feminist scholars over the last few decades?

In this paper, I propose to use Freudian theory catabolically, not as a universal explanation of sexual subjectivity but rather a window into the subjective structures of those who believe in its universalism. Using techniques drawn from Freud himself (along with Lacan and modern rhetorical theory), I will read far-right discourses in classical Freudian terms, examining their claims for universality as symptoms rather than psychoanalytic priciples of investigation.

To illustrate this process, I will analyze United States Executive Order 14168 which establishes the existence of two biological sexes as official government doxa. Read in the broader context of phallic right-wing discourse, this executive order demonstrates the unspoken fixation on male genitals as a "quilting point" pinning together a broader effort to stabilize (Woman's) sexual identity, and foreclose the contingency of the Symbolic and the impossibility of sex, to borrow from Zupančič.

This project offers a way of thinking about the far-right need to master uncertainty, one aspect of our interconnected "polycrisis." It also offers a potential response. Rather than (only) directly critiquing far right ideology directly, we may capitalize on precisely the thing it cannot tolerate: ambiguity, in this case, irony. Drawing from rhetorical theory, I consider how ironic affirmation and acceptance of the right-wing love of male genitals might destabilize their hermetic self-identities with a (trolling) celebration of their identities without shoring up the rigid categories of cisgender heterpatriarchy.

This study examines the evolution of Falun Gong, a new religious movement, through a series of crises. In the 1980s, China’s post-communist reform brought major challenges, including social anxiety, a spiritual void, and a diminished public healthcare system. In response to such crisis, "Qigong fever" emerged, providing spiritual comfort and low-cost alternative healthcare. Falun Gong emerged as part of this movement and experienced exponential growth.

However, Falun Gong’s success soon led to the Chinese government’s misgivings and subsequent crackdown. This crisis resulted in two key outcomes. First, it ended organized Falun Gong practice inside China, prompting many members to flee abroad. Second, the crackdown transformed Falun Gong into a de facto political movement. In exile, Falun Gong persistently staged protests against the Chinese government, leveraging its massive membership and media networks, which gained broad support in the West.

Less well known, however, is Falun Gong’s alignment with right-wing politics over the years, exemplified by its support for Donald Trump, the spread of misinformation, and opposition to vaccination, minority rights, and gender equality. Falun Gong’s turn to right-wing politics raises two additional questions about crisis.

First, Falun Gong justifies its involvement in right-wing politics through the lens of crisis, asserting that the West is facing the threat of communist domination and a loss of freedom. Second, this study argues that the West’s failure to understand Falun Gong’s multifaceted profile is indicative of an epistemological crisis. To address this latter question, the study applies Deleuze and Guattari’s poststructuralist thoughts to analyze Falun Gong’s transnational metamorphosis through crises.

Rationale: This presentation addresses the various crises through which Falun Gong has evolved, concluding with a discussion of the epistemological crisis scholars face in understanding its complex profile.

In his introduction to Anti-Oedipus Michel Foucault wrote that “the major enemy, the strategic advisory is fascism. [. . .] the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism the causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (Foucault in Deleuze and Guattari 2003: xiii). And, as Deleuze and Guattari remind us in A Thousand Plateaus, “what makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolitical power, for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a totalitarian organism” (2003: 215). Fifty-two years later we see microfascisms metastasising across the globe. This problem is most acute in zones where the economic and social crises of neoliberal capitalism are especially pronounced, begging the question, what is the relationship between neoliberalism, crisis and (micro)fascism?

Drawing from Guattari and Deleuze’s thought, the psychosocial insights of institutional analysis, and the work on Jacques Lacan, this will examine how the financialization of the global economy has created a “perfect storm” environment for fascism to flourish. The talk will argue that the injection of risk and volatility into the global economic system has created a socius that is constantly being torn apart, in other words a properly psychotic system. To live such precarious lives, I will argue that people collective reterritorialize their psyche in either an obsessive neurotic state (the liberal left’s obsession with “norms” as well as the aspiration to middle management and the belief that if you just work extra hard, you can have security) or by turning to authority, i.e. fascism. This talk will be anchored in an analysis of firsthand observations of fascist nationalist groups working together with international business leaders.

This piece is an autoethnographic investigation of the unconscious valences of academic research choices. Using psychosocial theory, the author outlines the biographical events leading to their research on the representation of depression in contemporary popular nonfiction. The Freudian and Lacanian concepts of the super-ego and Big Other are used to describe the pressures of academic knowledge production, and set into relation to the author’s political commitments. The analysis works towards an identification of unconscious elements in the author’s research, understanding it beyond its topic focus as a reparative and intergenerational project.

Concentrating particularly on the theory of Mark Fisher and its relation to their own experiences and work on the politics of mental health, the author follows through a signifying chain of 'the sadness of Marxist men'. This is set in relation to the author's own experiences of depression and relationship to their father.

Beyond an idea of 'including the subject in research' or examing 'underlying feelings', this piece seeks rather to challenge a binary between thought and feeling under the formulation 'feeling as intellectuality'. This is a thus also an interevention into psychosocial studies itself, mirroring descriptions of it as a 'catachresis' (Posocco, 2024) that even while containing an inherent division between 'pscyho' and 'social', at once commits to a totality of structure and experience in which such things are not neatly divisble.

This totality is mirrored in the Marxist political commitments interrogated in the piece, and it thus serves not just as a mediation on knowledge production, but also on the contradictory difficulty and necessity of poitical militancy to change society for the better in our current moment.

We are at a crossroads of trust, truth and authenticity in the history of global culture. Despite the careful and clever theorization of aesthetic experience, which has amongst other things, established the fallaciousness of objectivity in documentary, noted the significance of unconscious sublimation in abstract, experimental and surrealist art and film, and disclosed the mechanics of institutional white supremacy in systems of production, it is as though the difficult work of learning how to think/view/listen critically and skeptically, being open to other possibilities and other truths, is radically diminishing.

From the initial positivism of spreadable media to the current psychotic hallucinations of its fragmented micro shards and scrolls, we are inundated with the bad faith of slippery ontological relationships to reality. How can we trust our screens? Where do we begin and what assumptions must we recognize, if only to challenge and unpick them, in order to rediscover or reimagine authentic, progressive and trustworthy screen futures?

In this talk, I consider and develop Wilfred Bion’s concept of the ‘bizarre object’ to think about the consequences of our unthought experiences with various media, including the small screens we carry with us at all times. Originally coined to define the specific type of psychotic hallucination experienced by schizophrenics, I extend Bion’s notion of the bizarre object to explore broader themes and experiences of hallucination, virtuality and transformation, specifically attending to media object use. I am interested in expanding the clinical context of bizarre objects to consider the unthought projections that dominate our media use and production, which may further illuminate the emptiness endemic to social media use, yet (to end on a positive note) paradoxically indicate a desire for trust and a need to know.

This mixed-methods study explored 110,000 online conversations about death, dying, and bereavement from 2003-2020.

The study highlighted how digital communities provide important emotional support during times of crisis. Using natural language processing and qualitative analysis, the study identified three key ways online spaces support individuals: by providing comfort and validation from others who may be going through similar experiences; by enabling users to build capabilities and be sign posted towards the right information; and by creating communities that people can return to in order to find support.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted both the increased importance of these digital spaces when in-person services are halted and the barriers that still exist in trying to access them. The findings demonstrate that online communities are important platforms where people can find peer support, comfort and community during times of loss and change. Digital inequality, however, remains a significant barrier to these forums reaching their full potential. This research offers key insights into how online communities could become better integrated into existing support systems while preserving the grassroots, user-led qualities that make them safe spaces during times of crisis and when people are experiencing a bereavement.

Keywords: online communities, crisis support, digital health, peer support, COVID-19

Our paper explores the experience of working with women volunteers helping male asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland Dorset, where we set out to produce a soundscape that captures the psychosocial mood of Portland Bay through the voices of its residents.

The project builds on research conducted by The Weymouth and Portland Community Research Network that focused on the isolation and deprivation of residents in the area. It also highlights the need for Portland residents to develop a reparative community voice as a response to the racism stirred up in relation to fantasies of migration for which the barge became a powerful symbol, attracting global media attention. With that in mind, our research team have used a collaborative psychosocial approach that uses a mix of social dreaming, poetry and audio media to capture the voices of women from the Portland Global Friendship Group to evoke the conscious and unconscious feelings of residents who felt compelled to assist those men on the barge and show solidarity with them and each other at a time of division and upheaval.

This paper explores the unspoken struggles faced by counselling psychologist trainees in Hong Kong as they navigate tensions between Western therapeutic models and their own cultural and linguistic realities. These challenges arise from the need to reconcile English-language training with Cantonese-language practice, reflecting the coloniality of knowledge embedded in therapeutic frameworks. This tension generates unconscious anxieties that shape trainees’ supervisory relationships, therapeutic encounters, and professional identity. However, these struggles remain largely unspoken, leading to a sense of disconnection and marginalisation, creating an identity crisis within the profession.

Psychosocial thematic analysis will be introduced as a method for exploring unconscious processes within the broader socio-political context. Integrating the psychosocial approach with reflexive thematic analysis provides a framework for exploring shared themes across research participants, facilitating an understanding of how unconscious dynamics interact with power structures, cultural histories, and socio-political contexts. Rather than considering unconscious dynamics as exclusively intrapsychic, psychosocial thematic analysis situates them within broader historical and structural contexts, influenced by colonial legacies, power dynamics, and cultural resistance. The examination of these struggles reveals the embedding of the unconscious within a collective postcolonial psyche, shaped by histories of domination and resistance.

This paper will present the initial codes and themes from the researcher’s PhD project, addressing the potential unconscious dynamics that emerge in the interpretation of the data. Through this, group-level themes are proposed as the researcher examines how unconscious processes manifest within wider contexts. This contribution resonates with the conference theme by framing professional identity crises as both a challenge and an opportunity for transformation. It calls for a more reflexive approach in supervision and training to address these unconscious dynamics. By challenging the coloniality of knowledge, this approach promotes a more integrated professional identity and supports trainees in navigating the cultural and linguistic complexities of their practice.

This talk is a personal account of the struggle to find and sustain hope in these despairing times. When faced by the grim reality of a world overrun by right wing populists pedalling their politics of hate, violence, malice and greed, is it even worth the effort to look for hope? Where is the light in this ever darkening world – or has it already been extinguished?

This talk is my attempt to work my way towards hope. It is not certain that I will get there. It is a work in progress.

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.

This autoethnographic inquiry traces my experience of confronting maternal transference and grief through an encounter with a peer on my counsellor training programme. I explore my (dis)embodied experience of accessing my grief from maternal abuse and estrangement which surfaced years later when I came into contact with Natasha, who reminded me of my mother and instantly reactivated my trauma responses. I comment on cultural norms specific to motherhood, womanhood and the insidious competitiveness in female friendships in the Indian context that have followed me to the U.K. I trudge through this marsh in real time, documenting my anguish and fear as I experience it, contrary to what is typically expected of autoethnographic work where we are encouraged to practise vulnerability and self-preservation. This piece is a performance of my hesitations and grief, an advent of closure that I come closer to as I continue to write and immerse myself in my agony, abandonment and the guilt that accompanies the process. I write into fractured timelines, geographies and fears, swerving ‘In’ and ‘Out’ of my mind and body as I record my trauma emerge, sweep and sway/release me.

'It's a shame I was born in these times', said my 11 years old patient, shortly before things escalated out of control. For some children, with a background of multiple trauma and innate vulnerability, growing up in the shadow of world epidemic, terrorism and war, proves simply too much. As fear of breakdown (Winnicott, 1974) is being realized by an actual collapse, as trauma is reexperienced both inside and out, by the child herself as well as by the people around her and society as a whole, the fragile equilibrium, maintained by constant effort, breaks down and is lost. Escalation of symptoms and suffering may be dramatic and overwhelming, up to a traumatic de-compensation. In the following paper therapeutic work in the shadow of these events is described. An active invitation of reality into therapeutic space is needed, as well as giving words to the unspeakable, creatively extending therapeutic holding network, acknowledging the breakdown of basic trust while standing firm on the ground still there. Above all, 'Strong hope' or 'hope-against-hope' (Han- Pile, 2017, Sell, 2022), that is the resistance to despair in situations of hopelessness, is vital in order for these patients, lacking a stable psychic floor (Tustin, 1990), to regain solid ground and re-find their selves and their way.

Han-Pile’s and Sell's work implies, that retaining 'strong hope', able to withstand despair, requires a very specific therapeutic stance: a medio-passive agency. The subject cannot be said to be either an active agent or a passive recipient, but has elements of both: her acting integrates the experienced powerlessness into her agency. I would elaborate on these concepts, and the ways in which they may help us to keep hope alive in the face of breakdown and despair, contributing to onward movement in the therapeutic journey.

Bereavement is a universal human experience which shapes individual lives and society at large, with the potential to cause sadness, anxiety and long-lasting trauma if appropriate support is not available when needed.

It is known that 1 in 29 children under the age of 16 is bereaved of a parent – one every 22 minutes in the UK, one in every class in primary and secondary school. These ‘decisive moments’ of death are sometimes anticipated (with a parent’s terminal diagnosis for example), and sometimes unexpected and sudden, but never easy for the child. In addition, traumatic incidents such as the Grenfell Tower fire (2017) and the murder of three children in Southport (2024) ripple dramatically through school communities over many years. Schools can provide a safe space for supporting a grieving child, but this requires appropriate training and resources, a consistent bereavement policy, and sensitive support by adults across the school community and beyond.

This short paper explores some of the research literature, policy perspectives and good practice from schools on bereavement, aligned with the APS 2025 conference theme of Hope and Despair: Crisis and Opportunity. The case study research of bereavement awareness training with all primary and secondary trainee teachers at St Mary’s University will illustrate further the potential impact of an intentional focus on preparing adults who work with children to navigate times of loss and grief.

An unswerving commitment to supporting bereaved children through death, grief and trauma in their educational setting is an investment in longer-term public health and wellbeing. No child should feel invisible in their grief, at any stage or in any context, and collaboration with education professionals is an essential part of the process.

To follow

This working session aims to introduce doctoral students, early career researchers and anyone interested in disseminating their work through academic journals to some general principles for publishing. It will consider how to identify appropriate publications, structure papers to develop an argument and follow this through, introduce and critically discuss key themes, and practical tasks such as how to construct an abstract, and where to seek support during the writing process. The session will also consider what makes potential academic papers psychosocial, and consider what the requirements of publishing in psychosocial publications are, using the Journal of Psychosocial Studies as the exemplar. Drawing on the experience of David Jones and myself, as the editors of JPS, and the workshop attendees in relation to their own experiences of attempting to and/or getting published, we aim to engage in a dialogue to encourage and support them in successfully negotiating this often daunting hurdle. We offered a similar session by request online in Dec 2023, which was well attended and deemed useful by participants. We hope this would make a useful contribution to the conference attendees on behalf of APS and JPS.