Individual presentation:
• Gabriela Gusita:
From Mutual Analysis to Mutual Recognition. Is Mutuality Possible in the Here and Now?
(60 min)

Abstract:

When people experience profound internal fragmentation, a sense that the self is falling apart, they urgently seek something or someone to hold them together. As psychoanalyst Esther Bick observed, “the need for a containing object would seem, in the infantile unintegrated state, to produce a frantic search for an object which can be experienced as holding parts of the personality together.” The more acute the fragmentation, the more desperate the search for cohesion, regardless of the cost.

This binding can take two forms. When the cohering presence is attuned and responsive, the relationship fosters emotional regulation, empathy, and psychological growth. But when the binding force is damaged or exploitative, the price of psychological survival becomes domination and submission. Robert Jay Lifton documented this in his studies of thought reform: in times of severe dislocation, people seek belief systems that offer “fixity and absoluteness” — external structures that promise to hold the self together, even at the expense of autonomy.

This paper argues that managing unintegrated states is not merely a developmental task of infancy but an ongoing challenge throughout life — one with profound implications for understanding both individual pathology and collective behavior. In clinical work, the therapeutic task involves recognizing these fragmented self-states and identifying the internalized binding forces (whether nurturing or negating) that operate beneath conscious awareness. Similarly, understanding this dynamic at a collective level illuminates why populations experiencing historical trauma or social dislocation may submit to authoritarian systems or rigid ideologies: the promise of psychic coherence overrides other considerations, including freedom.

By bringing language to these pre-symbolic experiences of fragmentation and binding, both in the consulting room and in the historical arena, we create possibilities for liberation from unconscious submission to cohering forces — whatever their cost.

Keywords: authoritarianism, binding, fragmentation, historical trauma, psychohistory, psychic coherence, submission, unintegrated states

Short Bio:

Gabriela Gusita was born and raised in Romania. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Foreign Languages and Philology, with a focus on English and French, and one in Psychology. She also holds the Master’s degrees in Applied Psychology, in the Domain of National Security, and in Clinical Psychotherapy in the Relational Psychoanalytic Approach. She has completed further studies in psychoanalysis and forensic psychology and is currently a trainee in Group Analysis at the Institute for Relational and Group Psychotherapy in Athens, Greece.

A licensed psychologist in Athens and a member of the Greek Association of Psychologists, Gabriela has been practicing as a therapist since 2014. She is also a scientific collaborator with a private bank and serves as a forensic psychologist for the Court and the Prosecutor’s Offices in Athens. She is Vice President and a member of the International Psychohistorical Association, co-founder of the International Ferenczi Study Groups, and a member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) and the International Sandor Ferenczi Network (ISFN).

Gabriela works therapeutically in Romanian, English, and Greek. She has presented papers at numerous local and international conferences and seminars on relationality, mutuality, trauma, and suicide. Her areas of interest include the unconscious transmission of information between therapist and client; the internal and external environments of trauma; the aggression and violence of internalized trauma; and the collective and individual dynamics that move from the intrapsychic to the interpersonal field. She can be reached at