Volume III, Issue 3, 2025
-
Clients in high-acuity psychological states, marked by developmental neglect, trauma, or existential dislocation, often retreat into internally constructed psychic worlds. This paper explores the phenomenon of “Inner Architecture” as a self-protective and narrative-engineering strategy, drawing from autoethnographic accounts and composite client narratives. It proposes a model of sovereign inner governance, detailing how rites, roles, and symbolic maps are constructed by those for whom the external world offered no safe harbour.
© The Author(s) 2025. Published by RITHA Publishing. This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited maintaining attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Article’s history: Received 17th of June, 2025; Revised 7th of July, 2025; Accepted for publication 12th of July, 2025; Available online: 17th of July, 2025; Published as article in Volume III, Issue 3, 2025.
-
This article advances a conceptual dialogue between Attachment Theory and Polyvagal Theory, positioning co-regulation as their central point of convergence. While Attachment Theory explains how early relational experiences shape emotional regulation and internal working models, Polyvagal Theory provides a neurophysiological framework for understanding how states of safety and threat organize affective and relational functioning. Integrating these perspectives, the paper examines how the experience of feeling safe with another constitutes a foundational condition for emotional regulation and psychotherapeutic change.
Rather than proposing a unified model, the article offers an integrative conceptual framework that preserves the specificity of each theory while highlighting their shared clinical focus on embodied relational safety. The analysis demonstrates how attachment patterns and autonomic states interact through co-regulation within therapeutic encounters, fostering emotional tolerance, relational trust, and narrative integration. This perspective contributes a refined clinical lens for understanding affective dysregulation, relational trauma, and attachment-based difficulties in contemporary psychotherapy.
© The Author(s) 2025. Published by RITHA Publishing. This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited maintaining attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Article’s history: Received 17th of September, 2025; Revised 4th of October, 2025; Accepted for publication 22nd of October, 2025; Available online: 27th of October, 2025; Published as article in Volume III, Issue 3, 2025.
