Human experience is fundamentally embodied, involving the continuous interaction of external perception, bodily awareness, physiological states, and affective responses. However, because subjective experiences are multidimensional and personally situated, communicating their qualitative character presents a fundamental challenge. Existing theories of metaphor have primarily emphasized its role...
This theoretical-conceptual essay reconsiders epoché in qualitative phenomenological research and its relation to experiential emergence. Rather than a one-time technique of bracketing, epoché is conceptualized as a sustained discipline of epistemic suspension, attentional reorientation, and phenomenological restraint. On this basis, protoexistence is reformulated as a heuristic for incomplete...
This paper offers a theoretical re-situating of extreme experiences in response to Dominik Mihalits' (2025) multidimensional model. While acknowledging the value of Mihalits' effort to de-pathologize extreme experiences, it is argued that many of the phenomena he seeks to conceptualize have long been addressed within earlier traditions of psychological and existential thought. Drawing on Karl...
As Tsikandilakis et al. (2025) illustrate, an intense back and forth scientific debate on the existence and scope of unconscious processing has existed for at least 2000 years and within the field of psychology for well over 100 years. The focus of my commentary highlights important contributions from signal detection theory, which my work was based upon, beginning over 30 years ago (Haase,...
Aesthetic anhedonia and psychotic hyper-meaning are typically treated within separate explanatory traditions: the former as a deficit of reward and motivation, the latter as a dysregulation of salience and belief formation. Phenomenologically, however, the two conditions display a striking symmetry. In severe anhedonia, patients often report not only reduced pleasure but a pervasive failure of...
Thinking is a multifaceted process that encompasses logical, inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning, as well as planning, recalling past events and previous thoughts, imagining what may or may not happen, and experiencing and feeling affective states. The task of psychology is to explain what these thoughts are. How can physiological, biophysical, and neuronal processes in our bodies and...
Masking priming research into unconscious perception has a long history of ambiguous findings and controversies. Tsikandilakis and colleagues (2025) offer several commendable methodology recommendations that might resolve ambiguities and lead to compelling findings. However, better methodology might be insufficient to fully address the weaknesses of the null awareness paradigm. The expected...
In previous works, we provided empirical evidence and the theoretical foundations for a conceptual dissociation between subliminality, such as purported emotional responses to invisible-imperceptible elicitors, and the intelligent workings of the notion of an unconscious mind, such as involuntary and automatic physiological experiences and behavioural patterns that precede but eventually...
The commodification of cultural heritage has significantly disrupted the sacredness of religious sites in Indonesia, posing a challenge for communities seeking to preserve spiritual value within economically driven landscapes. This study focuses on Sojiwan Temple, a ninth-century Buddhist monument in Central Java, where full-moon meditation has emerged as a form of ritual resilience that...
This article critically examines the fundamental tenets of neurodeterminism in the discussion of free will, focusing on three key methodological issues: the personification of the brain as an independent actor, the assumed direct correspondence between neural processes and mental states, and the relationship between action predictability and free will. Through a comprehensive theoretical...
The article explores the Trickster as a symbol of liminality, transgression, and creativity, analyzing its characteristics through mythology, folklore, and literature. The Trickster (a prankster and a "boundary-crosser") embodies ambiguity, deception, and hidden wisdom, operating at the intersection of order and disorder, of sacred and profane. Through myths such as that of Hermes, as well as...
This paper presents the Cubic Model of Intelligence — a phenomenological and cognitive approach to understanding seven interrelated aspects of the mind: logic,emotion, intuition, memory, ethics, social context, and temporal foresight. The model is derived from observation of internal thinking processes and proposes to view these aspects not as separate functions but as facets of a unified...
This paper aims to foster a conceptual synthesis between enactivist theories of memory and cultural-historical activity theory, exploring their shared rejection of internalist models of cognition. By comparing these frameworks, we argue that both converge on a socially embedded, ecologically grounded understanding of memory as a dynamic, mediated activity rather than a static mental repository....
This article introduces the concept of protoexistence-a pre-reflective, affective layer of experience that resists narrative integration and challenges conventional frameworks of temporality and subjectivity. Drawing on foundational insights from Husserl's internal time-consciousness (1998) and Merleau-Ponty's later reflections on the visible and the invisible (1969), this article explores how...
This paper addresses the longstanding ambiguity of terms such as self , identity , and subjectivity in psychology and philosophy. Rather than adding yet another definition, it introduces Metaqualia Theory (MTQ) as a structural grammar that generates these notions as derivative effects of the Q–M–T cycle: Qualia (Q) as raw experiential material, Metaqualia (M) as interpretive stances, and...
Extreme experiences lie at the edges of human existence-and precisely for that reason, they demand the attention of psychology and psychotherapy science. However, in this context, extremes are often interpreted as pathological deviations from an assumed norm. This article argues for a conceptual re-evaluation: extremes should not be understood primarily as symptomatic distortion or disorders,...
In the present work of intellect, we introduce a novel approach to selfhood, the Onto-Rhythmic Self, situated within a participatory ontology in which Consciousness and Time function not as substrates but as expressive modalities of Being. Through a comparative critique of Husserl's transcendental ego and Dennett's narrative self, we classify four axes of limitation: the Who of subjectivity,...
This article-and this special issue-focuses on situated psychology. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief theoretical outline of what situated psychology is. If the reader wonders why they are not immediately familiar with the term 'situated psychology,' there is a simple explanation: it is a new concept (except for Phillip Cushman's argument that psychology should be "historically...
This paper focuses on understanding how cultural influences, social expectancy, and personal beliefs shape the perception of altered states of consciousness and how these mental states have been interpreted as a way to communicate with the spiritual world. Altered states of consciousness are commonly encountered in religious, spiritual, and therapeutic (e.g., hypnosis) practices. While...
This study investigates the effects of the Gateway Experience (GE) on psychological well-being. The GE has been developed several decades ago for the induction of altered states of consciousness. It incorporates several techniques such as hypnosis, meditation, and binaural beats, which are known to facilitate well-being, sleep, learning and memory, and emotional states, but have not been tested...
This article introduces Homo Putans, the "supposing human," as a novel philosophical framework for understanding human existence. Supposing, distinct from mere thinking or imagination, involves hesitation, doubt, and a creative engagement with possibilities. It is characterized by its ability to confront ambiguity and construct meaning in the face of uncertainty. The proposed concept,...
This article discusses social context of consciousness, the role of the brain and the psychological processes of their actions in the context of the socio-legal framework. Consciousness is understood without integrating with broader social and cultural situations. The understanding of consciousness also requires one's critical understanding of social context and group processes. Law has a more...
Exploring the nuanced and often elusive realm of pre-reflective consciousness presents a methodological challenge, as it involves capturing experiences that arise prior to reflective thought and language. This article introduces Phenomenological Mapping, an innovative research method designed to systematically study the pre-reflective dimensions of human experience. Grounded in the foundational...
This commentary outlines a novel agenda for future mindfulness research, building on various authors' insights, particularly Indius (Indius, S. (2024). Meditation and Self-transcendence: A Human need? Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 58(3), 878-883), who integrates Maslow's hierarchy of needs into the discussion of mindfulness. Indius argues for a revision of humanistic...
According to the QBIT theory, consciousness depends on the emergence of macroscopic coherence in a specific intracellular substrate which registers and processes sensory information. This occurs in a particular neuronal compartment called the axon initial segment which has unique properties not found in other neuronal segments. These unique properties allow the integration of synaptic inputs,...