Conference Agenda

Caring for a close person diagnosed with cancer constitutes a complex process that may be both demanding and empowering for caregivers. Understanding the psychological mechanisms that shape how caregiving is experienced is essential for developing effective psychosocial support interventions for caregivers. The present study investigated whether caregiver burden is better explained by attachment orientation, conceptualized as a relatively stable and enduring disposition, or by I-positions, which reflect more immediate and embodied self-experiences.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in Turkey with 188 informal caregivers of individuals with cancer. Participants completed the Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale, the Adult Attachment Style Scale, and the Caregiving I-Positions Profile Form, and provided information regarding the patient’s disease and treatment, as well as the nature of their caregiving responsibilities.

The findings indicate that specific I-positions are significantly associated with caregiver burden. In particular, I-positions such as “I-as-victim,” “I-as-lonely,” “I-as-angry,” and “I-as-anxious” predicted caregiver burden more strongly than objective caregiving demands and insecure attachment orientations. Mediation analyses further revealed that these I-positions fully mediated the relationship between insecure attachment and caregiver burden. These results suggest that conceptualizing caregivers’ internal mental stances in terms of I-positions offers a valuable framework for developing more targeted psychosocial interventions aimed at enhancing caregiver well-being.

'Narrative medicine' recognizes that patient stories need to be heard to co-construct a healing story. Medical staff are trained to listen in empathic ways by familiarizing themselves with literature and art. A broader 'narrative-dialogical-informed medical care' hosts the idea that patient stories are told from many different positions; interventions need to allow for their stories to be told using various means and voices. The present paper presents the process of a narrative-dialogical intervention on a group of 13 women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome (MRKH), a congenital condition characterized by absence of the uterus, cervix and upper two thirds of the vagina often associated with additional renal anomalies, in individuals assigned female at birth. The group was coordinated by two psychologists and a medical doctor, with the collaboration of the head of the 1st department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the 'Alexandra' General Hospital, University of Athens, where participants received medical care. The intervention followed three steps: (I) Use of the “Fiction Tool” (Androutsopoulou, 2001, 2015) required participants to retell a favorite story from literature, name three heroes, their feelings, and future prospects. Heroes are seen as outer and inner positions of the self; (II) Discussion was extended from fictional stories to personal issues. The participants expressed a variety of concerns regarding their health, their relationships, fertility, and social stigma. They also made suggestions for optimal care. (III) Participants were psycho-educated in recognizing a variety of inner voices or positions of self and navigating their inner dialogue toward empowerment. The participants spoke of the intervention in positive words, emphasizing the importance of a safe space for telling stories of physical and psychological distress. They also thought that the group provided a much-needed social support network. Follow-ups were scheduled to monitor the long-term impact of this intervention.

This paper proposes a psychobiosocial framework that integrates osteopathy and massage therapy with dialogical self‑therapy to address physical injuries and illnesses as expressions of embodied story, moral injury, and relational trauma. Drawing on dialogical self theory, we reconceptualise pain and bodily symptoms as “I‑positions” that speak from within a multi‑voiced self, including positions such as “I‑as‑injured,” “I‑as‑carer,” and “I‑as‑betrayed by the system.” Osteopathic and massage practices are used not only to restore biomechanical function, but also to invite patients into a co‑created narrative in which sensations, tensions, and postures become portals for conversation and witnessing. Through guided externalisation, the practitioner and patient together name and dialogue with these embodied positions, honouring them as valid responses to injury, overuse, structural violence, and moral constraint rather than as purely mechanical faults. Building on work in narrative and Indigenous‑informed medicine, we emphasise story as ceremony, touch as relational communication, and the clinical encounter as a small community in which new meanings of suffering can emerge. Moral injury in healthcare and labour settings is framed as a human response to systemic wrongs that becomes “stuck” in the body, shaping pain, fatigue, and autonomic dysregulation. By dialoguing directly with bodily I‑positions that carry guilt, shame, anger, and thwarted care, the team supports patients and practitioners in relocating responsibility, reclaiming agency, and reauthoring their participation in families, workplaces, and communities. Clinical vignettes (from musculoskeletal injury, chronic pain, and post‑COVID moral injury among health workers) illustrate how coordinated sessions of manual therapy and dialogical self‑therapy can reduce pain, increase flexibility in self‑positioning, and deepen spiritual and communal connection. We argue that such integrative practice aligns with Indigenous and relational worldviews, challenges narrowly biomedical reductionism, and offers a hopeful pathway toward mutually healing relationships between bodies, stories, and systems.

This paper presents advances from a doctoral research project that examines the configuration of the Self in adolescents with overweight/obesity, drawing on an approach that integrates cultural semiotic psychology and the Theory of the Dialogical Self. The study is grounded in the premise that the Self is social in its origin and dialogical in its functioning, constituted by a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions that are configured through dialogue with the voices of significant others and with broader sociocultural discourses about the body, health, and self-care.

The study focuses on understanding how cultural self-care practices and meanings associated with the body and body weight emerge within the family context through processes of affective and semiotic mediation. To this end, it draws on the concept of Affective-Semiotic Fields (ASF) proposed by Valsiner (2014), understood as dynamic systems of affective regulation that organize subjective experience and orient action. From this perspective, adolescent overweight is conceptualized as a dialogical space of tension in which multiple voices—medical, familial, educational, and peer-related—converge, become internalized, and are hierarchically organized within the Self system. These voices give rise to diverse I-positions that do not operate in isolation but relate to one another through dialogues, contradictions, and ambivalences that shape subjective experiences of the body and self-care practices.

Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative and idiographic approach, employing strategies of co-construction of information and a microgenetic analysis of adolescents’ and families’ narratives. The results suggest that the Self of adolescents with overweight is configured through tension-laden dialogues between I-positions regulated by hypergeneralized Affective-Semiotic Fields, which hierarchically organize internalized voices in which affect predominates, enabling self-care practices to be signified as expressions of agency and self-care rather than mere responses to external demands.