Conference Agenda

In this presentation we introduce the personal and cultural construction of meaning in autobiographical tattoos, focusing on the associated processes of self-construction, I-position construction, and shifts in discursive positions. From a discoursive psychological perspective autobiographical tattoos are conceptualised as a specific form of remembering, not as static representations of past events but as meaning-making practices through which personal and cultural narratives are continuously co-constructed.

Drawing on dialogical self theory (Hermans) and discursive approaches to the embodied self (Harré, Wiggins), in this presentation we explore how tattooing anchors significant biographical events to the embodied self, commonly assumed to be the most stable self-aspect (Harré). At the same time, tattooing produces a new embodied self-aspect (Wiggins), which becomes integrated into the dialogical organisation of the self. These positions and self-statements emerge partly from the lived biographical event and partly from the culturally embedded meanings of the tattooed motif, unfolding through diverse constructive strategies and patterns. They also influence everyday internal and external discourses related to both the tattoo and the life event it represents.

In this way, autobiographical tattoos function simultaneously as a distinctive form of dialogue between the personal and the cultural, operating across processes of remembering, meaning-making, self-construction, and everyday social interaction.

The study examines the role of the Ideal Self in shaping women’s self-perception and self-attitude within their culturally constituted life-world (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). Drawing on existential-phenomenological psychology and poststructuralist feminist theory, the research reconceptualizes Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of the cultural "Other" (L'Autre) as an internalized cultural law structuring women’s identity (de Beauvoir, 2011; Butler, 1990, 2011). Within the women’s life-world, this law takes the form of the “Ideal Woman,” which becomes an individualized yet culturally mediated Ideal Self (Irigaray, 1985). Unlike traditional psychological accounts that describe the Ideal Self as a personally constructed aspirational image (Higgins, 1987; Markus & Nurius, 1986), the present study conceptualizes it as a normative structure preceding and organizing self-experience. The empirical study involved 30 adult women (20–63 years), native speakers of Russian and English residing in several countries. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in both languages, focusing on representations of femininity, experiences of normative expectations, and attitudes toward the Ideal Self. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim in the original languages, and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). The system of categories was developed iteratively and comparatively across the Russian- and English-language corpora, allowing conceptual refinement sensitive to linguistic nuances. Findings indicate that the Ideal Self functions as a fundamental organizing principle within women’s life-worlds, often producing existential tension or a sense of "impossibility" that calls for reflective transformation (Butler, 2011; Gilligan, 1993). Through processes of meaning-making, participants renegotiate their relationship to this internalized cultural law, thereby reshaping self-attitude (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). The study proposes a reconceptualized model of the Ideal Self linking cultural normativity, gendered identity, and self-attitude, with implications for personality psychology and psychotherapeutic practice.

To analyze how multiple positions of the self are configured in the life story of a Colombian soldier who was amputated by anti-personnel mine, from a dialogical and phenomenological perspective. Method. A single case study was used, with historically structured sampling. A semi-structured interview with a phenomenological approach was applied. The interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA) and the Equifinality Trajectory Model (TEM) were used for the analysis model. Results. The participant's trajectory is marked by three main stages: 1) stepping on the anti-personnel mine and the rehabilitation process; 2) retirement as a soldier and the setting of goals through others; and 3) the consolidation of a life project as a Paralympic athlete that integrates military identity with the new physical condition. Discussion. The reconfiguration of the self implies an openness to others and to the new that allows for the reinterpretation of lived experience and the construction of a renewed identity in constant dialogue with the context.

This presentation is a reflection on how dialogue can transform today’s polarized, traumatizing discourses into contexts of healing and recovery. Contemporary, globalized societies are characterized by uneasy and increasing uncertainties, rapidly expanding crises, and a strong emphasis on technologies at the expense of social and human values, neglecting the complexities of human existence. In this sociocultural setting, liminality, traditionally understood as the in-between stage of communal and personal-level transitions, extends. Being arrested in a liminal hotspot, characterized by increased suggestibility in an ambivalent state coupled with the intensity of emotions blocks natural reconstructive processes in the turbulent phases of identity development. When keeping the person arrested in a stressful or traumatizing situation, criminalizing, or medicalizing the emerging human conditions would not solve the problem of blocked transitions.

Dialogue, a bridge between people and cultures, respects the human potential for positive change, and can convert extended or permanent liminalities into a transformative context. Its traditional, face-to-face form is grounded in the unity of mind and body. People are not only responding to each other by their empathetic words but also by gut-level responses, such as, for example, changes in heart rate patterns during a psychotherapy session. This way, your story can momentarily become my story, and your experience is construed as similar to my experience. These responses are powerful enough to establish the transient context of I-Thou relationship as an authentic and transformative experience and help the suffering person eliminate oppressive and spurious self-positions. By integrating many other important self-positions (as core me-positions, I-positions, and mine-positions), the door towards personal development opens.