Writings
Vol. 36 No. 2 (2025)
https://doi.org/10.4081/rp.2025.803

The onset of psychosis within developmental trauma: how one’s experiential background can block the acquisition of new representations, compromising internal homeostasis

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Received: 20 May 2023
Accepted: 9 July 2024
Published: 29 August 2025
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Psychosis, object relations, epigenetic marker, cumulative trauma, representations, state of mind

Authors

Cristi Marcí
cristimarci@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2976-6443
Institute Riza of Psychosomatic Medicine, Milan, Italy.

The following work aims to examine the relationship between the pathogenesis of psychosis and an individual’s experiential background, with a focus on traumatic experiences of a cumulative nature. It explores how events from the past and their failed integration can lead to the fragmentation of the psychobiological structure, understood as the dynamic balance among multiple interconnected brain regions. Furthermore, this work sought to explore, through the contributions of various authors, the role played by early life experiences, through which the individual is able to create representations and perceptions that enable them to orient themselves in the world and to acquire new knowledge to be integrated with what has already been stored. It also examines how cumulative traumatic experiences in childhood may reflect a blockage in the formation of new representations, thus serving as an effective springboard capable of triggering the onset of psychosis as a reflection of a developmental arrest, in which preverbal and primitive modes are reflected in adult life and the present moment.

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The onset of psychosis within developmental trauma: how one’s experiential background can block the acquisition of new representations, compromising internal homeostasis. (2025). Ricerca Psicoanalitica, 36(2). https://doi.org/10.4081/rp.2025.803
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