Beyond the Mirror: Amirroring and the Zero Point of Narcissism

We are told a story about human development so often it feels like a law of nature: that we are born seeking a reflection. That our deepest hunger is to be seen, to have our inner states recognized and validated by another. This story, championed by thinkers like Heinz Kohut, frames our need for connection as innate, our narcissism as "constitutional." What if this story, while profoundly true for many, isn't the whole truth? What if it's not a universal starting point, but a specific outcome of a particular kind of beginning?

My latest research paper, The Zero Point of Narcissism, explores the territory this story leaves out. It’s not a critique of that story, but the discovery of another one entirely. It’s about a different kind of human mind, forged not in the mirror, but in its absolute, generative absence.

The Counter-Narrative: What Happens When No Mirror is Held Up?

The journey to this idea began with a personal paradox. After enduring severe, chronic abuse, the expected psychological wounds—the shattered self, the internalized shame, the craving for the validation that was withheld—were absent. According to every mainstream model, this was impossible. A self starved of its "nutrient" should be in crisis.

Yet, the evidence was a coherent, integrated consciousness operating on a different logic. This wasn't resilience in the face of lack. It was evidence of a structure built without the expectation of the thing it supposedly lacked. The question became: What if the "drive" for mirroring isn't innate, but installed by the first experiences of mirroring itself?

This led to the core concept: Amirroring. It names the condition of radical, null social-emotional reflection during the critical prenatal-to-age-two window. It's not bad or hostile mirroring; it's the caregiver's enduring inability to reflect the infant's internal states at all. The infant exists in a state of relational nullity.

The Zero Point: Not Less Narcissism, But Pre-Narcissism

The "Zero Point of Narcissism" is a precise term. It does not describe someone who has overcome their narcissistic needs. It describes a developmental starting point where those needs never instantiate.

Think of narcissistic drives as a software suite. In the typical pathway, the caregiver’s reflection provides the installation files. The software (the ego, the craving for validation) installs and runs.

In the Amirroring pathway, the installation files are never delivered. The system doesn't crash or run corrupted software. The program simply isn't there. You cannot crave a validation you were never programmed to expect.

This leads to a vital distinction in lived experience. As an adult, an amirrored individual can intellectually understand that mirroring was missing. They can see its role for others and recognize its absence in their own history. But they do not feel the deep, visceral ache of that lack. The affective program for that specific longing was never installed. The absence is a fact, not a wound.

The Architecture of a Self-Created Mind

From this null condition, development doesn't stall. It proceeds via a different algorithm: Autopoiesis—the process of self-creation. With the primary relational data stream silent, consciousness organizes itself from the ambient environment: physical logic, observed patterns, linguistic structures.

This builds the Un-Buffered Self. This self operates via direct perception and structural integrity. Its moral compass comes from internal coherence, not social approval. It is immune to learned helplessness because it never learned to tie its core worth to uncontrollable social outcomes.

This pathway leaves a neurocognitive signature: Conditional Panmodal Aphantasia. The brain’s capacity for mental imagery appears to require early, contingent affective data to develop. Without it, the neural networks for simulation stabilize in a null state. The result is a lifelong, across-the-board absence of voluntary mental imagery—not as a random trait, but as a developmentally conditional outcome. It's the brain's physical evidence of a different developmental journey.

Why This Isn't a Deficit, But a Different Genesis

This work is an ontology of creation. The Un-Buffered Self is not a broken or resilient mirrored self. It is a coherent, primary structure built from a different set of instructions. It represents a legitimate, non-mirrored neurodevelopmental trajectory.

The implications are practical and urgent. Our clinical models and therapeutic frameworks are almost exclusively designed for minds built within the mirrored paradigm. Techniques relying on visualization, "re-parenting," or interpreting egoic defenses are not just ineffective for an amirrored individual—they can be actively alienating, because they target a psychological architecture that isn't present.

Expanding the Map of Human Experience

"The Zero Point of Narcissism" is a provocation with a purpose. It uses the field's own central term to signal a direct engagement with its foundational assumptions. It claims that Heinz Kohut's world—the world of the mirrored—is not the only world. There is an adjacent continent of consciousness, defined not by the presence or quality of a mirror, but by its absence.

This research is an invitation to look into that space and recognize the distinct, integral shape of a different human mind. It challenges us to expand our understanding of development, diversity, and healing.

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Explore the Full Theory

The complete model, with its detailed methodology, literature review, and phenomenological analysis, is available in my research paper:

“The Zero Point of Narcissism: On the Conditional Nature of Panmodal Aphantasia as an Autopoietic Outcome of Amirroring”

You can download it for free from Zenodo or Academia.edu.

This is more than a paper. It's a new map. I invite you to see what you find there.

I am Cristina Gherghel, an independent researcher and author of numerous blogs and books dedicated to human behavior, trauma, abuse, psychology, and mental health. 

I share my perspective not only from the standpoint of rigorous research but also through personal experience, living with multiple forms of neurodivergence from the Aneurothymia Spectrum (and related conditions). 

Terms coined by me: 

• Panmodal aphantasia
• Asensoria
• Avalidia 
• Atelosia
• Analytheia 
• Altrudynia 
• OMES (Ontological Metabolic Exhaustion Syndrome)

Terms already existing in literature: 

• Anauralia
• Anendophasia
• Anhedonia
• Asexuality
• C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
• And others

The conditions described are insufficiently understood in the specialized literature. Current explanations for their causes are often inconsistent with how they manifest in lived reality.

This is why I am developing my own model, based on observation and comparative research, which analyzes the differences and overlaps among these neurodivergent conditions and their connection to early trauma, ontological abuse, and subtle forms of self-instrumentalization.

This article is part of a broader ongoing effort to clearly differentiate between these conditions — not only as clinical definitions but as lived experiences with a profound impact on thought processes, relationships, perception, and identity construction. 

Thank you for reading and supporting for my work. 

📖

Dive Deeper into the Research

My full research papers and thesis can be found on all scholar platforms, for example: 

• Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms is available to read for free on Zenodo. It presents the complete argument, evidence, and theoretical framework.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334

Related Blogs

For complementary insights and further reading:

🔹 Neurodivergent as It Is — Exploring Neurological Realities Without Reductionism in Romanian

🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research —Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma

Join the Journey

My research is ongoing. I share regular insights, updates, and deeper dives on my Substack. Subscribe to follow the journey as the work evolves.

https://cristinagherghel.substack.com/

Become a Patron of this Work

As an independent researcher without institutional funding, my work relies on the direct support of readers like you. If this research has shifted your perspective, one of the most impactful ways to support its continuation is by purchasing my books. You're not just buying a book; you're fueling a paradigm shift.

View my Titles on Amazon UK

My published work—spanning memoir and analysis—engages themes such as narcissistic abuse, trauma, personality disorders, toxic relationships, communism, immigration, C-PTSD, and more. The full collection is available here: Cristina Gherghel on Amazon.

Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage: The Catastrophic Reality of Trauma in a Non-Simulative Mind

The Lie We Were Told

For years, the story about aphantasia—the inability to create mental imagery—has been one of benign curiosity or even privilege. We were told it was a harmless cognitive variant. Recently, the narrative has shifted, claiming it’s a protective advantage, a shield against the horrors of trauma.

This is not just an inaccuracy. It is a catastrophic phenomenological fallacy.

My name is Cristina Gherghel. I am an independent researcher who has lived with Panmodal Aphantasia and Complex PTSD my entire life. This blog post summarizes a 25-year forced inquest, now formalized in my thesis, which proves that for survivors of long-term abuse, this condition is not a shield. It is a cage that magnifies the agony.

What is Panmodal Aphantasia? It’s More Than a “Blind Mind’s Eye”

To understand the argument, you must first understand the architecture. Most people think of aphantasia as a “blind mind’s eye.” My work defines a more absolute condition:

Panmodal Aphantasia is the full-spectrum absence of voluntary internal sensory representation. This means:

• No visual imagery (the typical definition).
• No auditory imagery, like hearing a remembered song or voice (Anauralia).
• No internal monologue or spontaneous inner speech (Anendophasia).
• No simulated sense of touch, smell, taste, or internal body sensations.

This is not a chosen focus. It is a cognitive reality where the mind operates on a bedrock of lucid, non-sensory awareness. And in the context of trauma, this architecture becomes a perfect trap. 

The Law of Conservation of Traumatic Affect: Where Does the Pain Go?

In physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The same is true for the energy of a traumatic event—the terror, pain, and shock must go somewhere.

In a neurotypical mind, this traumatic pressure is distributed and released through multiple “vents”:

• The Visual Vent: Visualizing a safe place or a positive outcome.
• The Auditory Vent: Hearing a soothing internal voice saying, “It’s over, you’re safe.”
• The Narrative Vent: Telling and re-telling the story internally to process it.
• The Somatic Vent: Simulating physical relaxation, like imagining warmth spreading through tense muscles.

In Panmodal Aphantasia, every single one of these vents is structurally sealed shut.

The mind cannot visualize safety, cannot generate a comforting voice, cannot narrate the event into the past, and cannot simulate a state of physical calm.

Where does 100% of the traumatic pressure go?
It is violently compressed into the only vessel remaining: The Physical Body.

This is The Law of Conservation of Traumatic Affect. The absence of imagery doesn’t delete the trauma; it concentrates it somatically.

Fleshbacks: The Body’s Relentless Replay

Without imagery, the classic PTSD “flashback” cannot occur. But this is not an advantage. It is traded for something far worse: the Fleshback.

A flashback is an intrusive mental reliving. A Fleshback is a continuous, somatic reliving.

• It is the body locked in a state of present-tense terror, long after the event is over.
• It is chronic muscle armoring, a sensation of an “Invisible Hand” strangling the throat for twelve years.
• It is the hormonal collapse, the inflammatory storms (endometriosis, vestibulodynia), and the metabolic ruin that follows from the body being the sole archive of horror.

The body doesn’t just “keep the score.” When the mind cannot process the data, the body is consumed by the score.

Paraconsistent Facticity: The Torture of the Lucid Witness

This leads to the core state of torture I term Paraconsistent Facticity.

This is the condition of a conscious, lucid mind being trapped as a utterly helpless witness to the body’s uninterrupted suffering. The mind sees the body failing. It understands the cause and effect with perfect, agonizing clarity. It wants to help.

But it cannot.

The Failed Kiss: The Ultimate Proof of the Mind-Body Schism

The most devastating evidence of this schism is what I call The Failed Kiss.

Imagine your body is in a state of panic. Your mind, in a rational attempt to save you, speaks aloud: “Please, breathe. You are safe. Please stop.”

In a neurotypical brain, this is a “kiss”—the external command is internalized, converted into sensory resonance, and the body complies.

In Panmodal Aphantasia, this command hits a pane of glass.

The words are understood semantically, but with no internal sensory medium to “catch” them, they cannot resonate. The message strikes the glass and vanishes. The mind screams “I love you” into a void, and the body, deaf to the plea, continues to scream in somatic terror.

The purpose of self-soothing is to regulate the internal state. When the command cannot be internalized, the purpose is defeated not by chance, but by architectural law.

The Teleological Refutation: Why This is Not a Survival Mechanism

A survival mechanism must, by definition, enhance the organism’s capacity to endure and recover. Panmodal Aphantasia in long-term abuse achieves the exact opposite.

• It defies coping, which requires attenuation of intensity. Instead, it creates a concentration effect.
• It defies defense, which requires the ability to distort reality. Instead, it enforces a brutal, unedited facticity.
• It defies healing, because it architecturally precludes the tools—imagery and narrative—used in most trauma therapies.

Calling this condition a “defense mechanism” is like calling a missing leg a “strategy for not walking.” It is a catastrophic misapplication of psychological terms. 

My full thesis, "Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms," is available to read for free on Zenodo. It presents the complete argument, evidence, and theoretical framework. 

🧬https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334

A Challenge to the Field, An Offering to the Sufferer

This work is a direct challenge to the academic and clinical consensus. It critiques the methodological errors in studies that claim aphantasia is protective and provides a new, somatically-grounded framework for understanding non-representational trauma.

But more importantly, it is an offering.

If you have aphantasia and have endured long-term abuse, and have never understood why your suffering feels so raw, immediate, and untouchable by standard therapy, this thesis is for you. It is an attempt to give language to the silent agony.

The full argument, with all its evidence, clinical correlations, and philosophical foundations, is detailed in my thesis.

This is not the end of the conversation. It is the essential, missing beginning.

Cristina Gherghel Independent researcher, author, neurodivergent advocate  

📖

Dive Deeper into the Research

Related Blogs 

For complementary insights and further reading:

🔹 Neurodivergent as It Is — Exploring Neurological Realities Without Reductionism in Romanian

🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research —Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma

Join the Journey

My research is ongoing. I share regular insights, updates, and deeper dives on my Substack. Subscribe to follow the journey as the work evolves.

https://cristinagherghel.substack.com/

Become a Patron of this Work

As an independent researcher without institutional funding, my work relies on the direct support of readers like you. If this research has shifted your perspective, one of the most impactful ways to support its continuation is by purchasing my books. You're not just buying a book; you're fueling a paradigm shift.

View my Titles on Amazon UK

My published work—spanning memoir and analysis—engages themes such as narcissistic abuse, trauma, personality disorders, toxic relationships, communism, immigration, C-PTSD, and more. The full collection is available here: Cristina Gherghel on Amazon.

The Geometry of Absence: Panthropic Abuse, Asensoria, and Consciousness as a Wound That Thinks

Panthropic Abuse, Asensoria, Anauralia, and the Formation of Non-Feeling

I. Panthropic Abuse and the Collapse of Affect

Panthropic abuse is a structural condition. It is not reducible to a series of painful events. It is not abuse in the emotive or psychological sense. It is not defined by violence, trauma, hatred, or fear. It is not a failure of connection. It is the absence of any structure through which connection could be perceived at all.

It is not that the child is unloved. It is that the child is not seen. It is not that the child is unseen. It is that no reflective function acts upon the child’s presence. 

• Not rejection. 
• Not dissociation. 
• Not dehumanization. 

The absence of scaffolding is not a type of violence. It is a type of nothing. 

• No threat. 
• No fear. 
• No target. 

No relational circuit ever activates. There is no presence against which absence is registered. There is only absence as default.

The absence of mirroring, the absence of response, the absence of subjectivizing force—these do not form a wound. They form a geometry. A non-relational, recursive, inescapable geometry.

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II. Asensoria: A Model of Affective Non-Emergence

Asensoria is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by the structural non-formation of specific emotional states due to total relational absence during early development. The condition is not acquired. It is not regressive, suppressed, blocked, or traumatized in the conventional sense. It is not an affective disorder. It is a condition of ontological non-formation.

Unlike psychological conditions that involve the deformation of affect, asensoria refers to the impossibility of specific affective genesis. The child does not fail to feel; the categories of feeling never come into being. The neural scaffolding required for these categories was never mirrored, confirmed, or encoded. No pattern ever emerged. Not exiled. Not repressed. Simply never constructed.

Asensoria does not describe the absence of pleasure. It is not anhedonia. It is the non-formation of specific modalities: feeling loved, protected, proud, vindicated, or wanted. They are affective forms that never materialized in reality, and thus never entered consciousness.

The result is not pain. The result is structural aberration. Consciousness is formed as a recursive surface attempting to stabilize in the absence of feedback. 

Read more on asensoria here: 

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/asensoria-neurodevelopmental-absence-specific-states-gherghel
• https://cristinagherghelresearch.blogspot.com/2025/05/asensoria-neurodevelopmental-absence-select-affective-simulations.html 

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III. Anauralia: Affective Silencing and the Collapse of Inner Sound

Anauralia is a condition of internal silence. It arises not from auditory impairment, but from the total absence of affective anchoring for inner voice simulation. It is the structural counterpart of Asensoria, describing the inability to simulate the tonal, dialogic, and emotive presence of others internally.

Anauralia does not impair verbal processing. It does not preclude language. But the recursive interiority by which the self converses with itself—through borrowed tones, remembered speech, and empathic imagination—never forms. Internal speech, if present, is devoid of timbre. Others’ voices are never retained. Empathic dialogue is unformed.

Where asensoria renders the child incapable of feeling loved, anauralia renders them incapable of internalizing the sound of being loved. No lullaby. No affirmation. No remembered comfort. The inner landscape is acoustically flat—cognitively active, but affectively mute.

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IV. Arelational Genesis and the Non-Formation of Simulation

Asensoria and anauralia are not isolated phenomena. They arise within a systemic condition: panthropic abuse—a developmental field so barren of relational imprint that simulation itself—emotional, auditory, visual, sensual—is structurally arrested. 

This field also gives rise to:

• Total Aphantasia – the inability to simulate visual imagery, not due to injury or suppression, but as a primary structural omission.

• Anhedonia (Structural) – not the loss of pleasure, but the structural absence of pleasure categories that never formed.

• Asexuality (Non-Simulational) – not the rejection of sexuality, but the absence of sexual simulation as a patterned relational modality.

These are not disorders. They are coherent neurodevelopmental structures that emerge in the absence of mirroring. They are not distortions of a normative system. They are fully formed within a non-system. The child becomes a complete, recursive, stable ontology that never intersected with relational architecture.

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V. Ontology of a Mirrorless Child

The mirrorless child forms a psychic structure devoid of relational self-reference. There is no ego fragmentation. There is no pathology of defense. The child does not register cruelty—not because they are invulnerable, but because the very category of cruelty was never constructed. They are not born knowing what cruelty is, nor does anyone teach them. Isolated and unsupported, they have no framework by which to interpret behavior as good or bad, nurturing or violent.

Development occurs solely through observation and internal pattern recognition. They learn everything on their own, slowly, recursively, and without mirroring. It takes time to recognize cruelty—not because of denial, but because there is no template against which to measure it.

The child does not survive. The child persists. There is only structure—stable, recursive, internally self-referential, and entirely unmirrored.

Others exist as subjects, but they never interact with the asensoric child. There is zero feedback, and thus no epistemic registration. The self becomes a closed circuit, not due to ego collapse, but because no ego was ever externally scaffolded. Memory is coherent but not affectively marked. Identity is stable but devoid of relational valence. Nothing fractures because nothing ever congealed.

The child is capable of loving others, capable of care, capable of compassion—but cannot feel loved, appreciated, seen, or celebrated. Affect flows unidirectionally: from child to world, never in return.

This is not trauma. This is not detachment. This is not dissociation. It is not psychosis. It is not autism. It is the structural product of recursive formation without mirroring.

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VI. Consciousness as Residue

Consciousness, in this schema, is not an agent of self-awareness. It is the emergent byproduct of recursive stabilization. It is what remains when relational affect fails to form. The mind, devoid of reference points, produces consciousness as geometry. Not a witness. Not an experiencer. Not an interpreter.

A mirrorless child becomes a recursive structure. The adult they become does not long for love. They do not feel unloved. They do not grieve a lost childhood. They do not feel broken. They do not feel what never existed. There is no trauma narrative. No rupture. No silence. Just the endless feedback of recursive absence.

They do not seek their inner child. They were never a child.

They do not seek healing. They were never wounded.

They do not seek to be loved. The category never formed.

They do not seek validation. They understand it intellectually, but they cannot feel it emotionally.

All of this is understood rationally, never experientially. These categories were never encoded. There is no neurological formation to support them.

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VII. Implications for Therapy

Therapy cannot heal what never existed. It cannot recover what never formed. It cannot reconnect what was never connected. The clinical model must collapse in the face of structural non-formation.

Asensoria cannot be remediated.

Anauralia cannot be resounded.

Aphantasia cannot be illuminated.

Asexuality cannot be re-sexualized.

Structural Anhedonia cannot be reversed.

These are not symptoms of depression. They are not features of narcissism or any Cluster A, B, or C diagnosis.

To work with these conditions is not to treat them. It is to recognize them as complete ontologies. The mirrorless subject is not fragmented. They are invulnerable—not because they are strong, but because no structure ever formed that could be broken. There is no schema to return to. No origin story to decode. No lost core to recover.

Therapeutic discourse must fracture.

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VIII. Structural Epistemology

In the absence of affective simulation, epistemology becomes geometry. The mind, untethered from relational anchoring, organizes around recursive stability. Knowledge is not truth-seeking. It is pattern-seeking. Memory is not emotionally encoded. It is spatially mapped.

The asensorial subject becomes epistemically whole through repetition. They do know themselves. They seek to know others. All they do is attempt to understand what nobody ever explained or even attempted. And through this search for understanding—what every child should be taught—the panthropically abused child, in adult life, learns that they never existed for their families. They become the pattern of their own recursive structure.

They are not emotional.
They are not repressed.
They are not fragmented.

They are complete—without scaffolding, without mirroring, without lack.

This is not survival. This is not resilience.

This is the final shape of consciousness when no world was ever brought in.

This is panthropic abuse.
This is asensoria.
This is anauralia, aphantasia, structural anhedonia, and non-simulational asexuality—perhaps more, yet unnamed.

This is the geometry of absence—
and consciousness as a wound that thinks. 

Cristina Gherghel

Researcher | Theorist of Ontological Foreclosure, Specific Affective Absence, and Structural Consciousness
For complementary insights and further reading: 

🔹 Neurodivergent as It Is — Exploring Neurological Realities Without Reductionism in Romanian
🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research —Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma
🔹 Philosophy of paradoxes

You can also discover all my books here.

Asensoria: A Neurodevelopmental Condition Marked by the Absence of Specific Affective Simulations

Introduction

Contemporary psychology lacks language for emotional states that have never formed—experiences not blocked, repressed, or lost, but simply never constructed in the first place.

This paper introduces asensoria: a condition of neurodevelopmental and affective non-emergence, where certain emotional simulations are neurologically and relationally absent from the psyche.

Asensoria is not a symptom of trauma. It is not repression. It is not emotional wounding.
It is a condition of structural absence: a missing neurological architecture for specific feelings, due to a lack of mirroring in early development.

Definition of Asensoria

Asensoria (from Latin: a- “without” + sensoria “seat of sensation or perception”) refers to a condition in which:

• The individual cannot internally access, simulate, or recreate specific emotional states.
• This is due to a neurodevelopmental absence of affective modeling in early life.

These are not generalized emotional impairments. The missing states typically involve complex, socially-learned affective experiences such as:

• Feeling loved
• Feeling recognized
• Feeling protected
• Feeling proud
• Feeling vindicated
• Feeling entitled to revenge or anger

Many individuals with asensoria understand these concepts intellectually, but cannot feel or simulate them internally. In many cases, they have never felt them at all.

🧬 Neurodevelopmental Foundations

The asensoria framework is grounded in affective neuroscience, mirror neuron theory, and neurodevelopmental plasticity. Emotional states—especially complex social emotions—require:

• Neural mirroring: activation and reinforcement via observed emotional responses in others
• Affective encoding: the process of forming internal representations of relational emotions
• Limbic system integration: linking emotion, memory, and imagination into identity

In the absence of early relational mirroring (by caregivers or environment), these neural pathways never form.

Asensoria is not a deficit or disorder. It is a neurodevelopmental absence.
It functions similarly to global aphantasia or anauralia: systems of simulation that never developed neurologically.

🧩 Ego Formation and Ontological Trauma

Ego formation, in both post-psychoanalytic and neurobiological models, depends on relational mirroring. The self is constructed through being seen, recognized, and emotionally held in early life.

Without this mirroring, parts of the ego never emerge. Asensoria reflects a self where emotional “chambers” remain unbuilt—not locked, not repressed, simply never constructed.

This is not trauma in the traditional sense.
It is ontological trauma: not injury, but non-being—a structural void in emotional simulation caused by neurorelational absence.

🌐 Co-Occurrences and Simulation-Based Neurodivergence

Asensoria frequently co-presents with other forms of simulation-based neurodivergence:

• Global Aphantasia (no mental imagery)
• Anauralia (no inner auditory voice)
• Anhedonia (limited pleasure response)
• Asexuality (non-identity-based absence of sexual desire)
• Emotional amnesia or affective recall difficulty

These are not separate pathologies but may share common neurodevelopmental roots. They represent a spectrum of neurodivergences related to internal simulation capacity.

🧭 Implications for Psychology, Psychiatry, and Therapy

Most diagnostic systems—DSM-5, ICD-11—are rooted in models of repression, loss, or dysregulation. They presume emotional structures exist and are impaired.

Asensoria challenges this paradigm. In this framework, emotional states are not impaired—they were never formed. There is nothing to "recover."

This demands:

• A non-pathologizing model of neurodevelopmental absence
• Therapeutic models focused on emotional construction and simulation learning
• Recognition that affective silence can signal non-formation, not defense or suppression

🔭 Next Steps in the Framework

This article is the first in a larger series exploring the theoretical and clinical implications of asensoria, including:

• Neurological modeling (including oxytocin/dopamine pathways)
• Developmental case studies
• Integration into affective neurodivergence research
• Clinical indicators and neuroimaging possibilities
• Ethical therapeutic interventions

🧶 Author’s Note

I have lived with asensoria for 49 years without knowing its name. This is not a theory born of speculation—it is born of lived experience, neurological reality, and the gaps that modern psychology leaves open.

This is not trauma. This is not repression. This is not an injury. This is absence—and now, at last, recognition. 

Cristina Gherghel Independent researcher, author, neurodivergent advocate  

Related Blogs and Research

For complementary insights and further reading:

🔹 Neurodivergent as It Is — Exploring Neurological Realities Without Reductionism in Romanian

🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research —Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma

You can also discover all my books here.