The World Centre for Humanist Studies has published a new paper by Tony Robinson, Complex PTSD through the Lens of Silo’s Psychology, which explores whether the psychological writings of Silo, Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos, can offer a coherent phenomenological framework for understanding complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).
Published during PTSD Awareness Month, the paper appears at a time of growing public concern about the long-term consequences of trauma. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 70% of people worldwide will experience at least one potentially traumatic event during their lifetime, and around 3.9% of the global population are estimated to have experienced PTSD at some point in their lives.
The paper develops a theoretical and interpretive hypothesis: that Silo’s scheme of the psychism can help describe how traumatic experience becomes organised within the whole structure of human experience, affecting memory, Image, bodily registers, emotional climate, attention, expectations about the future, conduct and relationships.
Tony’s paper argues that Silo’s concepts of Image, climate, reversibility, memory, centres of response and the field of presence and co-presence offer a language for understanding CPTSD not as a set of isolated symptoms, but as expressions of a broader disorganisation of the psychism.
For the World Centre for Humanist Studies, the publication opens a new line of inquiry into the relevance of Silo’s psychology for contemporary questions of suffering, trauma, meaning and human action. It also invites dialogue between Humanist thought, trauma studies, phenomenology and theoretical psychology.
Speaking on behalf of the coordinating team of the World Centre for Humanist Studies, Leticia García said: “We value this work because it opens a necessary dialogue between Silo’s Psychology of the Image and a human problem of great contemporary relevance. Without claiming to replace existing clinical approaches, the monograph offers a perspective that can help us understand how trauma affects experience, conduct, relationships and the meaning of life. For the World Centre for Humanist Studies, this research expresses the possibility of placing Humanist thought at the service of the understanding and overcoming of human suffering.”
Tony Robinson said: “Complex PTSD can have devastating consequences for sufferers and family members, yet it is poorly understood by those who are not directly affected by it. What struck me in this research is that Silo’s scheme of the psychism offers a remarkably elegant way to describe the symptoms of CPTSD. It may also help explain why current trauma therapies that work with memory, imagery, bodily activation and meaning can be effective, opening interesting new lines of research.”
Complex PTSD through the Lens of Silo’s Psychology is available from the World Centre for Humanist Studies. A Spanish edition, El trastorno de estrés postraumático complejo a la luz de la psicología de Silo, is also available.
Centro Mundial de Estudios Humanistas
