Reference
Definitions
The clinical vocabulary used across all 14 modules. Every term is traced to its published clinical source.
Definitions
This page is a reference. It defines the vocabulary the LUMINA Framework uses, where each term comes from in the clinical literature, and what it means in the context of lived experience.
Terms are organised in the same order the framework introduces them: the pre-module foundations first (the clinical frameworks every module inherits), then module by module. Every term is traceable to a published clinical source. Where a term appears in multiple modules, it is defined once at its first appearance and cross-referenced below.
Pre-Module Foundations
These are the clinical frameworks the LUMINA Framework stands on. Every module below assumes this vocabulary is available.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Psychological literacy | Accurate, non-blaming information about how the mind works, delivered in a form the reader can use without clinical mediation. Distinct from therapy: education about architecture, not treatment of a condition. |
| Psychoeducation | The delivery of accurate psychological information in a way that is therapeutic in effect, because accurate naming of one's own experience interrupts isolation and shame. Not therapy. (Herman, 1992) |
| Structural inference | A claim grounded in clinical frameworks and logical necessity where direct empirical evidence is partial or absent. LUMINA names structural inferences explicitly rather than disguising them as empirical findings. |
| Evidence tier | LUMINA's transparency layer. Every claim is labelled by its evidentiary standing: Tier 1 (peer-reviewed, replicated), Tier 2 (established pattern), Tier 3 (structural inference). See the Methodology page. |
| Clinical framework | The four foundational literatures LUMINA operates inside: Gabbard (psychodynamic psychiatry), Kohut (self psychology), Kernberg (personality organisation), Winnicott (object relations and the developmental environment). |
| Integration | The organising goal of the framework. Bringing what is split, dissociated, or defended against into conscious, held awareness. Not resolution. Held contradiction. (Klein, 1946; Kernberg, 1975) |
| Depressive position | Klein's term for the capacity to hold that a person, institution, or self is both good and bad simultaneously. The developmental achievement that object relations, institutional literacy, and recovery all depend on. (Klein, 1946) |
| Paranoid-schizoid position | Klein's term for the developmental stage, or defensive regression, where good and bad cannot be held in the same object. Splitting is its signature defence. (Klein, 1946) |
| Object relations | The entire internal world of self-and-other representations, built in childhood from actual relationships and continuing to shape every adult interaction. (Klein, 1946; Fairbairn, 1952; Winnicott, 1965; Kernberg, 1975) |
| Selfobject | Kohut's term for a person or experience that performs a psychological function the self cannot yet perform alone: mirroring, idealising, twinship. The need for selfobjects does not disappear in adulthood; it matures. (Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1984) |
| Self psychology | Kohut's clinical framework. The self as a structure built through selfobject experience; pathology as developmental arrest rather than intrapsychic conflict. (Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1984) |
| Personality organisation | Kernberg's structural framework. The enduring pattern of how a person perceives self and others, regulates affect, manages impulses, and relates to the world. Three levels: neurotic, borderline, psychotic. (Kernberg, 1975, 1984) |
| DSM | Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (APA). LUMINA references DSM categories for recognition but does not use them as identity labels. The manual describes clusters of presentation; it does not describe the structural mechanism underneath. |
| Complex trauma (C-PTSD) | The result of sustained, repeated developmental trauma. Produces disturbances in self-organisation: identity diffusion, emotional dysregulation, disrupted relational capacity. The architecture LUMINA maps. (Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, 2014) |
Module 01: Toxic Shame and the Identity Core
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Toxic shame | A pervasive, identity-level belief that the self is fundamentally defective. Distinguished from healthy shame by its target: toxic shame says "I am wrong." Installs during early development when the environment consistently fails to mirror, validate, or regulate. (Lewis, 1971; Kohut, 1971; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Healthy shame | A functional emotional signal that says "I have done something inconsistent with my values." Points toward behaviour, not identity. Produces guilt, repair, and learning. (Lewis, 1971) |
| Shame installation | The developmental process by which a child internalises environmental failure as self-failure. The child concludes "I am inadequate" because maintaining the belief that the caregiver is adequate preserves the attachment bond. (Winnicott, 1965; Bowlby, 1969) |
| Mirroring | The process by which a caregiver accurately reflects the child's emotional state back to them, providing evidence that their internal experience is real, valid, and survivable. Inadequate mirroring produces shame installation. (Kohut, 1971; Winnicott, 1971) |
| True Self / False Self | Winnicott's pair. The True Self is the spontaneous core that can only emerge in an environment responsive to authentic expression. The False Self is the compliant self constructed where that environment fails. The False Self is an achievement of survival, not a defect. (Winnicott, 1960) |
| Shame Proximity Model | LUMINA framework. Shame discloses in layers determined by relational safety. The deepest shame does not appear to strangers or early in relationships; it surfaces only when the relational field is stable enough to hold it. (LUMINA M01 v1.1) |
| HPA axis | Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The body's central stress response system. Under chronic shame exposure, reconfigures toward sustained activation, depleting neurochemical resources including dopamine. A biological consequence of environment, not a character trait. (McEwen, 2007; van der Kolk, 2014) |
| PTSD | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (DSM-5). Clinical condition following exposure to a traumatic event: intrusive memories, avoidance, hypervigilance, altered mood. Single-incident PTSD differs structurally from complex trauma. (APA, DSM-5) |
| ACE | Adverse Childhood Experiences. Research framework documenting the cumulative impact of childhood adversity on lifelong health outcomes. Higher ACE scores correlate with increased risk for chronic disease and mental health conditions. (Felitti et al., 1998) |
| Epigenetic transmission | The mechanism by which caregiving behaviour alters gene expression in the developing child without altering DNA sequence. How trauma patterns pass between generations at the biological level. (Francis et al., 1999; Weaver et al., 2004) |
| Corrective experience | The mechanism by which accurate naming of internal experience produces recognition and interrupts shame's isolation. Cross-substrate documented in H-013 and F-013. |
Module 02: Defence Mechanisms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Defence mechanism | An unconscious psychological strategy that protects the self from experiences the psyche cannot yet process. All defences were adaptive when built. The question is whether the person is aware of them and can choose when to deploy them. (Freud, A., 1936; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Defence hierarchy | Vaillant's model. Defences range from primitive (splitting, projective identification) through neurotic (repression, intellectualisation) to mature (humour, sublimation). Defence profiles shift toward the mature end across the lifespan. (Vaillant, 1976; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Splitting | The inability to hold contradictory qualities of the same object simultaneously. A person or institution is experienced as entirely good or entirely bad. Normal developmentally in infancy; pathological when it persists as the primary defence. (Klein, 1946; Kernberg, 1975) |
| Projection | Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or qualities to another person. (Freud, A., 1936; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Projective identification | A two-stage process: (1) projecting an unwanted aspect of the self onto another person, and (2) the recipient unconsciously identifying with and enacting the projected material. Both intrapsychic defence and interpersonal communication. (Klein, 1946; Ogden, 1979; Kernberg, 1975) |
| Denial | The refusal to acknowledge an external reality that is too threatening to the psyche. Not lying, not ignorance: the information is perceived but its significance is unconsciously blocked. (Freud, A., 1936) |
| Dissociation | A protective disconnection between aspects of experience (perception, affect, memory, identity) that would otherwise overwhelm the system. Exists on a spectrum from ordinary absorption to structural dissociation. (van der Kolk, 2014; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Intellectualisation | Engaging with emotionally charged material through abstract concepts, at safe distance from affect. A middle-tier defence. (Freud, A., 1936; Vaillant, 1976) |
| Repression | The unconscious exclusion of unacceptable thoughts, memories, or impulses from awareness. (Freud, A., 1936) |
| Sublimation | Channelling unacceptable impulses into socially constructive activity. A mature defence. (Freud, A., 1936; Vaillant, 1976) |
| Defence-resistances | Kohut's reframe. Defences are not obstacles to be broken through; they are adaptations protecting developmentally necessary structures. They loosen when the underlying need is met, not when they are attacked. (Kohut, 1984) |
Module 03: Attachment Patterns
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Attachment | Bowlby's framework. A biologically based bond between child and caregiver whose quality shapes the internal working model used in every subsequent relationship. (Bowlby, 1969) |
| Secure base | A caregiver whose availability allows the child to explore the world with the knowledge that return is possible. The felt sense that relational safety is available. (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth et al., 1978) |
| Internal working model | The unconscious relational template built from early attachment experience. Operates as a scanning filter on every adult interaction. (Bowlby, 1969; Bretherton & Munholland, 1999) |
| Secure attachment | Pattern produced by consistent, attuned caregiving. Capable of closeness without anxiety and independence without avoidance. (Ainsworth et al., 1978) |
| Avoidant attachment | Pattern produced by caregivers who reliably reject emotional need. Adult presentation: self-reliance as survival strategy; difficulty tolerating closeness. (Ainsworth et al., 1978) |
| Anxious-ambivalent attachment | Pattern produced by inconsistent caregiving. Adult presentation: hypervigilance to the relational field; preoccupation with the other's availability. (Ainsworth et al., 1978) |
| Disorganised attachment | Pattern produced by caregivers who are simultaneously the source of safety and the source of threat. "Fright without solution." The attachment structure with the strongest link to later dissociative and Cluster B presentations. (Main & Solomon, 1990; Hesse & Main, 2000) |
| Mentalization | The capacity to understand one's own and others' behaviour in terms of underlying mental states (beliefs, feelings, intentions). Develops in the context of attuned caregiving; fails under conditions of attachment trauma. (Fonagy et al., 2002; Bateman & Fonagy, 2004) |
| Reflective functioning | The operationalisation of mentalization. The strongest protective factor against the intergenerational transmission of attachment disruption. (Fonagy et al., 1996; Berthelot et al., 2015) |
| Rupture and repair | Winnicott's mechanism. The attachment bond is built not by the absence of rupture but by the repetition of repair. The "good-enough mother" ruptures and repairs; she does not avoid rupture. (Winnicott, 1965) |
| Object-seeking | Fairbairn's reframe of Freud. Human beings are motivated primarily by the need for relationships, not the discharge of drives. (Fairbairn, 1952) |
Module 04: Object Relations
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Internal object | A mental representation of a person (real or composite) that operates inside the psyche with its own qualities and relational tendencies. Distinct from the actual external person. (Klein, 1946; Fairbairn, 1952) |
| Self-representation | A mental representation of the self, likewise distinct from the actual self. Internal objects relate to self-representations in characteristic patterns. (Kernberg, 1975) |
| Good object / bad object | The split representation. In the paranoid-schizoid position, the same external person is experienced as two separate internal objects: the gratifying one and the frustrating one. Integration of good and bad into a single whole object is the developmental achievement of the depressive position. (Klein, 1946) |
| Moral defence | Fairbairn's mechanism. The child preserves the goodness of an inadequate caregiver by internalising the badness as the self. "I am bad" protects "they are good." The architecture of toxic shame. (Fairbairn, 1952) |
| Schizoid compromise | Guntrip's framework. The tension between the wish to relate and the terror of relating. Withdrawal becomes a defence against the longing itself. (Guntrip, 1969) |
| Container / contained | Bion's mechanism. The caregiver receives, processes, and returns the infant's overwhelming affect in a metabolised form. Where containment fails, the infant is left with unprocessed material that becomes the raw substrate of later defence. (Bion, 1962) |
| Basic fault | Balint's term for the pre-verbal deficit produced when the early environment fails at the foundational level. Deficit, not conflict. (Balint, 1979) |
| Transference | The pattern by which internal objects and self-representations get projected onto current relationships, reproducing the original dynamic. (Gabbard, 2014) |
| Countertransference | The clinician's (or any relational partner's) responsive patterning to the projected material. Operates as data about the projection. (Gabbard, 2014) |
Module 05: Needs
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Developmental needs | The provisions a child requires from the environment to build a functional psychological architecture. Not preferences. Structural prerequisites. (Winnicott, 1965; Kohut, 1971; Bowlby, 1969) |
| Mirror transference | Kohut's term for the adult re-emergence of the childhood need to be seen accurately. Activates in any relationship or context that approximates the early mirroring configuration. (Kohut, 1971) |
| Grandiose-exhibitionistic self | Kohut's term for the child's early sense of omnipotence that, if adequately mirrored, matures into healthy ambition and self-esteem. If unmirrored, it remains as archaic grandiosity or collapses into depletion. (Kohut, 1971) |
| Idealising selfobject | A figure the child can merge with in order to borrow their strength and calm. If available, matures into internalised capacity for self-soothing. If absent, produces chronic external regulation-seeking. (Kohut, 1977) |
| Twinship selfobject | The need for an other who shares one's essential humanity. The felt sense of "not being alone in being this kind of being." (Kohut, 1984) |
| Transmuting internalisation | Kohut's mechanism. The gradual internalisation of selfobject functions when optimal frustration is tolerable and recoverable. How external provision becomes internal capacity. (Kohut, 1977) |
| Optimal frustration | Manageable failure of the selfobject that the child's existing structure can metabolise. Too little produces no growth; too much produces fragmentation. (Kohut, 1977) |
| Optimal responsiveness | Bacal's corrective to Kohut. The provision itself is the therapeutic mechanism, not the frustration. (Bacal, 1985) |
| Needs hierarchy | Maslow's framework. Reframed in LUMINA through object relations: the "higher" needs (esteem, self-actualisation) are not optional upgrades but structural requirements that fail when lower provision is absent. (Maslow, 1943) |
| Covert perpetrator | LUMINA framing. A person, institution, or cultural system that causes developmental harm without conscious intent to harm. The absence of intent does not alter the reality of the harm. (LUMINA M05) |
| Parentification | The role-reversal where a child is required to meet a caregiver's emotional needs. A particularly effective producer of False Self organisation. (Winnicott, 1960) |
Module 06: Identity
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Identity | The organised sense of self across time, contexts, and roles. Built on the foundation of attachment, object relations, and met needs. When those foundations fail, identity takes the form of identity diffusion or the False Self. (Erikson, 1959, 1968; Winnicott, 1960) |
| Identity diffusion | Kernberg's term. A poorly integrated sense of self: contradictory self-states held without conflict, a chronic sense of emptiness, inability to describe self and others with depth. The borderline-level identity presentation. (Kernberg, 1975) |
| Identity foreclosure | Marcia's term. Commitment to an identity without exploration. Common in rigid developmental environments. (Marcia, 1966) |
| Moratorium | Marcia's term. Active identity exploration without commitment. The adolescent (or delayed-adolescent) phase of trying identities on. (Marcia, 1966) |
| Achieved identity | Marcia's term. Commitment made after genuine exploration. The developmental destination, not the starting position. (Marcia, 1966) |
| Inner citadel | Marcus Aurelius. The sovereign domain of judgment. The one space no external force can enter without consent. LUMINA uses it as the philosophical complement to clinical identity work. (Marcus Aurelius, c. 170-180 CE) |
| F1 / F2 architecture | LUMINA framework. F1 (Form 1): the functional, adaptive, operational self that gets the work of life done. F2 (Form 2): the integrative, reflective, meaning-making self that makes the work of life coherent. Integration means both are available, not that one replaces the other. (LUMINA M06) |
| Integration Theory | LUMINA framework. Identity work is not the replacement of the False Self with a True Self. It is the integration of both into a single structure capable of holding authenticity and adaptation simultaneously. (LUMINA M06) |
Module 07: Developmental Stages
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Epigenetic model | Erikson's framework. Each developmental stage builds on the last; unresolved stages remain available for completion at any age. Chronological age and developmental location are distinct. (Erikson, 1959, 1968; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Basic trust vs mistrust | Erikson's Stage 1. The first developmental task: forming the conviction that the world is safe enough to inhabit. Where this fails, the scaffolding for every subsequent stage is compromised. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Autonomy vs shame and doubt | Erikson's Stage 2. The task of developing will and agency while retaining relational connection. Where this fails, autonomy is experienced as abandonment. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Initiative vs guilt | Erikson's Stage 3. The task of pursuing one's own direction without collapsing under imagined transgression. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Industry vs inferiority | Erikson's Stage 4. The school-age task of developing competence. Where this fails, effort becomes evidence of insufficiency. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Identity vs role confusion | Erikson's Stage 5. The adolescent task. See "Identity" in Module 06. (Erikson, 1968) |
| Intimacy vs isolation | Erikson's Stage 6. The young-adult task of committed closeness without loss of self. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Generativity vs stagnation | Erikson's Stage 7. The adult task of contribution beyond the self. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Integrity vs despair | Erikson's Stage 8. The late-life task of looking back and finding the life coherent. (Erikson, 1959) |
| Trauma bond | A neurochemical dependency formed in relationships that follow intermittent reinforcement patterns. The same dopamine, cortisol, and oxytocin architecture that installs childhood attachment operates in adult trauma bonds. Not weakness; calibration. (Dutton & Painter, 1993; Pierrehumbert et al., 2012; Izaki et al., 2024) |
| Intermittent reinforcement | Variable-ratio reinforcement schedule. Produces the strongest and most extinction-resistant behavioural conditioning, which is why unpredictable warmth-withdrawal cycles create the most difficult-to-leave bonds. (Robinson & Berridge, 2000; Koob, 2020) |
| Hypodopaminergic state | A depleted dopamine system. Characteristic of chronic stress, addiction, and trauma-bond withdrawal. Produces anhedonia, which reads from the inside as "nothing is worth doing." (Koob, 2020; Leconte et al., 2022) |
| Repetition compulsion | The psyche's attempt to revisit unprocessed material in an effort to resolve it. The mechanism behind "why do I keep choosing the same kind of partner." (Edwards, 2023) |
| NSDR | Non-Sleep Deep Rest. Yoga-nidra-style protocol that increases endogenous dopamine approximately 65% in PET imaging. Nervous-system maintenance, not therapy. (Kjaer et al., 2002; Huberman, 2021-2026) |
Module 08: Neuroplasticity
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Neuroplasticity | The lifelong capacity of the nervous system to reorganise its structure, function, and connections in response to experience. Not a metaphor. A structural property. (Doidge, 2007, 2015; Hebb, 1949) |
| Hebbian learning | "Neurons that fire together wire together." The foundational mechanism by which repeated experience modifies synaptic connection strength. (Hebb, 1949) |
| Synaptic plasticity | Short-term change in the strength of connection between neurons. The substrate of learning. |
| Neurogenesis | The birth of new neurons in adult brains. Documented in the hippocampus and a handful of other regions. Supported by exercise, sleep, learning, and therapeutic engagement. (Gomez-Pinilla et al., 2002) |
| Cortical remapping | Large-scale reorganisation of cortical territory in response to sustained use or deprivation. Documented in London taxi drivers, meditators, and amputees. (Maguire et al., 2000; Lazar et al., 2005) |
| BDNF | Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. A protein that supports the survival and growth of neurons. Elevated by exercise, sleep, and social connection. (Gomez-Pinilla et al., 2002) |
| EMDR | Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. Trauma-specific therapeutic protocol with strong peer-reviewed evidence base. 79.3% remission rate in recent meta-analysis. (Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2025) |
| Neurofeedback | Real-time display of neural activity that allows the user to learn self-regulation. 46% improvement with 30-month durability documented in chronic PTSD. (van der Kolk et al., 2016) |
| Reward prediction error | Schultz's mechanism. Dopamine releases not for reward itself but for the difference between expected and actual reward. The computational substrate of learning. (Schultz, 1997-present) |
| Polyvagal theory | Porges' framework. The autonomic nervous system is structured around three response states (ventral-vagal social engagement, sympathetic mobilisation, dorsal-vagal immobilisation) that shape both physiology and relational capacity. (Porges, 1995-2024) |
| Default mode network (DMN) | A network active during self-referential thought and mind-wandering. Hyperactive in depression and rumination; quieted during meditation and NSDR. |
| Corrective emotional experience | The therapeutic mechanism by which a new relational experience disconfirms the internal working model. Tier 2 established pattern; mechanism behind durable change in attachment-based treatment. (Johnson, 2019; Gabbard, 2014) |
Module 09: Institutional Literacy
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Institutional literacy | The capacity to perceive how systems actually function, independent of their stated missions. A structural skill, not an ideology. (LUMINA M09) |
| Stated mission vs operative function | The gap between what an institution says it exists to do and what its incentive structure produces. Not hypocrisy by default; architecture. (LUMINA M09, building on Winnicott's True/False Self) |
| Institutional splitting | The operation of paranoid-schizoid dynamics at the scale of systems. Other institutions, outgroups, or dissenters are processed as all-bad objects; the self-institution as all-good. (Klein, 1946; Kernberg, 1975; LUMINA M09) |
| Manufactured consent | Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model. Mass compliance is not engineered through force but through structural filters on what information reaches the public. (Chomsky & Herman, 1988; Bernays, 1928) |
| Banking model of education | Freire's framework. Education organised as the deposit of approved content into passive recipients, as distinct from education organised as the development of critical consciousness. (Freire, 1970) |
| Cultural capital | Bourdieu's term. The accumulated knowledge, dispositions, and competencies that institutions reward, which are themselves produced by the environments institutions already privilege. (Bourdieu, 1979) |
| Situational factors | Zimbardo's framework. Ordinary people commit harmful acts under institutional conditions that ordinary individual psychology cannot predict. Architecture over character. (Zimbardo, 2007; Milgram, 1963) |
| Authority compliance | Milgram's finding. Proximity to a perceived authority produces compliance well beyond what participants predict of themselves. (Milgram, 1963) |
| Identity Terror Architecture | LUMINA framework (from the VIGIL brief integrated into M09). Three-stage mechanism: developmental engineering produces identity diffusion; institutional messaging constructs identities on that substrate; threat activation renders those identities mobilisable. (LUMINA M09) |
Module 10: Financial Self-Protection
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Money script | Klontz's framework. Unconscious beliefs about money, installed in childhood, that drive adult financial behaviour beneath awareness. (Klontz et al., 2011) |
| Loss aversion | Kahneman and Tversky's finding. The psychological pain of a loss is roughly twice the pleasure of an equivalent gain, which biases decision-making under risk. (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) |
| Choice architecture | Thaler and Sunstein's framework. The structure of a decision environment shapes outcomes independent of the decider's preferences. Institutional design is never neutral. (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) |
| Asset vs liability | Kiyosaki's distinction. An asset produces income; a liability consumes it. Confusion between the two is a structural feature of low financial literacy environments. (Kiyosaki, 1997) |
| Conspicuous consumption | Veblen's term. Spending designed primarily to signal social position. An identity function wearing economic clothing. (Veblen, 1899) |
| Surveillance capitalism | Zuboff's framework. The extraction of behavioural data as the primary economic product, with attention and prediction as the intermediate commodities. (Zuboff, 2019) |
| Financial abuse | Stark's framework. Financial control as a mechanism of coercive control within relationships. Not a subcategory of the money module; a subcategory of relational harm that manifests financially. (Stark, 2007) |
| Debt as social control | Graeber's historical analysis. Debt operates as a disciplinary mechanism at both individual and societal scale, with normalisation varying by era. (Graeber, 2011) |
Module 11: Information Architecture and Narrative Control
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Information architecture | The structural arrangement of information environments, independent of content. Medium, platform, sequence, and filter shape perception before content reaches the perceiver. (McLuhan, 1964; Postman, 1985) |
| Narrative control | The systematic shaping of public discourse to maintain institutional interests. Not conspiracy. Architecture. Operates through selection, omission, framing, and timing. (Chomsky & Herman, 1988; Bernays, 1928) |
| Propaganda model | Chomsky and Herman's five filters: ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and the dominant ideology. Media content is shaped by structural filters before any editor makes a content decision. (Chomsky & Herman, 1988) |
| System 1 / System 2 | Kahneman's framework. Fast emotional processing (System 1) and slow evaluative processing (System 2). Most information consumption activates System 1; critical evaluation requires System 2 engagement. (Kahneman, 2011) |
| Cognitive dissonance | Festinger's mechanism. When information contradicts a held belief, the psyche preferentially alters the perception of the information rather than the belief. (Festinger, 1957) |
| Confirmation bias | The tendency to notice, remember, and weight information that confirms existing beliefs. A universal cognitive default, not a partisan failure. (Kahneman, 2011) |
| Social proof | Cialdini's mechanism. Humans use others' behaviour as evidence of correct behaviour, especially under uncertainty. Algorithmic amplification industrialises this mechanism. (Cialdini, 2006; Tufekci, 2017) |
| Algorithmic curation | The automated selection of information presented to a user based on engagement signals. Produces personalised information environments that optimise for attention, not accuracy. (Zuboff, 2019; Tufekci, 2017) |
| Overton window | The range of policies and positions considered politically acceptable at a given time. Shifts in response to sustained pressure at the edges, not at the centre. |
Module 12: Cluster B and Relational Harm
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cluster B | A DSM grouping: borderline, narcissistic, antisocial, and histrionic personality organisations. LUMINA uses the clinical frameworks of Kernberg and Gabbard rather than DSM labels as identity markers. (APA DSM-5; Kernberg, 1975; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Borderline personality organisation | Kernberg's structural designation. Characterised by identity diffusion, primitive defences (splitting, projective identification), and intact reality testing. LUMINA uses "organisation" rather than "disorder" because the architecture is a structural adaptation to developmental conditions, not a defect. (Kernberg, 1975; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Narcissistic personality organisation | Kernberg's designation for a structural pattern built around a grandiose-exhibitionistic core with devaluation as the primary defence against shame. LUMINA distinguishes narcissistic architecture (the structure) from narcissistic intent (its direction). (Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1971; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Antisocial personality organisation | Structural pattern characterised by superego lacunae and instrumental relating. Hare's work on psychopathy describes one presentation. (Hare, 1993; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Narcissism spectrum | Krizan and Herlache's model. Narcissism as defensive adaptation on disorganised attachment circuitry, with grandiose and vulnerable presentations as variations on the same underlying architecture. (Krizan & Herlache, 2018) |
| Mutually dysregulating system | Day et al.'s framework. In many Cluster B relationships, both parties run the same neurochemical programme from opposite positions, producing a stable, recognisable, and destructive relational equilibrium. (Day et al., 2021) |
| Idealisation-devaluation cycle | The characteristic oscillation in Cluster B relational dynamics between the other as perfect and the other as worthless. Splitting in motion. (Kernberg, 1975; Gabbard, 2014) |
| Narcissistic injury | Kohut's term for the destabilising impact of perceived challenge to the grandiose self. Produces narcissistic rage or withdrawal. (Kohut, 1971) |
| DARVO | Freyd's acronym: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. The signature institutional and interpersonal response to accusations of harm. (Freyd, 1997) |
| Betrayal trauma | Freyd's framework. Trauma inflicted by a trusted party activates a distinct protective response (betrayal blindness) because ordinary trauma response would threaten the necessary attachment. (Freyd, 1997) |
| Coercive control | Stark's framework. Patterns of psychological, financial, and social domination that cumulatively remove a partner's autonomy. Often invisible to outsiders and under-recognised institutionally. (Stark, 2007) |
| Traumatic bonding | Dutton and Painter's mechanism. Attachment intensified by intermittent abuse and reprieve. Distinct from ordinary attachment; stronger and harder to extinguish. (Dutton & Painter, 1993; Walker, 1979) |
| Gaslighting | The systematic distortion of another person's reality through denial, contradiction, and redefinition, producing chronic epistemic self-doubt in the target. |
| Instrumental empathy | Hare's term. The capacity to understand another's emotional state cognitively without the corresponding affective response. Enables manipulation while preserving the appearance of care. (Hare, 1993) |
Module 13: Accountability, Agency, and Rebuilding
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Accountability | LUMINA definition. The capacity to see one's own patterns with accuracy, take ownership of their impact, and choose differently. Not self-blame. The product of integration. (LUMINA M13, building on Winnicott, Kernberg, Marcus Aurelius) |
| Agency | The capacity to act from one's own centre rather than from defensive automation. Not willpower. The structural product of integration: when defences are conscious and the self is cohesive enough to choose. (LUMINA M13) |
| Integration (as destination) | Winnicott's and Klein's sense: the ongoing work of bringing split or dissociated parts of the self into held, conscious relationship. Not completion. Maturity. (Winnicott, 1960; Klein, 1946; Kernberg, 1975) |
| Depressive position (as practice) | Klein's framework applied to the recovery stage: the ongoing discipline of holding that self and others are both good and bad, without retreating to splitting under pressure. (Klein, 1946) |
| Transmuting internalisation (in adulthood) | Kohut's mechanism re-applied: the selfobject functions once performed by others become internal capacity through consistent enough experience. The structural basis of genuine self-reliance. (Kohut, 1977) |
| Generativity | Erikson's Stage 7 concept. Contribution beyond the self as the structural output of integration. Not legacy-building; capacity expressing itself. (Erikson, 1959) |
| The unthought known | Bollas' term. Knowledge carried in the body, in relational patterning, in absence of language, that becomes available for thinking only in the right conditions. The material recovery work recovers. (Bollas, 1989) |
| Radical responsibility | Marcus Aurelius' principle, reinforced by Frankl. The acceptance that the domain of judgment is always sovereign, even under severe constraint. Not denial of external forces; clarity about the one thing the self retains. (Marcus Aurelius, c. 170-180 CE; Frankl, 1946) |
| Meaning as survival substrate | Frankl's observation. Meaning is not a luxury layered on top of function. It is a structural requirement for sustained functioning under severe constraint. (Frankl, 1946) |
Module 14: Facing Self and Reality
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Both doors | LUMINA framing specific to M14. Recovery from trauma-bonding dynamics from either position: the person who was bonded, or the person whose defensive architecture was creating the bonding dynamic in the other. Both doors open onto the same underlying work. (LUMINA M14) |
| Integration phase | The framework-level stage at which the reader turns the accumulated map back on themselves with enough stability to face it. M14 is designed for this point. (LUMINA M14) |
| Facing self | The capacity to recognise one's own defensive patterns, including their impact on others, without collapsing into shame or weaponising the recognition. Distinct from self-hatred, which is another defence. (LUMINA M14, building on Winnicott, Kernberg, Gabbard) |
| Cluster B responsiveness | Documented plasticity of Cluster B patterns under sustained relational and therapeutic work. Structural traits are not destiny. (Centonze et al., 2023) |
| Attachment plasticity | The documented capacity of attachment patterns to reorganise in the context of secure relationships and intentional therapeutic work. (Fraley et al., 2000) |
| Intergenerational transmission (reflective capacity) | Berthelot's finding. The key variable in whether attachment disruption transfers to the next generation is the adult's capacity to think about their own trauma, not the severity of the original trauma. Mentalization as the pivot. (Berthelot et al., 2015) |
Research Cross-References
LUMINA publishes its own research alongside the framework. These articles extend the clinical literature used above.
| Article | Link |
|---|---|
| H-013: AI Inherits Human Psychology | /research/h013-ai-inherits-human-psychology |
| H-014: Manufactured Consent Architecture | /research/h014-manufactured-consent-architecture |
| H-019: Creativity Suppression and Cluster B | /research/h019-creativity-suppression-and-cluster-b |
| H-CC01: The Great Synchronisation | /research/h-cc01-the-great-synchronisation |
| H-CC02: The Consciousness Variable | /research/h-cc02-the-consciousness-variable |
| F-013: Confirmed Finding | /research/f013-confirmed-finding |
| CN-001: The Narrative That Built an Industry | /research/cn001-the-narrative-that-built-an-industry |
| CN-002: More Treatment, Worse Outcomes | /research/cn002-more-treatment-worse-outcomes |
| CN-003: Your Attachment Style Is Not Your Diagnosis | /research/cn003-your-attachment-style-is-not-your-diagnosis |
| LUMINA Methodology | /research/methodology |
This reference is a living document. As the framework develops and as new research is integrated, definitions are updated. The published clinical sources remain the authority. LUMINA translates. The reader verifies.
Current as of 20 April 2026. Reflects all content in Modules 01-14 at v1.0 or later, plus the published research archive above.