A pilot could be grounded for reasons of insanity upon making a formal request. However, the very act of requesting to be grounded—of trying to avoid more missions due to the understandable fear of death—proved one was sane, because only a sane person would want to avoid danger. Therefore, the request is denied. The catch is perfect and inescapable: if you ask, you don’t qualify; if you don’t ask, you can’t be excused.

Grounded in behavioral naturalism and informed by my panmodal aphantasia, the study reveals that Theory of Mind operates as an Epistemic Mirror—a self-referential projection mechanism that reflects the observer’s own cognitive logic rather than illuminating the other.

The first methodological law is the exclusion of the ghost from the machine. To observe a behavioral structure is to describe its geometry in time and relation—its sequences, its invariances, its pressures and resistances. Any explanation that begins with an invisible cause is not an explanation; it is a confession that observation has been abandoned for myth.

În noaptea dintre ani, îmi imaginez o stea care explodează în cer și trimite un praf vindecător peste cei aflați în nevoie — ca un miracol care rezolvă greutăți, restabilește sănătatea și aduce stabilitate financiară. #LaMultiAniFericiti https://cuvintecusufletdecristinagherghel.blogspot.com/2025/12/praf-de-stele-la-multi-ani-cu-sanatate.html

On New Year’s Eve, I imagine a star exploding in the sky and sending a healing dust over those in need — a miracle that resolves hardships, restores health, and brings financial stability. https://cristinagherghelvox.blogspot.com/2025/12/healing-dust-over-you-happy-new-year.html

"No equation precedes the pain. The body does not model the wound of the Other; it transduces it. No mental simulation is required when the self is not a mirror, but a conductor." I’ve published a new research paper examining the structural dissociation between empathy, moral valuation, and simulation-based models of social cognition. https://open.substack.com/pub/cristinagherghel/p/empathy-without-mental-imagery-why?r=6bmg7x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Open access on Zenodo. #Empathy #Aphantasia #MentalImagery #CognitiveScience #PhilosophyOfMind #Neuroscience

What if a key feature of your mind—like your inability to visualize—wasn’t a random glitch, but a signature? Not a bug, but an autograph? For decades, aphantasia—the inability to generate voluntary mental imagery—has been framed in two ways. It’s seen as a congenital trait, a neurological variation you’re simply born with. Or it’s acquired, lost after a brain injury or trauma. Both views see it as a state of the hardware: either it was born that way, or it was damaged.

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.

The Paradox That Started It All Psychology is clear: severe early trauma shatters the self. It leaves a person grappling with invisibility, worthlessness, and fractured identity. But what if you experience the trauma, yet none of those feelings exist?

The infant does not seek reflection. The capacity to seek reflection—and the subsequent feeling of its lack—is a psychobiological program installed only after reflection itself has been provided. Teleology is nurture, not nature. #Amirroring #Aphantasia #DevelopmentalPsychology #Consciousness #Autopoiesis #ZeroPointOfNarcissism