Professor Veronica Iubei, who teaches a course at Syracuse Florence on Italian serial crimes, presented a paper at the 3rd International Conference of the European Association of Phenomenology, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy (EAPPP), held in Athens on 2 and 3 October 2026. The conference was organized under the auspices of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and its Medical School, with support from the Institut français de Grèce and the Ambassade de France en Grèce.
Iubei’s paper began with Judith Herman’s landmark book Trauma and Recovery, which argues that people living with Complex PTSD should be seen first and foremost as survivors, not victims or merely patients. “Words matter: they convey a shared ground of reality and meaning,” Iubei said. Recovery and prevention, she argued, must go beyond medication and psychotherapy to engage with broader struggles against power structures and social injustice. Drawing on Ludwig Binswanger’s existential phenomenology, Iubei proposed that the essence of CPTSD lies in the sudden cessation of relationality, a rupture that can be repaired only if the therapist first becomes the survivor’s witness, validating that experience and giving it reality.