Psychology of Belonging versus Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Theoretical, Methodological, and Clinical Comparison with Constant Therapeutic Vignettes

This article develops a systematic theoretical and clinical comparison among four major psychological paradigms: Freudian psychoanalysis, behavioral psychology, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and the Psychology of Belonging developed by Carlos Federico Obregón Díaz. The paper argues that the differences among these approaches are not merely technical but ontological and anthropological, since each defines differently the nature of the subject, the causes of suffering, and the meaning of psychological cure. Using a comparative “constant cases” methodology, the same clinical vignettes—depression associated with emptiness and loneliness, social anxiety, self-destructive behaviors, and prolonged grief—are analyzed from each framework, allowing systematic comparison of clinical formulation, causal mechanisms, therapeutic techniques, role of the therapeutic relationship, and criteria of therapeutic success. The article introduces the Psychology of Belonging as a distinct paradigm grounded in the thesis that the human being is fundamentally a being-who-belongs. From this perspective, psychological suffering is conceptualized not primarily as unconscious conflict, maladaptive learning, or cognitive distortion, but as a fracture of belonging involving exclusion, non-recognition, loneliness, humiliation, or loss of place within affective, social, symbolic, and institutional networks. A central theoretical contribution of the manuscript is the formulation of the Central Theorem of the Psychology of Belonging: psychological problems cannot be fully resolved through interventions focused exclusively on the isolated individual; their resolution necessarily requires intervention in the structures of belonging that constitute the subject. The paper also develops a stratified and non-eclectic model of therapeutic complementarity integrating psychoanalysis, behaviorism, CBT, and belonging-centered therapy. The work contributes to contemporary debates in clinical psychology, philosophy of psychology, relational psychology, psychotherapy integration, and social theory by redefining the object of psychology itself: the subject as a relational and institutional being constituted through belonging.