Psychology of Belonging as a Clinical–Ontological Paradigm Differentiation from Humanism, Systemic Therapy, Attachment Theory, and Social Psychology

This article presents the Psychology of Belonging as an autonomous clinical and ontological paradigm distinct from humanistic psychology, systemic therapy, attachment theory, and social psychology. The paper argues that similarities among these approaches are often descriptive rather than ontological: while other paradigms recognize the importance of relationships, the Psychology of Belonging defines belonging as the constitutive condition of the psychological subject itself. The central thesis maintains that the subject does not preexist its belongings but is constituted within structures of belonging involving recognition, reciprocity, social position, institutional insertion, and meaningful participation in human networks. From this basis, the article formulates the Central Theorem of the Psychology of Belonging: psychological problems cannot be fully resolved through interventions focused exclusively on the isolated individual; effective clinical resolution requires intervention in the subject’s real structures of belonging. The manuscript systematically differentiates the Psychology of Belonging from: humanistic psychology, which treats relationships as facilitative rather than constitutive; systemic therapy, which emphasizes communication systems but not ontological belonging; attachment theory, which explains relational security but not multilevel and institutional belonging across the life cycle; and social psychology, which studies social influence on an already constituted subject rather than defining the subject from the social itself. The article develops a multilevel model of belonging including primary, secondary, and institutional/tertiary belongings, and introduces institutions—work, school, market, State, and culture—as legitimate clinical objects capable of generating recognition or symbolic expulsion. Eight detailed clinical vignettes operationalize the framework and demonstrate how psychopathology may emerge from exclusion, precarization, humiliation, loss of place, and non-recognition. The paper concludes that the Psychology of Belonging constitutes a reformulation of the very object of clinical psychology, redefining cure as reintegration into viable and non-damaging structures of belonging.