WOUND THEORY
The early public name for a question that became the Attachment-Regulation Framework.When does political identity become more than belief or group membership, and start doing emotional regulation work?
The early public name for a question that became the Attachment-Regulation Framework.When does political identity become more than belief or group membership, and start doing emotional regulation work?
What Is Wound Theory?
Wound Theory began as a public-facing attempt to understand why some beliefs, loyalties, and political identities become emotionally load-bearing.The current research version of this work is the Attachment-Regulation Framework, or ARF, and the construct of Perceived External Regulation, or PER.The core question is whether, for some people under some conditions, political groups, leaders, narratives, or communities can become external supports for regulating threat, shame, belonging, uncertainty, humiliation, or self-coherence.
For the current research framing, start with the public explainer or the Substack series.
A belief is not always only a belief.
The question is not only what people believe. It is what the belief is doing for them.
Eric Conklin is a security red teamer and independent researcher. His work focuses on political identity, emotional regulation, attachment, and how belief systems can become psychologically load-bearing.His theoretical paper, “Attachment Dysregulation and Political Identity: A Developmental Framework for Understanding Ideological Fusion,” has been accepted for publication in Social Sciences & Humanities Open; DOI forthcoming.His current research centers on the Attachment-Regulation Framework and Perceived External Regulation, or PER: a proposed way to study when political identity begins functioning as an external support for managing threat, shame, belonging, uncertainty, or self-coherence.Wound Theory remains the early public name for this line of thought. The research program now focuses on careful definition, empirical testing, and distinguishing healthy political engagement from compensatory regulatory reliance.