Viva seminar invite: Tibor Kovacs 'Language, psychosis and trauma: an interdisciplinary explorative study'
Viva seminar invite: Tibor Kovacs 'Language, psychosis and trauma: an interdisciplinary explorative study'
Dear colleagues and friends,
I would like to invite to the presentation of the results of my PhD entitled:
Language, psychosis and trauma: an interdisciplinary explorative study
Time: 1pm, 12th June 2025
My project is an explorative study investigating heterogeneity in schizophrenia using linguistic and clinical indicators. It is grounded in philosophical considerations about the nature of mental disorders, historic aspects of the concept of psychosis, and considerations about language as a characteristically human social-evolutionary skillset. It includes a quantitative and a qualitative part exploring heterogeneity from the viewpoint of different theoretical and methodological paradigms.
The quantitative part starts by reporting significant linguistic differences between participants with schizophrenia, first degree relatives and healthy controls (embedding complexity, length of utterance, propositional density and lexical variability). While it shows that language cannot be examined independently from other cognitive functions, linguistic variables appear indicative of schizophrenia with a considerable level of accuracy. Clinical and linguistic variables also indicate heterogeneity within the schizophrenia group in function of trauma history. Results highlight the importance of social-interpersonal aspects of trauma and demonstrate associations with certain symptoms and linguistic variables. The primary analysis shows that key linguistic variables are indicative of interpersonal trauma history, while the secondary analysis explores associations along the categorial, dimensional and network approaches.
The qualitative part pilots a tool of cognitive semantic analysis of non-literal speech. It reports certain patterns of non-literal speech that are important for the subjective understanding of psychosis and trauma (objectification, containment, space-schematic representation, personification, agency and force-dynamic interactions). These patterns appear to be essential features of image schematic representations, connected with psychological schemas underlying psychosis.
The presented results support theories of psychological trauma leading to qualitatively distinct psychotic presentations, but without neat diagnostic boundaries. Trauma appears to act synergistically with other contributors, and research methods examining complex, dynamic, non-linear processes are necessary to understand these interactions. The complex interface between language and psychosis is deeply rooted in socially interactive communicative processes that are part of human evolutionary and individual development.
You are welcome to join face to face at the Location: Colin Ingram Seminar Room, Henry Wellcome Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH
Or you can join us online at 13:00, 12 June:
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Many Thanks,
Tibor Kovacs