January 2026, Vol. 15 (2)
Contents
Lessons from Parts 1 & 2 of the International/Cultural Issue By Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC Editor-in-Chief
Wired for Harmony: Cultural Neuroscience and AEDP® with Asian Clients By Yuko Hanakawa
KPop Demon Hunters: An Allegory of Collective Transformance and Healing By Jeanne Paik
Letters from the Editors: Carrie Ruggieri & Danny Yeung
Lessons from Parts 1 & 2 of the International/Cultural Issue
By By Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC
Editor-in-Chief
Lessons from Parts 1 & 2 of the International/Cultural Issue By Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC Editor-in-Chief Dear Readers, Let us thank our authors -Yuko Hanakawa, Jeanne Paik, Evon Chiu, Tamar (Tammy) Avichail, and Kev Kokoska for the beautifully written, deeply insightful, and genuinely enjoyable scholarly articles. Each invite us into the experience of a culture – indeed, the writer’s culture. This is both a gift and an honor. Our writers, here, and in Part 1of this Issue (published September 2025), share personal stories and sentiments – a testament to the safety we create for each other as a community.
From Evon Chiu we learn of the identity challenges for 3rd culture kids – and the dynamic activity of identity, which, as Evon describes it, is more a verb than a noun. Tamar Avichail explores the sensitive task of discerning resistance to emotional expression and receptive capacity from cultural norms of expression. She, and Yuko demonstrate the sensitive and nuance task of honoring the culture while still facilitating an authentic emotional experience. Jeanne Paik writes poignant, and at times, playful exploration of the power of collective healing for collective trauma. Through Kev Kokoska’s work within the prison system, we grasp the anguished human need to communicate across imposed silence. And from Yuko Hanakawa— whose work served as the catalyst for everything I explore below—we encounter a perspective that upended my understanding of a multicultural world. Though her aim was to present applications of cultural neuroscience, I came away with a living-systems view of culture—one I had long sensed but could not yet name.
The Magic Continues – Part 2
By Danny Yeung, MD
Senior Editor
Building on the communal receptiveness of our previous International/Cultural issue, Transformance is proud to showcase another five erudite international/cultural contributions from Yuko Hanakawa, Evon Chiu, Tamar (Tammy) Avichail, Jeanne Paik, and Kev Kokoska.
Compelling in her contention, Yuko Hanakawa in Wired for Harmony: Cultural Neuroscience and AEDP with Asian Clients persuasively argues that collectivist culture shapes neural connectivity in ways that predispose the Asian clients towards interdependence and social harmony. Yuko’s citations of fMRI studies, cultural neuroscience and cross-cultural research are supportive of her main thesis. Her thesis – how cultures value and therefore shape the expression of affect – has profound significance for clinical understanding and intervention within AEDP’s four-state transformational process.
Building on this theoretical foundation, Yuko translates her her cultural informed AEDP into clinical practice by offering interventional guidelines that unpack the “rationale” and provide concrete suggestions for what to say in session. Beyond Yuko’s conceptual and practical contributions, a deep reading of her session transcripts is profoundly moving, stirring feelings of awe and reverence, and once again illustrating the magic of full presence – that simply being with an author’s (Yuko’s) words, can evoke core state.
Wired for Harmony: Cultural Neuroscience and AEDP® with Asian Clients
By Yuko Hanakawa
Abstract: This article integrates cultural neuroscience research with AEDP® clinical practice to articulate a both/and framework for working with Asian and Asian American clients. Three main points are illustrated: First, cultural neuroscience demonstrates that individuals raised in collectivist contexts organize self and emotion through neural circuits that prioritize interdependence and social harmony, with direct implications for how safety is established, affect is regulated, and transformation unfolds in therapy. Display-rule research (Matsumoto, 2008; Matsumoto & Wilson, 2022) and neural studies of self-referential processing (Kitayama & Park,
2010; Zhu et al., 2007) reveal that expressive suppression in harmony-valuing contexts represents culturally intelligent adaptation rather than mere pathology. Second, AEDP’s emphasis on moment-to-moment tracking, metatherapeutic processing, and undoing aloneness including explicit attention to social location and cultural humility—naturally assists cross-cultural work. A detailed clinical vignette with “Ken,” a Japanese American client, demonstrates how culturally attuned AEDP interventions facilitated his movement through all four transformational states, from culturally reinforced defenses to core state experiences of ecological interconnection and calm—a low-arousal positive state consistent with East Asian preferences. Third, eight practice guidelines are offered for AEDP practitioners, emphasizing validation of embeddedness as strength, tracking micro-suppression cues, naming the self-versus-harmony dilemma, and
honoring culturally congruent pathways to transformation. The paper concludes that AEDP’s healing-oriented, relationally embedded framework—with its phenomenological focus and recognition of universal human strivings—provides an unusually culturally adaptive, attuned model when informed by cultural neuroscience.
Culturally Attuned AEDP for Attachment Integration: Four Internal Working Models of a Taiwanese Adopted Migrant Boy
By Yi-Fang (Evon) Chiu
Abstract: This article offers a new perspective on culturally attuned AEDP, highlighting how early emotional experiences and unmet attachment needs shape survival strategies and responsiveness to therapy—beyond race, ethnicity, or language. Through the life story of Michael (birth name Jian-Hua), an adult third culture kid (TCK) who navigated migration and adoption, this article illustrates the unique identity confusion, attachment wounding and challenges of integrating dissociated internal parts that arise when one grows up between multiple cultural worlds, and emphasizes the therapist’s role in providing a secure, culturally attuned, and emotionally present space in which suppressed emotions can be felt, named, and transformed. In some cases, a “small self or no-self” phenomenon emerges, in which earlier, vulnerable selves remain partially disconnected, requiring relational safety for reintegration. In sociocultural contexts where existence or voice must be earned, this “dance” of attunement demonstrates how attachment wounds rooted in Third Culture experience—intersecting with migration, adoption and cultural norms —may fragment identity, and how thoughtful AEDP practice can foster integration. Using the vignette of Michael’s four internal parts—Little Jian-Hua, Little Michael, Big Michael, and Big Jian-Hua—healing begins within this intra-relational space, supporting gradual integration and laying the foundation for eventual Self-with-Other connection.
Therapeutic Delight or Cultural Discomfort? Enhancing Receptive Affective Capacity Across Cultures
By Tamar (Tammy) Avichail
Abstract: One of the central practices of AEDP emphasizes making the implicit explicit through direct expressions of appreciation and inter-subjective delight, aiming to expand the client’s receptive affective capacity. However, when applied in Israeli1 cultural contexts, these expressions, so integral to AEDP’s therapeutic process, often evoke discomfort, defensiveness, or feelings of inauthenticity for both clients and therapists. This paper explores the cultural dissonance that arises when explicit verbal appreciation, a norm in American therapeutic training, is introduced in Israeli therapy rooms, creating unique barriers to high-intensity affective interventions. The core dilemma addressed is how to distinguish between rejection stemming from personal trauma and resistance rooted in cultural defense. This precise understanding of the source of the resistance determines the corrective relational
path, which requires a detailed understanding of the unique culture. Drawing on socio- linguistic research and clinical vignettes, the article demonstrates how Israeli clients’
responses often reflect cultural norms rather than trauma-based restricted receptive affective capacity The article proposes diagnostic and interventional strategies, these culturally attuned adjustments serve dual purposes: they bridge the cultural gap while revealing the source of resistance through the speed and quality of the client’s response. Clinical vignettes illustrate how these adaptations successfully bypass cultural defenses, maintain AEDP fidelity, and enhance therapeutic safety and bonding.
KPop Demon Hunters: An Allegory of Collective Transformance and Healing
By Jeanne Paik
Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into
human cultural manifestation.
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Abstract: At the time of this article’s writing, KPop Demon Hunters (KPDH) has exploded to become a global phenomenon and the most watched film on Netflix of all time, with its soundtrack breaking similar records (Hatchett, 2025).
1 Using AEDP’s ethos and orientation of “humility before phenomena” (Fosha, 2021, p.31), through this article we will seek to identify the transformance represented by KPDH to the of healing collective wounds. In Part 1, we will explore Cultural Attachment Theory, Korean history, and KPDH’s role in repairing ruptures with Korean culture. In Part 2, we will explore how the film itself could be understood as a collective portrayal that helps us process State 2 affective experiences. Music and animation engage powerful right-brain to right-brain processes that allow us to bypass defenses and drop into State 2 (Harrison, 2019). In Part 3, we will metaprocess the healing effect this film has had on Asian American viewers in the U.S. who have suffered anti-Asian sentiment, rhetoric, and hate,
From Story to Symbol: Established Imagery in Constrained Therapeutic Settings – PART 1
By Kev Kokoska
Emotional Endurance Under Constraint:
This paper offers an initial framing for the use and function of imagination in therapeutic practice under conditions of constraint. It stems from my clinical experience working with incarcerated men, in settings where openness is not simply difficult but actively penalized. In carceral environments shaped by surveillance, stigma, and codes of silence, conventional therapeutic assumptions about disclosure, narrative, and safety do not reliably hold. This work is informed by sustained clinical practice within federal prison settings, where the consequences of speech are not theoretical but material. Rather than treating these constraints as obstacles to be overcome, this paper begins from the premise that they have already shaped how communication occurs. In my work, imagination – particularly imaginal forms that are familiar, stylized, and already in circulation – has emerged not as an alternative technique, but as a preferred and accessible channel of contact. This Part 1 paper introduces a phenomenological account of how imagination functions under such conditions, with particular attention to what I later name
Part 2 will extend this framing into detailed clinical material, illustrating how established imagery can be recruited within an AEDP framework to support affective movement and integration when narrative must remain limited. Together, the two papers aim to contribute to a broader understanding of imagination not as escape or embellishment, but as a core medium of psychological survival and change when words carry risk.