Reconstructing Psychological Thought: A Belonging-Based Integration of Contemporary Psychological Paradigms under Dual Temporality

Building on the ontological framework of belonging, dual temporality, and imperfect belonging developed in prior work, this paper advances a systematic reconstruction of psychological thought. Rather than proposing a new school, it reinterprets major psychological paradigms—behaviorism, psychoanalysis, cognitive-behavioral therapy, social psychology, and developmental theory—as partial models of belonging operating under distinct temporal and structural constraints. The central claim is that psychological theories implicitly presuppose different ontologies of the self. When examined through the lens of belonging, these paradigms can be reorganized within a unified structure in which the self is understood as a diachronic trajectory of belonging unfolding under synchronic constraints. Psychological distress is thereby redefined as disruption, rigidification, or substitution of belonging across affective, social, and existential domains. The paper develops a six-step clinical architecture that distinguishes pre-cognitive conditions—body, instinct regulation, reconstruction of belonging, and emotional development—from cognitive processes such as awareness and mentalization. This reordering explains the differential efficacy of contemporary therapies and introduces the belonging mediation hypothesis: cognitive interventions are effective only when sufficient belonging has been restored. Through comparative analysis and detailed clinical cases (loneliness, addiction, relational trauma), the paper demonstrates how existing approaches converge yet remain limited by methodological individualism. The proposed framework integrates these traditions while preserving individual freedom through the principle of imperfect belonging. The result is a unified reconstruction of psychology grounded in a relational ontology: being is belonging.