ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the term “nodule” to call attention to a particular type of irruption into the individual or collective’s psychology while it is engaged in other psychic and interpersonal activities. Something happens that punctures the ongoing flow of experience, hijacking the individual and group focus. This interruption may occur with vivid sensory and emotional immediacy, disrupting the individual or group. Psychic nodules may develop as a unique response to a new and difficult situation, or something that reappears at specific moments and relates to past or ongoing trauma. They may be intense but brief, repetitive, or ongoing, lasting over lengthy personal or historical time periods. The chapter concentrates on the individual and group experience, a political society may be “taken over” by a nodule, engulfing its citizens. A nodule materializes each time as if the first, asserting its presence without foreknowledge or self-understanding.
