INCLUSION: WITH RESERVATIONS

In contemporary public discourse, inclusion is an evergreen concept, enthusiastically embraced in educational

and clinical contexts. However, when examined more closely, it often reveals itself to be a conditional inclusion, strategically shaped around the “social acceptability” of the person to be included.

In practice: the different is welcome, provided they do not exceed. They may be vulnerable, certainly, but they must also be well-functioning ideally emotionally self-regulated, consistently cooperative, and, if possible, reassuring to those who receive them. If, instead, they bring too much chaos or indecipherable pain, they are quietly relocated outside the perimeter of “manageable normality”.

This is a social dynamic well described in psychology through the concepts of implicit norms, identity conformity, and relational desirability. Inclusion, far from being an absolute principle, often takes the shape of a sophisticated form of symbolic selection: we include those who prove themselves able to adapt to the context, who generate compatibility, who correctly decode the prevailing social script and conform without too much friction.

A mechanism is triggered widespread yet rarely named: the empathic bubble. A selective affective filter, which directs our capacity for empathy towards those who resemble us enough or, at least, manage to render themselves sufficiently intelligible according to our cultural and emotional codes.

The empathic bubble is convenient: it allows us to maintain an image of ourselves as open and welcoming individuals, while still excluding in elegantly and discreetly, what feels too disturbing, too alien, and too difficult

to truly “feel”.

We promote inclusion, as long as it does not demand that we tolerate misalignment and as long as otherness remains relatively tame.

Authentic inclusion, the kind that represents a true transformative process rather than a mere narrative strategy, would instead compel us to engage with friction, ambiguity, and incomprehensibility.

It would ask us to suspend the need for immediate identification, to welcome what is not intuitive, what cannot easily be explained in an Instagram caption, but this, as we know, is far less photogenic and far more difficult to implement in educational or institutional plans, where efficiency, measurability, and clarity continue to guide intervention practices.

What about those who cannot perform the expected inclusivity? Those who defy the emotional and moral expectations of the reference group? Those who not only do not “function”, but actively reject the functionalist logic underlying their acceptance?

Perhaps then, it is time to state it plainly: we are not truly speaking of inclusion, but of aesthetic adaptation to

the norm.

- 𝐷𝑟. 𝑁𝑖𝑘𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑗 𝐾𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑣

𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑃𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦