Adrian-Lei-Martinez
Traditional psychological and cognitive science research protocols typically exclude individuals experiencing acute existential or psychological crises, viewing such states as unethical or impractical to study. This framework introduces a novel research paradigm, "Survival as Method," which posits the opposite: that extreme existential crisis, when documented with rigor, serves as a "magnifying glass" for observing and modeling cognitive dynamics not visible under normal conditions.
This methodology treats the researcher's own lived experience not as a source of bias to be eliminated, but as a primary source of high-fidelity, longitudinal data. It formalizes the "trauma-to-theory pipeline," systematically converting lived crisis into scientifically generative and rigorous data. As outlined in the core dissertation, this approach positions the researcher as a "field instrument" , uniquely attuned to perceive and document field phenomena that external third-person observation cannot access.