PhronesisThe abandonment schema — Young's early maladaptive schema characterized by the core belief that significant others are inherently unreliable and will inevitably leave, die, or choose someone else — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_AB in the landscape of contingent security. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as contingent security: the capacity to trust in the reliability of significant relationships while acknowledging that all relationships involve genuine uncertainty and that one can survive loss.
Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: the instability prediction filter (the schema operates as a perceptual filter through which neutral relational events are interpreted as abandonment signals — selective attention confirms the schema), the preemptive strategy bifurcation (two opposing strategies both maintain W_AB: preemptive clinging and preemptive withdrawal, each generating the feared abandonment through different pathways), and the self-fulfilling prophecy (preemptive clinginess drives partners away; preemptive withdrawal ends relationships before they can deepen).
The schema perpetuation paradox is central: the abandonment schema cannot be disconfirmed through experience alone — positive relational experiences are dismissed as temporary or reframed as dangerous. Nine formal propositions characterize the instability prediction basin, the IPF, the preemptive bifurcation, self-fulfilling prophecy, perpetuation paradox, developmental roots, overlap with anxious attachment, return paths through schema therapy, and distinction from realistic concern.