PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), formalizing it as a sensory-safety wrong attractor in which a narrow set of safe foods constitutes a genuine attractor basin providing relief, predictability, and nutrition at minimum D(ξ) cost. The nutritional flexibility ground state S°_nutrition is defined as sufficient flexibility for nutritional adequacy and social participation — not enjoyment of all foods, but access to enough variety for health and social functioning.
ARFID is formally modeled as a heterogeneous disorder with three distinct pathways leading to the same wrong attractor: the sensory sensitivity pathway (foods avoided for aversive sensory properties — texture, smell, appearance — generating genuine sensory D(ξ)); the conditioned fear pathway (an aversive experience such as choking or severe vomiting has conditioned food as threat, with D(ξ_anticipation) generated before contact); and the low appetite pathway (motivational D(ξ) is absent, food does not activate normal exploratory behavior).
In all three pathways, the safe-food basin deepens through failed exposures that strengthen threat associations and narrow the safe-food list. Nine formal propositions are derived covering: three-pathway architecture, safe-food basin geometry, failed-exposure deepening dynamics, nutritional Φ accumulation across micronutrient deficiency and growth failure, social isolation as secondary displacement, ASD comorbidity as sensory landscape overlap, the non-pressured exposure requirement, and ARFID/AN distinction (weight-shape cognition as the formal distinguishing criterion).
Graduated food exposure hierarchy is formalized as return path activation; autism-informed modifications to standard ARFID treatment are specified.