PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to bipolar disorder, formalizing it as a dual wrong-attractor system in which the mood landscape contains two wrong attractors — W_mania and W_depression — on opposite sides of the euthymic ground state S°_mood. Euthymia is defined as calibrated emotional responsiveness, not emotional flatness: appropriate reactivity, sustained cognition, and identity continuity.
Nine formal propositions are derived covering: S°_mood as calibrated responsiveness rather than flatness, W_mania as a self-reinforcing euphoric wrong attractor that misreports itself as S°_mood (explaining treatment resistance during manic episodes), W_depression as a collapsed wrong attractor with anhedonia and cognitive slowing, the dual wrong-attractor structure as the defining feature distinguishing bipolar from unipolar depression, mixed states as simultaneous activation of both wrong attractors (the highest-risk configuration combining depressive hopelessness with manic energy and impulsivity), kindling as progressive basin deepening (each episode lowers the threshold for the next), sleep disruption as the primary landscape destabilizer, lithium as bilateral landscape modification reducing the basin depth of both wrong attractors simultaneously, and IPSRT (Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy) as behavioral landscape stabilization through social rhythm regulation.
The ethics of mood stabilization — some patients resist treatment because they experience manic states as their 'true self' — is analyzed as the self-misreporting feature of W_mania. The catastrophic risk of untreated bipolar disorder (suicide rate 20–30× general population) is contextualized within the Φ accumulation model.