PhronesisChronic conversational topic-hijacking (W_CCTH) is formalized within the displacement framework as a presence-seizure wrong attractor: a stable but dysfunctional relational basin in which a person compulsively redirects any incoming conversational topic back to themselves. The pathology is not clinical narcissism, simple self-absorption, or performative dominance—it is organized around an automatic associative process in which whatever the other person is talking about triggers a self-relevant connection that immediately displaces the original topic.
The hijack is typically experienced not as a redirect but as natural conversational flow; the self-centering is invisible from the inside. We identify three interlocking sustaining mechanisms: (1) self-relevance-as-engagement-criterion, the implicit belief that one can only genuinely contribute to a conversation about something if it relates to personal experience, such that other-focused topics feel like territory where one has nothing to offer; (2) other-topic-as-exclusion, the phenomenological experience of the other person's topic as the conversation excluding the self rather than as the conversation being about something, such that the redirect restores a sense of relational belonging; and (3) associative-disinhibition, the failure of inhibitory circuits to intercept the automatic path from other-topic to self-relevant topic before the redirect is already underway.
These mechanisms jointly generate the Topic-Hijacking Paradox: conversational self-centering organized to establish connection systematically prevents it, because the other person experiences their experience as unwitnessed, and gradually withdraws the genuine engagement that the self-centering is organized to secure. The ground state S^0 is calibrated conversational reciprocity: the capacity to hold space for another person's topic through its natural completion, contributing from genuine interest rather than self-relevance, without systematic self-centering.
Displacement accumulation under W_CCTH operates along three pathways: within-conversation topic compression, cross-conversation relational thinning, and the non-development of genuine other-directed attention. Return paths include associative-inhibition training, phenomenological reorientation toward other-experience as interesting-in-itself, and Internal Family Systems work on the part organized around self-relevance-as-inclusion.
Nine formal propositions structure the analysis.: topic-hijacking, wrong attractor, displacement framework, self-centering, conversational reciprocity, associative-disinhibition, Topic-Hijacking Paradox, other-topic intolerance, empathy