Chronic Helplessness as Agency-Collapse Wrong Attractor: Beyond Seligman

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to chronic helplessness, extending Seligman's learned helplessness paradigm by formalising the basin mechanics. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and attractor geometry, we show how incontingency learning creates an agency-collapse wrong attractor W whose basin depth is modulated by attributional style: internal, stable, and global attributions each deepen the basin.

The framework further identifies structural sources of helplessness — poverty, incarceration, systemic oppression — as basin components independent of individual psychology. Nine propositions characterise the incontingency learning mechanism, attributional deepening, structural helplessness, comorbidity with depression and PTSD, and return paths through mastery experiences, attribution retraining, and ACT.

Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.