PhronesisChronic self-neglect is here characterized not as a passive deficit but as an active wrong attractor: a dynamically stable configuration in which the systematic deprioritization of one's own care becomes self-reinforcing, structurally persistent, and progressively resistant to correction. We introduce a formal displacement framework centered on S^0, the ground state of calibrated self-stewardship, and define displacement D() as the deviation from this baseline along the care-allocation axis.
The cumulative deprivation functional = D()\,d quantifies temporal entrenchment. We characterize the wrong attractor W geometrically as a wellbeing-foreclosure basin: a region of state space in which self-care signals are systematically attenuated, internal need-recognition loops are disrupted, and exit energy barriers are elevated by the very mechanisms that sustain the attractor.
Nine formal propositions specify the structural conditions for entrenchment, the feedback architecture of the self-last loop, and the phase-transition conditions for return to S^0. We draw mechanistic connections to clinical depression, caregiver burnout, martyrdom dynamics, and the internalization of self-neglect as identity. Crucially, we argue that return to calibrated self-stewardship is not merely a matter of motivation but requires structural intervention in the deprivation architecture itself.
The paper closes with directions for therapeutic and systemic implications of the framework.