PhronesisChronic topic-shifting is the compulsion to change the subject whenever conversation approaches difficult, vulnerable, or emotionally charged territory. This paper formalizes the phenomenon as a wrong attractor W operating against ground state S^0, which we define as calibrated relational persistence: the capacity to remain present in a conversation without fleeing when discomfort rises.
We introduce the Conversation-Redirect Architecture (CRA) as the functional mechanism through which systematic subject-change operates as a discomfort-management strategy, and the Sustained-Depth Foreclosure Basin (SDFB) as the attractor basin that prevents access to relational contact available only through staying with difficult themes. Nine propositions characterize the structure of chronic topic-shifting: from the primacy of vulnerability-anxiety (P1), the immediate reinforcement of the redirect as relief (P2), the other person's recognition of avoidance (P3), identity lock-in as a surface-dweller (P4), intimacy foreclosure (P5), the diagnostic distinction between appropriate topic change and compulsive flight (P6), what is required for return (P7), the mechanics of gradual recalibration via presence-before-redirect practice (P8), and the definition of S^0 stability as the capacity to remain in difficult conversations without systematic exit (P9).
The paper closes with reflections on what it means to arrive rather than merely visit in conversation.