PhronesisCoercive control (Stark 2007) is a pattern of behavior in intimate relationships that seeks to take away the target's liberty and sense of self through isolation, monitoring, microregulation, degradation, and threat. It is distinguished from episodic intimate partner violence by being continuous, non-physical in its primary architecture, and organized around controlling identity rather than just the body.
We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize coercive control as an externally imposed wrong attractor. The autonomous self-determination ground state S0_autonomy is defined via Deci and Ryan's basic psychological needs. The perpetrator's control architecture displaces the target from S0_autonomy and installs a submission configuration W_submit. Nine formal propositions cover: S0_autonomy as autonomous self-determination (P1), W_submit as coercively installed wrong attractor — Johnson's intimate terrorism distinction (P2), the microregulation architecture and Stark's Liberty Principle with Foucault's panopticon (P3), isolation as basin-deepening mechanism that severs all alternative reality-testing (P4), gaslighting as epistemic control — Abramson's interpersonal disorientation (P5), trauma bonding and attachment under threat with intermittent reinforcement (P6), children and family system coercive control (P7), cumulative Phi_cc across autonomy, relational, somatic, economic, and identity domains (P8), and return paths including Herman's three-stage recovery, safety planning, specialized DV advocacy, and the UK Serious Crime Act 2015 legal framework (P9).