PhronesisCompulsive agenda-hiding is the habitual concealment of one's actual goals and interests in favor of ostensibly neutral, altruistic, or procedural framings. We analyze this pattern as a wrong attractor W within the Phronesis displacement framework, operating against the ground state S^0 of calibrated honest advocacy — the condition in which an agent states their genuine interests proportionally, accurately, and without systematic distortion.
The Hidden-Interest Architecture (HIA) describes the cognitive and behavioral infrastructure that sustains compulsive motive-concealment: a background model of interests as dangerous, a habitual translation layer converting authentic wants into presentable positions, and a relational strategy built on managed impressions rather than disclosed stakes. The Transparent-Engagement Foreclosure Basin names the field condition in which direct honest pursuit of one's goals becomes subjectively or functionally unavailable, so that concealment appears not as a choice but as a necessity.
We develop nine propositions covering: the primacy of interest-rejection anxiety (P1), hidden agenda as perceived safety device (P2), the detection dynamics whereby concealment degrades trust over time (P3), manipulator identity lock-in as a secondary attractor (P4), the relational cost of strategic opacity (P5), the principled distinction between appropriate strategic timing and compulsive concealment (P6), the logic of return requiring the disclosed interest (P7), gradual recalibration via honest-advocacy practice (P8), and the stability of S^0 in interests that can be stated (P9).
The analysis closes with a treatment of return conditions, structural differences between the two attractors, and the phenomenology of honest advocacy as a recoverable ground.