PhronesisCompulsive checking-in — the repetitive, anxiety-driven impulse to send messages, make calls, or physically appear in the presence of an attachment figure — constitutes a paradigmatic instance of wrong-attractor dynamics within the displacement framework. We formalize this pattern using the displacement field D() over psychological state space and define the compulsive-contact wrong attractor W as a locally stable fixed point maintained by a reinforcement loop: separation anxiety triggers contact-seeking, contact yields temporary relief, and that relief lowers the subject's tolerance for future separation, thereby deepening proximity dependence.
We introduce the Autonomous-Presence Foreclosure Basin (APFB), a geometric structure in state space demarcating the region from which unaided recovery to ground state S^0 (calibrated confident separation) is blocked without architectural intervention. Nine formal propositions establish the dynamical properties of W, the basin boundary conditions, and the return map to S^0. The Contact Architecture — the mechanistic scaffold by which checking-in episodes encode proximity as the primary anxiety-regulation resource — is analyzed as the proximate cause of APFB deepening.
We conclude with a discussion of clinical cognates: anxious attachment, clinginess, codependency, and enmeshment, showing each as a variant depth of the same basin. The paper closes with exit-dynamics prescriptions calibrated to basin depth.