PhronesisCompulsive justifying is reconceptualised within the Displacement Framework as a moral-vulnerability wrong attractor W_JU—a locally stable configuration of the self-regulatory system organised around the preemptive moral defense of actions and choices before any accusation has been made. The ground state S^0 is calibrated grounded accountability: the capacity to stand behind one's actions without preemptive moral armoring, to account for one's choices when genuinely called to do so, and to receive moral feedback without catastrophic dysregulation.
W_JU forecloses this standing: the compulsive justifier, by perpetually defending actions before they are questioned, evacuates the moral authority that genuine accountability would have built. The displacement cost D() accumulates through three simultaneous channels—credibility erosion, relational distance, and self-grounding atrophy—each of which deepens the foreclosure basin and makes return to S^0 progressively more costly.
Nine formal propositions develop the attractor architecture, the justification-relief cycle that sustains it, the accountable-standing foreclosure that defines its most corrosive long-run consequence, and the return conditions under which calibrated grounded accountability becomes available again. The pattern is situated within the psychology of shame and guilt (Brown), cognitive dissonance reduction (Tavris and Aronson), self-serving bias (Leary), and self-compassion (Neff), and distinguished throughout from appropriate, solicited accountability.