PhronesisCompulsive memory hoarding — the chronic pattern of being unable to release past versions of relationships, clinging to archived memories as the real version against which the present is measured and always found diminished — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_CMH in the landscape of present relational engagement. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as present relational engagement: the capacity to hold relational history as genuine context that enriches present experience, without using the past as the primary reference point against which the present is compared and found inadequate — allowing relationships, people, and oneself to change without requiring the changed version to be measured against the archived original.
W_CMH is rigorously distinguished from appropriate relational memory, healthy honoring of relational history, legitimate grief for genuine loss, and adaptive use of past experience as relationship context. Three interlocking mechanisms maintain the basin: archive primacy (the compulsive memory hoarder treats archived memories of relationships as the definitive authentic version; D(ξ) is generated by any discrepancy between present relationship and archived version; change is experienced as loss rather than development), present-devaluation loop (any positive quality in the present relationship is compared to the archived version and found smaller — memory has been curated and the present person is real), and grief-perpetuation mechanism (compulsive memory hoarding prevents genuine grieving of what has changed — because the archived version is kept alive in perpetual reference, the loss is never processed).
The Memory Paradox is central: compulsive memory hoarding reliably destroys the present relationships it is organized to preserve — by treating archived versions as the standard, the memory hoarder progressively alienates actual people in favor of their remembered images, losing both the past and the present. Nine formal propositions characterize the present relational engagement ground state, the archive-primacy wrong attractor, the three maintenance mechanisms, the memory paradox, developmental roots in early unprocessed relational loss, and return paths through grief work, IFS work on the archivist part, mindfulness-based present engagement, and ACT willingness toward relational change.