PhronesisMaterial simplicity is, in many contexts, an authentic good. The person who possesses what genuinely serves their needs, releases what does not, and remains unencumbered by surplus occupies a well-calibrated position relative to the material world. Compulsive minimalism is the structural distortion of this authentic orientation: a wrong attractor W_ CM in which reduction itself becomes the governing end, displacing the calibrated assessment of genuine use-value that should determine what is owned and what is released.
The ground state S^0_ CMI—Calibrated Material Intentionality—is the capacity to possess what serves authentic purposes and release what does not, without reduction becoming an ideology and without anxiety organizing around the mere existence of objects. This paper formalises the compulsive minimalism architecture within the Displacement Framework, introducing the displacement cost function D() over material-psychological state-space, the accumulated displacement functional = D()\,dt representing the chronic subtraction-drive, and the basin depth function B() that grows as each elimination episode reinforces the anxiety-relief cycle.
Nine formal propositions characterise the subtraction-drive mechanism, basin deepening through reinforcement, the role of aesthetic identity and social signalling through scarcity, the accumulation-aversion trigger and its escalating threshold, and the conditions sufficient for return to S^0_ CMI. The paper draws on object relations theory, behavioural reinforcement literature, identity-based motivation research, and the emerging empirical literature on ownership, meaning, and material attachment.