PhronesisCompulsive preemptive grieving (CPG) is characterized by habitual, anticipatory mourning of attachments that remain intact, in which an agent's cognitive and affective resources are systematically redirected from present bonding toward imagined future loss. We formalize CPG as a wrong attractor in a dynamical systems framework: a stable equilibrium state W that is persistently occupied at the cost of the ground state S^0, defined here as calibrated secure bonding.
The displacement cost D() measures the energetic and relational expenditure of sustaining W relative to S^0, and the cumulative displacement = D()\,dt quantifies the total foreclosure imposed on present attachment over time. We characterize the topology of the CPG basin, identify the structural conditions under which a system falls into and remains at W, and derive nine propositions describing the phenomenology, dynamics, and remediation of this pattern.
Central among our findings is that CPG represents a present-attachment foreclosure basin: by occupying grief in advance, the agent forecloses the very relational present that would constitute S^0. We describe the return path from W to S^0 as a basin-crossing event requiring threshold perturbation, relinquishment of imagined control through anticipation, and re-entry into calibrated, temporally grounded attachment.
Clinical and philosophical implications are discussed.