Compulsive Rescuing as Self-Erasure Wrong Attractor: The White Knight Architecture, Helper Identity Displacement, and the Return to Authentic Care

Compulsive rescuing—the pathological need to fix, save, and help others not from genuine care but from identity construction around the helper role—is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_rescue in the landscape of relational functioning. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as authentic care: helping from genuine abundance and choice, with clear boundaries, without requiring the helpee's ongoing dysfunction.

W_rescue arises when the rescuer's own unmet needs for worth, control, and connection are regulated through the helper role, creating structural dependency on the helpee's dysfunction. Nine formal propositions characterize the Karpman Drama Triangle dynamics, parentification as developmental origin, the resentment cycle, codependency overlap, and return paths through boundary-setting practice, needs identification, and authentic reciprocal relationship.