PhronesisCompulsive self-explanation is a cognitive-affective pattern in which a subject responds to uncertainty or discomfort by generating continuous internal justificatory narration. Rather than resolving the underlying displacement, this narration creates a wrong attractor: a locally stable state in which the appearance of clarity substitutes for actual epistemic contact with experience.
We formalize this within the displacement framework, defining the ground state S^0, the displacement functional D(), and the accumulated cost = D()\,dt. We identify the wrong attractor W as the fixed point of the self-explanation loop—explain clarity-illusion anxiety explain—and characterize its basin geometry as a direct-experience foreclosure basin: a region of state space from which raw phenomenal contact is inaccessible because each moment of experience is immediately overwritten by its narration.
We prove nine formal propositions describing attractor stability, foreclosure depth, and exit dynamics. The return to calibrated unmediated knowing requires a deliberate suspension of the justification drive, allowing displacement to register without being processed into narrative. Implications for post-hoc rationalization theory, inner-critic dynamics, narrative therapy, and mindfulness practice are discussed.