Morbid Jealousy as Possession-Threat Wrong Attractor: Surveillance Architecture, False-Positive Confirmation Loop, and Return Paths Through Secure Attachment

Morbid jealousy—pathological jealousy that has become self-sustaining in its intensity, persistence, and consequences—is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_MJ in the landscape of relational functioning. The healthy ground state S^0_secure is defined as secure attachment: proportionate, episodic jealousy that functions as a mate-retention signal without consuming relational resources or restricting partner autonomy.

W_MJ arises when jealousy shifts from signal to attractor through a possession-threat architecture: hypervigilance generates surveillance behavior, surveillance generates ambiguous evidence, ambiguity confirms threat, and partner withdrawal (a natural response to surveillance) closes the loop as evidence of infidelity. Nine formal propositions characterize the displacement cost structure, the false-positive confirmation loop, violence risk and Othello syndrome, comorbidity patterns, and return paths through CBT, emotionally-focused therapy, DBT, and pharmacotherapy.