PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to survivor's guilt, formalizing it as displacement from the moral ground state S°_moral — the unremarkable state of existence without required justification for being alive. Survivor's guilt imposes D(ξ_moral) through the asymmetry of survival: the survivor exists when others do not, and this asymmetry appears to demand moral explanation. Nine formal propositions are derived covering: S°_moral as existence without required justification, survivor's guilt as D(ξ_moral) imposed by survival asymmetry, counterfactual thinking as the primary wrong-attractor maintenance mechanism (formalized through a constructibility threshold: counterfactuals feel binding when the mind can construct scenarios in which different choices produced different outcomes, even when no actual choice existed), self-punishment as wrong-attractor maintenance behavior (refusing enjoyment, compulsive penance, sabotaging success, risk-taking), guilt as wrong-attractor substitute preventing raw grief from being processed, the moral arithmetic of deserving as the wrong attractor's cognitive structure, meaning-making through survivor mission as the return path (transforming survival from debt to gift, as in Frankl's logotherapy), grief processing as prerequisite for exiting the wrong attractor, and acceptance of randomness as a moral category.
The distinction between survivor's guilt (where no genuine choice existed) and moral injury (where choices were made) is formalized as different displacement structures requiring different interventions.