Theory Architecture
The SRF Theory Program
Seven papers. One question at each level. Together they form a layered structural psychology - from how regulation works to why compressed reality becomes specifically rewritten.
The core idea
Human beings do not process all reality at equal resolution. Some signals are processed with extraordinary nuance. Others collapse into primitive categorical encoding. This is not inconsistency. It is architecture.
The SRF Theory Program asks: what determines this architecture? Why does it persist? What does it protect? And what happens when what it protects is not comfort or identity — but the felt sense of existing?
Seven layers, seven questions
How does regulation work?
Structural Regulation Framework
The engine. Internal holding capacity, processing flexibility, external dependence, externalization timing, and directional vectors. The mechanism that produces all regulatory behavior.
Why do structures resist change?
Resolution Resistance
Defensive simplification persists because it is adaptive under insufficient holding capacity. The system resists change not from stubbornness but from structural necessity. Change requires the very capacity the system lacks.
What does this look like clinically?
Narcissistic Regulation Architecture
Narcissistic organization as a selective compression architecture. Not global dysfunction — preserved competence in some domains, categorical processing in others. Grandiose and vulnerable as different vector weightings, not different types.
Where does reality compress?
Compression Profiles
The mind does not process all signals at equal resolution. Different signal classes — shame, dependency, rejection, status, control — sustain different effective resolution levels. Personality as characteristic compression signature.
What is threatened?
Self Architecture
Signals compress because they threaten specific dimensions of self-organization: coherence, worth, shame tolerance, dependency tolerance, boundaries, or felt continuity. The vulnerability surface that determines what requires protection.
When existence itself is threatened?
Ontological Regulation
The deepest level. When the regulatory target is not comfort or identity but felt continuity of being. When recognition withdrawal threatens not who you are but whether you are. Maximum compression. Maximum resistance.
Why does compressed reality become rewritten?
Defensive Reconstruction
When representational cost exceeds holding capacity, the system may reshape accessible reality to preserve regulatory coherence. This is not merely seeing less - it is seeing something else. Reconstruction direction follows compression topology and self-architecture stakes.
What this means
The framework proposes that psychological suffering is not always caused by what is felt. Sometimes it is caused by what cannot yet be differentiated.
And that defensive rigidity is not always opposition to growth. Sometimes it is the only architecture available to a system that cannot yet afford the truth about itself.
Read the papers
All papers are available as open-access preprints on Zenodo.
View all papers →