Journal of Psychology and Psychiatry

ABSTRACT

Mirrored Psychic Inversion Theory (MPIT) introduces a new psychodynamic mechanism for understanding the breakdown of relational, symbolic, and affective coherence in individuals exposed to narcissistic trauma. At the centre of this theory is the Anticipatory Stress Reflex (ASR), a neuropsychodynamic threshold that governs how organisms regulate internal and external stimuli during attachment, threat, and symbolic activation. This paper proposes a tripartite ASR model: ASR1 (Annihilatory Stress Response, infancy); ASR2 (Anticipatory Stress Reflex, mature adult modulation); and ASR3 (Anticipatory Shadow Reflex, a defensive, fantasy-based inversion). These three modes comprise the “Organising Gate” through which all perception, internal object constellations, and emotional self-mapping must pass. When functioning properly, the ASR system scaffolds selfhood, object constancy, and symbolic coherence. But under chronic narcissistic or relational trauma, the Organising Gate fragments, inducing structural collapse, affective inversion, and paracosmic fantasy formation. This paper integrates clinical object-relations theory [1-3], predictive processing [4-5], interoceptive neuroscience [6-7], and recent trauma research [8-9] to locate the ASR gate at the intersection of symbolic narrative, cortical-subcortical regulation, and relational schema formation. Vaknin’s phenomenology of shared fantasy, snapshotting, and narcissistic object inversion is used as a clinical grounding for survivors of narcissistic abuse. MPIT contributes an original symbolic triad, a functional map of collapse and recovery, and clinical pathways for recalibrating the ASR. This framework enables clinicians and researchers to track collapse at the symbolic-physiological threshold and provides survivors with a structured path to reauthoring the self.

Keywords: Anticipatory Stress Reflex; Annihilatory Stress Response; Anticipatory Shadow Reflex; Shared Fantasy; Object Relations; Predictive Processing; Trauma; Symbolic Collapse; Dissociation; Interoception; Narrative Identity; Narcissistic Abuse.