When Regulation Is No Longer Self-Regulation: Interoceptive Authority, Interpretive Displacement, and the Structural Conditions of Affective Dependence

Predictive processing accounts of interoception hold that emotion regulation depends on the brain’scapacity to model, interpret, and update internal bodily signals. These frameworks assume that thelocus of interpretation remains with the subject. This paper identifies a structural condition underwhich that assumption fails: interpretive displacement—the progressive reconfiguration of inter-nal arbitration such that externally generated interpretations, including those produced by wearabledevices, algorithmic mood trackers, and digital health platforms, acquire privileged precision andbecome the default resolution rule within the subject’s own inferential system. Under interpretivedisplacement, bodily signals continue to be registered, yet the internal arbitration system stabiliseson a configuration in which externally sourced interpretations determine affective meaning. Underthe conditions specified in this framework, emotion regulation may persist behaviorally while nolonger constituting self-regulation in a strict sense; it becomes a form of interpretive dependence.The paper develops a conceptual framework distinguishing three configurations: intact interoceptiveself-regulation, partial delegation, and structural dependence. It specifies the conditions under whicheach configuration emerges and the point at which regulation transitions from agency to reliance.This reframing has direct implications for interoception research and for the design of interoception-based interventions, which currently presuppose an intact interpretive subject. The framework alsoclarifies conditions under which external interpretive supports remain assistive rather than displac-ing, an issue with direct relevance to educational, allied health, and neurodevelopmental contexts.By clarifying what must hold for self-regulation to remain self-regulation, the framework identifies aprior condition that intervention models have yet to address.