Mental Health Through the CRM Lens: Applying Coherence Resolution Modes to Clinical Conditions

The Coherence Resolution Mode (CRM) framework is a substrate-independent account of how autonomous coherence-seeking systems operate under constraint. It identifies a finite set of possible resolution modes and, for each mode, a bounded set of failure states. Each failure state implies a specific resolution logic. This paper applies that framework to dysfunction in biological systems. The core claim is that dysfunction in the human control architecture can be analysed at the level of CRM failure modes and configuration-level patterns, and that the resulting analysis directly implies what kind of change would count as repair, recalibration, stabilisation, compensation, or accommodation. That chain, from failure mode to resolution logic, is the paper's primary contribution, and it holds independently of how cleanly the resulting profile maps onto current clinical taxonomy. The paper develops a method that moves from observed presentation to functional phenotype, from phenotype to CRM correspondence, from correspondence to resolution logic, and only then to clinical correspondence. The clinical correspondence step is treated as a necessary translation for a field that communicates through DSM, not as the analytical target. Weakness at that translation step does not weaken the underlying CRM analysis. The method is then applied to six condition areas, selected because they are clinically prominent and because they pose distinct challenges to the framework: depression, a bounded anxiety phenotype, classical OCD, bounded PTSD, autism spectrum condition, and borderline personality disorder. Across these analyses, different conditions sit at different analytical levels. Some are best understood as single-CRM-dominant patterns. Others are better understood as a configuration of modes, recalibration, configuration variation, or configuration instability. Different patterns imply different resolution logics. The framework offers a layer of functional control-level analysis to sit alongside existing diagnostic and clinical frameworks. It is not designed to replace them, and it is not yet a validated clinical tool. Its contribution is to make the functional control-level structure of dysfunction explicit, and to show that the resolution logic follows directly from the CRM analysis rather than from the diagnostic label. If empirically supported, it could improve case formulation, clarify heterogeneity within diagnoses, explain structured overlap across diagnoses, and generate more precise hypotheses about what kind of change is needed in different presentations.