The Topological Paradigm in Modern Psychology: Reconceptualizing Cognitive Architecture, Somatic Burden, and Therapeutic Intervention

This paper introduces the Structural Cognitive Topology Assessment (SCTA) within the broader Paton System cognitive branch as a continuity-oriented interpretive framework for understanding recursive cognition, interruption sensitivity, somatic burden, masking, cyber-psychological vulnerability, and therapeutic stabilization. Rather than interpreting intelligence through flat scalar metrics or modular cognitive assumptions, the framework proposes that cognition may be more accurately understood as a dynamic continuity-maintenance architecture operating under recursive energetic load, environmental pressure, incomplete visibility, and admissibility constraints. The SCTA integrates: recursive continuity structures, Recursive Layer Integration Density (RLID), cognitive transduction, transduction tax, Persistence Locking Mechanisms (PLM), structural hyper-accommodation, sensory amplification, cyber-psychological trust topology, and bottom-up therapeutic stabilization into a unified continuity-oriented framework. The paper additionally introduces minimal mathematical interpretations of cognitive admissibility, recursive saturation, and continuity preservation while remaining fully interpretive and compatibility-focused. Importantly, the framework introduces no replacement neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, or psychometric science. Instead, it provides a structural continuity-oriented interpretive framework for understanding how differing cognitive architectures preserve continuity under recursive complexity and sustained environmental pressure. The framework further explores: interruption survivability, autonomic burden, masking-related exhaustion, trauma reconstruction under incomplete visibility, cognitive load asymmetry, cyber-psychological topology, and continuity-preserving therapeutic intervention. The SCTA is explicitly neuro-affirming and rejects hierarchical interpretations of human worth or intelligence. Different minds are interpreted as differing continuity architectures operating under differing energetic and ecological constraints.