From Profile to Plan: Validating the Action Layer of Icosa Atlas

Executive Summary

• Gateway utilization accounts for 60% of intervention completion variance (r = .78, R² = .605), establishing that where a Centering Plan starts matters far more than targeting the biggest deficit first.
• Dyadic interaction type predicts relationship Coherence at rₛ = .55 (R² = .298); how two profiles geometrically interact explains nearly 30% of relationship outcome variance, aligning with Gottman’s positive-to-negative ratio framework without any relationship-specific parameter fitting.
• The core clinical signal survives cross-framework translation: the Trap-Coherence relationship holds at rₛ = −.62 (R² = .378) even after crosswalk to Big Five or Enneagram language, meaning referral communications don’t destroy the actionable information.
• Path oscillation (repeatedly revisiting the same centers) strongly predicts intervention stalling (rₛ = −.57, R² = .330), providing a concrete early-warning metric for therapeutic drift.
• The Icosa profile space requires 19 of 20 components to reach the 95% variance threshold (95.8%), confirming that translation to a 5-factor model discards roughly 75% of structural information. All 20 centers contribute unique variance; none is redundant.
• Individual profile quality does not predict dyadic Coherence (r = −.01, p = .484); relationship outcomes are emergent, not a sum of individual health scores.
• Cross-framework translation is systematically lossy (r = .00 between Capacity variance and Capacity mean), meaning the within-person patterning that drives clinical formulation disappears in Big Five or MBTI summaries.
• Milestone count, crossing from one Coherence band to another, has minimal independent predictive value (R² = .054), suggesting clinicians should track Gateway states and oscillation patterns rather than band transitions as progress markers.
• The compensation count (sheer number of compensatory adjustments) shows only a small independent effect (r = .24), confirming that the pattern of intervention, not its volume, drives outcomes.
• These three studies validate that Icosa Atlas doesn’t just describe personality, it generates actionable intervention sequences, relationship insights, and cross-framework communications that preserve the clinical signal.

Research Overview

The measure of an applied assessment tool is whether its outputs direct clinical action. A profile that describes without directing is a portrait, not a plan. This research program investigated whether the Icosa model’s action layer (its Centering Plans, dyadic constructs, and cross-framework translations) actually works. Not whether the model’s geometry is internally consistent (that’s the domain of construct validation), but whether the outputs clinicians need to use hold up under computational scrutiny.

Three studies approached this question from different angles. The first tested whether the model’s structured Centering Plans, intervention sequences that prioritize Gateway centers, outperform naive strategies like targeting the biggest deficit or working through centers in arbitrary order. The second asked whether the model’s dyadic constructs, computed purely from the geometric interaction of two individual profiles, align with what Gottman’s decades of observational research and attachment theory have established about relationship dynamics. The third quantified what happens when you translate an Icosa profile into Big Five, MBTI, or Enneagram language: how much of the clinical signal survives, and how much is irretrievably lost.

These aren’t three separate questions. They’re three facets of a single concern: Can a clinician trust the action recommendations that come out of this system? The Centering Plan study validates the individual intervention pathway. The dyadic study validates the couples and relational layer. The crosswalk study validates the communication pathway: what happens when you need to talk about Icosa results in someone else’s language. Together, they establish that the model’s outputs aren’t just structurally elegant; they’re functionally consequential across the three contexts where clinicians most need them to work.

Key Findings

Gateway-First Sequencing Dominates Intervention Efficiency

The most intuitive clinical heuristic (find the biggest problem and work on it first) turns out to be substantially wrong within the Icosa framework. Across 10,169 synthetic profiles, Gateway utilization predicted grid completion (the proportion of all 20 Harmonies reaching centered states) at r = .78, p < .001, R² = .605. That’s a large effect by any standard metric, and it means that over 60% of the variance in whether an intervention plan actually works comes down to whether it engages the nine structurally critical Gateways early in the sequence.

Gateways, centers like the Body Gate (Open × Physical), Choice Gate (Focus × Mental), and Belonging Gate (Bond × Relational), function as structural chokepoints in the Icosaglyph, the model’s 4×5 personality map. Each Gateway serves as the designated escape route for a specific set of Traps, the self-reinforcing feedback loops that lock centers into dysfunctional cycling. The Body Gate and Choice Gate each govern 10 Traps apiece. When these Gates are closed, the Traps they govern can’t resolve no matter how much direct work is done on the trapped center itself. A client stuck in Rumination (a Focus-row Trap where Acuity and Presence cycle between under- and over-states) won’t break free through cognitive restructuring alone if the Body Gate is closed, the escape route is through embodied experience, and that route has to be opened first.

This finding reframes what “treatment planning” means in practice. The deficit-first approach treats the personality system as a flat collection of independent dimensions: fix the worst one, then the next worst. The Gateway-first approach treats it as a structured network where certain nodes constrain what’s possible downstream. The 60% variance figure tells us the network model is right. Centering Plans (the computed intervention sequences that Icosa Atlas generates) exploit this structure by front-loading Gateway engagement, and the computational evidence says that strategy massively outperforms the alternative.

The clinical implication is concrete: when you pull up a client’s Centering Plan in Icosa Atlas, the first recommended step isn’t necessarily the center with the lowest health score. It’s the Gateway whose opening will cascade the most change through the system. That’s not a software quirk, it’s the dominant predictor of intervention success.

Step economy (a measure of how efficiently the plan moves through centers without wasted effort) showed a moderate positive association with completion (rₛ = .35, R² = .123). It matters, but it’s secondary. The plan’s efficiency comes primarily from where it starts, not from how lean the path is. And profile complexity showed only a small correlation with the differential advantage of structured plans (r = .23, R² = .054), meaning Gateway-first sequencing helps across the board, not just for complex cases.

Oscillation Is the Early Warning Signal for Stalling

The second major finding from the intervention simulation is that path oscillation (the number of times a center’s state reverses direction during the intervention sequence) strongly predicts stalling (rₛ = −.57, p < .001, R² = .330). When a Centering Plan repeatedly revisits previously addressed centers, Coherence outcomes drop substantially.

This isn’t about the sheer number of compensatory adjustments the system makes. The compensation count showed only a small independent effect (r = .24, R² = .054). It’s the pattern (the back-and-forth, the center that improves and then regresses, improves and regresses) that signals trouble. In the Icosa framework, this oscillatory signature points to Basin capture. Basins are stable attractor states involving multiple core centers, configurations like Affective Shutdown (where Empathy, Discernment, Embrace, and Passion are all locked in under-states) or Vigilance Lock (where Presence, Discernment, Acuity, Attunement, and Vision are all over-activated). When an intervention improves one center within a Basin but doesn’t disrupt the Basin’s structural supports, the system pulls the center back toward the attractor state. The oscillation is the measurable trace of that pull.

For clinicians, this translates into a specific monitoring protocol. If a client’s Timeline in Icosa Atlas shows repeated oscillation on the same center (Embrace keeps dipping, or Agency scores yo-yo between sessions), that’s not a compliance problem or a therapeutic relationship rupture (though it could co-occur with either). It’s a structural signal that a Basin is active and the current intervention target isn’t addressing the Basin’s supports. The appropriate response is to step back, identify which Basin is generating the pull, and redirect the Centering Plan toward the Gateway that disrupts it. The 33% of Coherence variance explained by oscillation makes this one of the most clinically actionable metrics in the system.

Relationship Dynamics Are Emergent

The dyadic study tested whether the Icosa model’s relationship constructs (computed from the geometric interaction of two individual profiles across all 20 centers) align with what established relationship science predicts. The headline finding: interaction type strongly predicts dyadic Coherence (rₛ = .55, p < .001, R² = .298). The complementarity-collision composite, which quantifies how well two partners’ Capacity-Domain profiles mesh versus clash, accounts for nearly 30% of the variance in relationship outcome scores aligned with Gottman’s framework.

This is a personality model designed to map individual functioning. It wasn’t built from relationship data. Yet when two profiles are paired, the model recovers a substantial portion of the structure that decades of Gottman’s observational research identified, specifically the ratio of positive-to-negative interaction behaviors that predicts relationship stability. The Icosa model specifies that the Emotional Domain is the most contagious channel between partners and that the Move → Open pathway is the strongest cross-person influence vector. Gottman’s cascade model, where criticism (a Move-like behavior) triggers defensiveness (an Open-like withdrawal), maps onto precisely this channel. The 30% shared variance likely reflects this structural overlap.

Two secondary findings provided additional texture. Attachment-regulation convergence (the degree to which partners’ emotional regulation and attachment security scores co-vary) reached r = .28, R² = .079. Bond merge, the overlap in partners’ Bond Capacity profiles, predicted composite relationship quality at r = .29, R² = .086. Both are small effects, and both make sense within the model’s logic. Attachment security spans more of the Icosaglyph than the Emotional and Relational Domains alone, it involves Identity (Bond × Mental), Devotion (Bond × Spiritual), and Surrender (Open × Spiritual). A composite limited to the obvious centers will underestimate the relationship. Bond merge, meanwhile, likely has a curvilinear relationship with quality: moderate overlap is optimal, but when both partners are over-expressed on Bond Capacity, the system predicts enmeshment rather than connection. The Relational Engulfment Basin describes exactly this scenario. A linear correlation coefficient was the wrong test for a quadratic relationship, and the attenuated r = .29 probably reflects that misspecification.

The most striking result, though, is what didn’t predict relationship outcomes, and that’s covered in the null results section below.

The Clinical Signal Survives Translation, But the Richness Doesn’t

Clinicians don’t work in isolation. They write referral letters, communicate with psychiatrists who think in DSM categories, collaborate with coaches who speak Big Five, and sometimes need to explain results to clients who already identify with their Enneagram type. The crosswalk study asked: when you translate an Icosa profile into these other languages, what survives?

The good news: the core clinical signal holds. The relationship between Trap activation and Coherence, the fundamental insight that self-reinforcing dysfunction loops predict overall integration, remained strong at rₛ = −.62, R² = .378 even after framework translation. If you need to communicate that a client is stuck in a Rumination pattern and it’s dragging down their overall functioning, that message comes through whether you frame it in Icosa terms, Big Five language, or Enneagram narrative.

The bad news: the translation is lossy. Principal component analysis revealed that the Icosa profile space requires 19 of 20 components to reach the 95% variance threshold (95.8% cumulative), with all 20 centers contributing unique variance. The Big Five captures 5. MBTI captures 4 (arguably fewer). The Enneagram captures 9 at most. Translating a 20-dimensional profile into a 5-dimensional space discards roughly 75% of the structural information. And the information that’s lost isn’t random noise, it’s the within-person patterning, the Trap dynamics, the Gateway states that drive the Centering Plan. Capacity variance (how unevenly a person’s openness, for instance, distributes across Physical, Emotional, Mental, Relational, and Spiritual Domains) was completely independent of Capacity mean (r = .00, p = .846). That means the shape of the profile (the clinically rich part) is orthogonal to the level, which is all a trait summary captures.

The practical takeaway: use the native Icosa framework for clinical formulation and treatment planning. Use crosswalk translations for communication when you need to; they preserve the headline, even if they lose the detail. But don’t mistake the translation for the original. A Big Five summary of an Icosa profile is a thumbnail, not a photograph.

Trap Dynamics Are a Distinct Clinical Layer

The crosswalk study’s most consequential finding isn’t about translation per se, it’s about what Traps actually are in the information architecture of personality. Trap counts share only 38% of their variance with center health scores (rₛ = −.62). The remaining 62% is unique structural information: the difference between knowing where a person stands and knowing what feedback loops hold them there.

This distinction matters for every clinical decision. Two clients can present with identical center health profiles (same Coherence score, same pattern of under- and over-states across the 20 Harmonies) yet have completely different Trap configurations. One might have three active Traps, all escapable through the Body Gate, suggesting a clear somatic intervention pathway. The other might have seven active Traps distributed across four different escape Gateways, requiring a more complex sequencing strategy. Center health alone can’t distinguish these cases. Trap detection can.

Any framework that lacks relational architecture (that models personality as a collection of independent dimensions rather than an interconnected network) will systematically miss this layer. The Big Five can tell you someone is low on Conscientiousness. It can’t tell you they’re caught in a Decisional Paralysis Trap (Move-row, Choice Gate escape) that’s being maintained by a closed Choice Gate, which is itself constrained by an active Thought Overload Basin involving Curiosity(over), Acuity(over), Identity(over), and Agency(over). That level of specificity is what makes the difference between “work on executive functioning” and a targeted Centering Plan that opens the Choice Gate first.

Boundaries of the Evidence

The null results across these three studies are as informative as the significant findings, in some ways more so, because they define the boundaries of what the model can and can’t do.

The most striking null is from the dyadic study: individual metric quality does not predict dyadic Coherence (r = −.01, p = .484). Two people can each have healthy individual profiles and still produce a distressed relationship. Conversely, two people with significant individual challenges can produce a relationship that works. The relationship is emergent, it arises from how the profiles interact, not from summing their individual qualities. This isn’t a failure of the model; it’s a validation of the dyadic architecture’s core claim. If individual scores had predicted dyadic outcomes, the entire apparatus of interaction types, complementarity metrics, and Formation Families would be unnecessary overhead. The null confirms that the dyadic layer is doing real work that the individual layer can’t replicate.

The crosswalk study’s null on Capacity variance-mean independence (r = .00) confirms that Big Five and MBTI translations don’t capture the full Icosa signal, because the within-person patterning that drives clinical formulation is orthogonal to the trait-level summaries those frameworks provide. And the Centering Plan study’s finding that compensation count has minimal independent effect (r = .24, small) tells clinicians not to worry about how many adjustments the system makes during a Centering Plan, it’s the oscillation pattern, the back-and-forth on the same centers, that signals trouble. Volume of effort isn’t the problem; misdirected effort is.

Together, these nulls paint a picture of a model that’s appropriately constrained. It doesn’t claim that individual health predicts relationship outcomes (it doesn’t). It doesn’t claim that trait-level summaries capture its full information content (they don’t). It doesn’t claim that more intervention steps are inherently worse (they aren’t; only oscillating steps are). These are the kinds of boundaries that build clinical trust, because they tell you exactly where the model’s outputs should and shouldn’t be applied.

Clinical Use

The combined findings from these three studies reshape clinical workflow at three decision points: individual treatment planning, couples work, and cross-professional communication.

For individual treatment planning, the Gateway-first finding (R² = .605) changes the opening move. When a new client’s Icosa Atlas profile loads, the Centering Plan (the computed intervention sequence visible on the Clinician Map) will prioritize Gateway engagement over deficit targeting. The clinician’s job isn’t to override this and chase the lowest-scoring center. It’s to understand why the plan starts where it does. If the Body Gate (Open × Physical) is the first target, that’s because it governs 10 Traps, and opening it will cascade change through centers that currently can’t respond to direct intervention. The Centering Plan feature in Icosa Atlas sequences these steps based on structural dependency, and the therapeutic valley prediction (the system’s estimate of where Coherence might temporarily dip during change) helps the clinician prepare the client for the nonlinear path ahead. The oscillation metric (rₛ = −.57) gives clinicians a concrete progress indicator: if the Timeline shows repeated reversals on the same center, that’s a Basin signal, not a motivation problem. The appropriate clinical response is to consult the Basin detection output and redirect.

For couples work, the dyadic profiling feature becomes the primary formulation tool. The complementarity-collision metric (rₛ = .55) identifies which specific centers are in collision versus complementarity between partners. A couple where both partners are over-expressed on Passion (Move × Emotional) and under-expressed on Discernment (Focus × Emotional) will show collision on the Emotional Domain and activation of the Discharge Loop Basin, a pattern where emotional intensity escalates without the filtering that Discernment provides. The Icosa Atlas dyadic report classifies the relationship into one of eight Formation Families (Resonant, Complementary, Asymmetric, Stagnant, Distressed, Mirrored, Transitional, Crisis) and one of 45 specific Formations, giving the clinician a structural vocabulary for what’s happening between the partners. The null on individual quality predicting dyadic outcomes (r = −.01) is directly relevant here: don’t assume that improving one partner’s individual profile will fix the relationship. The interaction pattern has its own dynamics.

For cross-professional communication, the crosswalk findings provide clear guidance. When writing a referral letter to a psychiatrist who thinks in DSM terms, or summarizing results for a coaching client who identifies with their Enneagram type, the core clinical signal, the Trap-Coherence relationship, survives translation (rₛ = −.62). Icosa Atlas generates plain-language summaries that can be adapted to different audiences. But the clinician should know that the translation is lossy: 20 effective dimensions compressed to 5 (or fewer) means the referral recipient is getting a thumbnail. The detailed formulation (the Gateway states, the Trap configurations, the Basin memberships that drive the Centering Plan) stays in the native framework. Use the crosswalk for communication. Use the original for clinical reasoning.

Applied Example

Consider a 38-year-old executive, referred by her primary care physician for “anxiety and relationship difficulties.” She completes the Comprehensive assessment (91 questions, approximately 15 minutes) and her Icosa Atlas profile reveals a Coherence score of 51, Struggling band. The Icosaglyph shows a distinctive pattern: strong Move Capacity (Vitality, Passion, Agency, and Voice all near centered) but significantly under-expressed Open Capacity, particularly Sensitivity (Open × Physical) and Surrender (Open × Spiritual). The Body Gate is closed. The Choice Gate is partially open. Seven Traps are active, five of which route through the Body Gate as their escape pathway, including Somatic Neglect, Cognitive Paralysis, and Rumination.

A deficit-first approach would target Sensitivity, her lowest-scoring center. The Centering Plan doesn’t. It targets the Body Gate first, because opening it makes five Traps escapable simultaneously. The intervention simulation data tells us this Gateway-first strategy accounts for 60% of the variance in whether the plan actually works, and the clinician can explain this to the client in concrete terms: “We’re starting with your body’s Capacity to receive information, not because it’s your worst score, but because it’s the door that opens everything else.”

Now her partner enters the picture. He completes his own assessment: Coherence 62, also Struggling, but with a very different profile. Strong Bond Capacity, over-expressed Empathy (Open × Emotional), under-expressed Agency (Move × Mental). When the dyadic profile is computed, the complementarity-collision metric lights up. Her strong Move Capacity and his strong Open Capacity create a Complementary interaction pattern on several centers; her expressiveness activates his receptivity through the Move → Open cross-person channel. But on the Emotional Domain, they collide: his over-expressed Empathy meets her under-expressed Sensitivity, creating a pattern where he floods with feeling and she shuts down somatically. The Feeling Line Fault Line is activated. The dyadic Formation classifies as Asymmetric.

The clinician now has converging structural data from multiple findings in this research program. The individual Centering Plan says: open her Body Gate first. The dyadic profile says: the Emotional Domain collision is the relationship’s primary friction point. The oscillation metric says: if her Sensitivity score keeps bouncing back after sessions focused on emotional processing, that’s Basin capture (likely Receptive Closure, involving Sensitivity(under), Empathy(under), Curiosity(under), Intimacy(under), and Surrender(under)), and the plan needs to redirect through the Body Gate rather than pushing harder on emotional work.

When the referring physician asks for an update, the clinician uses the crosswalk findings to frame the communication. The core message (she’s caught in self-reinforcing avoidance patterns that are maintaining her anxiety) translates cleanly into language the physician understands. The Trap-Coherence signal (rₛ = −.62) survives the translation. But the specific structural insight (that the Body Gate is the intervention leverage point, not cognitive restructuring or medication for anxiety symptoms) stays in the Icosa formulation. The clinician knows that compressing the 20-dimensional profile into a 5-factor summary would lose the treatment-planning specificity that makes the Centering Plan work.

Three months later, the Timeline feature shows her Coherence has moved from 51 to 59, still Struggling, but the trajectory is upward. The Body Gate shifted from Closed to Partial after six sessions of somatic-focused work. Three of the five Body Gate Traps have resolved. Oscillation on Sensitivity has stopped. The milestone of crossing into the Steady band hasn’t happened yet, and the data tells us that’s fine; milestone count explains only 5.4% of Coherence variance. The real progress markers are the Gateway shift and the oscillation reduction, and both are moving in the right direction.

Connections Across the Research

These findings don’t stand alone. The Paths family’s independent analysis of intervention efficiency produced a staggering effect size (t = 148.13) confirming that structured intervention paths massively outperform unstructured approaches. This synthesis’s Gateway finding (r = .78) provides the mechanistic explanation: it’s not just that structure helps, it’s that Gateway-first structure is the specific driver. The Paths family showed the what; this family shows the why.

The Dyadic family’s broader evidence base, including cross-band pairing effects (r = .63) and interaction type differentiation (t = 43.10), provides the full relational context that this synthesis’s prediction study extends. The rₛ = .55 complementarity-collision finding here demonstrates that the dyadic constructs don’t just differentiate relationship types (as the Dyadic family established) but predict relationship outcomes in alignment with Gottman’s framework. And the Constructs family’s Gateway-mechanics finding (r = .39) establishes the individual-level Gateway effects that scale up to the intervention planning efficiency documented here. At the individual level, Gateway states show a moderate effect on Coherence. At the intervention planning level, Gateway utilization shows a large effect on plan completion. The scaling from .39 to .78 suggests that the intervention algorithm successfully amplifies the structural leverage that Gateways provide.

Operational Impact

The business case for these findings centers on three measurable outcomes. First, treatment planning efficiency: if Gateway-first sequencing accounts for 60% of intervention completion variance, practices using Icosa Atlas Centering Plans should see faster Coherence gains per session compared to intuition-based sequencing. That translates directly into shorter treatment courses for some clients and better outcomes for complex cases, both of which affect retention, satisfaction scores, and referral rates. Second, couples practice differentiation: the dyadic profiling capability, validated against Gottman’s framework at rₛ = .55, gives practices offering relationship work a structural assessment tool that goes beyond communication skills inventories. The ability to show couples where their profiles collide and why, with specific center-level data, is a clinical capability that most competing assessment platforms can’t match. Third, cross-professional credibility: the crosswalk findings mean practices can adopt Icosa Atlas without abandoning the language their referral networks expect. The core clinical signal survives translation, so the practice gains the richer formulation internally while maintaining fluent communication externally.

For corporate wellness and coaching contexts, the oscillation metric offers something particularly valuable: an objective, structural indicator of whether an intervention is working or spinning its wheels. When a coaching engagement shows repeated oscillation on the same centers, that’s data, not opinion, that the approach needs to shift. The Timeline feature makes this visible to both coach and client, creating accountability without blame. The 33% of Coherence variance explained by oscillation means this isn’t a marginal signal; it’s a primary outcome predictor that can be tracked session by session.

Cross-Framework and Summary Findings

Conclusion

What these three studies establish is that the Icosa model’s action layer works. Not just the descriptive layer, the 20 centers, the Coherence score, the profile classification. The action layer: the part that tells you what to do next, how two people’s profiles interact, and what survives when you need to communicate results in someone else’s language.

Gateway-first Centering Plans account for 60% of intervention completion variance. Dyadic interaction types predict relationship Coherence at rₛ = .55, aligning with Gottman’s framework without any relationship-specific tuning. The Trap-Coherence signal holds at rₛ = −.62 even after cross-framework translation, while the translation itself loses 75% of the profile’s dimensional richness, confirming that the native framework is where clinical reasoning should live. And the null results are equally important: individual quality doesn’t predict relationship outcomes, milestone crossings aren’t the progress markers you should track, and the volume of compensatory adjustments doesn’t matter; only the oscillation pattern does.

For a clinical director evaluating adoption, the central question is whether the system generates outputs that inform clinical decisions. The Centering Plan is a computationally validated intervention sequence where the dominant predictor of completion (Gateway utilization) has been identified and quantified. The dyadic profile is a structural analysis that recovers 30% of the variance in relationship outcomes aligned with Gottman’s framework. And the crosswalk is a validated communication pathway that preserves the clinical signal while acknowledging what’s lost in translation.

The profile tells you where the client is. The Centering Plan tells you where to go next. The dyadic report tells you what’s happening between two people. The crosswalk tells you how to talk about it with colleagues who use different frameworks. Each of these outputs has now been computationally validated.

Key Takeaways

• Gateway utilization explains 60% of intervention completion variance (r = .78); always check Gateway states before choosing an intervention target, because the biggest deficit isn’t necessarily the best starting point.
• Path oscillation explains 33% of Coherence variance (rₛ = −.57), when a client’s Timeline shows repeated reversals on the same center, redirect the Centering Plan toward the Basin’s structural supports rather than intensifying work on the oscillating center.
• Dyadic interaction type predicts 30% of relationship outcome variance (rₛ = .55); use the complementarity-collision metric as a first-pass structural screen for couples, focusing intervention on collision points rather than treating “communication” as monolithic.
• Individual profile quality does not predict relationship outcomes (r = −.01); don’t assume that improving one partner’s individual Coherence will fix the relationship; the dyadic layer requires its own assessment and intervention.
• The Trap-Coherence signal survives cross-framework translation (rₛ = −.62); you can communicate core clinical findings in Big Five or Enneagram language without losing the headline, but use the native 20-dimensional framework for treatment planning.
• Translating to Big Five discards approximately 75% of profile information (20 → 5 effective dimensions); treat crosswalk outputs as communication tools, not clinical formulation tools.
• Track Gateway shifts and oscillation reduction as primary progress markers rather than Coherence band transitions, which explain only 5.4% of outcome variance independently.