Motivation as developmental coordination: The generative arc as a heuristic framework for psychopathology

Motivational dysfunction is a transdiagnostic feature of psychopathology and is often associated with chronicity and limited treatment response. This minireview introduces the generative arc as a heuristic framework for considering motivation in developmental terms, with emphasis on the coordination of novelty generation, epistemic regulation, and stabilization across timescales. Drawing on affective neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and computational perspectives, the framework is used to organize patterns of motivational rigidity, instability, and mixed organization over time. From this perspective, psychopathology may involve excessive constraint, insufficient stabilization, or domain-specific combinations of both, with potential relevance to clinical heterogeneity and treatment resistance. Processes related to SEEKING, PLAY-consistent learning-permissive states, and neuromodulatory influences including dopamine and serotonin are discussed as illustrative contributors rather than definitive mechanisms. The generative arc is not proposed as a diagnostic model or comprehensive mechanistic account, but as a cautious conceptual vocabulary for clinical formulation and for future research on motivational organization in psychopathology.