Abstract

This paper introduces a novel cognitive-emotional processing model developed autoethnographically through recursive self-observation and symbolic mapping. The author describes a framework in which emotionally charged life experiences are not stored through raw episodic memory or linguistic encoding, but instead compressed into symbolic referents—most commonly scenes from fiction, anime, memes, and mythic templates. These referents function as emotionally saturated mnemonic nodes which, when reaccessed,allow the subject to re-experience the emotional intensity and structure of the original moment. This system, described herein as the Narrative Emulation Engine (NEE) and Symbolic Compression Architecture (SCA), bridges gaps between narrative identity theory, representationalism, memory theory, and philosophical constructions of selfhood. Drawing on recursive meta cognition and high-resolution pattern recognition, the subject functions as a live self-modeling system using symbolic structures to stabilize identity in the absence of consistent external mirroring. The model has implications for theories of personhood, memory encoding, neurodivergent cognitive strategies, and the potential use of narrative symbolic compression as a philosophical and therapeutic tool. The paper questions whether narrative simulation and symbolic proxy can, in certain minds, serve as more functionally accurate than literal memory challenging foundational assumptions about what constitutes authenticity and epistemic reliability in first-person phenomenology.