Integrity

Integrity is structural in this framework and has nothing to do with moral consistency. Two components make it, the strength of a person's own membrane and the strength of the network around them, and neither is sufficient alone. A personal membrane is a strong and permeable inner circle of self which controls intimacy and permits the establishment of euphoric and empathic conduits, so strength here means resilient and permeable rather than thick. Integrity is obtained through maintenance of a wide network of euphoric conduits and balanced interactions, which makes breadth the source of the strength. A person supported by many conduits does not depend on any one of them and cannot be captured by controlling a single relationship. What follows is the behavioural claim. A person with integrity has the strength to be trusted even under pressure, and the reason is supply rather than character, since someone with many routes to primary anima can afford to refuse an unbalanced one. That inverts the usual account of moral courage, making it a function of resources rather than of resolve. The failure mode is the mirror image. Damage to a personal membrane or depletion of its euphoric content is an existential threat to the individual inside, which is why isolation is the standard preparation for coercion and why Marsh treats attacks on privacy, reputation and relationships as attacks on a person's capacity to hold a position rather than merely on their comfort.

Integrity in ordinary and philosophical use means consistency between values and action, with Bernard Williams grounding it in identity-conferring commitments and virtue ethics treating it as a settled disposition. Psychology measures it as a trait and organizations test for it. The word's older sense of wholeness or structural soundness survives in engineering. Marsh returns to that older sense and gives it a mechanism, so integrity becomes a property of a person's connections rather than of their character. The predictive difference is sharp. On the standard account a person of integrity holds firm under pressure because of who they are, and on hers because of what they still have access to, which means isolation is expected to produce collapse in almost anyone.