introducing this business about "The Problem" adds nothing but obfuscation.

Point taken. will think about how to better describe the thing.

You encountered someone who seemed to have lots of problems. You concluded that he has lots of problems. Amazing!

Prior to talking me; some of these problems had been around for a number of years. These problems didn't come from one day to the next; they built up. The spiral problem is maybe better described as a problem with the approach to the rest of the problems. In that sense it's one that is hard to see when you are too busy tackling the object-level problems...

Uncharitable paraphrase of this post: "The Problem is that this person actually has not one problem but many problems."

try: "the problem is the person's other problems are getting in the way of actually fixing any of the problems."