defenses
Defense occupies a richly contested position across the depth-psychology corpus, spanning at least three distinct registers that rarely speak directly to one another yet share a common concern: the organism’s—or psyche’s—effort to maintain integrity against threat. In the somatic-trauma tradition represented by Ogden, Porges, and Nijenhuis, defense is primarily an instinctual, phylogenetically conserved repertoire of animal responses—fight, flight, freeze, shutdown, and cry for help—whose chronic activation underlies dissociative and post-traumatic symptomatology. Here the body is the locus of defensive action, and the therapeutic task is to complete or metabolize responses that were interrupted. In the structural-dissociation framework of van der Hart, defense shades into resistance: the patient’s defensive actions protect against integrating feared experience, and the clinician must work with rather than against these tendencies. Patricia Berry, writing from within archetypal psychology, radically reframes the Freudian conception: the defense is not merely an obstruction to unconscious content but its mimetic double—it expresses and simultaneously conceals what it would ward off, and therapeutic movement proceeds by deepening the likeness the defense has already formed to the avoided content. This Jungian inflection opens toward a teleological reading in which defenses carry the very material they ostensibly suppress. Mathieu adds a further dimension by identifying spiritual bypass as a defense mechanism specific to recovery contexts. Taken together, these positions reveal that ‘defense’ in depth psychology names not one thing but a spectrum: from neurophysiological reflex to archetypal mimesis.
the defense expresses that content from which it would defend itself. Now to take the Jungian leap
Berry argues that defenses do not merely block unconscious content but simulate and thereby reveal it, marking a fundamental shift from the Freudian to a Jungian-teleological reading of defense.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
the more the dreamer can recognize the value of the content ‘woman,’ the more blood he can give to it, the less hung-up and burdensome it will become… Then the defense can be relieved of having to be the sole mode of enacting the value of woman.
Berry demonstrates therapeutically that deepening the mimetic content carried by a defense—rather than dismantling it—is the path to its dissolution.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
These instincts are called animal defenses because they are innate capacities in most animals. Though no single animal defense is ‘better’ than another, in the face of a particular situation, one defense is usually more adaptive and effective.
Ogden establishes animal defenses as phylogenetically conserved instinctual responses whose adaptive value is situationally determined rather than hierarchically ranked.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
Panic and desperation accompany the ‘cry for help’ defense. Emotions of fear and terror fuel a flight defense, and anger and rage fortify a fight defense.
Ogden maps specific emotional states onto specific animal defensive responses, arguing that these emotions are adaptive supports for the defense active at a given moment of threat.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis
Resistance involves the patient’s defensive actions to avoid something that is feared, and is often due to their avoidance of integrating some dreaded aspect of experience, such as feelings, memories, or relational conflicts.
Van der Hart reconceptualizes therapeutic resistance as a form of defensive action organized around trauma-related phobias, requiring working with rather than opposing the patient’s avoidance.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentthesis
Social defensive action tendencies are linked with physical defenses, and may have evolved from these action tendencies… Many action tendencies of social defense involve psychophysiological conditions quite similar to action tendencies of physical defense: hypervigilance, flight, fight, freeze, and submission.
Van der Hart extends the concept of defense from the purely physical to the social domain, arguing that interpersonal defensive behaviors share evolutionary roots and psychophysiological signatures with bodily defensive responses.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentsupporting
Faulty neuroception—that is, an inaccurate assessment of the safety or danger of a situation—might contribute to the maladaptive physiological reactivity and the expression of defensive behaviors associated with specific psychiatric disorders.
Porges grounds defensive behavior in the autonomic nervous system’s neuroceptive processes, explaining psychiatric pathology as the misfiring of an otherwise adaptive defensive apparatus.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011supporting
the mobilizing defenses that Jay could not act upon at the time of the mugging arose spontaneously as physical impulses, allowing him to finally feel the power and strength of taking action to defend himself.
Ogden illustrates clinically how interrupted animal defensive responses can be therapeutically completed through embodied re-enactment, restoring a sense of agency and competence.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
grooming and licking wounds would attract attention, and would elicit further attack… When a predator rapidly approaches and comes close, the prey again dramatically changes its behavior in that it suddenly displays an explosive escape response
Nijenhuis details the sequential, context-dependent shifts in animal defensive behavior across stages of predatory imminence, grounding somatoform dissociation in these phylogenetic defensive cascades.
, Somatoform Dissociation: Phenomena, Measurement, and Theoretical Issues, 2004supporting
the essential process underlying the instinct of immobility is the suppression of fear and pain. It is possible that the instinctive reaction to danger by means of immobility may have furnished one of the earliest motives for suppression.
Nijenhuis links the evolutionary origin of psychic suppression to immobility as a defensive response, suggesting that dissociation has its deepest roots in animal defensive biology.
, Somatoform Dissociation: Phenomena, Measurement, and Theoretical Issues, 2004supporting
a defense mechanism that employs spirituality as a protector from emotional distress appeared to be a likely one for AA members.
Mathieu identifies spiritual bypass as a defense mechanism specific to recovery populations, wherein spiritual practice is mobilized to avoid rather than integrate emotional experience.
, Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice, 2011supporting
Try mindfully and slowly pushing against the wall, a pillow, or a big therapy ball held by your therapist. Stay focused on your body and describe how this defensive action feels physically.
Ogden presents a structured somatic protocol for mindfully rehearsing incomplete defensive actions, making the body’s defensive repertoire accessible to therapeutic awareness.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Cry-for-help a mobilizing animal defense used by humans and other animals when they feel threatened and want to summon help; also called the ‘separation cry’ or attachment cry.
Ogden’s glossary entry formally defines the cry-for-help as a mobilizing animal defense and links it explicitly to the attachment system through the concept of the separation cry.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting
Where Homer speaks of defence, Callinus talks war and loudly proclaims the glory of the battle.
Snell notes the cultural shift from Homeric defense-as-necessity to the elegiac poets’ celebration of offensive battle glory, tracing an early Greek revaluation of the concept.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside