Within the depth-psychology corpus, fawning occupies a distinctive and theoretically charged position as the fourth survival response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. The term, popularized principally by Pete Walker and given its fullest clinical elaboration by Ingrid Clayton, designates an involuntary, trauma-conditioned pattern in which an individual placates, appeases, or mirrors a threatening other in order to secure safety — not as a conscious choice but as a somatic imperative. Clayton’s 2025 monograph constitutes the primary theoretical resource in this corpus, arguing that fawning is not a moral deficiency, a personality trait, or conscious manipulation, but rather an instinctual adaptation to complex relational trauma, particularly that arising in childhood. The corpus positions fawning in close relationship with codependency — from which it is carefully distinguished on grounds of agency and intentionality — and with C-PTSD, narcissistic abuse, and attachment disruption. A persistent tension runs through the literature between fawning as adaptive genius in acute danger and fawning as self-annihilating chronic pattern when carried forward into ostensibly safe contexts. The therapeutic project of ‘unfawning’ — reclaiming authenticity, voice, and self-possession — is framed not as the eradication of the response but as its conscious, graduated renegotiation. The corpus is notably unified in insisting that fawners are neither liars nor manipulators but survivors of disempowerment.