Instinctual Body

The instinctual body occupies a contested but generative site within depth-psychology discourse, figured simultaneously as the repository of phylogenetic wisdom, the terrain upon which trauma inscribes itself, and the locus of suppressed vitality that modern civilization has rendered suspect. Jung furnishes the conceptual ground: the body is not merely an organ but the material substrate through which archetypes and instincts remain connected, a stratum that can be ‘peeled’ toward ever older evolutionary layers of the collective unconscious. Levine extends this into somatic-trauma theory, arguing that the neo-cortex routinely overrides instinctual discharge cycles, thereby producing chronic pathology; healing requires restoring the instinctual body’s own regulatory logic rather than imposing cognitive mastery upon it. Estés approaches the instinctual body through the Wild Woman archetype, insisting that the body is ‘a God in its own right,’ a messenger of the soul and a sensor whose mutilation by cultural ideals wounds the psyche and nature simultaneously. Woodman reads the body’s symptomatic revolt as the unconscious demanding recognition of instinctual and feminine energies the will has repressed. Hillman cautions that analytical psychology has intellectualized animal instinct into abstraction, losing the concrete particularity of embodied nature. Across these positions the central tension is consistent: between civilizing pressures that discipline or suppress the instinctual body and the psyche’s insistence that such suppression carries a pathological price.

In the library 26 passages

Body is not marble. That is not its purpose. Its purpose it to protect, contain, support, and fire the spirit and soul within it, to be a repository for memory, to fill us with feeling—that is the supreme psychic nourishment.

Estés argues that the instinctual body is not a sculptural object but a living psychic instrument whose primary function is to store memory and generate feeling, making it foundational rather than subordinate to soul.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

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This whole psychic organism corresponds exactly to the body, which, though individually varied, is in all essential features the specifically human body and mind which all men have. In its development and structure, it still preserves elements that connect it with the invertebrates and ultimately with the protozoa.

Levine invokes Jung to establish that the instinctual body is the concrete, biological reality of the collective unconscious, layered with phylogenetic strata whose integration is required for psychological wholeness.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis

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the neo-cortex easily overrides some of our gentler instinctual responses—such as those that guide the healing of trauma through the discharge of energy. If the discharge process is to serve its purpose, it must be initiated and driven by impulses from the reptilian brain.

Levine argues that trauma results from cortical suppression of the instinctual body’s self-regulating discharge cycles, so healing must restore rather than override those innate somatic processes.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997thesis

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the neo-cortex easily overrides some of our gentler instinctual responses—such as those that guide the healing of trauma through the discharge of energy. If the discharge process is to serve its purpose, it must be initiated and driven by impulses from the reptilian brain.

In the parallel edition, Levine reiterates that cortical dominance over the instinctual body is the structural mechanism by which trauma becomes chronic and healing is obstructed.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma—The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997thesis

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We expend an enormous amount of energy suppressing our instinctual eruptions. For example, when our boss passes over us and promotes a less experienced rival, we (perceiving actual threat) momentarily explode, then stuff our murderous rage back into our bodies from whence it came.

Levine demonstrates that chronic suppression of instinctual body responses produces cumulative somatic pathology—back pain, hypertension, heart disease—making the body the site where civilizational repression registers.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis

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This denial of the instinctual life is also shared by strange bedfellows, many modern behavioral scientists. The rejection of our animal nature is understandable as we have become (overly) socialized.

Levine traces the cultural pathology of over-socialization, showing that denial of the instinctual body is a shared project of religious conservatism and behavioral scientism alike.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis

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Archetypes and instincts are becoming connected at this level, and as the idea moves into the Shadow Quaternio, it takes on more and more instinctual and embodied attributes.

Stein maps the Jungian process by which psychological contents descend into the instinctual body, gaining embodied concreteness as archetypes connect with instincts at the level of physis.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting

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Today, mostly, the animal in a dream functions to represent a phylogenetically older level of the psyche, often referred to as ‘instinctive,’ ‘chthonic,’ ‘primitive,’ or simply as ‘the body’ from which the modern ego is judged to be too far removed.

Hillman critiques post-Jungian practice for reducing the animal—and by extension the instinctual body—to a theoretical abstraction representing phylogenetic regression rather than attending to its concrete particularity.

Hillman, James, Animal Presences, 2008supporting

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there is a certain contrast, an age-old contrast, which has been described in philosophy as the opposition of spirit and body, of spirit and instinctual drive.

Von Franz situates the instinctual body within the archetype’s bipolar spectrum, defining the ‘instinctual end’ as the pole at which archetypal energy manifests as compulsive drive rather than spiritual vision.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995supporting

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The Self was using her body to force her to recognize that her internal dam had to give way. The too-disciplined, too-logical, unflowing way of life had to give place to the more feminine flood.

Woodman reads somatic symptom as the Self deploying the instinctual body as agent of psychic correction, forcing recognition of repressed instinctual and feminine energies through physical breakdown.

Woodman, Marion, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting

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The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.

Levine cites Lawrence to argue that the body-unconscious—the instinctual body as dynamic substrate—is the primary register of aliveness and of contact with transpersonal depth.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma—The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997supporting

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the lower reaches of the psyche begin where the function emancipates itself from the compulsive force of instinct and becomes amenable to the will

Jung demarcates the instinctual body’s domain as the lower stratum of psyche where function remains bound to instinctual compulsion rather than conscious will, establishing the structural boundary between instinct and ego.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting

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Instinct is a difficult thing to define, for its configurations are invisible, and though we sense they have been part of human nature since the beginning of time, no one know

Estés foregrounds the irreducible opacity of instinct—and thus of the instinctual body’s organizing logic—while treating injury to basic instinct as a consequence of psychic capture and cultural famine.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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instinctual physical responses designed to protect us from harm are stimulated when we feel threatened. These responses fall into two general types: mobilizing actions, such as crying for help, fighting, and fleeing, and immobilizing actions

Ogden catalogs the instinctual body’s defensive repertoire as innate animal-defense sequences—mobilizing and immobilizing—whose disruption or completion determines whether trauma resolves or persists.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015supporting

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the defensive, precognitive instinct—the evoked fixed action tendency—is a startle response and fleeing. This action tendency is further organized by the context of the experience

Ogden shows how the instinctual body’s fixed-action tendencies operate pre-cognitively and are then modulated by context, illustrating the layered relationship between somatic instinct and cognitive elaboration.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting

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Observing this behavior can give us an understanding of our own instinctual ability to successfully overcome trauma. We can also learn more about how not to interfere wi

Levine uses comparative ethology to argue that the instinctual body possesses an innate self-restorative capacity that humans uniquely obstruct, making non-interference with instinctual process the therapeutic imperative.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma—The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997supporting

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Observing this behavior can give us an understanding of our own instinctual ability to successfully overcome trauma. We can also learn more about how not to interfere wi

The parallel edition reiterates the ethological argument: the instinctual body’s trauma-resolution capacity is intact in humans but is systematically overridden by civilized cognition.

Levine, Peter A., Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, 1997supporting

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the animal side of our nature can spring upon us from behind to claim its own. At these times, ego consciousness is thrust aside and our bodies fall prey to a force which is beyond control.

Nichols dramatizes the instinctual body’s autonomous power through the Strength archetype, showing how instinctual affect bypasses ego and physically seizes the organism when unintegrated.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting

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Hercules, who cleaned up Pan’s natural world first, clubbing instinct with his will-power, does not stop to clear away the dismembered carcasses left to putrefy after his civilizing, creative tasks.

Hillman uses the Herculean myth to indict the will’s violent suppression of instinct, arguing that civilizing heroism systematically dismembers the instinctual body and leaves pathological residue.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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anyone who has seen a well-executed rendering of a dance such as the tango or samba has witnessed an exquisitely instinct-rooted mating ritual. Seen simply as formalized movements, devoid of their primal sexual rooting, the steps lose their vitality and credibility.

Levine uses the tango as a cultural illustration of how instinctual body rooting animates form, arguing that artful expression loses vitality when severed from its instinctual substrate.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010aside

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the child who is healthy enough to reach the triangular situations as between whole people at the toddler age, when (as later at adolescence) the instinctual life is at its nodal point of intense expression, such a child is subject to conflicts

Winnicott situates the instinctual life’s nodal intensities developmentally, noting that even in health the body’s instinctual surges generate anxiety and defensive organization requiring adequate environmental holding.

Winnicott, Donald, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965aside

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The wild nature would never advocate the torture of the body, culture, or land. The wild nature would never agree to flog the form in order to prove worth, prove ‘control,’ prove character.

Estés aligns the instinctual body with wild nature as a site that resists cultural mutilation, insisting that the authentic instinctual standpoint categorically refuses bodily self-punishment.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017aside

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Instincts are usually taken to mean deeply embedded drives that do not have to be learnt, are not pursued as conscious aims, and find their fulfilment directly in their expression.

McGilchrist offers a philosophical clarification of instinct as pre-conscious, auto-fulfilling drive, providing conceptual scaffolding for understanding the instinctual body’s mode of operation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside

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Instincts are usually taken to mean deeply embedded drives that do not have to be learnt, are not pursued as conscious aims, and find their fulfilment directly in their expression.

The parallel edition supplies the same definition, establishing instinct as self-fulfilling and non-volitional—the structural feature that makes the instinctual body an autonomous psychophysical system.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside

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