The orienting response occupies a pivotal position in the somatic and depth-psychological literature on trauma, functioning as the hinge between instinctual survival behavior and the higher-order cognitive processes that distinguish adaptive from maladaptive functioning. The corpus draws primarily on Pavlov’s foundational identification of what he termed the ‘shto eta takoe’ reflex—the innate ‘what is it?’ reaction—and Sokolov’s subsequent elaboration of habituation and resensitization dynamics. Levine extends this neurobiological lineage into somatic trauma theory, positioning the orienting response as a phylogenetically ancient, reptilian-brain-organized capacity shared across species. Ogden’s sensorimotor framework offers the most sustained clinical elaboration, mapping multiple sequential stages of orienting—from arousal through identification, appraisal, action, and reorganization—and distinguishing overt from covert, reflexive from exploratory, and top-down from bottom-up forms. A central clinical tension pervades the corpus: the orienting response, when functioning adaptively, enables fluid environmental appraisal and survival; when distorted by trauma, it becomes rigidly fixed toward threat-related cues, generating both hypervigilance and perceptual narrowing. The therapeutic rehabilitation of orienting capacity thus emerges as a core intervention target within sensorimotor, somatic, and polyvagal-informed approaches.