Somatic Experiencing: Using Interoception and Proprioception as Core Elements of Trauma Therapy

Name: Somatic Experiencing: Using Interoception and Proprioception as Core Elements of Trauma Therapy
Author: Peter Payne

Somatic Experiencing: Using Interoception and Proprioception as Core Elements of Trauma Therapy is a work by Peter Payne (2015).

Core claims

Payne and colleagues provide the first comprehensive theoretical paper explaining how Somatic Experiencing (SE) works at the level of interoception and proprioception, arguing that SE’s primary mechanism is the restoration of the body’s capacity to track and regulate its own internal states — a capacity that trauma systematically disables.
The paper integrates polyvagal theory, interoceptive neuroscience, and Levine’s clinical observations into a unified model: trauma produces a state of frozen autonomic activation in which the body’s defensive responses are simultaneously mobilized and suppressed, and SE works by gently titrating the release of this trapped activation through careful interoceptive awareness.
By grounding SE in contemporary neuroscience rather than leaving it in the realm of clinical description alone, the paper provides the theoretical bridge between Levine’s pioneering clinical work and the evidence-based frameworks that mainstream medicine requires.

How does the paper’s model of ‘frozen activation’ — simultaneous mobilization and suppression of defensive responses — relate to Kalsched’s concept of the ‘self-care system’ that protects the traumatized individual by sacrificing embodied presence for psychological survival?
Does the interoceptive framework for SE illuminate why Jungian active imagination, when practiced somatically rather than purely imaginally, sometimes produces powerful discharge phenomena — is active imagination accessing the same frozen autonomic activation through a different door?