Thrust to Wholeness: The Nature of Self-Protection

Abstract

Although the literature enlists “self-protection” to explain widely varied behavior (e.g., startle, defense mechanism, hoarding), the concept is not defined, nor are its varied modes classified. Few textbooks even index the term. To help remedy this odd neglect, the author postulated the protective motive as a biologically given “thrust to wholeness,” modified by experience and dependent on social support. Utilizing mechanisms of homeostasis, defense, prevention, healing, and “outreach” (i.e., wholeness expressed), the motive disposes the individual to maintain and express the functional integrity of body and self (including “all that is mine”). Seemingly unrelated phenomena (e.g., immune response, quest for immortality, forgiveness, sharing, urge to procreate) are thus afforded common explanation. Prospectively, the thrust to wholeness affords conceptual unity, parsimony, and pedagogical utility. Also, it may furnish a conceptual anchor for well-being and its paradoxes, self-defeat and suicide.