The table below (based on tables in From Survival to Fulfilment, and Trauma and Fulfilment Therapy), lists specific appraisals which evoke one or other of eight survival strategies. They are respectively Rescue and Attachment, Assertiveness and Adaptation, Fight and Flight, and Competition and Cooperation, forming four complementary pairs.
Survival strategies are listed according to their adaptive and maladaptive, biological, psychological and social characteristics. Though listed separately, biological, psychological and social responses act as functional biopsychosocial units. Similarly, the apparently static divisions in the table belie the dynamism within it.
The first line for each psychological and social description of survival strategy responses (and the first line under the survival strategy name in column 2) refers to physical survival, while the second to provision of resources. The third lines (bold and underlined) are combinations of both. Words may appear to be ambiguous or relevant across survival strategies. This may reflect some characteristics which survival strategies share, or insufficient honing of language.
The Table denotes the process dimension of survival and trauma. Not shown, to its left of the Table are traumatic situations, and to the right of the table are defences and illnesses. This dimension intersects with a moral dimension, intimated in the Table under *Judgements of worth. A third dimension (not shown), the parameters dimension indicates what, where when to whom stress and trauma occur, eg to individuals, families, or nations. Survival struggles in their three dimensions constitute The Wholist Perspective.
Adaptive and maladaptive judgments of worth are included to give a sense of survival strategy ramifications.
