(from the Latin defensio – to defend, protect) is a person’s tendency to take an avoidant or passive-defensive position when faced with life difficulties. The habit of getting stuck in one or another emotional state (emotional viscosity, inertia, stiffness). In modern psychotherapy, the term is used in relation to people who are prone to experiencing their inferiority, which is manifested in timidity, shyness, shyness, indecisiveness, anxious suspiciousness, a tendency to doubt, and self-doubt. In modern Russian clinical psychotherapy, the term covers all anxious (defensive) people and is used to therapeutically explain the “strength of one’s weakness”. It is emphasized that people of this kind are capable of sympathy, compassion, thoughtful deep analysis; On their natural soil (weak, inert nervous system) morality is formed, higher spiritual abilities as the basis for the formation of society and mutual assistance.