Vulnerable versus defended adaptations

In Healing the Marriage-of-Opposites I allude to the core-styled as vulnerable and to the outer-styled as defended. Strictly speaking, both styles are forms of defensive organization. While the outer-styled typically defend with various forms of constriction (minimization, devaluing, intellectualization, emotional distancing, etc.), the core-styled are also locked into their own defensive forms (pursuing, reparative fantasy, maintaining illusion of withheld goodness, splitting into good and bad objects, etc.). At the end of the day, however, the defensive organization of the core-styled results in more exposure to vulnerability rather than less, in contrast to the outer-styled’s which typically results in an effective walling off of core feeling and lessened vulnerability. It is this very important difference in lived experience that I am attempting to capture by referring to the one style as vulnerable and the other as defended.