Shuhama et al., review Blanchard, D. C. & R. J. Blanchard, 1988. Ethoexperimental approaches to the biology of emotion. Annu Rev Psychol 39: 43-68. Its an interesting paper on applications to psychiatry.
"The concept of levels of defense was originally based on the results of a series of ethoexperimental studies carried out by the research group led by Caroline and Robert Blanchard using wild rats caught in the sugar cane farms of Hawaii (Blanchard and Blanchard 1988). The choice of wild animals is due to the fact that laboratory rats have undergone domestication by selective breeding that attenuated defensive aggression along generations, making them easier to handle, but unsuitable for the study of defense (Blanchard et al. 1986).
As a consequence, the results reviewed below are organized according to the proposal by Blanchard and Blanchard (1988) that antipredatory defense is hierarchically organized in levels of defense that go from risk assessment, to escape, tense immobility, defensive threat and, finally, defensive attack. To these strategies we add submission, which occurs only among individuals of the same species. "
See Shuhama, R., C. M. Del-Ben; S. R. Loureiro & F. G. Graeff, 2007.
Animal defense strategies and anxiety disorders. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências (Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences), 79(1): 97-109.