The author deconstructs how elements of defense analysis operate during the process of play in analytic work. In play, a patient’s defense process often involves an experience of aliveness and vividness within the analytic couple and is less oriented toward secondary process metacommentary about defensive function than is typical of more formal defense interpretation. The emergence of the analysis of defense that occurs during play is not meant to challenge other forms of defense analysis but is rather adjacent to these forms of defense analysis. This view of a cluster of approaches to defense analysis is consistent with his view that epistemological and ontological approaches often operate simultaneously in analytic work. The author theorizes defense process during play and clinically examines these processes in two vignettes.