Translator: itachikinnie#5512

Introduction:

Beyond the Christian description of gluttony as a disproportionate fondness for food, it can be described as a passion for more and better that manifests itself especially as a fascination with novelty, the unknown and the exotic, an excessive dependence on pleasure, an automatic tendency to avoid pain and frustration, and a desire to be liked, popular, and admired. The strong energization of a mental nature is accompanied by a difficulty in integrating the intellectual with the emotions and desires. This overinvestment in the rational aspect is expressed with a strategic vision of life (something that has been called planning), accompanied by a strong self-indulgence (fixation of this character) and a more or less tacit self-perception of superiority. In the background, there is the belief that the intelligent can be used to escape in all circumstances, but there is also an ambivalent experience in which this character puts on a mask of being intelligent and superior to hide a nucleus that is effectively lacking and has low self-esteem.

The E7 uses his undeniable intelligence to explain, manipulate and arouse admiration. In addition, their gluttony also manifests itself as intellectual gluttony, which makes it the most curious of characters, so that it not only constantly launches itself in search of new horizons and the mysterious, but also towards abstract or extravagant ideas that seduce him.

His intelligence, along with his self-concept of enjoyer or ben vint and his positive vision of life, which he projects strongly on others to seduce them, as well as his own capacity for intellectual seduction, are typical traits closely related to the strong narcissism of E7: an internal sense of feeling valuable (albeit ambivalently colored by a diffuse rumor of self-invalidation) that is usually accompanied by the exhibitionism of his talents, based on which he grants himself rights (entitlement), and a loquacious compulsion to explain things or to narrate life.

And is that the E7 is usually a charlatan. He talks a lot, both to seduce and to persuade, so that his loquacity serves gluttony as a way of getting his desires through good explanations, and it is also a way of eating the other through the word. It is also a fundamental part of his ability to charm: E7 is a fresh character, who acts humble even if he is not and who is happy to help and be useful (always with a strategic component behind). On this he bases his success; only that to achieve such a state of apparent satisfaction (a kind of cosmic well-being) the first thing you need is to deceive yourself by denying any hint of discomfort. Even more important than the desire for pleasure is, for this character, the avoidance of pain.

His apparent satisfaction and enthusiasm keep any hint of frustration far from his consciousness. He is also often unaware of his insatiability, a blindness reinforced by his sense of entitlement to gratification. Therefore, we say that they have the energy of a child in an adult body that allows everything, with an expected sense that everything is fine, which works not as a protection against pain and frustration. Your self-indulgence is, after all, a form of optimism that makes life go more smoothly and you can forgive yourself for any failures.

At the same time, the E7 is a rebellious character; he despises and goes against authority (although he usually does it from behind, avoiding direct confrontation), he lacks discipline, he is excessively fanciful, optimistic and self-confident, and everything this, together with his superficiality, allows him to show himself as brilliant and interesting, especially when displaying his verbal capacity. As a result, he frequently procrastinates and experiences his ideas and projects more on the plane of fantasy than putting them into practice. He always has new ideas with which to go until he gets tired and replaces them with others, concretizing them on rare occasions. This lack of commitment hides the magical illusion of staying in an ideal world that does not destroy the mask of a good place and a special person.

His seduction and manipulation ends up sometimes leading to the exploitation of those who fall under the influence of his bewitching personality since, definitely, he usually has the ability to get others to work at the service of his ideas or needs.
His rebelliousness is most visibly manifested in a bitter criticism towards the prejudices of established morality, through humor and inony. In reality, he opposes everything that curtails his gluttony, and for this it is necessary to be unconventional and contrary to hierarchies. He is, therefore, an apparent egalitarian. Rebellion is also related to the search for utopias, alternatives to the ordinary.
His unconscious rebellion prevents him from actually enjoying the little flavors of life-those things we call ordinary and makes him a slave to his freedom,

This is but a small sample of its contradictions. In the E7 imagination and reality are confused. Their worth and time are miscalculated, upwards, and efforts and sacrifices downwards. Anxiety hides behind complacency, aggression behind a soft and affable demeanor, and exploitation behind an appearance of generosity. His lack of commitment to the truth is crushing, and makes him a very disengaged and fraudulent character.
Between the different subtypes of E7 there are, basically, oppositions in various aspects, which we can broadly summarize as a polarity between idealism and lack of it, between credulity and cynical distrust, between blowing up the dreamer and excessive materialism. In this polarity, the conservation E7 embodies the distrustful, cynical and materialistic extreme. It could be said that, among the E7, it is about the pseudo-idealistic subtype or, more exactly, an anti-idealist taken by a visceral distrust and a clear love for the concrete, showing himself as an oral-aggressive character and, of course, as the most rebellious of them all. It is adrenaline because of the intensity that brings him closer to the lustful instinct of E8. He is both the most masochistic and psychopathic of the E7s, to the point where he is able, on occasion, to distance himself from his gluttony and behave in a sober, self-punitive manner.

At the same time, his radical disbelief leads him to compensate by putting material aspects and survival above all else. In the erotic field, the lack of empathic capacity leads to a radical hedonism. He substitutes quality in the love bond for quantity in the sexual encounter, showing himself insatiable in the erotic conquest, unlike the social and sexual subtypes, who find it much more difficult to specify erotic situations, beyond deployment of seductive arts from the intellectual. In this sense, the conservation subtype is often drawn as a sensuous being with being described as playboy hedonistic charlatans.

Unlike the social and sexual E7 idealists, the conservative E7 can be ruthless if his safety is compromised, and is generally more prone to confrontation and violence than the other E7 subtypes, an enneatype that, itself, is little given to physical aggression. In contrast to other E7s, the conservation 7 tends to be very territorial and, within the common gluttony of novelty and new horizons of the three subtypes, it is much more costumbrist than someone who is typically an explorer of new worlds and a seeker of exciting experiences. This is shown by the fact that he always occupies the same place at the table, or the same side of the bed, or that he buys several identical shirts, etc.

The conservation subtype is less disciplined than the social E7, but more than the sexual one, and tends to show a great capacity for work. Likewise, its self-indulgence finds a clear limit with the protection of those it considers part of its clan, showing more indulgences than self-indulgence. It presents a higher degree of hedonistic permissiveness than the social subtype, but less than the sexual one. There is also a greater practicality, linked to the possession of money or goods, both material and intangible, in which there is an opportunistic and advantageous aspect.
He shows greater adherence to his own desires and, being conservative, to concrete basic needs, which he tends to carry out with a spontaneity that brings him closer to his instinctive part. In this sense, he tends less to the imaginary satisfaction of desire, being rather proactive in his self-satisfaction.

His penchant for realism and his lack of idealism makes him more cynical and more openly critical and self-critical than other E7s. According to the psychic instances described by Karen Horney (would, against and away), the E7 of conservation goes against it, often showing himself to be a seasoned debater. He is often the leader of the pack and becomes the protector of his family, clan or affinity group, which represents his passion: a passion for involvement, for complicity beyond norms and morals. In this case, it shows great generosity and is very affectionate, defending the members within it. Naturally, these are all forms of manipulation to gain one's own recognition in return.

On the other hand, we could define the sexual E7 as an idealist who changes his ideals as the wind of his whims blows, without much awareness of his contradictions, generally credulous and who fits perfectly with the description of a high-flying dreamer, with a very high hedonistic permissiveness , a great lack of discipline and a greater tendency to the imaginary satisfaction of their desires.
Much more fanciful, ethereal, poetic and dreamy than the other greedy subtypes, the sexual one is more emotional, tender and excitable, and tends to live in a virtual reality in which everything is fine and everyone is good. He is the most oral-dependent among the E7, the one who gives himself over to gluttony with greater earnestness and without dissimulation, and the most self-indulgent and uncritical with himself.
According to Horney's psychic prompts, the sexual E7 goes towards others. He is an integrator, a seducer whose wound (intimacy) compulsively drives him to an intimate encounter that he later cannot sustain, showing himself to be an escapist or experiencing fits of childish rage at the slightest frustration of his expectations.

Among the various subtypes of E7, the sexual tends to inhabit and persevere in no other place than in a childish dimension, as a defense against the difficulties and frustrations of life. It is not in vain that he is said to be a Peter Pan; he does not take responsibility, he does not fulfill his obligations, he does not want to be an adult.
He is invaded by a kind of joy, he tends to idealize himself and his particular gifts. In a narcissistic sense, he is the most self-focused and, therefore, the most disconnected from reality. To such an extent that, when it's not funny, it tends to be irritating and tiresome and, above all, very invasive.

The social E7 is the most idealistic. In Horney's instances, he is a character who seems far away, he isolates himself and usually locks himself in an intellectual ivory tower from which he observes others with pretense of superiority, behaving like the most schizoid of the E7.
They tend to have a more active and demanding superego, more disciplined, and a greater contact with guilt. He also believes more strongly in ideas and theoretical abstractions that he produces with a flowery charlatanism and intellectual sophistication. He tends to be helpful and even self-sacrificing (up to a certain point, because deep down he's still, like a good E7, uncommitted and an escapist).

He perceives himself as a candidate for sainthood; a good and well-intentioned being, careful with everyone and deserving of the respect and admiration of the community for his lofty actions and sense of the common good. In this sense, he usually behaves like a real Rasputin, like a counselor or ideologue capable of whitewashing the execrable.
Putting himself at the service of everyone, as a kind of community builder, he exchanges such services for admiration and indulgence.

Unlike the social subtype, the conservation subtype places himself at the service of his own clan, while seeming unmoved by the fate of the rest of the world. And the sexual subtype, in its lack of contact with reality, seems oblivious to matters such as service, despite its good intentions. The social one is also the E7 that represses gluttony the most, to the point that it has been defined as the “anti-seven”. The same goes for their leniency. As an «old» subtype, the social E7 tends to be less (self) indulgent (at least, apparently) and manifests less hedonistic permissiveness, which in his case appears denied

Love
Beyond being the enneatype with the greatest development of erotic love among the mental characters, the E7 is, in the second instance, an admiring character, which takes the forms of idealization (in the case of the social subtype), self-idealization (sexual subtype) and pseudo or anti-idealism (in the conservation subtype, which tends to go against it). Establishing a characteristic type of tertiary love, Claudio Naranjo divides the three subtypes of the E7 into compassionate (conservation), erotic (sexual) and admirative (social), being true that the E7 conservation usually acts with a certain maternal orientation, protecting theirs, while the sexual E7 has a celebratory attitude towards life that is more compatible with the free will of their inner child or eros, and the social E7 is the most admiring or idealizing.

Physical aspects
As phenomenological observations, not to take as absolute truths, the conservationist usually appears more sober when dressing. It's more understated, it's usually elegant in a classic sense, and it doesn't take on as many colors; Rather, its practicality can lead you to buy several identical shirts or suits. The sexual E7, on the other hand, tends to exaggerate by combining bright colors with rather exotic accessories (feathers, unorthodox aesthetic. The social E7 tends, more than to sobriety, to becoming uninterested in aspects such as fashion or dressing well. At a morphological level, sexual E7s are usually characterized by large mouths and teeth, boyish features, large and very lively eyes and the permanent smiling expression of someone very young. On the other hand, in the E7 conservation, prominent and bulky jaws are common, with generous cheeks and wide faces. And a less angelic face, more markedly earthly than the social or sexual ones (they have more of a “bad face”). Protruding snouts and large, fat, fleshy noses are common in the E7 conservation.
The look is perhaps the most characteristic: withdrawn, observant, distrustful, with generally sunken eyes and a prominent eyebrow.
As for the social E7, they tend to have less prominent or exaggerated features, as if the greater sobriety in their actions and thoughts, or their ancient orientation, had a concordant effect on the sweetness of their faces.

CONSERVATION 7

CHAPTER 1; THE CONSERVATION 7

Iconoclastic, rebellious, provocateur, intellectual challenger, seeker of novelties... as well as easygoing, opportunists, lover of privileges and central heating, the Seven Conservation character moves in life crossing from one side to another one basic polarity: that of someone who is, at the same time, revolutionarily heterodox and secretly conservative. Here is the quintessence of the Flaubertian bourgeois: a great moderate capable of punishing himself with sober regimens after a binge or with large doses of work after a period of laziness.
He is also a playboy (or playgirl) and a cheat, both in business and in emotions. A clever trickster, a satyr in need of constantly proving his seductiveness. A planner and sagacious bon vivant, whose definition is, by the way, that of one who is dedicated to enjoying the pleasures of life, especially food and drink, as well as leisure and social activities.

In the game of polarities typical of each enneagram, we can observe among the E7, on the one hand, the helpful and social idealists and the sexual fantasists and charmers, and on the other, the cynical, practical and earthly E7 conservation, not at all idealists. With this starting point, gluttony taken to the field of conservation becomes a very materialistic gluttony of concrete sensory pleasure, making this subtype a cheerful, easy-going hedonist, light-hearted and enjoying himself, interested in sex, money, food, and the good life. But with a schizoid background, disconnected from feeling and emotionally stingy, which usually appears in a more resounding way in private, while publicly maintaining its pseudo-social facade intended to satisfy its gluttony. In someone whose most acute instinct is the always reptilian conservation, all this yearning for pleasure is very uninterested in theoretical abstractions.

The E7 conservation is clear about what it wants: always more and better, and as soon as possible. To implement his gluttony in the world, he deploys networks of influence and mutual favors based on common greedy interests or on ties of empathy or blood (hence the specific use of the word family, which generates so much confusion, to define him), and that lead others to describe him with more or less grandiose terms such as “mafioso” or “gangster”. (Terms that, after all, end up generating a certain mythomania around this character, which we will review over the next few pages.)

It is a mental character, which occurs more in men. And the E7 conservation women present very specific traits. They tend to be somewhat "masculinized" women, who put strength and cunning ahead of what is topically understood as "femininity." As befits this trait, they stand out for their practical mentality, often also for their sexual gluttony and their few prejudices in the erotic field, as well as for their enormous capacity to support the clan or the intimate circle where, as is usual in all Seven conservation, usually occupy the place of the head of the family.

Family stories of survival
The world was made to the conservative E7 preservation too dry in its infancy; especially emotionally, but often also in the material. It is about a person who saw or felt very unprotected at a tender age. Stories of broken families, patriarchal violence, parental alcoholism, having to take care of siblings, large families where there is not enough care, or a general sense of feeling threatened that is transmitted from parents to children are common. The person of this character continues to stay, even now, in a constant state of alert, with a strong initiative and even aggressiveness at the service of his needs, which translates into a great capacity to improvise in order to nurture himself: the Seven conservation is a hustler.
And so he doesn't tolerate deprivation without being able to get what he thinks he needs in order to achieve his neurotic goal that “I'm fine and everything is fine.”

Either through the effort to satisfy himself or, more commonly, through his more or less disguised aptitude for robbery, which does not call his honor into question, but in which his aggressiveness and possessive tendencies shine. It is common to find in this character stories of family survival, of absent parents or direct abandoners. Humble and suffering children who are not very compatible with the usual idea that the E7 lived in a children's paradise. (In this case, if there was, it ended early and abruptly.)

“I have not been an adventurer, an insatiable explorer or a compulsive liar. Nor would my humble family economy have allowed it. I felt that I had to make a living, that I had to be smart, that I was better equipped for it than the rest, but everything at a very homely level, without large companies, or expeditions, or scams (some minor theft from time to time from time to time), all much more of the neighborhood... It is also true that my desire for exploration was directed more to knowledge than to real life. That way of moving in the world made me feel superior, certainly smarter than the rest. Our stories are more about home-grown rogues, who justify their excesses and nonsense with verbiage and self-indulgence.” (ORI)

The Conservation Seven can be described as a survivor of its own family atmosphere. Traps, fraudulence, opportunism... everything is put at the service of covering up the anguish of the threat to the conservation of the childhood stage. That lacerating wound is still so alive that he runs towards hedonistic pleasures to try to leave his psychic footprint behind, forgetting that pain is a tireless long-distance runner that always ends up catching those who shun it: depression or alcohol can become the last subterfuges of the ego E7 conservation so that life does not hurt.

“I think I first got depressed when I was five years old, when my mother left home without telling me because my father had threatened her with a gun. Then, at fourteen, I had a car accident that left my face covered in scars. I became depressed again. I had manic and depressive cycles for the next few years. The last moment of depression I remember ended the day Claudio Naranjo asked me: How are you doing with your depression? I replied: I already feel less pain. He looked at me and said: Pain? You mean fear of pain. The answer made me open my eyes. Depression was but one more evasion not to touch the wound.” (DAVID)

Added to the stories of abandonment are childhood deprivations; sometimes, having to improvise to survive in a suffocating environment that does not allow the physical or intellectual expansion of children. There is suffering, therefore, related to material scarcity, and another that comes from a lack of love and parental attention, which is displaced towards that experience of hardship. It is not surprising, then, that the E7 conservationist is someone who develops the biting instinct early on, as if he soon came to the conclusion that if he does not personally take care of himself, no one will do it for him.

The picaresque novel seems to be a genre dedicated to the celebration of this character, his cheekiness and cunning. The bigardo, picaro or buscón, like Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Pablos, the Guzmán de Alfarache or the mischievous Justina, is usually a wandering anti-knight, in an “epic of hunger through a miserable world, where one only survives thanks to fraud and deception. La Celestina is another example; cunning and greedy old woman who with her tempting words, manipulation and greed, ends up breaking Melibea's virtue. Underneath a clear satirical intention, underlies a moralizing and pessimistic ideology, a determinism with which their own mistakes are justified and a praise of failure.

“At home, we used to go to bed grounded without dinner. The reasons could not be more absurd. What was happening? That there was nothing for dinner and my mother invented punishments to make the lack become something else. We lived nine people in 60 square meters. Faced with such a scenario, I developed a skill to get them to share the sandwich with me. From my older brother I learned to make a fool of myself in front of the gate of a school for middle-class children. What a good heart they had! When we drooled pretending to be disabled, food rained down on us.” (DAVID)

“I have the powerful experience, in a care workshop with Albert Rams, of feeling how I could kill to get food, the experience of touching a regressive deficiency state that I have been fleeing from all my life because of its power, virulence and the violence that I felt in my. It was six hours in silence through the streets of Barcelona. I made up my mind not to eat. in that time and walk through the ugliest places: dumpsters, garages and gloomy streets. My own proposal not to eat triggered the fear in me and, at the beginning of the trip, I bought a sandwich in case something happened to me. In the final stretch I was so taken by discomfort that I was stumbling and folding in on myself. I ended up devouring the sandwich I had in my backpack with animal voracity. Seeing myself in that state made me feel very ashamed.” (MEKA)

Family histories of violence are not uncommon, with a father or mother who is the perpetrator and a generalized situation of chaos and disorder that the E7 conservation tries to solve by taking on responsibilities that do not correspond to it and sharpening its skepticism before any form of authority, with an emotional retreat. bordering on the schizoid in the face of intimacy.

“My father was a traditional family head. really, it was impulsive and practical, very visceral and obsessed with his own conservation. My mother is a torrent of emotions. And my older sister, too; Despite being the second, I feel like the head of the family. For me, conflicts began with emotional explosions, more than with my father's absences or nonsense. My house had two rooms and forty-five square meters. There were six of us in the family! I lived in fear of these discussions, but my task was to reassure and appease the sisters. Even today I am paralyzed in conflicts. I always think it's not that bad. And I only find out hours or days later what was really happening to me. Also, once I grew up a little more, my mother hid behind me to reproach my father and pour out all her dissatisfaction on him. On one occasion I had to stop an attack with a knife, moved by rage, fear and the need to protect my mother. It was very hard for me as a girl to stand in front of her dad in the middle of a violent act.” (ORI)

“My father, a joker type, when he sprouted he could be the most violent man in the world; that's how I lived it. I have witnessed the mistreatment of my mother, psychologically and physically. I used to get in the way so he wouldn't hit my mom. One of the most horrible scenes was at Christmas. They argued and my father hit my mother. She also stood up to him and didn't keep quiet, which made the violence even more dramatic. He stayed in bed lying down. I went into her room, I call her repeatedly and she doesn't answer, I begin to despair. I lay down on my bed and I remember that I was paralyzed. After a while I heard voices in the hallway and I heard her tearful voice. I felt such immense relief that my soul returned to my body.” (NESTOR)

The family environment often prepares or contributes to generate the state of moral laxity in which the E7 conservation lives. His character can also be understood as a self-protective reaction to a family environment where catastrophe reigns or in which, not to exaggerate, there is a certain atmosphere of selfishness, atomization or «Get out whoever you can, a bit like in the chapter «Education sentimentals>>, from the film “I mostri” (Monsters of today, 1963), by Dino Risi, where a father (Ugo Tognazzi) deals with the education and social initiation of his son (Ricky Tognazzi), using a series of examples and teachings inspired by absolute dishonesty and a total lack of respect for others.

As a very believable caricature of a conservative E7, the character is laughable for his absolute immorality and hypocrisy, especially when he tells his son that politicians, “instead of thinking of others, they only think of themselves.” Because, on top of that, there is this tendency to dishonesty. “So, if you want to do well, don't trust anyone. Never! From no one! Do you understand? Not even your father!” And, before the stunned look of the little one, he adds: “It's a joke! Give daddy a kiss."

A materialism that obscures existence
The belief that the world is a dangerous place, the feeling of being constantly in danger of extinction, of perpetual threat, more or less unconscious, to conservation, leads him to think, as a self-protective reaction, that through his intelligence and his planning capacity can solve things to his advantage, to take advantage, order the world around him to put the wind in his favor and alter the unfavorable starting conditions.

He will not easily allow anxiety and fear to show through, but he will struggle between his fright at the intense experiences and the feelings that move too much, on the one hand, and his aggressiveness, his lack of control and his maniacal need to feel without restraint, to live at the same time. limit of enjoying the great tit of life squeezing it as if there were no tomorrow. His desires are gargantuan and he will surround himself with luxuries, favors and graces, hours of paradise, beauty and nectars. And in the same way, you will imagine yourself elevated to the category of aristocrat, trusted adviser, advisor to the kingdom or unexpected heir to a fortune.

In the Conservation Seven, the confusion between love and pleasure is typical of all E7s, it not only prevents a deeper meaning from emerging than what is immediately available, but tends to make them value only what is immediately available, the bird in the hand. so that everything else becomes "flying hundred", as the saying goes. As in Aesop's fable, the Conservation Seven often behaves like a fox who, realizing that the bunch of grapes is out of her reach, scorns it, saying, "They're green!" The gesture betrays him as a self-indulgent and interested person who often shies away from great efforts or sacrifices if they do not give clear results.

His alienation from experiential depth (which underpins the feeling of scarcity) is heightened by his search for concreteness. Like the proud character, gluttony also hides insufficiency with false abundance. Although this concealment is orchestrated from the intellectual, and not from the emotional as happens in the case of E2. And in the case of the Seven conservation, it is a false abundance based on the concrete, the good gourmet dinners, the women or the men, the vintage wine...
His need to experience only what is pleasurable is exacerbated by restricting it very often, closing a vicious circle, to the sensory or aesthetic realm.

So the E7 conservation even comes to despise abstract pleasure; let alone the vague flavor of poetry or the novel. It is a trait so focused on what is immediately available that, inevitably, the person is obscured because he tends to discard everything that belongs to the world of the subtle, the intangible. And though he may be fanciful, a good storyteller or even oriented towards a certain mysticism, the E7 conservation does not usually love or value anything that does not offer him pleasure and, above all, that does not give him immediate pleasure.

A tremendous handicap, because it limits the depth of the experience to what is strictly related to the skin, to the senses, and distracts from a deeper experimentation of the loving bond, as well as from the more elaborate feeling of love for God or for that which is felt. notices as greater than oneself.
It is not uncommon for this to happen, since he often suffers from existential disillusionment in the face of the supposed neurotic realization that he cannot count on anyone, that he must fend for himself, that everyone else is as selfish as he is. And this makes him not only a recalcitrant skeptic at convenience but, generally speaking, he does not believe in anything.

Bipolar tendency
The weakness for pleasure draws the enneatype Seven to a general susceptibility to "falling into temptation", which eventually gives off an orientation towards corruption. He who is addicted to the sin of gluttony cannot resist the temptation to any other sin, says Chaucer, and nothing is truer for this earthy glutton, for this unrepentant materialist, whose conception of life is, more than for any another E7, that of a gigantic (and often literal) tit waiting to be dolled. If we understand "sin" as a diversion of the person's potential for self-actualization, with the "sin" of gluttony, the individual renounces self-realization by staying stuck to exaggerated expectations of reward, around some more than debatable merits. accrued from their condition of being special, an idea often forged in the relationship with the mother during early childhood. Since such expectations are going to be repeatedly disappointed - such is life - the enneagram Seven, in general, has developed a kind of neurotic floater at all risks against depression:

Enneatype VII individuals are more than simple explorers of open-minds: their search for experiences characteristically takes them from an insufficient present to a promising future. The glutton's insatiability, however, is veiled by apparent satisfaction. To put it more precisely, behind the enthusiasm lies the frustration. The mentioned enthusiasm seems to compensate for the dissatisfaction and, at the same time, keep the experience of frustration out of the individual's consciousness.

The many misfortunes of Ulysses (an E7 conservation character) during his return to Ithaca in The Odyssey suggest another fundamental characteristic of this subtype, which often lacks the kind of vaccine against depression that other sweet tooths enjoy. Well, his condition is usually, rather, that of a bipolar for which the manic phases are usually not longer than the depressive ones.

This tendency is well identified in the story of Odysseus, nicknamed "he of many cunnings", who goes from behaving like an arrogant smartass in his phase of conquering Troy (similar to the period of mystical inflation in the myth of the Journey of the Hero) to lose everything in his ten years wandering at sea, to the point of returning as a castaway to Ithaca, only then, after many tests and a cure of humility, to be king again.

The depressive cycle can also be interpreted, as we have already pointed out, as an extreme way of avoiding pain when it inexorably reaches the person. In this case, depression is a way of "playing dead" so as not to come into contact with the pain. Both the manic activation of gluttony and the depressive deactivation of contact with the painful experience are very present avoidance strategies. However, the resulting experience is not nice at all.

Both the up (manic) and down (depressive) phases take the person out of their center and subject them to strong existential outbursts, a difficult price to pay for denying that they face pain (and love) directly. The manic-depressive cycle therefore involves surrendering to fear getting in touch with the great emotions of life. It's better, neurotically speaking, to die while you're alive, fall asleep, drug yourself. And it is not uncommon to find in some E7 conservation tendencies towards drug use or, directly, alcoholism (while others are Spartanly sober, with moments of punctual excess).

“I remember that I had no desire to socialize, go to parties or any kind of gathering, family or friends. These environments caused me a lot of stress. I felt extremely inadequate and insecure. It was as if all the people were watching me. suitability and isolation. That made me feel inferior and ridiculous. At the age of twelve, however, I found a faithful and competent ally in alcohol. It made me more confident, indifferent to the possible judgments of people, more talkative, expansive, brave. I felt more willing and impetuous in seeking out women to relate to. Various women! Thus, thanks to drinking, I managed to attend all the parties, make many trips, have hundreds of relationships. At the age of thirty, I decided to stop drinking, since I came to the conclusion that I could not start a family. The price I paid for abstinence was very high. A huge insecurity came in the form sexual relationships, depression, isolation…” (ALEXANDRE)

If gluttony is the passion for more and better, in self-preservation it is the passion for much more and much better. Given its earthiness, its ruthless realism, conservation tends to be more in contact with the feeling of frustration, of emptiness, which is why it needs a greater intensity to cover it up and extremes its search with zeal. That is also why he shows himself to be an opportunist or profiteer, who does not miss an opportunity. So much gluttony demands the minimum waste of opportunities, thereby feeling minimized-numbed rather, it gives the threat to conservation. To complement this description of the pain avoidance mechanism, we reproduce below an excerpt from an interview with psychotherapist Albert Rams on this particular issue:

DAVID: The manic and the depressive have been a very strong constant all my life. Over time these phases have softened. Now I speak of internalization phases. When I go to the expansive, it is very strong, and when I go to the confinement, too; but I can no longer speak of mania or depression: the compulsion is much less.

ALBERT: I live a similar life to you. The phases have moderated a lot. An important element was toxic. I have increased the manic phases with alcohol, joints, coffee... Eliminating alcohol, joints-the latest being coffee- has been a help. It has helped me better understand the dynamics, how the down phase and the up phase are related. How much of what hasn't been well resolved in the down phase favors the up phase. For example, in the down phase there is a tendency for everything to cost; discipline is difficult. My last expansive period, which has lasted three years (it had never lasted so long and had never been so clean of toxins and other things) has been very productive. I was making a blog that I have now closed, I wrote a lot, I have made myself available to many people... I did an article for the AETG magazine that talked about bipolarity, and one of the pieces of advice I gave was that, whatever you are, do what you have to do. Don't let what you have to do depend on your mood.

To the extent that the down is generating a kind of deposit, an enormous desire to burst is created. And vice versa. I have dedicated myself to cleaning up the phases, especially the up ones: See what was false, what needs to be corrected, who to apologize to, what appeared to be radiant and what was not so... To the extent that the phase up throws you out of control, generates guilt and the foundations of the phase down are laid.

DAVID: How do you live in this phase being more in contact with the emptiness and loneliness? Do you live with an inner restlessness?

ALBERT: At the moment, yes, with anguish, on the dark side, and at times with a kind of calm that doesn't exist in the manic phase. It is a feeling that there is nothing to do, life is already taking me. In my specific case, there is a very important matter. You know that a daughter of mine died in 1994, and thus it became very clear to me, among other things, that what I wanted in life was time, and I didn't have it as I had before. Lately, in these three years, a movement was to reduce the query. I used to come to work three days a week, and I reduced it to two days, and this has given me the opportunity of living an adventure, a story of experiencing solitude in the countryside. But that same thing now comes back to me: when one is manic, time is joyful... But what I have been gaining is moderation, cutting the limits above and below. Something that helps me in the depressive phases, that it is the metaphor of winter. In winter it seems that nothing moves, that everything is still, unless you look at the roots... There is a whole movement that is not visible, that goes below. All that movement of digestion, contemplation, anguish, emptiness, I know that the next high phase is nourished by what was experienced in that low phase.

The need for gratification
In conservational E7s, insatiability leads to a dual, ambiguous, and even painful relationship with sources of pleasure. With food (tendency to suffer from digestive problems), with sex (tendency to infidelity and to change partners), with money (tendency to waste/speculate/accumulate), etc.
Here's a guy from E7 who won't settle for a promise of pleasure. It is not enough to turn the insufficient present into a promising future. There is less cathexis in the satisfaction of gluttony: There is more going for what one wants, less contemplation. There will be anxiety with money, with sex, with the attention that is not obtained, with the desire for recognition... At the same time, such anxiety will be intertwined in an exhausting game of polarities with the already mentioned and typical tendencies to (self)indulgence and procrastination of all Sevens.

Surely it can also be said that the E7 conservation is more self-indulgent. He always has his feet on the ground, he doesn't evade so much towards fantasy. The result is that he often feels entitled to gratification. Without God, neither karma nor law, without so much tendency to idealizing fantasies, who is going to be able to stop it? His gluttony dominates him, in the sense that he lives in a compulsive search for refuge in pleasure, as an antidote to a greater contact with anxiety.

Full pantry versus empty
Like all head types, the Conservation Seven lives gripped by fear as a background noise that contaminates his entire life experience. In this character, fear is usually denied. The E7 conservation could be defined as a second «counterphobic» character, after the sexual E6, since it also «goes against fear», tends to despise it and is often capable of risky and even quarrelsome behaviors: there is in this character a constant aggressive attitude.

Attachment to material pleasures denotes, in itself, a maneuver against fear: The basic neurotic strategy of survival consists of a kind of filling the pantry" abundantly as an antidote to the lack-not only affective, but often also material, food, etc.- that was experienced in childhood, and in the face of the fear of experiencing again the painful emotions that this produced.

His lack of involvement, altruism, empathy is often expressed superficially as a lack of seriousness and lightheartedness, and with a great sense of humor, which disconnects him from uncomfortable feelings and serves as an antidote to pain. And as an analgesic, the bank account is also filled with money, and the bed, with sex -without getting emotionally involved, in relationships rather thought of as a supply than as a link, or the agenda, of appointments.

If the E6 conservation lives traumatized by the conviction that he lacks the resources to master unforeseen events, with the consequent paralysis in action, the E7 conservation, on the other hand, lives accommodated in the narcissistic idea that he is a born generator of resources and wellness. Something that hides, in fact and opportunely, the other extreme of the polarity: the intimate and ancient feeling of emptiness, misery or vital scarcity, from which he flees like the plague.

It is worth remembering (as we will see in chapter 6) that in the infantile relationship with the mother, the conservation enneatype Seven took good note of the mother's projections: a woman usually distant and at the same time invasive; sometimes a victim, sometimes empowered in front of the father; sometimes overwhelming, sometimes cold, but always emotionally ambiguous; a mother, finally, who projects her fears of survival onto her son and turns him, in one way or another, into her "savior" at all costs, often putting him in competition with the father, or in a situation of ambivalence towards him. The mother, in this way, enlarges the ego of the boy or girl E7 conservation.

Confusion between want and need
When gluttony acts on the conservative, passion takes the form of a constant concern for the satisfaction, and not of basic needs (which it will generally take care of covering very well), but of those desires and pleasures that, from the point of view of this character, they are considered "basic: the earthly pleasures of the good life. His is a half-understood Epicureanism, since not as much attention is paid to the virtuous philosophy of living well as to the material practice of living well.

There is thus a real confusion between desire and need. “We had counted ourselves and others our own desires as needs”, continues Albert Rams. And, in reality, we really need little, although much can be desired. Here, the primary needs are confused by gluttony: it is not about eating, but about eating delicatessen (ready-to-eat food); it is not about drinking, but about tasting; It is not about resting, but about being cared for. And yes: it is about sex, in quantity and quality, also delighting in the narcissistic pleasure of seduction and conquest, and if possible always experiencing novelty and challenges.

Moderation and sobriety are experienced as dearth and deprivation, especially in people with less ego awareness. The non-satisfaction of desire produces anxiety and rage, even envy and suffering. Perhaps, faced with this trend, we could oppose an Epicurus, a philosopher who suffered from this character and who, without denying pleasure as the maximum desideratum of existence, made serenity a way of life, coming to understand that not all pleasure brings a good nor all pain an evil, and emphasizing the virtue of temperance and frugality. "Send me-write to a friend a little jar of cheese, so that he can give me a luxurious feast whenever he wants." Did Epicurus practice hedonism? Yes of course; but a hedonism of small daily pleasures, like talking with friends, eating only milk and bread.

CHAPTER 2; THE CHARACTERISTIC OF NEUROTIC NEED:

The word that describes the predominant neurotic need in a E7 conservation is family. A term that refers to how this character creates links based on relationships of mutual interest, in a double unconscious strategy of:

a) try to favor their greedy interests (in order to mitigate their in satiation or chronic dissatisfaction)
b) repress their diffuse feeling of lack, which has to do with an old feeling of threat to conservation.

Family describes, therefore, the creation of ties driven by a neurosis of you help me and I will help you, a type of human association that this character is often criticized for his uncritical fidelity to his family. and because of the implicit contempt that such an attitude leads to those who do not belong to their circle of trust.

However, family is an imprecise descriptor. Other descriptions, such as complicity, collusion or, especially, involvement, would be more appropriate, since the E7 conservation is not necessarily a family person, or one who spends more time with his family than others. Quite the contrary, in intimacy it is someone who usually shows great difficulties in maintaining the bond, with problems of lack of transparency, communication, affection and trust, as well as a tendency to emotional isolation, radical autonomy, individualism and independence at all costs- Oscar Ichazo referred to this character as the “guardian of the castle", thus denouncing his schizoid origin. Therefore, the term family should be understood in a pseudo-social sense: the family is one that is chosen, not (necessarily) by blood ties, but is agreed upon according to the aforementioned ties of mutual interest.

The E7 conservation is that person who makes alliances. Family could be an alternative word. But not in the true sense of the term, which is full of positive connotations. The word "families" describes an aspect of life. But, in the specialized vocabulary of the ego, there is a kind of family game that can be played. In it, the Seven conservation builds relationships with people, which are based on ideas such as: «I will be family to you and I demand that you be family to me», «let's get together, I will serve you and you will serve me, together, we can create a good mob...

They are people in solidarity with their family, and it would seem that there was nothing wrong with being a lover of their own. But, after all, being too partial or loyal to those of one's own clan or group, isn't that a form of corruption? What is the point of loving your loved ones a lot and behaving like an antisocial towards the rest of the world? The E7 conservationists are often called “mobsters” precisely because of their extreme loyalty to their own. We are talking about people involved in affective ties within their environment, but who behave like freeloaders with the rest of the world.

They are funny, warm and strategically friendly, but they do not fall into their own charm like the rest of the Seven subtypes, but tend to be more distant, a little psychopathic and cynical. And sometimes even psychopaths. Like Monsieur Lan drú, an E7 conservationist famous for seducing and murdering widows to rob them, back in the First World War, who in court defended himself saying that he did everything for his children. (And, indeed, he was a doting family man after all.) Another apt word for this character's neurotic need is smuggling

I drop the word “smuggling” because this type of behavior can lead to mafioso. This is clear partisanship. There is an element of corruption very present in it. Interest itself, selfishness, is behind this alliance, although it appears denied.

Also, obviously, behind this partisanship we can find the ancient and primordial fear of abandonment and the aforementioned threat to conservation. The survival of the family structure is intended as a kind of life insurance, as a spring that allows one to survive when things go wrong. Character conservation has a lot to do with going around the world “taking out alleged life insurance”, especially in relationships with others and without necessarily informing the other of the conditions of the contract.

Passion for inclusion
In conservation, gluttony "wants the good things that life offers, starting with maternal love and, by extension, the warmth of the family -as well as money and sex-, but all this in the context of a passion for the inclution". The term «family» (or involvement) does not have so much to do, as we pointed out, with a special experience of family ties, but rather with the difficulty of including strangers, or simply third parties, in a closed environment of relationships of trust that the conservation Seven converts into utilitarian relationships.

In the childhood of many E7 conservationists there was a broken family; or they are illegitimate children; or one of the parents dies or disappears early; or there is a situation of abandonment, etc. That is to say, there is a lack of family, an experience of not having been able to feel that one belongs, or of having felt excluded, or not recognized. He has felt like a “freak within his own family system. It is from there that he later builds his own «family, his I help you, you help me, as a way of guaranteeing the conservation and continuity of the bonds. In this way, it exalts the implication in pursuit of the inclusion that, precisely, it lacked. At the same time, it will be difficult for him to accept others who are not from the "clan", from girlfriends or boyfriends of the children to relatives, politicians, etc.

“I experienced a deep feeling of not belonging to my family. Since I was little, I felt very different from all of them on several levels: My parents and siblings are big, fat, strong, they speak loud, they are very passionate... I was small, skinny, fragile, still, with suppressed emotions... Until today, I eat a different meal than what they like, I don't listen to the same music, I don't have the same habits, nor the same social, economic or political position. Many times I felt like the ugly duckling who, in the midst of a gang of ungainly ducks, turns into a swan (I am not proud of my arrogance in feeling this). That feeling of not belonging to the family is the core self point of my entire functioning system. The search for belonging. The mafia, the bonds of protection and complicity that I learned to create are attempts to recreate a safe and welcoming environment, surrounded by those who "speak my own languages, and thus give me a sense of belonging.”

“As a child I felt very different from my family. I played the role of independent, I learned to do things alone and not to bother much at home, with how busy they were with their own needs. HowI met new people, I didn't want to be related to my family, I was ashamed; my mother had no studies, neither did my brothers, nor did they leave the town. My sister was almost always involved in small drug deals, and I felt so different... It seemed that I didn't belong to that family. I felt superior; They also told me that I was special, smart, intelligent, independent, nice, that I knew how to do everything. It was as if he had been born to improve the family; That's how I thought it was important.”

Families is a term that must be understood, therefore, as a passion for inclusiveness that also implies the exclusion of those who are not family. The border he draws between his loved ones and the rest of humanity is very precise. For those inside, everything; those outside, on the other hand, do not even exist for him. In this closed world, there is only one whose "fidelity" has previously been verified. It is for this very reason that it is said that the E7 conservation is a mobster, someone who does not trust the laws (the father) but rather the blood ties (the mother); although, as of Come on, such ties are not necessarily biological.

According to psychiatrist Alejandro Napolitano, submission to blood ties has made families, and more precisely, mafias, the emblem word for the enneagram Seven conservation, as a way of alluding to the most degraded and destructive forms of the family bond matrix. But it is obvious that behind the apparent masculine power of the mafia organization, and behind the relegated place that the wife occupies, there appears an omnipotent and indisputable power, symbolized in the use of blood to seal alliances and centered in the abysmal depth of the lap: the mamma, the Great Mother, Gaea, Demeter, Stella Maris, the center of gravity of devotion and power.

The conservation E7 was someone whose mother looked at her special way, perhaps with a wild admiration, with an inappropriate voracity. If Saturn or Cronos, father of Time, devoured his children so that they would not dethrone him as king of Heaven, the slow Hindu goddess Kali is known to be the devourer of Time (a property related, archetypally, to the Father). This Oedipus son who has been encouraged to unseat the father thus grows up with a strong confusion about his place.

His passion for inclusion is a passion for being recognized even if he doesn't deserve it. Not in vain, the conservation Seven is a narcissist with a strong, more or less strategic will to be noticed: at all parties, at all dances, in all clubs. And naturally, as a special guest. Well, we are talking about a passion to be taken into account not as one more, but as an important person, based on rights granted by his condition as an intelligent person. Therefore, he usually suffers from a strong entitlement: a feeling of having talent rights, of superiority, and he doesn't just want to be listened to, recognized as someone who knows”, but expects admiration.

It should be added that behaviors of the «family» or involvement type, or passion for inclusion, also have as a hidden or unconscious motivation the surrogate experience of an emotionality that replaces the emptiness or the loss of the primordial sense of unity. Here is the main stumbling block or metaphysical-spiritual distortion of the «family» passion: An ancient horror of intimacy that, finally, is compensated with a substitute of intimacy around the group, the clan, the partners; and not as much as it might seem, although sometimes also from the biological family.

“I talk a lot about living in a community, but I really don't know how estuary it is. It is more to share resources, share a common goal, commit myself more to the spiritual life, not feel as alone asI sometimes feel I work less on the tasks of daily life, which for me are not very pleasant. But surely it would measure a lot what I do and what others do; I doubt my love for others, at least I doubt my ability to put the other person's needs before my own in some situations. I am still too hungry a spirit.”

The passion of involvement has, as we pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, its polar opposite. This wanting to belong is experienced with a certain schizoid ambiguity: the need to be in a relationship (in a pseudo social way) is polarized by a strong neurotic need to withdraw. And the more intimacy, the more strongly the sullen, elusive, stingy part will be activated... The guardian of the castle (who guards an empty and cold fortress) has a great capacity for relational sabotage. At the same time, there is also in this character a core experience of low self-esteem. While the figure is dominated by narcissistic feelings, the background-denied-is characterized by diffuse discomfort related to a feeling of inadequacy, disadvantage, inferiority and even envy, with a certain tendency to feel "bad".

“At first, as a young man, I felt incapable of being loved by a woman. I imagined that if one day I found a woman who wanted to marry me, that would be enough to make me happy. With the passage of time, a woman was not enough, but a pretty one. Afterwards, I was no longer content with one. Later, my need for conquest spread in such a way that it was only enough for me if everyone admired and recognized me. Although I had obtained many conquests, the certainty that I did not deserve them bothered me. I knew that my charms had no consistency and, therefore, I did not show myself completely, assuming an enigmatic posture so that they would not discover my absence of attractions and true values.”

Complicity, permissiveness and seductive complacency
Regarding permissiveness, it can be said that this not only describes a trait of the individual in relation to himself, but also a characteristic laissez faire attitude towards others. When gluttons seductively indulge in the vices of others, this permissiveness even turns into complicity. It is curious how this lone wolf, schizoid, easily goes on to organize himself into a pack when it suits him, so that he can satisfy himself with greater skill. All of this, of course, has a clear origin in a family unit that is not given to promoting rules of conduct.

“Within the family home there were no rigid rules, mainly for small transgressions. On the contrary, I received support from my mother to buy cigarettes (at only thirteen years old) and the support of my father to buy and consume alcoholic beverages (within only twelve years of age).” (ALEXANDRE)

In this sense, the role played by the typical seductive complacency of the E7 is not negligible. As in all the characters of the Seven, there is not only an inclination to satisfy their own greed for pleasure, but also that of those they want to seduce. Only that the conservationist can be as indulgent and solicitous with those who interest him as cold and distant with those who do not; that is, the vast majority of the population. Characteristic of conservationists is this polarity between warmth and coldness, between helpfulness and a complete lack of empathy, between generosity and ignoring others, as if they thought or felt that “who is not a part of my world, does not exist". Although the following description applies to all E7s, it is especially for the conservational,

Gluttons are very good hosts and can be big spenders. To the extent that generosity is part of seduction and a way of buying love (rather than actual giving), it is offset in the glutton's psyche by its corresponding opposite: a hidden but effective exploitation It can manifest as a parasitic tendency and, perhaps, in feelings of being worthy of affection and care.

As ultimate motivation we again find the typical insatiability of character. The network serves to procure positions in profiteers, and, beyond that, we finally find again the childhood fear of abandonment, the basic threat to conservation.
That is why an E7 conservation has to be very careful with the typical praise of friendship, so typical of the character, almost at absolute value.
Not all Seven conservation is an Epicurus, a philosopher who knew how to navigate the difficult meanders and sinuosities on the border between friendship and mafia association.

In the content of ethics [Epicurus] says: of all the goods that we offer wisdom, the most precious is friendship: and when he spoke of friendship, we can say that he was talking about love. For him, it was very. The community is important, but not a pyramidal, hierarchical society. but a type of family, corporate, cultural group: a clan.

Thus, through an epicurean approach we find a third way between the clan-based community and the law-based society: the construction of social bonds based on a genuine love of neighbor, something that an E7 conservation in the process of self-knowledge has a lot, a lot to learn-and the experience of altruism as the maximum conscious end for an egoist too accustomed to using a balance of benefits and losses with each of his links.

Creation of networks of influence
Although it is a substitute solution to the fear of abandonment, the ability of the Seven conservation to create plots of involvement is not negligible. Again, that today for you, tomorrow for me, or I help you so that you can help me, often turns into an I partner with you so that together we look for shortcuts and violate the rules with a greater guarantee of success.

“I have a network of rich and influential friends. I try never to annoy them by asking for favors. It's like an emergency net, a last frontier that, in my fantasy, will defend me from homelessness in case everything goes wrong. I usually give them my advice, my good humor, and my thoughtful analysis of everyday problems. In exchange, at most, I let myself be invited to eat and little else; so, in the end, I come out cheap as a counselor. This reminds me of Elias Canetti's character, the designer, he never earns anything, he does everything for free. He implies that he hardly does anything for himself and does not allow himself to be invited even to a coffee.” (ANONYMOUS)

Opportunism
So the E7 conservation is the opportunist, the person who has to find advantages, to take advantage. It is as if a conservation threat hangs over it that has to be compensated for. So gluttony, in this case, expresses itself as an excessive concern to get out of this conservation threat by making good deals and deals at every opportunity. It seems that with the Seven conservation there is no conversation that does not lead to a business. He does instant business because his mind is so alert to opportunity that he never lets it pass. Their position is that of one who thinks that if you are not alert, if you do not keep in contact with the wind to catch opportunities, you will be a loser.

Opportunism also has, of course, a childish root. From Albert Rams:

Paradise, the false paradise, seems to be truncated, broken (separation, abandonment, trauma...), and we are left with the idea that it was a lie... Then everything is a lie... Ergo I can do whatever I want because there is no law: anything goes. So life is going to be dedicated to the search and restoration of that primi-genius paradisiacal state, that family-mafia in which the seven conservation occupy a place of tacit privilege.

According to Claudio Naranjo, E7 is often generous and hospitable, the kind of person I said “I'm at your service”, “Call me whenever you want”, “Have my phone number”. This can be both an unconscious seduction and a conscious idea of ​​exchange: the opportunistic expectation that by leaving the other in debt, reciprocity can be expected. Here again we find the basic structure of the 'families, or implication, its characteristic neurotic need. The other side of this generosity and self-interested hospitality is distinctly criminal. When we refer to the word mafias, we cannot fail to mention the very Italian mafia: a special type of organized crime whose name probably comes from the Arabic word mahya, 'bravado, boasting, bravado', or from the also Arabic mu'afah , 'protection of the weak', ruled by family and blood ties, and that could be said to be a product of exacerbation of the "bad" of involvement or passion for the inclusion of conservation E7s.
In a recent analysis of the social dimension of the characters described by the psychology of enneagram, it is stated:

It is interesting to consider how a Seven responds to the conditioning of patriarchal society, because, in a way, an E7 - like an E8 - is a rebel who has turned against authority. And it was surely in order to escape from a bad authority that this character, like the fox of the fables, has become a trickster who achieves his purposes through his charm. Furthermore, it is very easy for us to understand how an unjust world becomes a nest of criminals. It even seems justifiable to us that in an unjust world the underprivileged get by by stealing a little here or there, in view of their own need to survive and to favor their relatives or friends. They are allowed to be smart enough to realize that the supposedly good authority that governs us is only apparently so; and perhaps we come to implicitly approve of their cynicism, which somehow empowers them to allow themselves certain liberties. Isn't it implicitly expressed in the saying that whoever steals from a thief, a hundred years of forgiveness?

“A typical phrase of my mother was: "You have to have friends even in hell." And yes, I believed it, and it is a phrase and an attitude that accompanies me, and guides me in many of my social relationships. Being an accomplice of the mafia, or of small mafia or criminal acts, justifying them and downplaying them: making personal photocopies working in the public administration, using the telephone, using work hours for personal matters, taking office supplies home, knowing that the painter has overcharged the owner of my rented house and taken advantage of it to charge me less, etc. I am an accomplice in case I need your favors, in case I can take advantage of it at some point that I need it, you never know, because you have to have friends even in hell.” (CONCHA)

An egoist with his own agenda
The tendency to manipulate, sometimes disguised as friendliness or the paternalism of those who believe they know what is best for the other, as well as tricks to persuade him, causes not only authenticity in relationships to suffer, but also the divorce between the individual and the sense of community reaches the proportion of a radical individualism, sometimes disguised as idiosyncrasy, idealization of the personal mummy or the bittersweet sensation of being lonely wolves precisely because their relational networks are not based so much on affections as on counterparts).
In this subtype, not even the usual pseudo-social communal appearance of the E7 helps to mask their emptiness.

The Conservation Seven is often perceived as an independent egoist with an agenda of his own, regardless of the needs of the group. Here, the child who permanently carries enneagram Seven has become a mercantilist child who values ​​affection according to the goods or services or care that others are able to lavish on him.

This requires modulating the intensity of emotions: here is a perfect compartmentalizer of reality. The E7 conservation is adept at staying away from any emotion or situation that disturbs him emotionally: He goes in parts, breaks down problems to deactivate them, confuses to convince the other that he is not right or, at least, knows how to earn his appreciation through despite it, avoiding commitments and responsibilities with a very low capacity to feel guilty; a bit like in that famous joke of the Brazilian whose wife approaches him: “The maid is pregnant.” To which he replies: "That's her problem.” The wife yells at him, “What am I supposed to do?”. The husband replies: “That’s your problem.” “But the maid says the child is yours," the woman protests. “That’s my own problem.”

CHAPTER 3; INTRAPERSONAL STRATEGY AND ASSOCIATED IRRATIONAL IDEAS:

The following describes how the Conservation Seven builds their philosophy of life. The wrong interpretation of reality sustains passion (in this case, gluttony). It is the fixation: a subjective cognitive vision that neurotically appears to the individual as objective and serves as a support and justification for gluttony. It is the distorted cognitive core from which subjective beliefs, or irrational ideas, derive. Here we will define the most typical of the E7 conservation. Oscar Ichazo defined that cognitive world and relationship style with himself and with the world of E7 as charlatanism.

The first time Ichazo spoke of protoanalysis, he used the word charlatan to refer to the individual of enneatype VII and the word charlatanism to refer to fixation. This word should not be understood literally: the glutton is someone who approaches the world through the strategy of words and good reasons, someone who manipulates through the intellect. The word Ichazo later uses for this personality, ego-plan, refers to the fact that the charlatan is also a dreamer. Actually, his quackery can be interpreted as taking (and offering) dreams as realities

For Naranjo, the term planning to define the fixation of the E7 is not so appropriate, since it is also a prominent feature of enneatypes I and III, while quackery carries additional meanings, such as expressive ability and the role of persuader and manipulator of words, with which it deviously exceeds the limits of its knowledge. More than a mere planner, encatype VII is an intriguer, with that strategic character that La Fontaine (who had this disposition of character) symbolized in the fox.

Planning evokes the Seven enneatype's tendency to live by projects and fantasies and to substitute action for imagination. That is why terms such as "quackery and even" fraudulence to describe this character are more evocative, and the whole of such a description points to an insatiability that gluttons share with the lustful "; especially, we might say, the gluttons of the conservation subtype, so much like the social E8s, with their cultivation of complicity. Finally, the word that best defines the fixation of the enneatype Seven is self-indulgence, closely linked to permissiveness with fraud and cheating, especially typical of conservation Seven:

A fundamental trait of E7 is permissiveness or indulgence, which I take to be the essence of gluttony. And since this self-indulgence would be impossible with the imposition of the superego or by submitting to authority, this character is rebellious, though sometimes in a soft or diplomatic way." It is curious that self-indulgence is described by some sources as a feeling of pity towards oneself in the face of situations that are perceived as adverse.

“I wanted to be, deep down, a victim of the situation and overcompensated by seeing myself as deserving of condolences. Psychoanalysis understands self-indulgence as a hyper-cathartic reaction that causes pleasure and pain and is related to the search for personal comfort. Also, not surprisingly, the Sufi master Hastat Inayat Khan says that self-indulgence is the cause of all life's complaints.”

Self-indulgence in the conservative instinct
The key to self-indulgence as a fixation on the E7 conservation is in the attitude towards life that what I need-actually, rather than "what I want" is “I take it because I deserve it, since I am leaving a situation of handicap that I must compensate for, even if it is by cheating", or "that I will be able to compensate thanks precisely to the cheats that I have learned, since I am intelligent. This implies not taking things head-on, but usually with subterfuges or tricks. And it implies associations with accomplices, whom he will in turn treat with indulgence. In this way, in this subtype the mixture of self-indulgence, permissiveness, fraudulence, implication and materialism makes the typical hedonism of the Seven stronger here than in any other character.

Self-indulgence gives E7s the necessary reinforcement in feeling entitled to gratification. Something very much in relation to the playboy/playgirl orientation towards life, especially the Seven's own conservation, as well as the exaggerated sense that all is well, that the individual develops as a protection of hedonism against pain and frustration: an optimistic attitude that not only makes him and others okay, but it makes the world a good place to live.

All this, mixed with the typical vision of a Seven of a world where there is no good and evil, no guilt, no obligations, no duties, no need to make any effort, and where just enjoying is enough, generates a predatory attitude that borders on in lust If the conservation E7 does not allow everything, absolutely everything, as the E8 does, it may be because his narcissism stops him (it is important for him to "look good"), his unconscious fear of being punished and their "family" ties. The permissiveness and self-indulgence of gluttons are inseparable from the avoidance of suffering and the hedonist orientation is typical of this character.

For the self-indulgent nothing is totally forbidden, because there is in him the belief that authority is bad and that whoever is smart does what he wants. He also feels entitled to how talented he is [entitlement] and a deep conviction that personal charm is the best way to succeed." In direct relation to self-indulgence, descriptors such as manipulation, fraudulence and lying in the context of scheming behavior, greed (in good guise), cunning, eloquence (charlatanism) disguised as good reasons or justifications, warmth in treatment and expression, seduction through intellect, cynicism and sense of humor, and rebellion and lack of discipline.

Manipulative, fraudulent liar
Lying is an attitude at the service of self-indulgence. Lying and believing one's own lies (or pretending to believe them, depending on the degree of cynicism) finds its justification in lofty goals, helping others, saving their own, achieving social rights to satisfy unavoidable needs. Being an interesting storyteller, a rogue, a storyteller in the most political sense of the term, serves to convince others, to obtain allies and supporters, whom he persuades that if they support him, he will achieve the best for them. Thus, the E7 conservation achieves the benefits it seeks, not in terms of its needs or desires, but also by graffing its narcissism. The following joke illustrates this well:

-Good evening. I'm here because I read in the paper that you want to sell a talking dog, and since I own a circus, I'm very interested in it. Can I check if the dog speaks?

  • Sure, ask him.
  • Let's see, dog, can you talk?
    -Well of course! And also throwing knives blindfolded while pedaling a tricycle on a tightrope.
  • But this is amazing! This dog is mine! With him, my circus will become famous. Tell me, how come you want to sell it?
    -Oops, he's a bit of a liar...

The conservation one is, more than any other Seven, a fox who doesn't bother too much to hide his tail behind his sheep costume. That foxy passion for hiding is more present in the sibylline social E7, according to Naranjo, who describes the conservation E7 more like a bear in the way that the Disney studios interpret the bear Baloo from The Jungle Book, that is, like a cheater. Another way of looking at it is to remember that a mythomaniac lurks in every Seven, and especially in the conservation one, due to its usual lack of moral restraints and its defiance of established morality. (In other words: he usually cares little about the opinion of those who don't care about him at all, that is, the majority of the population.) Mythomania or fantastic pseudology is described by psychiatrists as a compulsive behavior in which:

  1. the lies are not entirely improbable or delusional,
  2. the tendency to lie is consistent, a personality trait,
  3. the ultimate motive for lying is internal, clinically discernible,
  4. stories told tend to present the liar favorably.

All this, very compatible with the character described here. The tendency to manipulate and greed, especially pronounced in E7 conservation, widen the gap between private interests and those of the community. The aspect that this opportunist usually takes as a social disguise is that of the connaisseur, the wise adviser: talented, intuitive, ingenious, creative, tolerant, scathingly critical, friendly... but often hypocritical. He has the conviction that his interlocutor is going to believe him, he is going to let himself be deceived. He believes that his intellectual seduction is of a superior quality and that the other will be happy with his proposals, even hiding from himself the fraudulence of acting above all for his own benefit. While he fascinates with his flowery words, his plan is to end up charging him, just as the Pied Piper of Hamelin managed to seduce first the rats and then the children, whom he only freed when the town paid him for his services.

Evidence of fraudulence
With its tendency to merge into the blood ties of the Mother universe, the E7 conservation becomes prey to moral relativism that induces fraudulence. Does not respect the limits of the Law (the father), neither in personal relationships nor, often, in social and professional ones. The fraudulent uses of the Seven Conservation cover a wide range of cases and things: from the great scams and pyramid schemes (Bernie Madoff, the greatest swindler in history, is a firm candidate to belong to this character) or the journalistic falsehoods of the 19th century French journalist Léo Taxil (who unleashed panic on the Côte d'Azur by inventing a massive sighting of white donkeys), to scam on a small scale or even, and more common, emotional fraud to the couple or the family. Here are some testimonies of it.

“I recognize in myself a special vision to take advantage of any situation, along with a very large internal penalty for doing so. Between that and the fact that for me it is something natural, it has not been easy for me to qualify these acts of opportunism, much less see them as something fraudulent. A scene. I remember an occasion, when I was twelve or thirteen years old, a very important football match in my city.
It occurred to me to buy a ticket well in advance and then resell it on game day, when there were no more left, and make a profit. I had no money for the investment, so I convinced my sisters to borrow an amount that my parents had given them to buy some clothes. I bought it according to my plan and on the day of the game I left about two hours before to the area surrounding the stadium in order to complete my business.
My surprise was that there were no people buying tickets and that they were still at the box office.
I offered it to some who came but there was no way. A guy, in his sixties to seventies, at least, came up to me and started talking to me and asking me what I wanted. I told him a story that I had to sell the ticket, that I needed the money and I don't know what else... The man had a lot of fun with me, and although he already had his ticket, he offered to buy it for me if I stayed with him and instead of watching the match, he invited me for a drink. I knew immediately what he was up to, of course.
He was convincing me for a while and I was playing hard to get, even though I was clear from the beginning what I was going to do.
When I was finally sure that he was convinced that he had persuaded and deceived me, I agreed. I gave him the ticket, he gave me the money and I ran like hell. I didn't stop until I got home. At least I had recovered the loan my sisters gave me. I would like to boast of having outwitted this damned pedophile, to say that I took advantage of the situation, that I was smarter, but now I only think about the terrible risk I took, how I exposed myself, the fear that remained in me. the body for a long time and in the obsession to get out of this set, almost at any price. .” (ORI)

“Opportunism was so well seen, taught and applauded at home, so mixed with business, that it is almost impossible to see it as negative, but as "ready", "savvy", "alive... and whoever does not do it is that belongs to the subgroup of the fools of this world. Life is to see the opportunities that exist and take advantage of them; you also have to get there first and brag about it. I used to be involved with auto shops and insurance companies. If a window on my car broke, instead of putting it back on, I took it to a well-known workshop, where the mechanic, another opportunistic friend of the family, used it for me.

With the money that the company assigned me for the new glass, they fixed a blow that I had accidentally given in the parking lot. Even sometimes, if the expert was a friend of the mechanic, they would pay me for a glass without having broken it, and with that money I had for other repairs that the car needed, and that way we all won... These scams required me to put a lot of energy and time into calls, visits, manipulation, seduction and forced smiles in a world of men.

It has not been easy to make myself aware of what I was losing by being in constant alertness and tension to take advantage and not look like a fool. Now I see how this behavior is also covering up a feeling of lack, misery, of not deserving.” (CONCHA)

“When I was fifteen, during the summer, I worked on the terrace of a bar. The work was hard and poorly paid, and the owner was the typical cheapskate and exploitative merchant with double chins. Once, a friend of my sister, who was also a bartender in another bar, asked me how much money I earned during the weekend, including tips.

I answered a figure much higher than the one that he used to collect. "I don't believe it," he said. You can't possibly win so much." "Yes, I can," I replied. "And how do you do it?" “Very easy”, I proudly put "I stop checking the box one out of ten orders. Neither the waiter nor my sister could believe what they had just heard. "Are you stealing?" "Well, I wouldn't call it that," I replied. What I am doing is charging me the surplus value.

They looked at each other and gave me a speech that managed to embarrass me: «If you are not happy with what you charge, dare to tell Mr. X. [the owner of the bar] to increase your floor. But don't steal!" We all knew that Mr. X. would never raise my salary, so the recommendation was not - let's say it with the cynicism of character - very practical. However, what I took away from there was not a moral lesson or a sudden regret at the realization of an immoral action, but the double feeling that: a) it had been stupid to show off stealing, and b) I began to consider Strange that it was cowardice not to dare, not to tell Mr. X. that his conditions seemed unfair to me, but to set fire to the bar with Mr. X. and all his customers inside.” (ANONYMOUS)

“When I was nine years old, I was at a friend's house and I saw a coin on the ground. I took it, hid it and took it with me. It was a lot of money for me. I hid that coin in a safe place, outside my house, and I bought sweets little by little, so that no one would notice my first theft. I was not bothered by any feeling of guilt, because that companion of mine was violent and deserved to be robbed. Although I am an opportunist, I achieve my goals in a predominantly stealthy and covert manner. That way, I don't expose my needs and interests (which I see as a disgusting display of lack) and I don't end up owing people favors.” (ALEXANDRE)

Second-rate narcissist
Whether with hoaxes, exaggerations or inventions, their frauds have a goal that is not only exploitative, but also narcissistic. Whoever goes to dinner with a conservative Seven at a trendy restaurant is liable to hear things like: «Pierre was telling me the other day... Or Ferran, or Gastón.

But, beyond his megalomaniacal exaggerations, his illusions of success and greatness corresponding to the manic phases, this character certainly shows a special ability to rub shoulders with important people, with VIPs, whom he intellectually seduces, placing himself in a comfortable background next to them, thanks to which he shines through others and usually achieves fortune and influence without exposing himself and thus freeing himself from the sevices and responsibilities that fame or power entails, or from the inconveniences of being in first line. When he boasts of his contacts at the highest level, he also does so with feigned humility, making clear his ability to influence with the subtlety with which a lady would drop a handkerchief.

His style is generous, generous. He presents himself as a refined being that he had never broken a plate: «When describing a character from this type among his characters, Elías Canetti observes that "he doesn't even let them offer him a cup of coffee".

“When it comes to business, I try to avoid it. To negotiate, I would have to expose myself and, if the deal was good for me and bad for the other person, I can be accused of free riding and bad character. If the business was bad for me and good for the other person, I keep the mask of an idiot. In short, the concern with the opinion and reaction of people end up inhibiting me in business. I am good at business when I’m in the dark, when I don't need to expose myself.” (ALEXANDRE)

In 27 characters in search of being, Naranjo describes a character (this time real) quite similar to the pharmacist Homais from Madame Bovary. A friend of mine was a dentist for part of his life. He seemed like a kind, friendly, talkative person. Some of them really like the dental profession because they keep each other's mouths closed all the time, and so they can talk and talk as much as they want.

Surely you will have met very talkative dentists. It may be that they do not realize; unconsciousness plays tricks. And it's typical of the Conservation Seven who like to do something with their hands, something useful for others. They are practical. Talking and talking, the conservation Seven soon discovers the other person's weaknesses. “I see that you bought a new car, how is it going?» says the dentist. "Well, it's an excellent car, I'm very happy with it," replies the patient, “but unfortunately I have to sell it." “Ah, well - take advantage of the dentist, then I will buy it from you!".

It seems that with the Conservation Seven there is no conversation that does not lead to a deal. He does instant business because his mind is so alert to opportunity that he never lets it pass. His position is that of one who thinks that if you are not alert, if you do not keep your nose in the wind to catch opportunities, you will be a loser.

Somehow, the conservation enneatype Seven will manage to actively and passively remind you that he is a genius, a wise man, the best adviser, and that you belong to a lower category of human beings: those who would pay for it. for leading the life he leads, for being so nice, charismatic, suggestive and having such a gift for people; that of those who must be guided by intelligent people. Added to this is the fact that, certainly, the E7 conservation tend to have aptitudes for complex thinking and a good nose for opportunities. And that, in itself, is not a problem.

It can be said that the problem is, precisely, to be a free rider, not to live or enjoy the moment without more, but to be too thirsty and act as if there is a danger of losing the opportunity, relying on the distorted idea that it is better not to lose the opportunity, because nobody knows what tomorrow will be like; and thus, moreover, he forgives himself for his selfishness

The Conservation Seven needs, in short, to distance himself from anyone who is not part of his “tribe” and to place himself above him, something that often earns him the silent enmity of anyone who is likely to feel despised.

Cunningness
Do not forget that the E7 is a crook (and even more so, the conservatio nal), a rogue. He has a lot of charmer or, as the Argentines would say, blackmail (it is said, in the Río de la Plata, of someone who "has little disposition to do something that requires effort or constitutes an obligation, especially work"; or of the one who presumes of having something, especially an ability, knowledge, or power, that he does not actually possess). All this, very typical of this markedly speculative character. The distorted conviction underlying this attitude is: If I help you, I can ask you for a favor when I need it.

And it is that the Seven conservation is presented as the one who knows, the one who thinks, and his cunning is usually as valued as admired by the unsuspecting. Cunning is also related to their ability to distract the other from their true intentions or misdeeds. With cunning and seduction, he manages to obtain the forgiveness and approval of others, and he takes pleasure in his achievements, mistaking cunning for intelligence. Making the other fall into his nets gives him back a narcissistic assessment of himself; he is not interested in knowing the real feeling of the other; his constant search is the feeling of satisfaction resulting from his own abilities.

Paternalistic
By adopting a paternal role, he places himself in a position of power and pre-eminence within the clan or the relational network of which he is a part; feel important and belonging. By overriding paternal authority, with the implicit or explicit support of the mother, he imbues himself with such authority (this applies to both men and women): I take care of mother because if she is ill, I am ill. In this way, the ontic insecurity is removed and the anguish due to the lack of a father, physically or emotionally absent, is avoided, substituting it with a narcissistic self-ideal.

“I remember the negotiation with the company that bought the apartment building where I lived. They were trying to cancel our rental contracts with minimum indemnities and soon I was at the forefront of the negotiation against the unfair speculators. In the end, we got some good things: neighbors of decades were able to live under the same conditions, others were compensated... Needless to say, I got everything I asked for and the company was kind enough to keep me happy so I wouldn't make things difficult for them. , because I used my ability at the head of the group to rise up as a voice obstructing their plans. In the end, we all win, yes, but... from which part I was? From the company? From the neighbors? From mine, to be honest.” (DAVID)

The self-concept can be, then, that of someone who feels like a warm and disinterested benefactor of their own (and even of society), in the event that the person is short of conscience. Although rather mixed feelings will coexist, where the self-image of the protector will coexist with a certain resentment more or less aware of feeling "bad", selfish, unclear in their relational gossip.
And perhaps it is not bad that it is so. Although this awareness of not being so good often leads the Conservation Seven to justify himself by thinking that the world is a battle in which one must be strong, that it is full of wolves and that it is better to be smarter than others to survive, the truth is that this awareness of being little altruistic in their behavior can help them grow.

One of the consequences of this lack of altruism is their difficulty in real listening. He can be a good adviser but with him, just looking for a share, to vent or to be heard can be difficult. "That's not a big deal or what you should do is..." are common responses. Basically, this tendency hides a will to shape the thought and the will of the other so that it goes well for him (me), something that refers again to utilitarianism and self-satisfaction. Again, the other does not exist by itself, but based on my own needs or desires. There is a wound in the capacity to trust, so that one tries not so much to control the other but directly to manipulate him.

The world is (also) a dangerous place
The fight of the Seven - a «rebel without a cause to «be well, that everything be well» is a low intensity war, made not only of frauds and lies, but also of ambiguity in the discourse, elusive solutions and, to the extent If possible, avoidance of direct confrontation (although this is the most confrontational of the E7).

It is a fight against any form of authority, since there is the (not entirely) irrational belief that authority, in any of its forms, is the enemy of their greedy intentions and their hedonistic orientation, which they interpret as control and a crushing of his freedom. In the specific case of the Conservation Seven, this conviction that the world (or, rather, the social order with the powerful at the forefront) is a hostile place in which it is better to take care of saving one's skin, has a lot to do with their childlike sense of threat to conservation. Facing such a state of things, "the world belongs to the smart ones", he usually thinks, and "works" as much as can to take advantage of the cracks of the System in his favor.

This means that the individual with this character sees his accommodative tendency reinforced, behaving more like a 19th-century rabble-rouser than a 20th-century hippy. They are rebels, yes, but also, and especially, there tend to be among their ranks comfortable individuals who live parasitically from the system, speculators, tax fraudsters, freeloaders of all kinds, swindlers, shellers, hedonists and gourmets, journalists, court counselors. , public relations and propagandists, this being a character closely related to the light attitude and the typical intellectual superficiality of our time.

We are talking about great manipulators, capable of diffusing any conflict around them thanks to their friendliness and affability, their indulgence and well-structured exculpatory justifications, in which the euphemization mechanism plays a preponderant role.

Alejandro Napolitano says that in enneagram seven, particularly in the conservation subtype, a surprising psychological procedure called euphemization takes place, through which the harsh is softened and the tremendous is trivialized, innocuous and superficial. Naming descents to what a fall is, for example, is a euphemism that removes drama and intensity from an event, preventing full contact with what it is. The fear subjected to this damping and liquefaction operation may be expressed as disqualification because anguish is euphemized as contempt and mockery. A testimonial illustrates this with a professional example:

“Euphemization occurs a lot in the diplomatic field. I left my defensive activity focused on conflicts and began to specialize in the respectful, delicate and considered attacks that are established in the international human rights organizations. Although the issues discussed in these spaces involve fundamental rights, that is, very serious violations of human beings, the debates are addressed in a climate of cordiality and comfort, very convenient for E7 conservation.” (ALEXANDRE)

Also, in this sense, his cultivated loquacity (in association with his chattering), full of "good reasons", plays a role. In the latter, the typical defense mechanism of the E7, rationalization, plays a fundamental role. that supposes attributing to one's own acts a motivation that is different and admirable or more acceptable than the real one; essentially, the denial of the greedy and exploitative part of the person, while a generous, generous and helpful style is strikingly displayed.

Cynicism
In E7 there is a refusal to realize the harshness of life or the difficulty inherent in a situation, by way of numbing the annoying reality with large doses of narcissistic and naïve idealism. However, in Transformative Self-Knowledge, the Seven's position is defined as that of "idealistic opportunism," although the conservative variety is accused of more pseudo-idealism.

The pathological optimism of the enneagram Seven, capable of “turning shit into Chantilly”, acquires in the case of E7 conservation a dimension of fake sales pitch. We could even label him irredeemably anti-idealistic, not at all naive: a despiser and demystifier, capable of being very cynical and hurtful. And, of course, he does not believe anything and does not believe in anything; to the point that, in his case, idealism would even be healing.

Still, the E7 conservation is anti-idealistic only up to a point. His idealism, which he also has, manifests itself, yes, in a peculiar way. In his case, the ideal is not so much a utopian horizon as the futurism of a pragmatic "visionary." An anti Conventionalism about customs or ideas that has a practical, applicable background; a look beyond with the arrogance of a disobedient Prometheus.

But be that as it may, whether the opportunistic or the idealistic aspect stands out, the concealment of one's own interests behind some form of camaraderie reminds [the defense mechanism of] reaction formation, as occurs in Molière's Tartuffe, which is a parasite disguised as a saint."

Strategy and looting oriented
It can be difficult to talk about interpersonal strategy in the E7 conservation when the strategy is a constant in the life of this, more than a planner, a plotter, who exceeds the limits of his knowledge with charlatanism, and whose expressive ability and lack of moral limits they make him a very effective persuader and manipulator of words. If planning is so present in all Seven encatypes (what wonderful things await me?, «how do I convince others to come with me there?»), the specific form of planning of the E7 conservation has to do especially with strategy, persuasion, deception, or the need to see oneself as smarter than others. If you're smart enough you'll get what you want, which seems like the crazy idea in the background.
In the case of conservation, this anti-conventionalism acquires markedly strategic overtones: The strategic vision is highly developed, as in La Fontaine's fox, with its detours to achieve the goal, and the lack of altruism is sometimes flagrant (except with their own).

Associated irrational ideas (crazy ideas)
Here is a list of phrases that a conservation Seven might say to himself. It must be remembered that these “crazy ideas” are beliefs and convictions that represent nuances of the distorted cognitive core of self-indulgence, and by describing them we can have a broader vision of the way of interpreting the experiences of this subtype. This is not an exhaustive description, but the proposals of a working group made up of members of this nature. Finally, it should be remembered that in the E7 conservation there are profound differences between men and women:

“Above all, when it comes to hedonism, I think that, for cultural reasons, we have been criticized for what man has been extolled. The criticism is not only from outside; there is a self-criticism hand in hand with the search and the encounter of pleasure versus love. In my case it is something very internal, there has been a constant question: «How can I be happy in a world full of calamities? And above all, when my mother is sick, what right do I have to make her happy?». Somehow, my crazy ideas are always well thought out to look good even if I do what I want.” (MARÍA MARTA)

"If I'm honest, I'll miss out," .
"No one can be trusted", and
"That’s why I have to take care of everything",
"If I play my cards right, I won't be in need and I'll have everything I need"
"If I act well, I can fool them all”
“My own are not capable of taking care of their affairs, I have to take care of them and save them from themselves”,
“Before giving to others, I think about what I get in return”,
“I do you favors and you do me favors”,
“If you do not get involved in my business, you do not love me”,
”Blood ties are stronger than anything”
“I know the truth and I must convince them to stop being blind”,
“I can share my small doubts with others, but the big decisions I must make alone”,
“For every problem there is at least one solution”,
“I only believe in what I see”, it is better and faster to do things alone”,
“I can't have patience with the dumb or the slow."
“The world is too big and interesting to focus your attention on one thing or one person”,
“Trust is like a crystal glass; when it breaks, no there is how to glue the pieces”,
“Commitment is a prison for pleasure”,
"You must have friends, even in hell”,
“Give meaning to life does not have a clear meaning, so my own life would be a fiction”,
“Nothing matters too much, everything is relative”,
“We all have a price”
“If I choose I lose opportunities, If I leave it to the last minute, a better option can always appear, one that benefits me more”,
“It is best to get the exquisite when it is on sale”,
“If I commit, I am not free”,
"If I make people feel good, I win them over", “
“I don't want to miss anything that I feel like a delicacy", and
“I can handle everything".

CHAPTER 4; CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS AND OTHER PSYCHODYNAMICS

Bon Vivant
As an expression of a life dedicated to hedonism, this character has the facility to feel good and to feel that everything is fine, to seek pleasant terrain for himself and for others. His image is usually neat, elitist, friendly, in polite ways, with which he reinforces the power of his seduction. He likes to drag others into what he considers the good life: he wants them to have fun with him. This is the nicest aspect of your handling, as well as a way to keep the image narcissistic.

Ironic, cynical and sarcastic
The conservation E7 usually has a great sense of humor; have fun and have fun. He laughs happily about almost everything; when it comes to laughter, nothing is sacred. The problem is that the sense of humor is put at the service of contempt for the interlocutor, with what is put above, in a clear display of narcissism.

He is irreverent, arrogant, mentally aggressive, and in this way he expresses his rage, almost as an alternative to physical aggression, since he does not allow it. He is able to put his finger on the sore spot with every word. He also knows how to laugh at himself, thus distancing himself from his true emotions.
But above all, he is not afraid of others, which prevents him from taking them seriously. Etymologically, 'irony' has to do with dissimulating and playing dumb; 'cinismo mo', with behaving like a dog; 'sarcasm', with cutting or biting a piece of meat. All this refers to a disguised sadistic behavior and a tendency to mistreat trying to appear cordial.

Self-indulgent
The mantra of a conservation Seven might be: "First of all, avoid being uncomfortable." There is in this an anesthetic behavior in the face of suffering, a need to disconnect from the harshness of life in order to maintain the fiction that the “childhood paradise” has not been lost. He despises suffering as a thing for “unintelligent” people and, deep down, underlies an enormous fear of returning to the deprived place of childhood, in which he experienced a strong sense of threat to conservation.

“My self-complacency is so great that I lose the ability to listen or see at times when an authority, or any person, is pointing to my mistake, my inadequacy. If criticism is launched indirectly, I am unable to understand it as directed. give to me It would affect me a lot to receive disapproval in public and, therefore, I assume an authoritarian and excellent role, which inhibits people from pointing out my defects. For this reason, sometimes criticism comes in a veiled, indirect way, but I am unable to understand that it is directed at me or at my behavior.” (ALEXANDRE)

Entitlement
As an extension of his narcissism, we can cite entitlement: a feeling of superiority rights because of his talent and personal charm. It's subtle: The attitude of the enneatype Seven in a love relationship is different from that of those who go through life important and assume a role of authority. In this case, it is a more subtle importance: it is not that he expects to be obeyed, but to be heard and recognized as a person who is in the know. The man may expect the woman to be his audience; the same happens with a father regarding his son. Correlative to the charlatan's need to be heard is, naturally, his inability to hear, although he may not be aware of this himself, since he offers great empathy through an attentive countenance."

Jealous
A fundamental polarity in this character, already pointed out in chapter 2, is the opposition between the greedy insatiability, in the foreground, and the fear of lack, which is denied.

“There is a rejection of the victim in me, and this leads me to the inability to listen to the other's complaint about something, someone, it doesn't have to be about me. The idea behind it is that the weak complain, those who do not know how to face reality, those who resist making this world a better place.” (MARÍA MARTA)

Although it seems contradictory to the oral optimism of the Seven, the conservationist tends to compare himself and, therefore, to feel, unconsciously, envy. Who compares, suffers. And although, unlike E4, there is a strong tendency to overcompensation that turns envy into insatiability, the background sensation of lack and disadvantage is common, probably due to having felt excluded or disadvantaged in childhood, which explains the voracity in their relationships and the aggressiveness with which they take on the world. Feeling that his starting conditions are less advantageous, he tells myself that he needs more and more to catch up or win.

“As a child I suffered a lot from the comments of adults, because they told me I was ugly. Throughout my life, I evaluated people's happiness based on their physical attractiveness. I always imagined that an ugly person would have enormous difficulties, almost insurmountable, to enjoy joy and be happy. On the other hand, he already considered beautiful people happy and felt enormous envy towards them. However, when it came to men, I thought they might be handsome, but they didn't have the sensitivity that I possessed to offer women in a relationship.” (ALEXANDRE)

Excessive, aggressive
This measurement and comparison causes stress and anguish and is a source of compulsive behavior and all kinds of excesses. «Just as the miser does not want to part with something that he feels is precisely scarce, the greedy person distracts himself in abundance: faced with the fear of lack. Excessiveness is the door to dispersion and, therefore, an inexhaustible source of problems for this character.
The greater the gluttony, the greater the orientation to compare and the greater the contact with the feeling of insatiability, thus creating a feedback loop that lays the groundwork for the usual manic co-depressive phases that this character usually goes through.

It is usual for the E7 to retain a certain degree of aggressiveness and a tendency to possessiveness, seizure and even looting, which sometimes leads to confusion with the E8 character. They are tendencies related to their disposition: narcissism and impulsiveness, acting before reflecting, risking everything to an art and, in general, a counterphobic attitude, even psychopathic.

Utilitarian and strategist
A good friend of the powerful, an effective propagandist, a highly perceptive planner and strategist, the Conservation Seven usually surrounds himself with people with the ability not only to help him, but to make him prosper and carry out his projects and ideas. His utilitarianism occurs in personal accounts, and could be defined as a feeling that friendship is only worth cultivating if the friend is useful to his plans or interests, or if he finds it suggestive enough.
He usually deals with information, and uses strategies and tactics to position himself comfortably. Look for ways to get what you want without asking directly and, above all, without counting on others. And he is accustomed to making his responsibilities lighter by allowing others to deal with them, charging them to them, in order to reach pleasure earlier.

Impatience, boredom
He suffers predisposition and intolerance to boredom, allergy to everyday life and routines. You need constant stimuli and new or extraordinary experiences, to the detriment of feeling pleasure in everyday life. As background, a difficulty to connect with the emotion that causes a feeling of dryness in life.

Obligation and responsibility, predisposed to flight or abandonment, no: there is a desire to return to pleasure and freedom as soon as possible. It is also difficult for him to contact the slowness, that is, with the natural flow of life, which is constantly forced, accelerated by the planning ego, so as not to contact what is there, so as not to feel. Difficulty sustaining frustration and giving space to emotions, immediacy and constantly accelerating walking (antagonistic to the harmony of natural rhythms) are tools to avoid coming into contact with anguish and other unpleasant emotions.

Insubordinate and rebellious
The feeling is that accepting limits creates suffering. The authority has to demonstrate its reasons or logic, so it ceases to be an authority: internally, the E7 conservation underestimates and disqualifies it, despising and disobeying it. There is a fundamental distortion: "Accepting the authority of others limits my personal autonomy."

He has a narcissistic taste in presenting himself as a rebel, while avoiding direct confrontation with authority, to that dodges or seduces, thus avoiding the consequences that entails would contradict her.
Indiscipline and procrastination are inextricably linked to insubordination and rebellion. As a background, the invalidation of the father in childhood is the engine of the invalidation of all other authority, always identified as repressive or imposing. The limited capacity for self-criticism further contributes to this scenario: there is difficulty in repenting, as well as little tolerance for criticism from others. All this, reinforced by its aggressive mentality and its tendency to be elusive.

Egotistic and individualistic
The absolute priority is to satisfy one's own desires, with the feeling that others have to adapt to their times and needs. In the Conservation Seven, narcissism has a lot to do with objectifying others.
There is a difficulty in seeing the wife as an entity separate from her own ends of exchange, especially the couple as another separate from her interests and desires. The rest of the people, those who do not belong to their own circle of trust, can be seen as a limit or a hindrance to their plans (or, simply, they are not seen).

The inner feeling is that of a need for self-preservation. The crazy idea that I can “handle everything, I don't need anyone” contributes to this scenario. And as background, search for immediate pleasure without assessing the consequences for those around him. There is also the crazy idea that giving oneself emotionally makes one gregarious and makes one lose independence, as well as stop being "special" or "unique."

Prone to corruption
Not even for some representatives of this character does this descriptor sound too strong, we can subject the term 'corruption' to a process of euphemization (typical of this character) and go on to call "the tendency to take legal shortcuts" or to interpret the laws as indicative instead of to respect its mandatory compliance. Underlies the light attitude towards life typical of all E7, and especially the conservation ones.

If one does not believe in anything, if one implicitly thinks that the authority is useless, that the system is corrupt, then one must do what is best for oneself. And with a lot of people like that, it's impossible for the community to function. When Socrates was offered to flee, he preferred to give his life as an example of support for the ideal of democracy, to strengthen faith in the idea that the people can govern themselves; that, even if he is wrong, one can in principle arrive at a system in which wisdom prevails. How far we are today from that attitude!

What would have done, instead of Socrates, a conservation E7?

Fraudulent and charlatan
This character uses any available resource to achieve an end, both words and actions. Some of the most used resources are lying, stealing, confusing others, cheating, intriguing others…

He has his own morality where benefits are imposed on acts or, in other words, he does not pay attention to the means to achieve certain goals. purposes. For this, there must be a high degree of self-indulgence, own laws, personal interpretations of good and evil; and, as they are laws of their own, they can change so as not to sustain states of guilt, to adapt to each moment according to the greedy need that arises. Added to this is his great ability to arrogate merits that do not correspond to him, a strong desire for protagonism and a frequent imposition, mythomania and fantastic pseudology, especially in the intellectual field.

The Conservation Seven has become an expert at getting what he wants without asking for it. His basic conception is that things are not achieved by asking for them: either they take them or they cheat or speculate to obtain them. You believe that asking puts you in a vulnerable position and brings you closer to pain and frustration. There is in it, again, a disregard of the other. The childhood experience of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and survival contributes to promoting this scenario.

Schizoid austerity vs. seductive waste
At times, the E7 conservation shows a simplicity bordering on the greed of the E5. It tends to have a great deal of control over the economy and go, as well as a constant calculation of costs and benefits. He attaches great importance to money, and feels dizzy when he sees himself in financial trouble. But his difficulty in spending is tempered by a great facility to invest, to do "business' ', sometimes a hint of megalomania. His practical sense permeates everything: he does not want to complicate his life and tries to avoid everything that could be a source of displeasure. In the background, there is a great ski fear mile to deprivation.

On the other hand, everything said is invalidated when, in his manic state, he pursues his objects of desire. Then he can be foully wasteful, throw the house out the window', commit... Nothing will be enough until he reaches the object of his gluttony. Again, this behavior has a lot to do with his bipolar tendency.

Dryness
The intense mental life causes a physical disembodiment and a semiotic embodiment, bodily and emotional dissociation where life is confused with words and speeches. Impervious to pain makes you less permeable to emotions. There is a great fear of vulnerability that deprives you of being receptive. In the background of so much excitement and noise of thoughts and words, there is a frozen emotional world and the experience of a nuclear coldness. In the background, we find the schizoid origin of this character. At the same time, the difficulty with admiring love, with the spontaneous wonder at creation, complicates this panorama. Consequently, his attitude is more openly pseudo-social or even antisocial than in the other subtypes of Seven.

Sometimes he devotes himself to work to the point of becoming a worker, all based on his manic or depressive mood. After moments of excessive workload, usually getting sick or going into periods of depression or nervous breakdown. It is very difficult for him to trust the relationship, and it usually takes a long time to establish deep bonds (when they are allowed), which can quickly mutate a couple relationship from one first phase of strong seduction to another of great emotional dryness, testing the patience of the other or another.

Untrustful and skeptical
He feels distrust in the flow of life. He questions everything and has a certain degree of anger with life, little manifested. Basically, it underlies the difficulty of character for devotional love and recognizing the other. Similar to the E1 in the feeling that being smoke-not trustworthy, that people are imperfect, but without taking the trouble to try to correct others, E7 conservation isolates itself from the world in its particular garden: that of the "family" or the feeling of involvement with a network to link, as a defense against a life that it understands as chaos and that reinforces its idea that pleasure and non-stop are the only possible escape routes.

In addition, in someone who is a profiteer and lacks a broad sense of community, it is logical that there is mistrust. He thinks that everyone acts like him and that, since there is no law that is worth it, everyone will act with the same contempt for the rules. When he leaves aside for a moment his manic tendency to worldly pleasures, a nihilistic background appears: The narcis-sist balloon is deflated, the schizoid background becomes clear and disbelief and basic distrust of life appears even more strongly.

Stubborn and earthly
Beyond the tendency of all Siere to procrastinate, that of conservation often demonstrates tenacity in overcoming obstacles and standing up to adversity based on nerve, will and fury. Sub- Nate an irrational idea: «I can handle everything».
He has an obsession with being efficient, with obtaining the maximum rewards with minimal effort. His mental agility helps him in this and his capacity for strategy.

Combat is split halfway between mental activity and physical action. He likes to feel that he is in control of the situation, which not only reinforces his narcissism, but it also helps to drain the anguish.

His tenacity can lead to disconnection from the body and its emotional needs, in addition, is the most realistic variety of the E7, with a great predisposition towards skepticism, the material and the earthly fruit of self-preservation. All this, in relation to its utilitarianism and advantage in social relations. He doesn't behave like an idealist, but rather as someone disappointed with the ideals, a pseudo-idealist or even an anti-idealist. He believes that by organizing himself well he will be able to avoid the return of deficient states experienced in his childhood, and with this he tries to annul the feeling of threat to conservation.

CHAPTER 5; EMOTIONALITY AND FANTASY

The E7 is a mental character, that is, a personality that breaks free from pain by separating emotional and instinctive experience from cognitive elaboration. Avoiding contact with the emotions and repressing his natural instinct, he relies on the ability to understand intellectually. This entails a freezing of emotions and an impulsive instinctive life and not connected with deep pleasure, while the intellectual part is reduced to an Instrumental and strategic mind.

With regard to the conservation subtype, we can say that the only emotional window that it keeps open is that of rage, which it sometimes expresses affirmatively and directly, but which usually transforms into cynicism or indirect aggressiveness, channeled by contemptuous irony, and above all placed at the service of a strong personality of his own and of the need for the material.

This is a greedy character and he feels lacking when he cannot satisfy his desires, which, we insist, he confuses with needs. Someone disconnected from their emotions is not nourished by anything, nothing fills them enough. The E7 is, deep down, frustrated, chronically dissatisfied. The conservation Seven wants everything, but at the same time he is not sure that he wants something too badly, because in a way nothing interests him enough.

“On the one hand, I look for emotional intensity, but when it's there, I get scared and back off and play with a sense of madness. Like when you get too close to the paper to read something and the letters blur and the eye makes strange. Well, like this. And that's how I use imagination and fantasy too: I start explaining the world with metaphors. My fall into the shadows was when I began to see how life told me and the difference with what was happening... and my difficulty in knowing what was happening to me. I have an easy time seeing where the rest is going; I think I have a good sense of smell (I insist on «believing») and I anticipate. And in this getting ahead of myself I don't realize what is happening to me and what I am feeling.” (MONICA)

On the one hand, anguish and emptiness impel him to form bonds of superficial attachment, an association of mutual interests rather than a relationship founded on love or friendship. A link based on utilitarian expectations rather than respect or altruism. On the other hand, their insatiability and their difficulties in staying and committing often show up when there is an opportunity for a deeper bond, such as with a partner, who may not be slow to complain about the lack of transparency and lack of communication typical of a conservational E7 in intimacy, in addition to the lack of trust, tenderness and even affection that could be experienced with someone who is accustomed to «going their own way», to function autonomously, radically independent , clever individual, who constantly seeks novelty and conquest, with a selfish background halfway between the easygoing and the misanthropic, and who needs a lot of time to "verify" that the love they offer her is "real" and surrender.

Pain is an emotion that the E7 conservation harshly represses. Let us remember that gluttony is, more than a search for pleasure, an effort not to suffer. It is for this that the emotional consciousness becomes superficial, that one avoids seeing things as they are, that reality is disguised in convenient colors, that one deceives oneself..

The passion of gluttony -a receptive orality intensified to the point of becoming a predatory or parasitic will- constitutes a thirst for pleasure (or an avoidance of frustration) with which the individual tries to recover the lost paradise of the true freedom of his natural impulses. And he will suffer an E7 from the consequences of this mistake when, over the years, he realizes that the pursuit of pleasure, comfort and advantage has distracted him from finding and living his own life.

Being well, and even love, is confused with physical and economic well-being. But, can one "be well" without integrating emotions, leaving aside what makes us suffer? The operation of E7 Conservation consists of getting away from everything that bothers it, which translates into an avoidance of interiority.

“I have a lot of hidden pain. Now that I am allowing myself to feel it, a lot of sadness and crying comes out. It relieves me to let myself feel the sadness. Crying helps me soften, to connect with the emotion, with the feeling, to open my heart, to be able to be with me, to be able to accompany me... I also feel loneliness, a historical loneliness; lack of clonal emo, of support, of support. Of all these emotions I am aware of now. They were covered. There was an idea of ​​a happy life and peterpanism: enthusiasm, parties, plans, dinners, trips... to escape and not contact those feelings.” (ANONYMOUS)

As a counterpart to this avoidance, somatizations, stress and anxiety, intestinal and digestive problems are common (probable somatization of repressed emotions of fear, abandonment and lack), with E7 conservation being a character that oscillates contradictorily between rudeness and physical resistance in the manic phases, and a remarkable apprehension, especially in the depressive phases.

“Since I was little I have been taking medication to open my appetite. I have always somatized my nervous state in the digestive system, of tension, of fear. On one occasion I had a colonoscopy and the doctor told me that I had a tortuous colon, they call it, and that seeing the level of kink he must have had a high level of tension in my life... The neck is also an area where I have high tension and stiffness.” (ANONYMOUS)

“It may be that the typical digestive problems of this character come from not being able to assimilate those feelings that are denied. I have had diarrhea all my life, so much so that it seemed normal to me. Now less, because I am more aware of the food that makes me feel bad. I have also had a weak immune system, perhaps as a symptom of the inadequacy felt.” (MARÍA MARTA)

Anxiety and paranoia about one's own health are also not uncommon... And here is the best kept secret of a conservation Seven: he is a hypochondriac.

“I have had some other episodes in which I have entered places that I still cannot explain. When I was eleven years old I became paranoid that I was going to swallow my tongue. And, at night, I tested to see if it was possible to swallow it. It was hard for me to eat because I was afraid I would choke. The doctor blamed it on the growth spurt he had had that summer. At the time my parents were separating and I had more information than I could hold onto. And, curiously, when school started, I had mini-meetings with my friends to tell them that my parents were separating, but not to worry, that everything was fine. And I boasted that they had more to worry about than me. And here I see the disconnect between what was happening to me, which I was diverting into physical sensations, and what I was showing to the world. Today, when I start hypochondriacal episodes, I start to review what is happening to me to deviate towards physical illness.” (MONICA)

We are dealing with someone who only validates that "I'm fine, you're fine", and who strongly rejects both his own feelings of passion and the expression of discomfort of the other. But, at the same time, he also fails to fully enjoy himself, since constant alertness to prevent pain or discomfort ultimately acts as a kind of barrier against any other emotions.

“When I feel anger, sadness, etc., I don't validate it, with an internal discourse of the type: "I think it's not right for me to feel it because what's happening is not that bad." And between «it's not that big a deal» and «they're going to think I'm a brat», the emotion seized me. With these two sentences of the internal dialogue, I delve into control and image. Thus, when I manage to go beyond the internal dialogue and appropriate what I feel, if someone confronts me, I doubt again whether what I feel is real.” (MONICA)

Any claim of affective order will be understood as a lack of love, or even as a betrayal of his balance, his well-being, and he is extremely sensitive to feeling emotionally invaded.

“For me, intense emotionality is closely related to invasion, manipulation, lack of respect for my space, my needs, my emotions. I am learning to open myself up to feel and accept that fear and everything that moves me there.” (ANONYMOUS)

The contact with fear is another emotion that the E7 retains but does not allow.

Fear is more thought than sense. The last time I felt fear was in a dream. The experience was so strong that I woke up scared, tearful, incredulously, and already half awake. I said to myself: «This is really scary, damn it!». I had a brutal realization, an awareness of how little fear let me live. I sometimes think: «You will not go through this again». That the boy that I was once said “You will not go through this again”. (NÉSTOR)

As a subtype of Seven, belonging to the head triad, this character builds his ego structure on an avoidant, fearful basis. According to Francesco Bonsante, the E7 is a personality that is formed as a defense against the fear of losing control. A fear covered by a more visible concern: the fear of abandonment. This is why, according to Bonsante, he tends to avoid the experience of "emptying himself" that would normally characterize abandonment.

Paradoxically, in this way he becomes the personality least able to bear the suffering of abandonment - and any painful feelings - when life catches him off guard. In fact, the fear of abandonment, related to loss of control, is both widespread and repressed. It is linked to lack of affective and vital nutrition. These remnants, beneath an apparent optimism, emanate an underlying lack of confidence in the external world. And this mistrust is the matrix of the need to be free that corresponds to the fear of being controlled and conditioned.

His childhood conviction was that there was no one who could provide him with protection and affection, and at some point he decided that he had to be autonomous and manage alone to ensure his well-being. That made him a fierce individualist. Which means that he will live his relationships of trust with the feeling that the other must be at his disposal for what he may want, and he will feel any resistance to his needs as a betrayal. The fact that he lies so much without flinching, that he disguises reality at his convenience, also has to do with the infantile sensation of having felt swallowed by the mother. It was a relationship in which he felt caught between the need to "save" her and, at the same time, to keep her in check so he wouldn't be emotionally engulfed. Hence his fear of not being free.

Here is a tremendously controlling enneagram of your flow of emotions. At the same time, there is an emotional hardening on the outside, facing the gallery, and a certain fragility on the inside. The E7 Conservation is someone who suffers from a strong fantasy of self-sufficiency.

“I don't usually ask for favors unless it is something very relevant to me, but I can do favors for many, somehow creating a debt, something that puts me at an advantage. Many times they have told me that I am self-sufficient, something that flatters me on the one hand and hurts me on the other, because many times this attitude leaves me alone. Not needing nadic is not real, now I am aware that I need, only that I have it associated with my childhood survival. When I needed, I had to look for life alone, and I have that deeply engraved in my body.” (NÉSTOR)

It is also a character that tends to be easily offended and to disavow anyone at the slightest touch. That is, he reacts aggressively to criticism, even if he does not allow himself to be conditioned by it. While he is convinced that he can handle everything, inside he is much more fragile than that.

“Faced with any emotion that takes me out of my comfort zone, the tendency is to move on. If I stop, it is to think or reason why what is happening is happening. Depending on the section (work, love, family, etc.), I look for one solution or another. Sometimes I look for justifications, explanations to see the positive part and «understand» the painful part of the matter (and not to feel much, just a little). Also, I get distracted and disconnect doing other trivial things. The Achilles heel is, for me, not only to open my heart, but to expose myself and show my true feelings without games or strategy. Just do what you want, without expecting anything in return. let me fall.” (NÉSTOR)

“I feel an immense paradox: as if I were someone very strong on the outside and absolutely sensitive on the inside. I remember being really very fragile when I was a child: short, skinny, quiet... I lived alone with my fantasies. I didn't like being treated with such diminutive coughs. When they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered: I want to be strong! My sister would say to me, amused: "Don't you prefer to be pretty, smart, rich, famous?" And I answered: «I want to be smart... and strong!». I don't know where that desire came from, perhaps from the feeling of being fragile in the midst of so many giants and of living in an atmosphere of emotional storms. Later I understood that everyone in my family was very emotional, uncontrolled, inflamed... and I felt insecure. I began to contain what I felt and kept everything in my silence.” (LUCIANA)

The emotional discomfort of this subtype is diffuse, and maintains a background relationship with narcissism, which appears in the foreground. Diffuse but constant, only appeased by lenitives such as sex or alcohol. Repressed feelings of inferiority or envy are not unusual, and a clear tendency to feel "bad," inadequate, lacking... In general, the E7 conservation does not feel good about the world around him, despite his apparently cheerful temperament, and in this also plays an important role the schizoid orientation and the infantile sense of threat to conservation.

His utilitarianism, his strategy, his ability to get a slice are also explained from an emotional withdrawal. The one who is not connected with others through the heart, the radical skeptic who does not feel life as a somehow sacred experience, finds the door open to converting others into exploited and anything into merchandise.

The emotionality in the Seven conservation appears profoundly castrated, left aside. He is someone who has hardened very early. That “weird mix” of E8 and E5, where the lecherous and schizoid aspects make up a somewhat indecipherable puzzle of personality, makes this enneagram type someone far removed from emotional contact.

On the other hand, the lack of emotional transparency is a fact: dishonesty has a starting point in the disconnection with empathy. Therefore, it is also very difficult for him to identify such things as fear or anger.

“Sometimes I realize that something has made me angry when two days or months have passed. At the time I downplay it by telling myself that maybe I'm exaggerating, until I see that it's not like that, that it hurt me. Sometimes it's hard for me to turn the page. Especially when the damage is from someone I consider "family". Here the word «mafia» is very present to me.” (MONICA)

In general, it is a character who is afraid of emotional life, which sustains his typical disconnection (and this condemns his greed). You fear and anticipate pain with exaggeration, thinking things are going to hurt more than they really do. A common idea is that if you go into pain, you will never come out of it again; Put your compulsion to avoid it there.

“Emotions scare me. And when I speak of emotions, I think of anger and sadness. When I see sadness in others I have the feeling that they are walking through an autumn forest... Instead, when I play with mine, I see a lake of quick waters that will suck me in as soon as I step on it. I have had times of bordering on depression; What's more, now is when I feel like I'm coming out of one that has lasted me about three or four years. When I read Claudio's phrase: «You get depressed to avoid it hurting», I was amazed... That's it. While I have been submerged in the dark it has always been afraid of touching something and being crazy. It's like there's a part of me that's hiding information from me. And that part does not stop me from shifting the waters so as not to submerge myself in them.” (MONICA)

The E7 conservation is someone used to monitoring the world to detect not only opportunities but also dangers, Controls, forms of authority that can curtail the achievement of their desires: the defense mechanism of rationalization stains everything with its explanationism and intellectualization of the life.

Reason is put on a pedestal, but that does not mean that one will behave in a reasonable way; we are not before an E5 or an E6. Just like road signs, which a conservation Seven considers more indicative than obligatory, reason is used for convenience to seduce or undermine the opponent, or as a way of "ordering" the emotional world of others by way of try to create watertight compartments in which to file each emotion, without having to listen to them.

Correlative to the charlatan's need to be heard naturally is his not knowing how to hear, although he may not be aware of this himself, since he offers great empathy through an attentive countenance. In matters of parenting, too, the love of the self-indulgent is less than it appears to be, due to their persuasive talent and charm.

In the background, there is a lot of fear of losing one's head, losing control, with fantasies of being able to kill and, in general, fear of physical aggression (sometimes very present due to bodily abuse suffered in the family environment in the childhood), which is nothing more than the fear of one's repressed aggressiveness.

«All the misfortunes of man derive from the fact of not being able to sit quietly and alone in a room», said Blaise Pascal. A phrase that applies perfectly to the conservative subtype: running away from boredom is a constant in the life of a Seven.
«Boredom», moreover, is what this character calls his evident difficulty in connecting with the here and now, focused as he is on a more promising «there». «The issue of boredom relates to Alejandro Napolitano- is included in a larger issue, which is the particular relationship that enneatype seven shows with that which occurs in time or is linked totemporality».

The emptiness, the tedium, are very badly handled by the E7, who do not usually notice that it is when apparently nothing happens and time slows down that the roots of things become deeper, much earlier that any effort or expectation will bear fruit. Waiting becomes, therefore, very difficult in the face of what lacks immediate attractions, which is why restlessness, stress and self-existence arise when feeling that time, life is not being used, that the cow is not giving milk or that there is no the attractions offered by an existence not as exciting as it would be expected to be are being optimized. There is a lot of anxiety to get results. One's own slowness is not sustained, much less that of others. Since, in his chronic dissatisfaction, nothing fully satisfies his needs, he keeps moving in order to move away from painful feelings such as guilt or sadness.

However, despite the internal rage, there is no real desire to hurt anyone. Only that it is very difficult for the E7 conservation to recognize the pain caused by his disaffection, his lack of involvement when, curiously, this is his specific passion, his neglects and his constant privileging of pleasure over obligation, since he blindly launches after any promise of instant gratification, disregarding the hurt and exhaustion that his wild and impulsive adventures sometimes bring.

Napolitano also reminds us of the need for brilliance and sparkling performance typical of this character (it is not in vain that there were seven intellectuals and writers of eminent practical orientation such as Francis Bacon, Alexander Dumas, Mark Twain -who sold their own books door to door to avoid intermediaries-or Umberto Eco). This compulsive and notably narcissistic need often prevents healing silences and attitudes of stillness, «to make do with what there is... and not only in the therapeutic space, but in practically all life situations that require assimilation or recollection.

Emotional dryness underlies the friendliness and people skills of E7 conservation permeating everything. His intense mental life condemns him to a kind of disembodiment in exchange for a semiotic re-embodiment: emotions are lived especially in the head.

Because he has sealed himself against pain, he is also not very permeable to any other emotion. Or, at least, it is difficult for him to externalize it when there are witnesses, lest his "strong" self-image be called into question. There is a great fear of being vulnerable, of leaving behind the role of warrior, of a person who controls the situation. The phobia of pain makes contact with emotions very difficult: love passes through pain, and we only reach the depths of the heart when we are able to slow down and enter the language of receptivity. The associated crazy idea might be expressed as: "If I go through the pain, I die." Something that, obviously, leads him to avoid pain, fleeing from difficult situations through a compulsive and mechanical search for pleasure, sex, seduction, leisure...

There is a confusion between emotionality and affability. Not knowing how to contact emotions easily, he shows himself to be a warm person, a good hostess, gentle and paternal, as well as accommodating and attentive to those he intends to seduce. However, this warmth can quickly turn to coldness, distance and even insensitivity when the other does not belong to your circle of trust. An E7 conservation without conscientious work is very far from the concept of universal love, as if denying the letter of human nature to those whom it does not accept as part of its bonding system.

This polarity is complemented by another, which we could call greatness and smallness. An E7 conservation will try to behave in a soft and little arrogant way with those who are the object of seduction, to the point of being perceived as humble while feelings of greatness flow unchecked inside, the feeling of having special virtues... «They do not claim any glory for themselves, but they want their ideas to triumph»

The conservation enneagram Seven is adept at staying out of any situation that upsets him emotionally. He goes in parts, compartmentalizes the problems in order to deactivate them and entangles to convince the other that he is wrong or, at least, knows how to earn his appreciation despite everything, avoiding commitments and responsibilities, with very little capacity to feel guilty (in fact, he seems immune to guilt, and when it does appear he defuses it with rationalizations and indulgence). This contrasts with a reality that seems to have crushed the motivation of conservational E7s in childhood, making them more fussy and allergic to the emotional commitments or demands of relational life. Narcissists (and this applies perfectly to the Conservation Seven)

Not only do they show considerable talent for rationalizing their lack of social consideration, but they also use a variety of other intrapsychic mechanisms with equal ease. However, reflecting very little on what others think, their defensive maneuvers are transparent, poor camouflage to a trained eye. Their inability to hide what is bothering them also contributes to being seen as cocky and arrogant.

Post a testimonial:

“People, to me, have typically been divided into two camps. On the one hand, those I know, take into account and love me. On the other, the rest of the world. This rest of the world is made up of indifference and offends, because it is not uncommon that, one week in and another too, it reaches my ears that someone I do not know or know little has said that I am an arrogant, contemptuous, indifferent type, etc. Those who love me try to defend me: “How unfair”, “they don't know you”, “but you are a very good person... and the truth is that they are right. What happens is that it becomes clear to me that those who don't know me are also right.” (DAVID)

Arrogance is related to a repression of aggression. His narcissism does not allow him to clearly identify a strong aggression, which, however, he usually conveys through words, with ironic humor or sarcasm.

“I can feel a lot of anger and aggressiveness inside. And one reason why I don't express it is that I consider it too strong, overflowing, and I feel that it won't have a place, it won't be admitted. So I do not allow it to not lose my good image.” (ANONYMOUS)

Psychological aggression is based, then, on jokes, on ambiguity, with which the emotional tension is also ironed out. "Should I laugh or be angry?" the "victim" will often ask. A bit like before a scene from Groucho Marx: “Excuse me if I call you gentlemen, but I don't know you very well. "I never forget a face, but with you I'm going to make an exception. "Do not think wrong about me, lady. My interest in you is purely sexual." «The secret of life is honesty and fair play... if you can simulate that, you have succeeded.»

“Humor is a double-edged sword for me. What would we be or who would we be without humor? Having a sense of humor is healthy (and this is the perfect premise and excuse to use it), but when it becomes irony it can become a throwing weapon to express our dark side. In my case, it has been a way of expressing and saying things that otherwise I would not have been able to do or would not have dared. Very easily I can see the Achilles heel of the other. I do it if I feel disadvantaged or threatened, because that way I will know where I can go if I am confronted. Although there is no guarantee of success, at least I have a card to play.“ (NÉSTOR)

In his quest for self-gratification, his aggressive impulse, generally less repressed than in other Seven subtypes, helps to reinforce his gluttony. The amalgamation of fear, lack and selfishness plus aggressiveness explains this enneatype quite well, halfway between the sullen, the ruffian and the seducer. However, his own anger frightens him, it seems inappropriate, reprehensible, and he will tend to hide it or disguise it in order to preserve "harmony" and his good image.

“Another emotion that scares me is anger because it is the least valid and, when it comes loaded with anger, I am afraid that it will get out of hand and hurt someone. Or to lose control and be seen outside of myself. When I see someone out of it, I tend to internally cut their head off thinking: "There's no need, he's gone." In the end, my limits to staying in control are loss of control and insanity. Whoever is unflappable wins. And sometimes I see myself using imperturbability, even with fire inside, as a weapon. In adolescence I always tended to pick on a friend who got angry quickly. We used to get into debates over various topics. Once he told me: "Damn, Monica, you always want to be right." To which I, with half a smile and with fire inside and ice outside, told him: «If we are arguing it is because I am not the only one who wants to be right». And, seeing his anger, I forget mine or I'm not so sorry.” (MONICA)

With such aggressiveness, the Seven conservation enneagram type will find it difficult to hide it, especially in situations where it is free from the judgment of its surroundings. Other times, as Albert Rams says in 27 personalities in search of being, he does not notice "the aggressive acting that accidental mistakes, jokes,
forgetfulness or absent-mindedness can entail".

Especially, with his penchant for hurtful humor and destructive irony, he marks the territory and makes anyone who plays as his opponent, that is, who is not part of his "family" or network, feel idiotic. We are talking about a Seven and, like all of his character, the conservation one also presents an avoidance of aggressive impulses, although not as much as the other subtypes. In addition, his aggressiveness makes the relationship between conservational gluttony and envy more evident, even though enneatype Four is a kind of antipodal to enneatype Seven.

Gluttony, like oral-aggressive envy, looks abroad for what it vaguely perceives as an inner lack, only, unlike envy (in which there is a heightened awareness of ontic insufficiency), gluttony fraudulently conceals the insufficiency with false abundance, comparable to that of pride, so that the passion is externalized without complete self-awareness.

This translates, in conservation, into a perpetual escape towards the pleasures of the senses, as a pseudo way of fleeing from the intimate and unspeakable feeling of frustration.

In the E7 conservation, aggressiveness is not paralyzed. as a masochistic defense against the hostile impulse towards the parent of the same sex, which has not served as a figure of identification. Somehow, he has managed to have a plus of aggressiveness that facilitates his path towards egoic self-satisfaction. This means that, when faced with a violent situation, he can alternate between paralysis or freezing out of fear, and violent reaction, even reckless.

“He was about three years old and was playing with a new toy with music. My father appeared very angry and kicked the toy, which became useless. I remember how internally I only heard silence. I got up, left the room and went to the dining room to stare at the TV, not speaking and not feeling anything beyond freezing.” (ANONYMOUS)

“I was in 4th or 5th grade of school(about nine years old), playing with rubber bands with a friend at recess. An 8th grade girl (about twelve, I think) came to bother us, especially my friend. I kept playing as if I didn't see her... until the impulse took me to spit in her face. The girl froze. They have always told me that when I get angry, I am scary. And here I would add that I too am frightened by the fantasy that I can kill.” (MONICA)

A sample of the intellectually aggressive and contemptuous behavior with authority, typical of the conservation Seven, is offered to us, again, by the philosopher Epicurus when he was still barely fourteen years old and studying in public school:

The teacher told that, according to mythology, at the beginning of everything was Chaos. The young Epicurus asked the master: "And where did chaos come from?" He replied: "We cannot know that, it is a point reserved for philosophers." And in turn, Epicurus said to him: “Then why do I come here to waste my time? Right now I am going to see the philosophers.” Already in this anecdote the character E7 is manifested: light, irreverent, relentless and impatient, not content simply to follow where everyone else is going.

De Crescenzo makes the following observation about the character of Epicurus, which is fully compatible with the Seven preservation:

Who knows why Epicurus, so sweet and courteous with women, became a real viper with intellectuals, and above all with the Platonists and the Aristotelians. Probably, he wanted to be considered an autodidact and rejected any relationship between his thinking and that of others. A competitive one, intellectually.

In Essays on the psychology of enneatypes, Naranjo applies the three psychic instances described by the psychoanalyst Karen Horney - towards, away, against - to each enneatype, suggesting that E2, E9 and E7 are expansive characters (going towards the other).

However, it qualifies this primary characteristic with a secondary one, so the Two goes towards (towards-towards), the Nine goes far (towards-far) and the Seven goes against (towards-against). Which shows that, in addition to the warmth with which the E7 approaches personal relationships, there is also an element of rebellion and insubordination very present in his behavior.

Among the E7, the most antagonistic is the conservation one, "which is also the most similar to the E8, in its rudeness, its use of vulgar language, greater self-interest, orientation towards profits and its cunning." With this, Naranjo introduces a third characteristic:

Although it is the I that most tends to go against others, I would say that the sexual E7 is the most impulsive and extroverted-expansive-, despite the little credibility of its generosity; while the social Seven, on the contrary, seems to be the most withdrawn in his search for goodness through the sacrifice of gluttony.

Conservation Sevens often camouflage emotion with fantasy, think they feel, and speculate on it. The result is an authentic exchange where it becomes usual to give (itself) a cat for a hare.

“I also thought I felt. And this thought moved me so much! I have always camouflaged emotion with fantasy. The pleasure and happiness, with that kind of capacity for suggestion. Brotherhood, friendship and love, with relationships of debt, interest and loyalty. Pain and sorrow, with an intellectualized discourse on the evils of the world. safety, with dialectical display. Rage, with fine irony. Authentic compassion, with iron protection. I have disguised or mocked fear as a grotesque clown that scared no one, and cast it away with self-sufficient bravado.

I have omitted the sharpest aspects of reality, I have tinted the black paintings of the war with a school watercolor of basic colors. I have rationalized the lacerating wounds in my life to the point of ignoring them completely. I have therefore hidden and denied my deep pain, preventing the people around me from feeling their own.

I have sung to life, secretly fearing it. I have simulated love, avoiding their frustrations. I have cheated death, hidden between your skirts. I have challenged God by becoming his entourage, to create another world less hostile and more friendly. Finally, I have been moved by pure narcissism to feel an intelligent fan, so important, so vital, so indispensable. And I have paid the price, of course. Survival doesn't come cheap. And more if it lengthens beyond forty…” (ORI)

Beneath this atmosphere of confusion lies a basic fantasy: that of feeling inadequate, not feeling good, or not knowing how to experience love. That of being an emotional idiot with a small heart.

“I live the fantasy that I don't feel well. That emotion is wrong and someone (unidentified) is going to scold me. When I immerse myself in the least pleasant emotions for me regarding someone, I think I'm going to be scolded. They are going to realize that I am not right (mixing emotion and reason) and they are going to catch me, placing me in an even more vulnerable and childish place, because I put the Other or Other in a place of superiority... and from there , it is easy for me not to let myself fall completely, associating emotion with loss of place and vulnerability.” (MONICA)

We are facing a character with a great capacity to imagine, both in the creative sense and in anticipating fears, dangerous scenarios or dystopian futures. The fact is that, as in any mental enneatype, the head usually shoots off at the first sight of change.

“Fantasy for me has two faces: light and shadow. Depending on how I am, I am shot to one side or the other. When it's light, I appropriate it quickly; when it's the shadow one, I live it as if it weren't mine, as something that possesses me... Another fantasy to not take responsibility for something happening to me. I amuse myself fantasizing about the fear of the shadow, rather than taking charge of it.” (MONICA)

Beautifully illustrated fraud, fanciful lies, that is, mythomania or fantastic pseudology, are also common. The person tells stories that are not entirely improbable and with glimpses of truth, sustains them over time, presents himself in them in a favorable way and is involved in the plot in such a way that he sometimes comes to believe it.

“As a journalist, I tried to stick to the facts and I knew that anyone who read me would do so with a magnifying glass. But journalism is a trade that is partly developed with a drink in hand. And it's full of fanciful Sevens. You compete to see who has the biggest account. And in the end I realize that I always season my stories; I recognize a desire to entertain and move. And I remember Nasrudin when he tells the people that the king stopped to talk to him. People stay amazed, admiring him. Until a simple peasant asks him: What did he tell you? And Nasrudin confesses: "Get out of my way." (DAVID)

CHAPTER 6; CHILDHOOD

The E7 conservation usually develops in a family and socio-cultural environment that feeds their obsession with survival and, specifically, with filling with overcompensating pleasures what in a first time of life was experienced as lack or abandonment. Economic or emotional instability in the home triggers the conservation mechanism.

The boy or girl felt in inferior conditions, alone, lacking material or emotional support. Parents' messages tend to be a more or less implicit "there's not much for you" and an explicit "get a life" or "be independent," which quickly become introjects. This is accompanied by a great feeling of loneliness; Without wishing to make this a general rule, we can say that parents are not available and are often unloving or very ambiguous and manipulative with their displays of affection. On the contrary, they foster a sense of active or passive responsibility in the boy or girl, who immediately begins to cultivate positions of independence.

“I started working very early to achieve the things I wanted. I was born in a rich family, I saw my father spending a lot of money, parties, and cars, and then I heard my mother complaining about debts, talking about shortages... I lived insecure with that issue. I remember having knew from very early on that I had to become independent from my family. And I think conservation has to do with not trusting the people you loved the most.” (LUCIANA)

“I think that the character was formed in me when I realized that for me "there was not", and I had to be strong; vulnerability was not an option. I got involved with gangs with whom we committed petty thefts to get some money, until I started working: street vendor, movers, unloading trucks... At seventeen I entered a factory; then, in workshops and as a longshoreman at the airport, but I never stopped studying. I was going to get out of family misery, I was going to do better in life.” (JUAN CARLOS)

The boy or girl develops the feeling that he has to balance his handicap with intelligence and displays a keen mind early. He also quickly discovers that while he may often have felt physically clumsy or weak, he often outperforms his peers in intellectual abilities. Thus, the deficiency experience is soon counteracted with acuity and social skills, as a compensation for the schizoid core of this character. Deficiency becomes false abundance through an insatiability that turns into an obsession with not needing anything that one cannot provide for oneself, to ensure a minimum to feel safe, which in the end ends up not being so minimum, since the feeling of gluttony for the concrete and material does not stop growing. In this way, it fills with novelties what begins to feel inside as a thunderous silence where it seems not to exist.

“I was born with my lungs malformed. My breathing was always very shallow. My fragility was enormous and I remember showing feelings of lack, of fear, of the need for my mother to hold me in her arms, but I received a lot of criticism for it. So I created my world parallel to reality and I didn't ask anyone for anything else. For years I used a Type Five strategy: I would isolate myself by reading books and listening to music, and I didn't move much so as not to attract anyone's attention.” (ALEXANDRE)

Sometimes, the boy or girl begins to develop the role of provider early, wanting to satisfy loved ones with their sharpness and their gift of opportunity, to feel that one is through gratitude and recognition. In this way, he manages to live a certain illusion that there is no lack, conflict or sadness that can cloud his mood, and to maintain a fantasy of balance in the family system.

“Until a few years ago I thought I had a happy childhood; however, I do not remember much of that supposed happiness. My mother became ill When I was a child, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was fourteen years old. But his emotional instability had started long ago. My father was an alcoholic and did not fulfill his responsibilities. Today I realize that my mechanism was already working, everything is fine here”, when in my childhood and adolescence there was a lot of loneliness.” (MARÍA MARTA)

The childhood paradise early lost
The chaotic situation or the lack of care received in the family of origin in which the child lives E7 conservation came to end very quickly with the feeling of happiness at the beginning of life. The early experience of a «childhood paradise», which in other subtypes of the Grandson can last until adolescence or can never be differentiated from fantasy, in the conservation subtype it seems that it does not usually go beyond the first four or five years of life. The difficult situations experienced, being doomed to survival, lack, loneliness, violence or intense fear make such a "childhood paradise" remain blurred among the oldest memories.

“I remember my father carrying me on his shoulders next to a river when I was three years old. I remember the smell of a hug from my mother when I was four years old. Then, a fit of rage from my father and a flying table with food and crockery woke me up from that dream: I had arrived in reality, and it was a disturbing and dangerous place. From that moment on, the violence became greater and greater. Paradise is, then, the moment before the violence, the moment when there was happiness, I didn't know what was happening and I felt that all the attention was on me.” (DAVID)

The E7 permanently carries within him a greedy child who often takes over his adult behavior. And although the allegory of Peter Pan does not fit the conservative subtype, much rougher and more realistic, the attachment to childhood is still very strong in relation to the ability to enchant and the darkness that this entails. Narcissism reaches its fullness in the Seven conservation. To reach this situation, a peculiar forging in childhood has been necessary, in which the difficulties have been compensated with emotional anesthesia and narcissism, especially in the face of loneliness and helplessness, which usually brings with it feelings of inadequacy, envy and rage, one later at convenience.

“From a very young age I remember feeling a great emptiness, a feeling of loneliness always present in my house. I invented games, I was always fantasizing, I spent hours looking at the photos of an encyclopedia that I had at home and I imagined traveling to all those places in the world, I think my passion for travel was created there. I felt very alone and when I went out into the street, I would go out angry, I would look at other children with envy and rage; they had parents and I didn't, in their house there was tranquility and in mine, no.” (JUAN CARLOS)

“The common denominator of my childhood was having felt alone. The slogans in my family were: «You have to look for your life», «no one will do it for you», «the most important thing is the family», «he who hits first, hits twice», «the world belongs to bold", "I'm going to tell you something but you can't tell anyone", "dirty laundry is washed at home", men don't cry... The essence of all this would be: "You have to be a strong man".” (NÉSTOR)

“I had a painful childhood in relation to emotional loneliness; there was no place for my emotionality, there was little understanding of that in my family, they did not deal with the emotions of a girl and the emotional space was already overflowing with my mother. I learned that if I express my emotions and show myself vulnerable, they hurt me, they reject me, I'm mean and I annoy mom; so I can't get anything.” (MEKA)

Soon the E7 conservation is going to become a "hustler", a controller and an emotionally controlled. The child puts par thes a to his feeling of lack, looking at everything he lacks and believes is abundant around him. And he sets out to get it for himself by tempering himself with strategy. The implicit question is: “How can I benefit from this abundance?” Feeling disadvantaged, he quickly develops his skills for optimization, advantage, and shortcuts; first, with small attempts that allow him to overcome his shyness and his skittish condition.

“From a very young age I got used to making a living doing errands for the neighbors and other family errands; but, above all, I found the greatest pleasure in taking a few coins from my father from the fishmonger's money. In the end I always had some money for whims. I gave gifts to my little sisters and I also bought myself something. That gave me power. And especially it kept me from feeling frustration and lack. The pain of lack. I have always run away (and I continue to run away) from feeling the need for something I want and don't have, from having to ask for or sustain that distressing feeling. It was also a way of telling my father: "I don't need you", of course.” (ORI)

“My father always encouraged us to study; He said that women could not depend on a man. The uncertainty about tomorrow, in relation to money, my mother's economic dependence on my father and the mantra I heard from him became the basis for my survival to be a constant theme in my life.” (JUSSARA)

“We are four brothers, and this led me to assume responsibilities that did not correspond to me. My childish arrogance led me to laugh at having everything under control to save my mother and, therefore, me and the world. Here comes my schizoid origin (and narcissism too): I began to disconnect from feelings and to be as practical as possible. This took me away from myself, from my being, and my ego began to inflate. He was going to show the world where the holes were. The Terran Controller was on.” (MARÍA MARTA)

Violent scenarios
Although this is not always the case, there are many testimonies that suggest that it is common to encounter scenarios of family violence in the childhood of a conservation E7. The child distances himself from his emotions and becomes calculating, strategic, fighting fear with anticipation and planning. He wants to become strong to defend his mother; sometimes save her from her father…

so she can get through these experiences, the Seven Conservation boy or girl becomes a kind of surrogate “family man” (regardless of gender). He learns to mediate between the elders, to sometimes even become a shield. He learns that he is being asked to fulfill a family expectation (usually raised unconsciously by the mother as a kind of emotional debt to her) that he fill the void and "save" his own from chaos. And, above all, learn to be tricky, smart, opportunistic. He introjects him through family messages, since in his family, in some way, he is expected to know how to deceive, take shortcuts, be intelligent, and that is how he is taught, albeit implicitly.

“My mother taught me to steal from my father. When she arrived drunk she didn't remember how much money she had in her wallet, and I went to get bills for her; it was like payment for a bad time, it was justified, and thus I did not have to ask for money to buy and I avoided possible arguments (my mother repeated to me, and I understood well, that I was not going to depend on anyone for my money, I wasn't going to put up with a man), then I started taking money from him for myself, to go out, "it was all for the bad times we had had", his payment for the scars he gave us. And no guilt, my mother taught me, who was blessed. (Better to cheat, to steal, to take what I need than to ask. Money appears to cover lack of love, unresolved conflicts).” (CONCHA)

We are talking about atmospheres where an atmosphere of confused emotionality often also prevails. The child is inhibited by the overwhelming feelings of his parents, so it is not surprising that he early shows a certain schizoid withdrawal as a defense, and that he also shows himself to be very rational and even organized, practical, a good student... like a way to restructure an unstructured environment. Albert Rams says, in 27 Characters in Search of Being, that «to assume a commitment, for a Seven, is to find himself once again immersed in that subtle obligation to satisfy the impossible expectations of the Family Environment», that atmosphere of chaos in which the child he is oriented towards the role of “rescuer” of the balance of the system, which indelibly marks his affective future.

“My mother sometimes used me to entertain my father, especially when he was drinking. Little by little I managed to take him to rest in bed, he hugged me-trapped me; I don't remember abuse, I knew he loved me very much. I knew I had the power to calm the ogre, I kissed him, talked to him, smiled at him, I felt betrayed by her, abandoned. She felt a lot of fear and also a lot of power: she was the savior.” (CONCHA)

“The discussions were almost always about the same topic, sexuality. My mother was not receptive to my father's sexual appetite, and he was continually angry. It caught me in the middle; my mother used me as a shield and my father rejected me because he said that he had made me a “mother’s child”. I remember that my mother drowned me. I was a woman who suffered constantly and could not find a way to get rid of it. I couldn't go with my father and I didn't want to go with my mother, I felt very alone.” (JUAN CARLOS)

“I saw myself on more than one occasion putting myself in the middle of the two to avoid what was often inevitable. Obviously, I sided with my mother because she couldn't stand so much violence. Which is why I learned that mediation is a good strategy to avoid expressing my anger. I do it in an ironic way, and even though I allow myself to get angrier now, sometimes I find myself cutting off this impulse for fear of overflowing.” (NÉSTOR)

This function has been experienced in family relationships, in which the E7, in the physical or emotional absence of the father, often took charge of alleviating the pain or depression of the mother. For boys, this has meant a distant relationship or rejection of the father; for women, on the other hand, it has been to fulfill a masculine role, leaving aside the feminine dimension (either in terms of the erotic or emotional aspect).

This support function did not translate, as for the E1, into a rigid assumption of responsibilities, but rather led to a compulsive need to please and be recognized as a skillful harlequin who puts himself at the service of the other without giving up his own advantages.

One more testimony illustrates how the rigidity of E7 conservation develops in an environment of emotional ambivalence:

“When I was a child, I didn't know what atmosphere I would find at home when I got home from school, if my mother would be singing or beating up her children. Even though my father attacked my mother, he didn't hit us. On the contrary, it was my mother who did it; I was moody and I have a lot of difficulty dealing with people who have abrupt mood swings. Many times, we believed that my father was going to kill my mother and that he would also kill us. The preservation of physical integrity, the fear of touch, not allowing others to get too close, began very early. If someone comes suddenly, eagerly, it scares me. My body becomes stiff and cold, I freeze, even though I need a hug.” (JUSSARA)

Sometimes it is not (only) the father, but the mother who is secretly aggressive and exercises violence, explicitly or through emotional manipulations, because it not only seduces, but sometimes also floats in the psyche of an E7 conserving the flavor of having been betrayed by her: "Mom adores me (or, more honestly, seduces me), but leaves me."

“My mother's aggressiveness was through her suffering. He was always complaining, "with everything I do for you", always emotionally blackmailing me. His way of feeding me was very anxious, I was very thin and his biggest concern was that the other mothers might think that he did not take good care of me. More than feeding me, he fattened me. I remember my mother's complaints and suffering like a drum in my head, I didn't understand why she suffered so much, and I remember telling myself: "I'm not like you, I'm not going to suffer." (JUAN CARLOS)

One way or another, the final feeling in the family environment is that the father is a threat or a hindrance, and he is discredited. It can be said that, with the collaboration of the mother, the father becomes redundant, so there is no paternal figure to rescue the Seven from the maternal seduction.

“The chasm between my father and I opened up very early and got deeper and deeper. My mother actively contributed to this, of course. Her relationship with him was going from bad to worse and I was clearly positioned on his side. My father's presence was accidental. For me, it was enough. It is painful for me to discover how my mother used me when I was so little, how she confronted me with my father and how she confronted him with me, how she exposed him to the shame of being confronted by a girl. Even today my father feels self-conscious when I speak to him, like a child hiding his guilt. I was a rather shy and sensitive girl who had to swallow her fear.” (ORI)

On the other hand, sometimes the father not only does not exercise authority, but is unable to orchestrate credible punishments, to make the child take discipline seriously. There is no ethics, a superego is not organized in an organized way. Sometimes even punishment is followed by a greedy benefit.

“As a child I often refused to eat. Then my father would take off his leash and threaten me. I was terrified, but resisted the blows. I knew that in the end he would get tired and tell me: «Come on, go to the bar and buy yourself a couple of Tigretones» [very sweet industrial cupcakes]. I'd get up from the table with a sore ass, receive the money, and walk out the door wiping away my tears, with a bittersweet feeling of self-pity and joy at my father's loss and at the sweets. Along the way, the little respect I had for him went down the drain. I was five years old.” (DAVID)

A me-you without him
Albert Rams says that the conservation E7 seems to have an I constituted as a kind of intimacy interestedly eroticized by the mother, in the case of men, and by the father, in the case of girls and women. In the first case, the father does not occupy the paternal role because he is subject to the mother, due to excessive authoritarianism or because he is perceived as weak; so there is no paternal responsibility and law.

The norm, the limits, are not reliable. In the case of women, there seems to be a father-not father, a father who does not make it sufficiently clear that his wife is the mother and not the daughter (who is usually daddy's girl),

Paradise, the false paradise, seems to be truncated, broken (through separation, abandonment, trauma...), and we are left with the idea that it was a lie... Then everything is a lie... Ergo I can do what I want because there is no law: anything goes.

In this way, adult life is going to be dedicated to the search for and restoration of that primordial paradisiacal state, that family-ma fa in which the seven conservation occupies a place of privilege. One flees from the dysphoric, from loneliness, of the unpleasant, of the emptiness, of the boredom, of the little, because of that infantile environment of dysphoria and lack. «Not touching the unpleasant emotions, the feeling of already because life is ending, the impatience, the need for everything to be alright permanently.

In this I-you relationship intensely eroticized by the mother, there is no room for a third party. According to Alejandro Napolitano, in the E7 conservation there is an intense bond with the maternal archetype and a conflictive relationship with the father (the «number three»). In adulthood, this will result in a closed universe where there is no room for surprises, third parties, or otherness. There is also no room for authority, which is considered good for others, but not for oneself.

The E7 conservation tends not to respect any type of authority, to circumvent the law, and he congratulates himself for it. In reality, we are dealing with an arrogant character that does not see the other, except the one in its me-you orbit. He loves who he considers "his own", but the rest of the world does not exist for him, he does not care. His dislike of humankind is cued by the expulsion of the third.

Enneagram seven belongs to the mother, is only her son, and is bound and subdued to her, because he is overwhelmed or because he lacks. In this subtype, the matriarchy shows some of its most fearsome excesses and reaches its saturation point. To be linked to the mother means, in this case, to be psychologically fascinated (fascinum means 'malefice', and fascia, 'bond'). It is about the endogamic bond between blood and the material, which reaches finished symbolic expressions of its nefarious aspect in the spider's web, in the octopus and in the gallows. "Blood ties" dominate over any other type of pact.

The alliances of the law, which, prevailing over those of the blood, open to exogamy, are here neutralized because the relationship with the law, the agreements, the contracts or the commitments are completely subordinated to the loyalties of the blood, with all the implications and derivations that we can extract from this affirmation. Being the only child of the mother means contempt, instead of fear, towards the father and towards the law. In E6, the conflictive relationship with the paternal principle" derives in a fear conceptualized by Freud as "castration anxiety". The decapitation-castration of our legend is replaced in similar ones by Saturn striking down the son with the ray of his gaze, or devouring him like the worst of cannibals. Tremendous images.

This influence of the mother gives rise to a series of omnipotent and infantile fantasies, which cause behaviors beyond the limits, as well as more disqualification of the father. Such behaviors manifest themselves as transgressive, self-indulgent, and contempt for authority, which is the basis of narcissism.

One of the consequences of the lack of a father figure is the difficult relationship with time. And we're not just talking about a tendency to be late, which can be corrected with a little effort. In this regard, Napolitano tells us:

The psychological structure of enneatype seven, particularly the conservative one, shows a specific constitutive difficulty in connecting with temporal becoming, and the deep roots of this difficulty are found in a conflictive relationship with the archetypal figure of the father. [...] Some known characteristics of type seven appear linked to this particular relationship with temporality: flight forward in time or morbid planning, the vital center of its evasive and strategic disposition.

The testimonials speak for themselves:

“I was very happy when, about to turn ten, my older brother came to rescue me from my father's house, where time had stopped for me, to take me back to my mother, who had run away from home because of the threats of my father. My father said that I was not going, and my brother confronted him. But while they were arguing, I had already packed some clothes and got into my brother's car. My father stood still. I told him: "Goodbye, dad!", and I left very happy. At last we were going to start a new life away from that alcoholic and violent Falangist whom I loved, feared and despised, but above all I was ashamed of.” (DAVID)

Partner of the mother
In some way, both the E7 conservation boy and girl are chosen by the mother as a "husband" or surrogate partner and take on a role as solvers of concrete problems. There are many stories of women (and some men) of this character who have lived the experience of having to care for their mothers in illness and in life, in the face of the inhibition or absence of the father.

In general, E7 conservation women do not necessarily experience this «paternal substitution» as an open conflict against the father, but may even be apparently in alliance with him and even admire him, although taking the father's place makes them clearly or hiddenly in conflict with the father figure.

However, sometimes we find in the biographies of women of this character fathers considered as those to whom they profess a feeling and a protective role, in the same way that they profess it towards the mother. And, at the same time that this protection is given, and even a typical absorption of «masculine values», there also usually exists in the woman E7 conservation a disqualification of the father (and of the man in general), as the girl learned to do from this character through the mother more explicitly or implicitly.

“Personally, I have the experience of becoming my mother's savior or protector and that gave me a place and recognition for life. My father's absences didn't help, of course. And the consequence is that where there is a near void in the role of authority, I hurry to occupy it quickly. Simply, my father did not take care of placating my mother's emotional outbursts, or protecting her from her fears and shortcomings and I had to do it, I do not know if she chose me among her four daughters or if I took a step forward. In either case, the result is the same. My survival depended on her being calm and content. I wasn't going against her, but against Dad. Now I see more clearly that both of them put me in that situation, but my feeling as a child and adolescent was more for blaming my father all the time.” (ORI)

“I took great care of my mother's health. At eleven years old I saw the first abortion of my life, attending to my mother in the bathroom, with blood everywhere. As a teenager, I came into conflict with my father, because he did not understand how he did not realize that his wife was killing herself with abortions, since the same scenario was repeated several times. Ten years later, my mother died of cancer. I took her to the doctor, to radiotherapy, to the hospital, and not my father. He found him incompetent for the task. I think that at that time I began to disqualify men, I found them weak.” (JUSSARA)

In this way, finally, we can see how the position in the original family triad is, both for the boy and for the girl by the E7 conservation, quite similar: an alliance with the mother and a displacement or devaluation of the father, beyond specific nuances and unique personal experiences that will always make important differences.

Reverse Oedipus
At this point we can affirm that, regardless of its sex, the E7 conservation is a character strongly kidnapped by the mother: we have seen how the child becomes the father's placebo substitute, the «mama's boy»-absorbing in this I protest the values ​​of the mother. And how the girl tends to become likewise the masculinized partner of the mother (due to the absence or inhibition of the father), and sometimes also in “girl/daddy’s playmate”; his place in the family triad is that of an alliance with the mother and an opposition/seduction (undoubtedly an ambiguity) with respect to the father.

“It was usual for my father to have romantic and sexual relationships with other women. My mother was aware of some of them and finally separated. I also knew about this parallel life of my father, but I kept it a secret. I always sided with my mother and acted in front of my father with a layer of nonchalance.My father became violent at random. My confrontations with him were looking into his eyes, without speaking and showing him that I was not afraid of him. The relationship with my mother was one of compassion and defense against my father. Although I always felt that she was mad at me for something. Until I became a woman, I was not aware of the guilt I was carrying, feeling that she was angry.” (ANONYMOUS)

The mother, halfway between seduction - she makes the child feel special and emotional manipulation - complains or is anxious, trying to get the son or daughter to satisfy their emotional needs, and often even material ones. These projections of the mother are introjected by the boy or girl of this character, so that they become his neurotic "values." The girl, as we have seen, tends to "occupy" the role of "husband", with a tendency to despise or invalidate the father and to incorporate values ​​typically considered masculine - which often also derive from projections of the mother.

In Tenderness and aggressiveness, Juan José Albert describes this process using the hypothesis of an inverted Oedipus: an identification of the self with the parent of the opposite sex, with which the boy takes the values ​​of the mother, and the girl, those of the father. -because "the same-sex parent is invalidated as a liberating figure from the seductive erotic possession of the other parent and, therefore, as a figure that completes their gender identification". At the same time, there is “a tenacious internal resistance to the authority of the parent of the opposite sex, who has been experienced as powerful, possessive and, whether fantasized or not, incestuously protective”.

It is typical in Reichian analysis and bioenergetics to call character Seven a "rigid passive-feminine" although in women we might call it a "passive-masculine" character instead, especially, as we have seen, in the conservation subtypeprecisely because of this identification with the values ​​of the parent of the opposite sex, “the only available parent, under whose complicity [the E7] feels powerful, but at the price of falling into a passive attitude based on the need to have to inhibit part of his aggressiveness”,

Thus, by the way, the component that would lead to the satisfaction of his desire is inhibited, which avoids the anguish of incest but also individualization and complete independence, Albert concludes.

In addition, the figure of this parent [of the opposite sex], the object of intense incestuous desires, is also feared as generating anxiety by being suffocatingly possessive. Before her, the child finds it necessary to inhibit his aggressive impulses, including the hostile ones that may later manifest in a sadistic way, which will imply the renunciation of his phallic position of independence, even though it is already anchored and defined. genitally.

As a phenomenological sample, without claiming it as a proven fact, we will read below a couple of testimonies that coincide with the reverse Oedipus hypothesis:

“My mother worked all day, while my father roamed the bars getting drunk "with the money he takes from me," she said, or participating in violent demonstrations.
My unconditional support towards her was total: it was order (and also seduction) in the face of chaos. Because of her I became a good student, a promising student, and for a long time I denied the thug demon that (despised, like my father) also lived inside me.” (DAVID)

“Father and mother. He, the night; her, the day He, the party; her, work. He, the rebellion; her, the responsibility. He was the most beautiful and desired man in the neighborhood; she, a common and demure girl. I became my father's doll; funny, shrewd, brilliant in his eyes: an accessory he displayed to feed his vanity. With my mother I became a rival. I didn't understand why she suffered so much, always poorly dressed and in a bad mood.

I was ashamed of my mother and I remember that I didn't want to be like her. It took me a long time to realize that my most faithful relationship was with my mother. I idealized my father; the distance was so great that it became Platonism. I became very much like him, but it was because of her that I became a free, independent woman. It was because of her that I had many men. I wanted revenge. I felt that I was not like her or like any other woman. She felt that she was like a superwoman who functioned like a man, but even more powerful because she was a woman.” (DAVID)

Oral-aggressive character
In the enneatype Seven conservation, this renunciation of the aggressive impulses described by J. Albert is not as clear or as great as in the social and sexual characters, since the boy or girl of this subtype has a character with more psychopathic compromises. or of greater phallic intensity than the other E7. In this way, the submissive identification with the figure of the parent of the opposite sex, which hides an attitude of pseudo-rebellion, can emerge in a much clearer rebellion, and even in a fierce contempt and aggressiveness.

Although E7 has been defined as an oral-receptive character, we could say that E7 conservation is an oral-aggressive character (like sexual E4). His aggressive attitude has to do, to a great extent, with the fantasy of being devoured by his mother. There is a fundamental ambiguity in this, an attraction/repulsion towards the mother, who appears at the same time as someone who, metaphorically speaking, nurtures but can devour, castrate, annul. Hence, then, that the E7 conservation is a character that is both extraverted and introverted.

The testimonies reflect a deep ambiguity in the relationship not only with the parent of the opposite sex but, in all cases, with the mother:

“I have always seen her as a tremendous manipulator from whom I had to defend myself. Before her, I have spent my life with the whip in my hand, trying not to get tangled up in her emotional shenanigans. Born in the post-civil war and daughter of a single mother, with the social stigma that came with it, she is a strong woman, but at the same time, an innocent and fragile girl whom I adore and hate. In the end, the relationship becomes very that because I get warm with it it takes up too much space and suffocates me, and if I withdraw emotionally, then I freeze.” (DAVID)

“Mom has always done with me and my brothers what she wanted. When he has a problem, we all have to go or he starts telling everyone that we don't pay any attention to him. But when I was little I was never there. She would place us at her friends' houses and would pick us up after days. Then she emotionally contacted us very strongly, she seduced us, but then she disappeared again and we were left hanging, missing her. Today it is still the same. She removes and puts on as she pleases, she continues to despise our father and in the end we always do what she wants. She still has the power, but we all have a lot of anger with her.” (ANONYMOUS)

Adolescence
Once the boy or girl grows up and becomes aware of the maternal kidnapping, they will try to break that bond with all their might. The adolescent E7 conservation becomes a radical independent, often from a very early age, showing great aggressiveness with everything or those who intend to exercise the limits with him that should have been put in long before and that he will now viscerally reject.

Soon he stops giving explanations at home, he isolates himself from everything that hurts him from the family of origin, even despising it or feeling that he has "outgrown it", and projects all his attention on the professional and social world. The rebelliousness manifests itself in all its splendor and will surely achieve economic independence very soon, although it will often move in a polarity between a libertine life and a responsible attitude towards work or studies.

“In adolescence I began to feel hatred towards my father and, later, towards my mother. I didn't want to be the good girl anymore. Uncontrolled aggressiveness was on. The Eight in me emerged and took center stage. I would attack anyone or anything that I felt was a threat to me. The softness made me angry and pity too, I wanted justice.” (MARÍA MARTA)

“We changed neighborhoods and I decided to continue in the same school; I felt attached to my classmates and teachers. So I fought to impose my position and every day I saw myself crossing the entire city alone, by subway and bus, when I was ten years old. From then on, I began to do more and more of what I wanted, reinforced by the fact that I had very good grades and seemed to have everything under control. pulled out” (DAVID)

“At the age of fifteen I began a relationship with the man with whom I deflowered; He was eight years older than me, a cocaine and heroin addict. This led me to know the world of drugs in depth: consumption, trafficking. Until I returned from a trip to South America, at the age of seventeen, where I was involved in the trafficking of a kilo and a half of cocaine. My audacity and some guardian angel made sure that no one in the family found out and that I didn't end up in a reformatory.” (MARÍA MARTA)

The feeling that "everything is a lie", that adult authority is not respectable, only becomes more and more ferocious. Greater skepticism and a defiant and competitive attitude also begin to take shape. The limits have not served to curb gluttony. But limits also have a protective function for people: they delimit the internal territory of security and self-confidence. In his absence, the adolescent Seven conservation will fully develop his strong instinct for self-protection, with the aim of avoiding what he interprets as an atmosphere of constant threat to his survival.

CHAPTER 7; PERSONA AND SHADOW: WHAT IS DESTRUCTIVE FOR THEMSELVES AND FOR OTHERS

Let us briefly recall that Carl Gustav Jung coined the concepts person and shadow to differentiate between the mask -person- with which the human being appears before others, and that which (consciously or not) tries to hide -shadow-: all that content of the psyche experienced as unacceptable and not lived on a conscious level.
In E7 conservation, the person or mask is built around the trait of (self)indulgence. He presents himself as a pleasant person, on the surface gentle but deep down exploitative, in constant search of possibilities, of markets, of self-promotion.

“I can use my trickster side, seducing or with stronger arguments, to convince and carry out some project, and thus get recognition. I have ideas (according to me, very good) in which I will try to involve others to carry them out. Here I understand as a shadow that I do not recognize that deep down I seek my own benefit before anything else. Self-deception occurs if I see that the benefit is for others.” (NÉSTOR)

This non-relationship with the other hides his exploitative character, as well as a schizoid more interested in himself than in the other to the point that this other form of selfishness would be unacceptable to others if it were not compensated by at least an equivalent dose of gallant generosity.
Utilitarianism also disguises itself as friendly relations, but in reality it weaves networks where contact is superficial and has to do with the exchange of favors. In reality, this selfishness is difficult to recognize and has its origin in another great shadow: the disconnection between feeling and thinking. Narcissism arises from the denial of feeling; then empathy ceases to have a place and, therefore, love for the other. From there comes selfishness and opportunism.

“Recognizing myself as selfish without further ado, without justifying myself, has been hard. One part of my child's story learned to survive without the other. This is embedded in my body, and the individualistic attitude is there, even when I catch myself making speeches about teamwork. That's why I think a challenge for my (our) character is to take true actions without looking for anything in return.” (NÉSTOR)

The conservation E7 is a cynic. The disbelief of everything and everyone, mistrust, skepticism, also denote a certain disillusionment with life that is little manifested. There is, behind all this, a tendency to nihilism that has to do with the fear he felt in childhood when faced with the sensation of a threat to conservation, which in turn feeds his permanent insatiability: fill the void with abundance so as not to feel deprived.

“For me, a crazy idea is not knowing what the purpose of being in the world is. I want it all at once, and I don't really know what I really want either, because in the end I don't focus on almost anything, but instead keep trying different things to try to fill the void. I only focus on something when I really feel a clear desire for it.” (SIRNE)

From the mask to the being
The difficulty for contact and the feeling of emotional emptiness is compensated with an intense seductiveness. To the extent that the conservation Seven can spend their lives in games of seduction that remain in shallow-touch relationships (again, not relationships). Depth is replaced by quantity and diversity, with multiple contacts followed by more or less instantaneous withdrawals and a more than evident fear of intimacy, which fits with his usual escapism in compromising situations or that he simply dislikes. Of course, he runs away from everything that makes him uncomfortable, not just emotional pain.
But, beyond the obvious and superficial tricky or seductive behavior, the shadow of the E7 conservation reaches more subtle dimensions. It is someone who presents himself as strong but who is afraid, and hides it.

He also presents himself as apparently satisfied, keeping well hidden a low self-esteem and such a fear of impotence, of frustration that he does not tolerate these feelings in the least. The generalized fear of emotions is, of course, its most intimate, fragile and defended part. His fear of cuteness masks it as cynicism. And he also disguises his enormous fear of depression as cynicism. Something very profound is involved in this, such as contact with the mother's experience of depression, whom she could not save” from her sadness. That is why he also fears relationships, where he often recalls his fear of pain and helplessness that he felt in the relationship with his mother, and that even shakes him the ghost of depression.

All this fear of intimacy is given, above all, by the emotional castration he suffered at the hands of his mother. In reality, it is nothing other than a rejection of maternal love, for he fears being swallowed up and invalidated by her again; to which is added his lack of recognition towards the father, who was not present enough to save him from this invalidation.

The fear of illness (both present and hidden) and even the fear of dying also have to do with this emotional invalidation, and with the ambiguous relationship with the mother. Any emotional pain is amplified and there is fear that it will take on shades of chronic suffering, leading to hypochondria.
Lastly, another very present fear is the fear of being a man, masked by the machismo or misogyny typical of men of this subtype, or the fear of being a woman, masked by the typical masculinity of women of this character.

“Suffering is difficult to manage. I become totally incredulous before life and I enter a kind of emptiness; I keep all my feelings in suspension. To avoid the pain, I move. When I get into a spiral of doing a lot of things and not getting anything done, I know I'm in a stress phase.” (JUSSARA)

Edit
Pub: 26 Jul 2023 18:39 UTC
Views: 185