Emotionality and Fantasy

The Social 1 personality type tends to repress anger, especially in social situations, but this attitude also extends to other emotions. For example, Caroline has a tendency to block her emotions, as she demonstrated by not allowing herself to feel sadness when her grandmother passed away. Instead of expressing her emotion, she spent time cleaning the house and giving instructions on what to do. Antonio, on the other hand, remains unperturbed even in the face of the death of loved ones and, in other cases, redirects his attention to other things in order to diminish the emotional impact. As a child, he used to repress anger and sadness. He felt as if his heart was about to explode, but did not express his emotion, which likely led him to develop a reactive training in which he replaced anger with a smile. Shame was a strong impediment to expressing and communicating with others, both for Carolina and Antonio. They both feared not being able to do it well and that their fragility or lack of intelligence would be revealed. This fear prevented them from asking for help, even in situations where it was needed, such as when they were sick. When Carolina tried to interact with others, the intense agitation and redness of her face often made her give up.

The use of the verb "to manage" to refer to managing emotions seemed like a discovery to me the first time I heard it. I felt that it helped make the "manager" visible, as until then, it had been quite hidden, invisible, since what I did with my emotions was what should be done. There were positive emotions and negative emotions. Among the latter were fear, shame, anger, sadness, and envy. All of them should be fought; at the very least, their public expression. But I believed that it wasn’t just their public expression that needed to be avoided, but the very possibility of their emergence. The mix of pain, sadness, and anger from not getting what I wanted was something that "could not be." "Men don’t cry" was one of the mantras of my childhood and early adolescence. I would say that the strict way of introjecting such instructions is the essence of E1. Likewise, I learned to "manage shame (shyness), fear, and, with much less success, anger." — FERNANDO GÓMEZ

This way of repressing and reworking emotionality diminishes the liveliness of both bodily and verbal expression. Often, the person finds themselves offstage. They also transform subjectivity, strengthening value scales and beliefs, intellectualizing the experience at every moment. In this way, emotions are gradually relegated to the background of rationality:

"I think I feel, or should feel, this or that." "I’ll cheer up later..." "I’ll get excited later." "When I understand this, I will be able to surrender to the pain of loss or the joy of achievement." "When I 'put' this affection between us, I will be able to enjoy it," etc. This psychodynamics is further developed in the chapter on love.

When Antonio was a child, he dreamed of being an invincible, courageous, and just hero who would fight against villains to protect the weaker ones. He was inspired by characters like Captain Miki, a ranger who always triumphed in his adventures alongside his loyal companions Double Ron and Doctor Salasso. Another of his heroes was Nembo Kid, who later became Superman, and who represented his desire to acquire strength and omnipotence to solve impossible problems. These characters influenced the formation of his values and life principles.

One of Caroline's favorite characters was Lady Oscar, a woman raised as a man who becomes a royal guard to Queen Marie Antoinette and, later, betrays the crown to defend the people during the French Revolution. She also admired Highlander, an immortal who, to protect humanity, cuts the heads of other immortals who threaten the extinction of the human race.

Fantasy is a form of universal recognition: "The whole world starts to see how my ideas are correct and appropriate."

For Fernando, if in childhood the ideation was projected onto superheroes with superpowers (the Marvel universe, then only on paper), with maturity, other figures emerged for him. The ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty brought onto the stage characters who embodied their realization. The triad of saint, genius, and hero emerged as the epitome of these ideas. The figures of renowned individuals (Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Confucius, Gandhi, etc.) seemed to orbit in this type of cognitive stratosphere.

In this realm of fantasy, it becomes clearer how a strong idea can slip into its delusional version, into the crazy idea. Ideation becomes idealization, and idealization becomes delusion. Psychiatric literature and popular wisdom warn us about the danger of entering forbidden territory (delusions of grandeur, messianic delusions, or delusions of interpretation).

In general, this character represses creativity because, as a child, they managed to express it in their family of origin, where it was considered secondary in relation to the efficiency of schoolwork. As a result of repressing their emotions and instincts, it is clear that, as a consequence, the child cannot let their mind wander into surreal or fantastic worlds. Perhaps it is precisely because of this repression of fantasy that we often find in these people behaviors of escape from ordinary and disciplined life, double life situations, sexual transgressions, etc., as a performance they allow themselves, which gives them the opportunity to discharge their accumulated energy.

As we have seen, the only imagination the child allows is to consider themselves a candidate for superhero, in service of a "greater cause," in coherence with the idealization of

themselves and of a just world, with little space for any fantasy of pleasure and healthy rebellion.