Emotionality and Fantasy

The Sexual 4 resorts to fantasy as a defense mechanism against what they often experience as boredom. This theme of boredom is pervasive in this subtype. They have great difficulty living with the ordinary aspects of life, especially because they feel that normality prevents them from feeling “special and different.”

What grace and intensity are there in the plain moments of everyday life? The answer is none. A simple, routine life has no meaning. There is a significant phobia of routine. In the face of the ordinary, the Sexual 4 acts in a counterphobic way and rebels. An example of this can be seen in the following story:

He worked in an office and had to come in at nine, just like everyone else. Every morning, when he arrived at the subway entrance, he couldn’t put the token in the grinder. He saw the crowd, like obedient sheep, and had to rebel every day. He waited for everyone to pass, lost a meter or two, and when there was hardly anyone left, he put his token in and passed. He was different. He didn’t like sheep because they had obedient faces and because they all passed by on the same side. — Cristina DicuZzo

Fantasy allows the Sexual 4 to escape the monotony and distances them excessively from reality, making it difficult for them to recognize facts and concrete interactions, particularly in conflict situations. Their intense emotionality is sustained by fantasy. With the help of fantasized thoughts, which often resemble a movie where they are the protagonist, the Sexual 4 can suddenly find themselves in heaven or hell. They may cry the bitterest tears (which have a sweet, melancholy aftertaste) or visit paradise, where they reach the ultimate experience of total love (but always in the future, of course).

If I felt depressed, I would play music for the occasion, ending in drama. If, on the other hand, I felt euphoric, I would play music that heightened the euphoria, all alone at home, sometimes imagining someone was watching me. The important thing was to feel that I was alive and not feel the boredom of everyday life. — Cristina DicuZzo

Fantasy is often linked to a lacking past and present, with a future in which love will finally arrive: love as a couple, erotic love, which will also represent and fulfill the roles of a good mother and father who can provide unconditional love. They imagine that one day people will recognize them, they will give them everything, or they will return what was unjustly taken from them: the lost throne. In this subtype, there is often a strong sense of kingship that was taken away too early and unjustly.

In my youth, I remember many times imagining situations. It was that imagination that gave me drive and strength to continue living. The future would be better, love would come, above all. In some secret place, there was someone who would discover me. It was for that someone that I cooked, got ready, kept the house in order, etc. When I moved away from that fantasy, I could enter periods of disorder, personal carelessness, etc. I remember once being in great sadness or melancholy, spending days on the street looking like a real mess, praying that no one I knew would see me.

One difference between the intensity of the Sexual 4 and the E8 is that the E8’s search for intensity is more visceral and concrete, and less related to fantasy: “This has to be mine, and it will be.” The Sexual 4, however, is overwhelmed with emotions to the point of feeling possessed by them, while the E8 seeks sensory intensity. The E8 takes what it wants, and the Sexual 4 is satisfied by imagining that they earn it through their own merit. If they had it, they wouldn’t know what to do with it and might even reject it. This is because they don’t have an internal reference for deserving what is good, making it difficult to recognize and value it.

For example, fantasizing about platonic love, including eroticism and romance, may be enough to feed this need for emotional intensity. However, if that love goes from platonic to real, there may be a loss of interest in the once-desired object.

In childhood, the fantasy of being adopted or not being a biological child of the family, believing that there are better parents out there looking for them, is common. They imagine that when these parents appear, life will become wonderful. Even without resorting to adoption as a fantasy, they often desire that someone will appear who is better than their actual parents and will rescue them from the degraded or shameful environment in which they find themselves. Common statements include: “I console myself by inventing that my true life is somewhere else.”

There is much wasted fantasy, which often seems preferable to reality. This can lead to withdrawal and seclusion, where the individual may feel they live better because there is more hope there than in accepting reality as it is. The latter would require taking responsibility to change it or accept it. Through this fantasy, the Sexual 4 may develop a passion for reading, cinema, etc., entering a foreign world where they can feel like the protagonist of numerous stories. This facet likely fuels the creativity and artistry characteristic of this subtype. They tend to have a predilection for movies and music that evoke melancholic states, to which they can exclusively resort to cry.

When I was a teenager, I watched a movie in the cinema that moved me so much. It was tragic: she died, and he was devastated. I couldn’t cry in the cinema because I was embarrassed to be seen. After a while, they aired it on TV. I locked myself in my room, and as soon as the title appeared, I started crying and didn’t stop until it was over.

Within the fantasy aspect, there is the catastrophic and dramatic tendency characteristic of this Enneatype. In the sexual subtype, we observe catastrophic thoughts of misfortune happening to someone dear, which can plunge the individual into an intense emotional state as if it had already happened. They may experience pain and despair, crying without understanding why. However, this tendency is shared by the other E4 subtypes. What characterizes the Sexual 4 is the intensely dramatic externalization of feelings.

As mentioned earlier, the E4 has a passion for discussion and verbal confrontation. Sometimes, this happens at an imaginative level, with long internal conversations with others (usually enemies at the time), filled with great detail and reactions. In general, sexual Fours allow themselves to visualize defeating their adversaries in the most dignified way. Only when they consider the victim’s stance do they let their opponent win in their fantasy, at which point everyone cries for them, and that helps them calm down. Vengeful, elaborate, sadistic, violent, and all sorts of fantasies have also been observed. These fantasies are typically not acted out or are only carried out in a different way than imagined. They may manifest as attacks, explicit conflicts, or manipulations aimed at creating hostile environments.

It can be inferred that, although the Sexual 4 belongs to the triad of emotional Enneatypes, there is a significant amount of mental activity in this subtype, which feeds emotionality.

This means that true emotion may not be genuine but instead has an element of invention and inflation. For this reason, managing emotions is essential. The Sexual 4 cannot bear to feel pain because it leads them to a state of fragility and frustration that they cannot tolerate. This makes them feel vulnerable and inferior, dependent on someone they don’t trust. As a defense, they immediately respond with rage, which helps them feel strong, especially in the eyes of others, who will not be able to cause them more pain. The rage becomes a powerful motor that, if not channeled, overflows into hate—an intense, addictive hate that temporarily satisfies them and makes them feel potent.

The feedback loop of hate leaves no energy to shift away from it. Any source of dissatisfaction is seen as foreign to them, with the resultant outward hostility expressed as rage. This anger, transformed into hatred, aims to destroy the object of desire or frustration. Through the fantasy of destruction, the E4 contains part of their anguish in exchange for feelings of ambivalence and guilt.

The memory of helplessness and awareness of their dependence have created mechanisms to manage the anguish of unmet needs. These unpleasant states block access to loving feelings, such as tenderness toward themselves or others. The energy spent on demands is perceived as worthless, leading to self-devaluation. The Sexual 4 despises victimhood and the crying they associate with weakness, fearing it would leave them defenseless and without aid. This results in anger toward themselves for being the source of their own frustration and dissatisfaction. This hostility is also projected outward, leading to a belief that they need help, but no one provides it. The Sexual 4 turns hate into a centripetal and centrifugal denial of love.

Detecting their own needs causes discomfort. As a result, the Sexual 4 feels depleted and chronically empty, unable to retain energizing stimuli from the outside. There is a constant, insatiable demand that is never satisfied. The inability to retain what they receive leads to envy. They feel pleasure in denying themselves, because if others saw them as they truly are, they would not love them, making them feel unworthy. This conviction is tied to an aristocratic attitude, a strong ambition, and a desire to stand out and be special. This structure does not allow for crying or victimization, which they consider beneath them.

The Sexual 4 is further removed from their true emotions than they realize. This distance is often addressed through personal introspection, though it is not easy to recognize.