Passion In The Sphere Of Instinct: How Envy Works In The Sexual Subtype

Envious passion, in the sexual subtype, takes on the character of a passion to reclaim what is felt to be lost. It is a claim, a furious cry against those who have talents, qualities, objects, and recognition—things that people who identify with this character feel are their right to possess. The existence of the Sexual 4 is characterized by constant drama, similar to a lover who despairs over having lost their love and can only hate the one who caused them such pain.

This passionate suffering for having been abandoned mirrors what the baby experiences with their mother—the “witch” who left them alone and with nothing. All energies are invested in searching for that lost love.

The Sexual 4 baby is likely to carry a high energy level. They are more noticeable, more lively, more restless, and more annoying than the other envious subtypes.

I am the seventh of seven siblings, with a twin sister (Social 4). In family stories, they always tell how much of a crybaby I was. I was a restless baby, waking up at night complaining, in contrast to my sister, who was barely noticeable. — John Lion

Instead of becoming depressed soon after facing the frustration of unmet needs from the mother, the Sexual 4 invests more energy in claiming the emotional nourishment they need. In this trance, it is quite possible that the baby might bite the mother’s nipple (figuratively or literally), and be reprimanded for it. Faced with a disinterested and emotionally absent mother, the child manages to attract some attention, albeit in the form of reprimand.

On the one hand, like all babies, the Sexual 4 remains undifferentiated from the world and identifies the source of the displeasure (in this case, the mother’s emotional absence) as coming from themselves. On the other hand, the Sexual 4 arouses the mother’s hatred, which they internalize, hating themselves in the process. Identified with the mother and in need of her, the baby incorporates her by “gobbling her up” and begins to see themselves as a monster, bad, or inadequate. Sexual 4 mothers are often highly emotional and unstable—sometimes suddenly distant or humiliating. This ambivalence makes the child

unable to predict their reactions, living in a constant sense of abandonment without being able to understand it. They experience a feeling of injustice for being mistreated, but cannot associate this behavior with any objective event in reality. Sometimes, this sense of injustice is rooted in the difference in the way the mother treats other children. Many reports mention feeling neglected compared to a sibling who is sick or problematic. We can say that the Sexual 4 feels a paradise cruelly taken away.

All this occurs while the baby begins to integrate the maternal function within themselves, which becomes distorted. The Sexual 4 proceeds through the stages of growth and maturation already marked by this damage, and their neurosis becomes fixed. As with all subtypes, this fixed pattern is reproduced throughout development, hindering their interactions with the world. What is specific to the sexual subtype is that it does not turn all the hostility inward, but projects it outward, toward others.

The following testimony exemplifies several aspects developed throughout this chapter:

I am ashamed of being so despotic and inquisitive with myself, loving myself so little, despising myself, denying myself love (what I can give myself and what I can receive from others), and then dragging myself around and begging for it covertly, nothing clear. I do not ask for it or make it explicit because that would commit me. So, I demand love and attention (I’m dying to get it), and if I don’t get it (which is likely because I didn’t express it openly), I unleash my hatred and revenge (all before feeling pain, emptiness, and loneliness). I aim, I shoot, and if I can, I kill. I refine my style. You can go to kill in many ways, and I have style. I don’t kill just any way—what merit does that have? I can be a bitch with a simple eyebrow raise, I can unload all my rage and hatred with the slightest gesture. And here, yes, I feel powerful, indestructible, absolutely sexual, because I will be bad—but how good I am at being bad! In nothing else, but in contempt (both outwardly and inwardly), I’m good. And that turns me on, warms me up, makes me work, lets my hair down. Here, I believe in myself.

The strategy to gain love, even if it is a substitute, has been through an early, unconscious decision to claim it openly in an intense and angry way. Statements such as:

I was very nervous and attracted attention by causing trouble, being capricious and obsessive. I would put on big scenes if I didn’t get what I wanted. Little by little, I specialized in provocation and confronted everyone at home. My reason was clouded, and I went on the attack with my crazy energy, then regretted it. — John Lion

This passion for intensity will shape how the Sexual 4 navigates life—everything below this intensity feels decaffeinated and too dull, keeping them far from their balance and

hypertrophying their emotions. Over time, these emotions will amplify their sense of deficiency.

Regret in this subtype also fuels the passion for intensity. It arises from how badly the E4 feels when the monster they cannot contain emerges—manifesting as rage, hate, or a venomous tongue—and is directly proportional to the pleasure they derive from displaying it cyclically. In fact, it is one of their best manipulation tools.

Competitiveness

The dominant passion in this subtype is competitiveness—an odious desire for superiority tied to an instinctive level. As they develop, learning to suppress their needs and fix frustrations, they compensate by managing hostile components of the aggressive drive, such as rage. This may also be the source of their thirst for revenge, justified by a sense of justice. All of this is linked to an original lack of love stemming from a childhood wound involving maternal love. A woman of this subtype declares:

With competitiveness, I learned to measure affection in a family environment that was not lukewarm. Outside the home, it was the best weapon to combat shame. I competed with my mother, believing I was the only one who understood my father. In this way, I covered up the envy she caused me. Despite her many flaws, I always found her very sensual, and the good sexual energy she had with my father was noticeable.

Envy drives the competition of “me or the other.” They measure their personal value by what is lost or supposedly lost. However, due to the high level of devaluation they use as a defense mechanism, they do not believe they can achieve these things on their own merits. They must get them from a valuable source.

Eroticism and Sexuality

Seducing and trapping others through sex becomes an effective weapon to win them over and defeat them. The following statements may exemplify this:

With men, until I was thirty, I took them to bed to take away their power.

In adolescence, I dedicated myself to flirting with the fashionable boys, to show them that they really were nothing.

At the same time, through eroticism and seduction, they seek to buy love: "With me, you will enjoy a lot in bed."

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They maintain the misguided belief that by giving themselves sexually, they will be loved. This serves as a way to soothe the feeling of lack and mask self-crushing and internal devaluation. The following statement reflects the original motivation for the sexual predominance in the desire for fusion with the mother:

"Through the sexual, I recognize a search for fusion, in which, in that being clothed, there is the element of searching for a mother, even if it is through a man."

Eroticism and sexuality also serve to achieve other valued aspects, such as recognition:

"Back then, my body served me to show off, not gain weight, and dress in the latest fashion. In sex, I was looking for something aesthetic, ethereal, that prevented me from enjoying myself. When I grew up, I slept with men to be the most modern girl in college. The act itself, I think deep down, seemed vulgar to me." — Annie Chevreux

Sexual energy is powerful, captivating, and filling, and, like rage, ensures the desired intensity. Along with resentment, they are the great drivers of this subtype. They handle envy through anger, actually hiding it behind their anger. Instead of admitting envy, they react by disqualifying and attacking what they envy, making it disappear in their eyes. In addition to envy, lack, need, emptiness, and shame are hidden.

"I have had a mixture of anger and shame ever since I was little, although I always angrily demanded that they give me what I considered to be my own." — Cristina Dicucco

As long as they are unable to make the envy they feel disappear, they maintain enormous tension between the painful feeling of not having or being what they envy and the fantasy of a lost paradise. Along with this tension, they hold on to the hope of becoming the envied object. They can indulge in this quest in a voracious way. On the few occasions they achieve what they envy, they later transform it into contempt. Like the rest of the envious subtypes, they cannot value what they get, since nothing from outside can satisfy the original lack of maternal love.

"I tried to be the person I envied with all my strength, very image-oriented, frivolous, with contempt for everyday life, feeling special, skilled at hurting others with words, especially my partner at the time." — John Lion

In many cases, a castrating mother is present, through hyperprotection and the transmission of her frustration:

"When my mother appeared, what she conveyed to me in a glance was her bitterness as a woman, the deep hatred she felt for men. 'Don't be like them, men are only good for hurting women.' That look was also full of tenderness and was accompanied by 'I will always love you like this, being a little boy.'"

And this also contaminates the sexual encounter, whether hetero or homosexual:

"I think I felt like a bit of a man and couldn't compete with them, so an unconscious solution was to seduce them. It was my way of competing and of keeping my mother inside." — John Lion