Emotionality and Fantasy

The Sexual 5 is, above all, a dreamer. Fantasy is the trait that defines them; in every moment of their life, whether happy or sad. It is what connects them to reality, in the sense of preparing them for it. This preparation is the doorway to the real world, but, above all, it leads to the exit of that door; an escape.

Fantasies, in a way, are what determine their destiny, attitudes, defenses, and even their emotions. Because emotion and fantasy go hand in hand: the former sometimes awakens and at other times inhibits the appearance of the latter. Like a true miser, the Sexual 5 struggles to deal with their emotions and needs fantasy as a solution.

"I remember exactly the day I discovered the role of fantasy. It was a Sunday afternoon; I couldn't have been more than ten years old. I was afraid to go into the house because my father was drunk. He was also bored, with nothing to do. It was then that I realized that what I dreamt freed me from fear and monotony, and even brought me some joy and comfort." – Alexandre V.

As we've highlighted, in this sexual subtype there is a paradox between abstinence and the need for emotional expression. They also constantly alternate between fantasizing and trying to feel, something so difficult for them that they develop the ability to create artificial emotional states, maintaining them at a bearable level. And when they realize they are barely alive, they plan the impossible: this absolute love. Which, therefore, is a new fantasy, like a homeostatic regulator of the psyche, serving both to warm a cold emotional life and to cool the emotional chaos, the result of physical distance and the tyranny of the intellect.

And of all the fantasies, the ones with the most energy will be the romantic ones. Thus, the fantasy that emotional intensity would allow for a meaningful experience with others

stands out. Here, they confuse the free flow of affection with excitability. Closed off, they need excitement to feel. Since their body is rigid, they need something to awaken them. Eros, having no feeling to attach to, tries to produce something akin to emotion: they get excited randomly, like a dynamo that produces energy but has nothing to connect to.

"When there is any joy, it quickly ends, and depression returns. With anger, it’s different: I feel like it’s so strong that I’ll explode if I dive into it; I’m afraid of anger." – Alexandre V.

"It’s like exaggerated emotionality feeds fantasy, and fantasy makes emotions even more intense. When emotions emerge, they become completely chaotic." – Mara G.

There is confusion between joy and euphoria (excitability); as if an excessive emotional state would bring true satisfaction. Excitability is the polar opposite of vital minimization. The person is not connected to their inner joy, is not playful, and is not interested in life’s simple pleasures. It is difficult for them to connect with the joy of the body. They are linked to being loved by a chosen person. And as for "negative" emotions, the Sexual 5 sees them as destructive.

There is, even deeper and unconsciously, the fantasy that the unattainable is what will nurture them. This is the basic assumption, the one that determines the plot of the Sexual 5’s search and illusions.

Let’s move on to how this character deals with their specific emotions. To begin with, they withdraw emotional expression to camouflage the fear of abandonment and rejection (which, for a Sexual 5, points to the fear of death); a retreat that leads them to experience their emotions in a platonic way. A "shame of affection and distrust of spontaneity" reveals that they don’t trust their own feelings.

"When I manage to expose what I feel, especially a manifestation of tenderness or affection, I realize it’s very different from what I imagined. Things seem much more beautiful and alive here, inside me. I oscillate between the arrogance of not being vulnerable and the shame when I am surprised by a slightly stronger feeling. I can’t access emotions in a balanced way, and when they come, I don’t have much control." – Alexandre V.

In their nostalgia, the Sexual 5 lives tied to the past and is emotionally nurtured by memories that are not always accurate, even feeling what never even existed.

One of the characteristic dreams is to love and be loved. They manage to feel abundantly loved and cherished in fantasy to avoid seeing their harsh reality: they loved little and allowed themselves to be loved little.

Moreover, when they fall in love, the extremist fantasy is that their love is so intense that nothing could be greater. These fantasies of intensity differentiate sex from the other two subtypes of greed.

Tendency

"I can only truly express my tenderness towards my children. With my partner, I expressed affection at the beginning of the relationship. After that, it faded, though I thought I still loved her. After showing tenderness to someone, sadness immediately follows." – Maria Luisa F.

Rage

"My anger is completely suppressed; when it comes out, it can be dangerous. I suppress the anger, and it returns to me. I express it through destruction and self-sabotage of vehicles, beyond vengeful distance. There is an uncontrollable monster inside me, and I can’t direct my gaze toward it."

Pleasure

"I have few memories of what gave me pleasure as a child. What I had fun with were my fantasies. In adolescence and adulthood, alcohol made me uninhibited, and the guitar attracted attention. They were moments of intense pleasure followed by depression the next day. Later came reading, movies, and meditation as pleasures, but this time nothing too intense." – Alexandre V.

"With my childhood friends, any childhood game entertained me, there was no issue with pleasure. But since adolescence, after a romantic disappointment, I saw life as meaningless, without any pleasure. Today, my two pleasures are meditating and reading: I feel pleasure alone."

Sadness

They escape sadness and go toward boredom.

Boredom

Boredom is the most present feeling in the other vital dimensions of a Sexual 5. Their disinterest in the world in favor of a restricted relationship, the little energy invested in other circuits of life, and, ultimately, the absence of life in those areas only results in monotony and discontent.

Once again, fantasy is the escape from boredom and aridity. Routine is impregnated with fantasies of adventure and ambitious projects. Because getting bored becomes a dangerous experience.

"I try to escape immediately when boredom sets in. I feel like it’s the 'prelude' to my despair. As if it leads me to something I’m not in a position to see, to realize the total delirium upon which I’ve built my life, throwing away everything essential and keeping only the pieces I nurture." – Mara G.

Fear

Fear is the central emotion of all mental characters, and the E5 manages it like the others: by dividing the emotional and bodily experience of consciousness. It remains as a state of anxiety that tries to calm itself by producing ideas, emotional coldness, and low energy. Only when they begin to work on themselves and mobilize their instincts and emotions do they encounter fear—overwhelming, with a fear of life.

"My greatest fear is reaching the end of my life and realizing I’ve been chasing illusions, and now there’s no more time." – Alexandre V.

Childhood

"With my childhood friends, any children's game entertained me, there was no problem with pleasure. But since adolescence, after a heartbreak, I saw life as meaningless, devoid of any pleasure. Today my two pleasures are meditating and reading: I take pleasure in being alone."

The Beginning of Life

It is a difficult beginning of life, with physical fragility and early suffering. There are high-risk pregnancies with threats of abortion and moments of despair for the mother. The Sexual 5 lives with little motivation to live.

"When I made the timeline on the SAT, I saw myself before being conceived and felt it was a punishment, an imposition to have to come to the world, something that, even before I started to exist, already required a lot of energy." – Mara G.

The lack of motivation is largely caused by this difficult beginning of life. It is most common to find a Sexual 5ly devitalized since childhood.

"Firstborn, I was born in Milan, after a very difficult pregnancy during which my mother had several abortion threats." – Piero A.

"I was born with strength, and my parents denied it; they told me it was a normal delivery, without complications. However, in the rebirth experiences, I always found it difficult to 'be born'; I felt very weak when it came to 'overcoming the barrier.' Only recently did I learn that strength was necessary. The fact is that I almost always give up on my projects in the end, and I have a strong fear of attachment, especially emotionally." – Alexandre V.

One interviewee recalls that her mother fled from her husband – the alcoholic and violent one – whom she was afraid of, along with three small children, one of whom was pregnant with her. She attempts suicide while pregnant with Vania, and this future Sexual 5 will spend several days unconscious.

"I was born very small (just over 1.5 kg); according to my mother, it seemed like I wasn’t going to ‘defend myself’ (survive), that I wouldn’t succeed. She wasn’t in a condition to breastfeed me. She ended up giving me cow's milk, which my body rejected. I had serious intestinal problems, almost died twice. They even placed a candle in my hand (commonly in rural Brazil, when someone dies) twice."

The weeks after birth, therefore, also show trauma and suffering: withdrawal from breast milk, diseases caused by neglect, and abandonment by the mother, imminent contact with death.

"At three months they cut off my breast milk, and I was left in the care of nannies, fed with powdered milk. At ten months, my caregiver gave me spoiled milk. I had acute dyspepsia and almost died. I spent several days in the hospital, drinking milk serum and trying new kinds of milk. I realized it one day while receiving an abdominal massage; the masseuse seemed very distracted and negligent, with no contact with me, and there I returned to how I was cared for in childhood." – Alexandre V.

"I was born with a dislocated hip. My parents didn’t notice until I was one year old. I attribute this experience to my constant feeling of not being ready (like someone who doesn’t want to be born yet because they still have a piece to complete) and the certainty of not being seen." – Mara G.

"I have a bad memory of the 1st and 2nd grades of Primary School. The constant emotion was sadness. Looking back, I seem pale, withdrawn, and full of fear. I think being so sick and delicate was nothing more than the consequence of my inner fragility. With a constant feeling of confusion, I felt permanently exposed, naked." – Piero A.

If the motivational base of a Sexual 5 is their lack of vitality, the most frequent situations in their childhood include contradictory traumas of abandonment, invasion, feelings of not belonging, inadequacy, poor separation from the mother, disorientation, insecurity, castrated aggression, and loss of trust. Let’s look at them.

Feelings of Abandonment and Excessive Care (Invasion)

A great anguish for the Sexual 5 arises from the contradictory experience between the extremes of abandonment and invasion. It creates a conflict between wanting an exclusive, closed love versus the desire for isolation.

"My two earliest memories are scenes with that cast. In the first, I’m on the floor with a comic book in hand, which I used to distract myself; my mother, a few meters away from me, standing, enjoying cooking. It was like seeing the person I wanted to be with from a distance. I started walking around the age of three. I feel like I am always learning to walk. Being in a cast, my brother was born. If my contact with my mother had been interrupted by hospitalization and physical contact, due to the cast, with my brother’s birth, things got worse. My reaction to seeking attention and love was to get sick, I started having bronchitis outbreaks." – Mara G.

Intrusive care and disrespectful invasions brought them the feeling of not being seen, along with the danger of being crushed.

"My mother is too dramatic, and that shaped my inner division. I wanted her attention when I was sick, but her care was unbearable. I remember getting sick, and the pills were placed in my throat, one after the other. Also, the use of very hot medicines on my skin. It was torture. Once it was a huge display that she was a jealous mother having a 'sick' daughter, she kept me sick. When I finally managed to escape and run to play, if someone hurt me, I would remain silent to avoid their interference. I remember hiding serious things I experienced so that she wouldn’t invade me." – Mara G.

"No one noticed that I had poor vision, so when I wore glasses, I was already nine years old." – Michele C.

Fear and Violence

The retention of emotional expressions and the increased feeling of having few rights in life are due to premature causes.

"I remember the cold in the house where I was born and grew up. The fear of the cold, the restlessness of the night, the fear that something might be there to watch me, judge me. And, feeling guilty, I asked the invisible presence, 'Please, don’t do anything to me.' I didn’t sleep, pressed into the bed so that my body wouldn’t be seen, losing weight, hidden under the beds. I piped in bed." – Michel T.

"I have no memories of my first years of life. The first (just under three) is my mother hitting me because I didn’t turn the record player (she didn’t know how to place the needle arm in place and didn’t want to ruin the vinyl). She locked me in the dark. I huddled in a corner, cried a little (never again, since then), my head exploded, and I felt something strangling my throat and preventing me from making sound, falling into the void." – Michele C.

Let’s see more consequences of the violence and fears suffered prematurely:

"Until I was one year old, I cried a lot. I was reading Alexander Lowen about an old method to make the child stop crying: the child would be locked in a room all night, alone, two or three nights, crying nonstop. The method worked because the child stopped crying as a defense mechanism to literally not die. When I read this excerpt, I cried convulsively without knowing why. I found out years later that my parents used this method on me. And it worked: I didn’t cry anymore until thirty years later, when I took the SAT." – Alexandre V.

Feeling of Not Belonging

The E5 feels they do not occupy their body, which comes with the anguish of not knowing how to position themselves. It’s a sense of strangeness, as if coming from another world and the human environment being full of unknown beings. This experience makes their way into the family, where they never felt welcome, not even physically, and the bonds were fragile and distant. Although they had an emotional mother, her emotional instability installed, on one hand, the fear of emotional chaos and defense in internal withdrawal, and on the other, an anxious dependence to control the fear of abandonment.

"I didn’t have friends at school, I was kind of an alien." – Mara G.

"I was a calmer, shy, focused child, and tended to isolate myself and play alone. I felt different from my siblings, who were very lively. I didn’t keep up with them and always stayed at home. I had the fantasy of escaping from there, from that house I never felt a part of." – Alexandre V.

In The Future, It's Hard For Sexual 5 To Experience Normal Interaction

In the future, it is difficult for the Sexual 5 to experience normal interaction and they feel like they don’t belong to their family or to the world in general. "The song from The Ugly Duckling stuck with me: 'I will go far, this is the sad truth, maybe I will find peace and happiness alone.' I wanted to escape that environment. I was almost always in my room; cold, sore throat, pain in my throat, cough, cold." – Michele C.

"I've always preferred having a room just for myself. I insisted with my parents. By the time I was twelve, it was possible. And when she was home, she spent most of her time inside, not interacting with the family. She read and made plastic things, with cuts, paintings, and various materials. I came to sell some of the things I made, people liked them a lot. I spent my time creating in isolation. I also learned guitar from a nun, but I played very softly so no one could hear me." – Maria Luisa F.

"I was going like a dance for years between my house and my aunt’s house, feeling like a bother and inconvenience in both places, a burden, and even for the air I breathed (little), guilty for being different, strange (my mother would tell me many times: 'But why aren't you like the others?') She was homeless, a being without a home, without a family, without a place." – Michele C.

At Three, I Started Going To Kindergarten

At three years old, I started going to kindergarten. On the first day, my mother's departure was tragic. Every time she was about to leave, I burst into tears and threw myself back into her arms. I even vomited. I think the problem was that I was slow to understand things, and a huge distrust of my abilities was growing. *On Saturday mornings, there was a naval battle with the boys A. We moved to their class, the coordinates were drawn on the two blackboards, and then we played one class against the other. While all the children kept raising their hands shouting 'B6!' 'A7!' 'C9!' I could understand the mechanics of the game and could not give the coordinates to hit the enemy ships. This game was a metaphor: I was struggling to find the coordinates in the world, it was as if I didn’t have the data to guide

me. The less I understood, the more I isolated myself. I felt less awake than the others, less intelligent." – Piero A.

Castrated Aggressiveness

The lack of emotional expression includes, of course, aggressiveness. The Sexual 5 does not express it or allow healthy aggression: they sabotage their projects and direct their anger inward, in a self-destructive process.

"A silent and unconscious anger, never fully declared to myself or the world. Inside me, there was a deep unease, a rooted evil of existence. To get out of apathy and fill the emptiness, I sought intense sensations in music and sports, as if they were drugs." – Piero A.

Nature

In nature, the Sexual 5 manages to connect with the "magic" of life. In its silent beauty, which asks for nothing in return, it is the ideal environment for this character. Already as a child, they feed off plants and animals, transferring their need for safe, non-invasive, and stable contact there. They find in nature the possibility to hide and disappear and satisfy the need for space and romantic emotional contact.

"In the countryside, where my aunt lived, I spent my days hanging on tall grass, geo-observing insects and plants, listening to the sounds of nature in complete silence. And climbing trees, catching snakes, sliding through the darkest places, without fear." – Michele A.

Introspection

Since childhood, they have been an introspective and silent observer, living in fantasy instead of concrete life.

"My mother used to refer to my usual behavior as: 'He doesn't talk, but he looks a lot.' Opening up to a smile was rare; laughing, almost a miracle that surprised everyone." – Maria Luisa F.

"I lived much more as a spectator than as an explorer of life." – Mara G.

Loss of Trust

The experience of many Sexual 5s has not been respected in their intimacy. We find uncomfortable or cruel mothers who penetrate them with disdain for the child's feelings and ridicule the child’s need for a private space. This intrusion feeds the need for refuge and the crazy idea that another person is dangerous.

"The affective and material precariousness marked my character, leading me to isolation, distrust, lack of compassion, and extreme selectivity in the world of relationships." – Michael C.

"The trust I had in my mother was lost during my childhood. But the remnants of the small bond I still had with her disappeared at the age of eleven. My father disappeared from home for a month or more. My mother would become desperate, and I would become very scared. One day, I was playing football in front of my house when she called me to talk. She started shouting accusingly: 'You're a child who doesn't take care of me, doesn't show affection, you only live for yourself. You don't help me at home, you don't help me take care of your siblings, I have to do everything alone.' At that moment, I felt something fall from my heart to my feet, as if my soul had left, leaving my body and falling to the ground. From that moment, I completely distanced myself from her and my siblings, leaving me with the guilt of not taking care of them as I 'should' when I was eleven. A few months later, I definitely lost the trust I still had in my father. There was a Sunday lunch with family and friends at home. Around five, I went to take a shower to go to mass with my grandmother. I was undressing in the bathroom when an older woman asked me to open the door; she wanted to urinate. I told her I was going to take a shower and was naked. She said she wouldn’t look at me, to which I replied that I was embarrassed. Then my father knocked on the door and told me to open it. I put on a towel and opened it. He then took me to the room where all the guests were, and he took my towel off, leaving me naked in front of everyone." – Alexandre V.

Emotional Disengagement with Parents

The emotional bond with the father is of an avoidant and distant type. He has been emotionally and physically absent, with whom he did not have contact or shared experiences, and from whom he often learned to withdraw from the relationship as a defense against invasion. It is a father who "leaves the child in the hands" of the mother, thus preventing the resolution of the Oedipal conflict, which involves the separation of the child from the mother.

"I had a moment of contact with my father when he picked me up, thinking I was asleep, to take me to bed. I pretended I was asleep because I thought that if he saw I was awake, he would make me walk. I remember that very pleasant contact in his arms, and the result of pretending to be asleep to receive that pleasure." – Maria Luiza F.

"The only memory I have of happy contact with my father was when I was five years old, when I received my black belt in judo. He hugged me and pulled me, as if I were a trophy to him." – Alexandre V.

The Mother Is A "Very" Present Person

The mother is a "very" present person who asks the child to fill her existential void. She suffers and, focused on herself, implicitly or explicitly demands that the child deal with her loneliness. She expects him to be her companion, a friend, or a partner who finally guesses her pain and need. She conveys the message of being a special person to her at the high cost of being crushed and dominated.

"I remember my mother, beyond the humiliations, the invasion. She used to fill my plate, forcing me to finish everything, lent my things to my cousins, and raised my hand many times. I have no memories of hugs or any other kind of physical contact with my parents; no dialogue." – Piero A.

"The first part of my life was without love. A depressive, invasive, hyper-controlling, devaluing mother, who showed her rejection of me in various ways, including violently both verbally and physically. And a completely absent father, who at one point 'left' my mother with me to seek fulfillment elsewhere; although he didn’t break up the marriage." – Monica C.

"My mother often yelled and was rude, harsh, she even hit me. My father, on the other hand, was very calm. He was affectionate but also very inhibited. He kept everything inside and rubbed his stomach in silence; I never heard him yell or express his anger. He suffered inheritance from my mother, who sometimes attacked him publicly, even in front of others. He didn’t respond or defend himself, and I felt great humiliation. So, I learned from him to stay silent, without reacting. Especially because a feeling of shame overwhelmed me, because every time I expressed a need or let out an emotion, my mother made my mood public for everyone present in a loud voice. I felt exposed, naked. It was impossible for me to defend myself. Everything I said could be used against me, and I soon learned that the best strategy was to hide and show fake calm. My disregard was appreciated and encouraged, so I began to wear the mask of the little wise man who is not touched by anything. Getting angry would have been a sign of unforgivable weakness." – Piero A.