Passion In The Sphere Of Instinct: How Greed Operates in the Sexual Subtype

The E5 is tormented by the looming fear of impoverishment, which is why they hold back. Greed is this: an unwillingness to offer oneself (dedication, presence, affection) to others. They do not acknowledge the needs of others and live detached from their own feelings and contact with others.

Even so, the sexual instinct, mythologically represented by the Greek god Eros, is characterized, contrary to the passion of greed, precisely by an impulse toward union and the fulfillment of desires and needs, by connection and abundance. It is based on relationships, spontaneity, and openness.

With the sexual instinct, then, the question arises: what happens when the passion to withhold and withdraw from others—with its strong sense of poverty—focuses on the instinct that demands connection, giving and receiving, and above all, gratification and availability?

The presence of these opposing forces creates an internal conflict within the Sexual 5 between contact and withdrawal, between reason and feeling, between mind and body, between excitement and apathy. This polarization is the theme of the Sexual 5, which is the countertype of the E5.

If the priority is the satisfaction of the sexual instinct, we must consider Eros as the main object of greed. A snapshot of the everyday life of a Sexual 5 reveals a withdrawn and distrustful person, wandering through the world halfway between exposing themselves and hiding. They are not as isolated from social contact as other subtypes but will never be found at the center of discussions. They try not to draw attention but still want to be seen in some way. They present themselves in a different and unusual manner but not so much as to make people turn their heads to look.

Withholding the Sexual Instinct

The most evident aspect of the greedy character is a restraint marked by fear, behind which lies the fantasy that letting go would lead to catastrophic depletion. In the Sexual 5, the

fear of letting go is tied precisely to the erotic impulse, which they keep within themselves and reserve for a better occasion, as if it were something to be hoarded. This leads to avoiding encounters that might not be as gratifying as imagined, including becoming emotionally involved in a sexual relationship or explicitly expressing interest in someone.

This is not just about halting action but also about suppressing the spontaneity of the body itself and its natural receptivity, which are what make the "dance" of a relationship possible.

Poverty and the dehydration of vitality are the key traits that characterize E5s. Disconnected from their body and emotionally cold, they conclude that survival involves holding back. They lack the vitality to pursue gratification, leading them to have just enough energy to maintain their resources. They grow accustomed to having the bare minimum and give up on gratification. In the case of the sexual subtype, their most profound experience of impoverishment will be the lack of love, coupled with the physical-emotional memory of lost fulfillment. This, as we will see, leads to a blind and relentless search for the idyll they lost long ago—the ultimate love of the other—and to paralysis, as they live this idyll in fantasy.

"The most decisive contact I could have had in my life was mutilated, it didn’t happen: the experience of my mother’s love. From an early age, I realized life would not have much to offer me, starting with my mother’s milk. Internally, this was seen as something else, but today I’m clear that it was the experience of motherly love I was seeking in the unconditional love of a woman." – Alexandre V.

"Distancing Oneself From Eroticism, Spontaneity, Playfulness… Out of Fear of Losing What? Pleasure. Or Rather, I Am Afraid of Feeling Nothing, of Being Impotent or Not Liking It; That It Might Just Be an Obligation I Don’t Want. This Mark Signifies a Basic Mistrust in the Natural Abundance of Love, Both My Own and That of Others." – Giulio M.

Loving the Other for Oneself: Isolating Oneself in the Relationship

This personality type prioritizes intimate relationships, usually a romantic partner but sometimes extending to a few selected friends or a spiritual teacher. As a result, other dimensions of life are often neglected. (Though some Sexual 5s may prioritize their work or a political cause, making their partner the central focus of their existence.)

As someone driven by avarice, the Sexual 5 wants the other person exclusively for themselves, in a bubble of intimacy that excludes the rest of the world. Naturally, this tendency is most strongly expressed in romantic relationships. The sexually avaricious type seeks a relationship that fulfills their ideal fantasy of love, where they can express themselves completely. It is within the couple dynamic that they aspire to find their safe

haven. Avarice holds them back, while the sexual instinct pushes them into the relationship; the (neurotic) compromise is to isolate themselves within the intimate relationship.

Ideal of Solitude Versus Ideal of the Couple

The lack of vitality drives the E5 to a constant need for solitude, in an attempt to recover lost energy and better assimilate their experiences with others. Human contact is what drains the E5 the most, as they cannot fully process their experiences with others in real time; this can only happen later, in isolation.

"Of course, we end up alone, because we don’t lower ourselves to the imperfect, earthly loves of others or to relationships we deem superficial. That would be a waste of time and energy." – Giulio M.

All E5s nurture an ideal of solitude. Sexual 5s share this ideal but resist it with another: the ideal of a sacred, perfect, almost divine relationship where the other does not make emotional demands. They feel a longing for reclusion and, simultaneously, for loving and being loved.

"Perhaps he didn’t even need the woman there, just the feeling and the confidence of being loved. I felt like Henry David Thoreau, living alone in his cabin at Walden. With his walks through nature, but with a heart as passionate and intense as Nietzsche’s. Those were my dreams when I started studying Philosophy in college: to confront my existential angst and remain on my solitary quest, in seclusion. But I needed to have my girlfriend nearby to give me security and not let me feel the full harshness of loneliness (as long as she didn’t demand too much from me, of course)." – Alexandre V.

Fearing being overwhelmed by their caregivers, children of this subtype protect themselves through isolation but continue to dream of connection, nourishing themselves on crumbs of it—on a mother’s love that, in reality, feels insufficient. The sense of scarcity tied to their lack of vitality is so great that, in adulthood, they sexualize this dynamic, imagining their partner as someone who can give them everything, fill them up, and save them. This justifies the almost divine character they attribute to the object of their desire. This illusory yearning for unconditional and absolute love becomes the source of all their other missteps in life.

Eros in Fantasy

Experiencing the tension between the need for solitude and the desire for a relationship, the most comfortable option for a sexual miser is isolation, satisfying Eros's call for connection through fantasy. Greedy accumulation here takes the form of romantic and sexual fantasies that create a substitute for real relationships. A compensatory overstimulation results in pseudo-eroticism and pseudo-love, pretending to possess love without actually entering into a relationship, experiencing the intensity of Eros independently of contact with another real person.

The lack of vitality to cope with the demands of other couples and the unrealistic nature of the love they seek leads to a strong attraction to a symbolic experience of love. This excess of fantasy, combined with its repression, results in the unfulfillment of desire.

"When I was a teenager, I read many love stories, feeding on them. I lived in a platonic love while idealizing my romantic life, trusting that I would live a unique and perfect romance, marry as a virgin, have eight children, and be a wonderful wife and mother." – Anonymous

Difficulty With Concrete and Real Relationships

Reality is entirely different from their dreams. A humorous historical example of this situation can be found in the Confessions of Rousseau, a famous Sexual 5. The young thinker dreamed of Zulieta, the most desired courtesan in the region, and heavenly luck granted him access to his muse. Full of poetry, he wrote: "Never were such sweet pleasures offered to the heart and senses of a mortal." But, already sensing how inexperienced and incapable he was of realizing his fantasies, fear overwhelmed him. To avoid complete embarrassment, "my eyes opened, and in a survival impulse, I told her that her breasts were slightly mismatched. To which she replied like lightning: 'Dear, give up. Just give up and devote yourself to mathematics.'"

"When he kissed me for the first time, my heart, which had previously been overly vibrant, was no longer present. The feeling was like a strong wind that swept away everything I had imagined. I felt abandoned. I felt like a defenseless child who had just woken up in an unfamiliar place with no one nearby. I wanted, at all costs, to leave and get back to my room as quickly as possible. I can’t even say I was confused or had conflicting feelings because there was nothing. But, finally, once alone again, I could relive my dreams. Honestly, I don’t know how we managed to keep dating." – Maria Luiza F.

However, once the initial challenges of the drama this romantic dreamer finds themselves in are overcome, if they fulfill their desire and stay in the relationship, the Sexual 5 will face another potentially enslaving situation: detachment from relationships that have ended.

The protective restraint against the danger of invasion and usurpation of their "emotional property" corresponds, as a polarity, to an attachment to a regressive state of fusion with the other. It is difficult for them to let go of what has ended, and they may remain stuck for a long time. The end of a relationship is a significant challenge for a Sexual 5: the pain of abandonment, fear of the future, and the weakness that arises from the loss of fantasy create obstacles to facing real life. A healthy approach would be to avoid surrendering to new fantasies in an attempt to ease the pain with pseudo-vitality and instead be realistic.

He First Refuses to Let Something Enter His Life and Then Refuses to Let It Leave

He first refuses to let something enter his life and then refuses to let it leave (even the most toxic): this is the impermeability of greed in the sexual instinct. He lets himself drift with the circumstances of life, waiting for the love that will grant him freedom. The person becomes stagnant, life does not flow, and there comes a moment when what is inside them rots, becomes sick, and thus further diminishes their vitality, creating a vicious cycle of passivity.

"I waited over twenty years for a woman who never came. And during that time of waiting, I found in fantasy and seduction, in alcohol and other narcotics—such as exaggerated sex—a substitute for her, while I continued to wait. I was running at all costs from the responsibility of moving my life forward, and I became stuck." — Alexandre V.

"Until I was twenty-one, I was alone, waiting for ideal love. When I found the woman who embodied the ideal and we became engaged, the relationship only lasted two years; she left me. But I remained obsessively attached to her for the next ten years, trying to bring her back to me. Only then would I feel complete, as though my existence had meaning... I placed my life in her hands." — Piero A.

One of the most painful and difficult traits to overcome in this subtype is the lack of experience of a sense of continuity in life and, consequently, the emptiness of any sense of integrity and duration in sentimental relationships. Here, sex plunges into a silent despair at the lack of meaning, a consequence of the disconnection of its parts.

The Renunciation of Love

The impression of poverty leads the miser to refuse to have and to protect the little they possess: renunciation and retention at the same time. They cling to themselves as compensation, resigning and pseudo-gratifying themselves with the bare minimum.

More challenging to understand is the role of a neurotic self-demand. Perfectionism is insatiable and requires a Herculean effort. But when it comes to fulfilling needs and desires, the ego flips and minimizes them to the point of renunciation. Greed eliminates every positive experience from a person’s life. It tyrannically restricts anything that could be translated into life, abundance, or spiritual peace. The miser not only hoards the little they have but structures their life to sabotage any possibility of abundance and generosity.

And when it comes to the instinct of union, pleasure, and, why not, life, they block those possibilities. The Sexual 5 renounces love and rejects abundance, fullness, and even spontaneity. The inner child is gradually destroyed as they minimize their own life, enthusiasm, and freedom of expression, in a slow and painful agony. At this point, the sexual instinct has become highly dysfunctional: Eros is unrecognizable and works against itself.

The renunciation of greed pollutes the sexual instinct with the pursuit of a fantastic encounter that fits the mold of an idealized other. It’s a form of self-sabotage, where the dimension of relationship, the concrete experience with a partner, is abandoned in an attempt to rise above the human toward the sublime. Inevitably frustrated, they return to resignation and renunciation, confirming their sense of scarcity.

But as the sexual instinct continues to struggle, it returns to the opposite pole, demanding again, and once more it becomes impossible to achieve absolute satisfaction. This is how the conflict perpetuates itself, becoming increasingly insecure, anxious, and fragile—blow by blow, more distant and indifferent.

As Naranjo explains, quoting Karen Horney, a pathological abdication replaces the open hand toward gratification. For this to happen, it is necessary to disconnect emotionally. This way, the person is not affected by events but also does not transform through their experiences, nor learns from them. The Sexual 5 is deeply affected by this in love experiences, where they cannot assimilate or change through their experiences due to the devastating impact love has on them.

"I am very sensitive and vulnerable, and I feel this is a weakness. I am very open to being hurt (perhaps even willing), and with wounded love, I suffer greatly. I become paralyzed in a barren present, internally living a past that wasn’t great, and begging in fantasy for a love I didn’t fully have. Eventually, I end up integrating this negative experience into my self-concept: I embody the wound, the weakness, and the consequent sense that love is dangerous." – Alexandre V.

The sexual dimension is the most clarifying representation of the behavior of a Sexual 5; it reveals the spiritual poverty in which they live. Their interpretations and the consequent wrong decisions are attempts to recover what can no longer be lived (a positive maternal experience). Directed toward the gap they so desperately want to heal, this serves only to perpetuate their condition of begging.

Greed is often understood as the act of holding back and not giving to others. In the sexual subtype, it is the miserable attitude and experience of taking away the little one believes they have to avoid losing it. This prevents them from approaching others and stops others from coming to them and taking away what they hardly achieved.

Now, if I fear and don’t want to surrender, what happens to the impulse for union? The Sexual 5 unconsciously acts on the contradiction between fear and desire. In the tension generated between the passion for holding on and the relational imperative demanded by Eros, the solution they find, no matter how grotesque it may seem, is an "implicit kidnapping and captivity" of the idealized person chosen as the object of their love and devotion. This is a blind spot for the simple reason that the sexual instinct confuses love and relationship with possession and exclusivity.