Childhood

These individuals experienced threatening circumstances in childhood that required an effective action to protect the Being. This protection was achieved by splitting the invulnerable/powerful emotional state of anger from the vulnerable/impotent one of the desire for consolation, so that behavior was guided by one or the other of these aspects, depending on the circumstances. Alternating between these two strategies works like the “pull of the rope”: I protest (and pull the rope) to get attention until the other gets angry, and then I loosen the rope and take a disarming attitude that makes them desist from any vengeful purpose. Fear is the common base from which the two polarities arise: anger (he gets angry because he is scared) and the desire to be comforted (he longs for protection for that very reason). By contaminating conservation, it touches aspects of material life where the individual fears that he will not be able to cope and may end badly.

For me, fear is the feeling that there is no protection, no security, that we are one step away from death, from cold, from poverty, from illness, from abandonment; that no one can save me. I protect myself from the unforeseen, and I never travel without having booked a hotel, and the anxiety of missing the plane reaches such an obsessive intensity that it ruins entire vacation days. For many years, my ingrained fear was that my mother might die.

The Threat of Abandonment

During infancy, fear is often fueled by threats of abandonment from the mother: "If you don't behave, I'll leave you"; and then, "you can't manage without me."

When I was little, my mother used to repeat in an ironic tone (and I couldn't discern what was true in her words) a phrase that deeply disturbed me: “You will look for me and you will not find me”; hinting that one day she would be gone (would she die? laugh?), and that I was going to be in desperate need of her.

These threats of abandonment have the effect of conditioning the child's behavior, who learns to control their needs and impulses:

I learned to suppress my needs and demands to avoid disappointment, even though I was boiling inside. I felt an energy and intelligence inside, an irrepressible, inexhaustible desire to know, to feel, but also a total fear: that of losing my mother. My mother always talked about her own death and its consequences (orphanage, or being left in the care of "that useless" father), provoking in my mind the "crazy" idea that nothing is certain, that everything can disappear in a second, that behind every moment of tranquility and security hides ruin and disaster.

They didn't threaten me with the "coconut," but with: Be careful! If mom dies, you end up in an orphanage, your father won't want to be with you, you'll end up alone. It was the fear of abandonment, of being orphaned.

The Blame

The feeling of guilt is one of the most outstanding features in the life histories of the Self-Preservation 6. It is indefinite, not delimitable, and therefore irremediable, as in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

I have felt a lot of guilt. If, walking into a room, I sensed someone's discontent or bad mood, I would blame myself and begin to think about what I had done to cause it. At school, it was the same: if the teacher had to punish someone, I was afraid it would be me.

In my family, especially my mother, I used to make me feel responsible for her moods: if she felt bitter or angry, the responsibility was mine because I had not eaten enough or had not studied; there must have been something I had done that put her in a bad mood. This attitude of my mother has been the reason for my difficulty in living spontaneously freely, and for my adapted and ingratiating attitude. It was horrible to live with the conviction that my behaviors could harm the people I loved; I felt like I was in an invisible straitjacket.

As a child, I even thought that my actions could have caused the death of my mother, given her precarious health. Carlos Saura, in Cría cuervos, describes this experience very well, with the protagonist girl who is convinced she is responsible for the death of her father, whom she would have inadvertently poisoned with the tea she had brought to bed.

Family Conflict

The fear of conflict is a consequence of the climate, during childhood, of confrontation between two or more members of the family: being “docile” is the only possibility to avoid being involved in a discussion from which one would emerge, he is convinced, “to pieces”:

I saw the open conflict between my mother and my father, between my mother and her mother, between my mother and my aunt, between my mother and my brother: shouting, accusations, and a desire to impose one's own will. This is where the horror of conflict is born, being “terribly docile,” the almost impossibility of punching the table, resorting to force and assertiveness, and being completely opposed to fighting, to direct confrontation.

The Self-Preservation 6 speaks of his troubled childhood in a torrent of words, seeks your agreement with his point of view, and tries to engage in complicity against his family members, hoping that you will give him the thoughts he needs. If you appear puzzled that the situation was as problematic as he describes it, he may paranoidly suspect that you have ganged up with his family against him.

My childhood was marked by the abnormal family situation in which I was born: a totally absent father, and a masculine, authoritarian, castrating, and self-castrating mother, raised in turn by a harsh and ruthless mother. My mother had assumed the parental role, working full-time and being home only a small part of the time. I had a very welcoming, feminine aunt, who played the maternal role, but whose affection I did not feel authorized to reciprocate so as not to trigger my mother's jealousy.

The Past Returns

In his account, one often observes a collapse of time into a focal point located in the present, in which things have always been the same and continue to be. Stories from early childhood are mixed with recent events. Moods from the past are reactivated and influence current behavior.

The world is so terrible that to escape the fear it gives me, I think the only solution is to be good, docile, silent, and in this way, I hope I can avoid my destiny, death, or that total abandonment, that "ending up in an orphanage" that was the main, absolute fear. Do not demand anything. Do not pretend anything. Ask only indirectly. Avoid disappointment. The fantasy is that you don't have to ask the Cosmos for anything because the answer will be: “No.”

Fantasy

Fantasizing is the way to escape from a reality perceived as cold and hostile, and from the feeling of helplessness and loneliness.

I liked comics; I read and reread them. At the age of seven, I began to create my own stories; I told them, but I didn’t write them. I chose the titles of the episodes and wrote them down in a notebook. I spent entire afternoons alone, fantasizing. I played with a ball for hours and hours, or with a cane that I repeatedly hit against the floor. In my fantasies, I was a brave hero, with a group of faithful friends. Love reigned, and the protagonist was the beloved leader of a team of heroes willing to defy Evil and overcome the most incredible adversities.

Mother

The mother often represents a strong model that, especially for the girl, is difficult to imitate:

My mother has always faced everything with strength and a lot of nervousness. She did what was necessary to take care of me, my brother, my grandmother, my father, the house, the groceries, the housework, the receipts... She took care of absolutely everything without neglecting anything. I admired her strength, not physical strength, but mental and psychological strength. I felt much more fragile.

In the life histories of Self-Preservation 6, an attachment to the mother characterized by discontinuity can be seen from the beginning. The word is “deceit,” understood as the unpredictable alternation of approval/support and indifference. This is the origin of the neurotic need for “warmth” — as a search for stability — and the consequent development, as a child, of a pusillanimous seduction (to make oneself loved and condescended to) as an instrument to control unpredictability.

On one hand, the mother who did not grant “permission” to live, who demanded silence, obedience, and school performance. On the other hand, the mother who was impossible not to love, because she was the only parent I had. A mother from whom I could not separate myself, to the point that, during adolescence, I reached an emotional symbiosis, the inability to separate my molecules from hers, as if we were united by an icy but inextricable embrace. My mother, who had been like a father to me, got into my soul, abolishing the limit between her and me, with our voices that are confused — I who am she, she who is I.

I don't love my mother, but I think (I thought) that without her I could only die. Even when reality showed me that this was not the case, when I broke up with her, a part of me feared all kinds of misfortunes caused by the lack of a mother figure.

The Father

The father is introduced in this picture as one of the main causes of the affective intermittence of the mother, who is torn between love for her son and the relationship with her spouse. According to a "classic" Oedipal dynamic, when the father appears on the scene, the mother would not do so, but she is forced to obey a man, "abandons" or "betrays" her son, letting it be understood that if she is selfish (a fable in which all

adolescents believe, coming to hate the father, perceived as the cause of the mother's unhappiness and their own frustration).

The early experience of impotence will form an important basis of character. Passivity frequently manifests itself in early play fantasies, sometimes with sadistic elements. By inflicting cruel punishment on the protagonists, they exercise the feeling of powerlessness in front of their father, projecting their revenge onto neutral characters, since it would be unacceptable for them to admit their strong desire for revenge against their father.

In many stories, the figure of the father is, like that of the mother, unpredictable and inconsistent, to the point of being emotionally threatening:

I saw a person who changes in everything and for everything, who is consumed by nicotine, who loses weight, who is afraid to sleep, who speaks in a chaotic and confused way, but above all, who becomes a danger to himself and the people he loves...

This happened when I was little, and I imagined that this sullen and irascible man, with strange gestures, was not my father but a substitute, a kind of Martian who would replace him for about a month.

The father is perceived as distant or immersed in his problems. Affective manifestations towards him can be limited by a kind of modesty in expressing an affective need, when noticing a distance and embarrassment.

My father is an introverted man, even somewhat hermetic, a lover of reading, politics, and painting, emotionally distant, not very protective.

The father, who should teach the things of life, has a catastrophic vision or lives in the clouds, building castles in the air or fantasizing about grandeur.

My father, in his madness and in the very few moments we met when I was a child, with his magical and romantic idea of the vine, his feeling of greatness, the "Duke of Guarnaccia," a kind of decadent nobleman of whom I was the firstborn, instilled in me this "bottom of the sea" that stops my fall when I plunge into the abysses of despair, this sensation of being blessed by the gods, by luck, predestined to glory. A crazy idea, rejected, the object of a thousand feelings of guilt, but one that has saved me every day of my life.

On other occasions, he is a weak figure that conveys insecurity.

During my childhood, I was docile, smiling, good, and capable; I tried to cheer up my father in difficult moments because I was always afraid that he could get worse and die. This wound is actually an archaic fear of death, not mine but my father's. A good part of my life has been focused on his discomfort.

Often the father “demands” from the child higher benefits than are due.

I have a brother four years older than me; when I was seven or eight, he was already a teenager. Sometimes the three of us played (my brother, my father, and I) and I always lost. Sometimes I didn't understand the rules but, in order to play, I pretended to have understood them.

The image of the couple of parents in the childhood of the Self-Preservation 6 is not solid and happy: although there is no open conflict that has "frozen" it, the mother usually manipulates the image of the father before the son or daughter. In general, the absence of a lived parent as a guide is observed; thus, Self-Preservation 6 spends his life looking for teachers to mediate between him and the world.

Brothers

The relationship with siblings is marked by comparison, actively directed by the parents, and to which they often react with avoidance and passivity. The comparison is overwhelming and a source of anxiety due to a feeling of inferiority and helplessness.

As a child, my brother was rebellious: at school, at home; in some cases, he was very violent even with me, because he was jealous due to the constant comparisons that were made between him and me. When I was three years old, he knocked out two of my teeth with a metal cane "because I wouldn't obey him." I clearly felt that he would have preferred I did not exist, that I stole the stage, and then punished me, but I did everything possible to make him accept me. I followed him everywhere and I think that exasperated him even more. They used to punish him because of his character; I once witnessed a scene where my father was chasing him with a whip (used for horses).

Other times, the perception is that of a preference for the other sibling on the part of the mother. The competition between siblings is a negative experience from which you always lose and, therefore, should also be avoided in life.

My brother was very alert and intelligent, which is why he managed to follow my father in his hobbies, like model airplanes, in which I was a disaster. I felt that I was meant to understand everything quickly to be able to participate in their games, without patience. No one stimulated me to develop practical capabilities, and therefore, discouraged by a precociously “technological” brother, I preferred to read or take refuge in fantasy.

Loneliness

The feeling of loneliness usually accompanies the stories about the childhood of Self-Preservation 6:

I was a "good boy": obedient, perfect in school, very intelligent, with few demands. I would quietly stand aside and read, fantasize; I had two dolls and a shoebox to create my kingdom. My games were very cerebral and manifested a spirit of control. I had built a city of shoeboxes, each with its furniture and its inhabitants, of which I was the King; each time I assembled it, I did it with the same sequence, according to a map of the city that was always the same.

Loneliness originates from the feeling of not being understood, which then feeds the constant desire for a closeness that I lacked in childhood:

I have always liked having friends around, since I was little, and even today, loneliness makes me suffer. I need to establish deep relationships with the people around me and to feel supported by them.

Persona and Shadow: What Is Destructive For Themselves And For Others

Selfishness

A Self-Preservation 6 becomes dangerous to others when, in order to protect himself, he does what he knows best in difficult times: disappear, "evaporate."

When I think of all the times in my life that I "disappeared," leaving others in a disastrous situation, I feel ashamed. I forget about friendship, about each other's needs, even about my debts of gratitude. And I can't honestly say that it's always due to feeling gripped by fear. Many times it has been out of selfishness; admitting it in all its crudeness costs me horrors.

The shadow of Self-Preservation 6, the secret that he does not want to admit, is that behind so much warmth and docility hides the crazy idea that when all is lost, he will be saved; he will take the last lifeboat, the only parachute. In the catastrophe, the one who will be saved will be him because, in some way, it corresponds to him: his whole life has been an exercise in survival. And he will not give up: he will go over everyone's corpses in order to survive.

This is the shady idea because, apparently, the Self-Preservation 6 is docile, warm, a puppy. It is like the animals that play dead or blend in with the environment to survive predators.

If I have to tell it like it is, I must admit that you will not think twice about saving me before the others. Deep down, for what I care! And when I say these things to myself, I get scared of the monster that I feel I carry inside.

An Self-Preservation 6 knows, somewhere in his hidden self, that he would do anything to save his life. But this potential violence is a repressed aspect, the great taboo that must never be revealed. Behind the warmth and docility lies the possibility of harm: that is the great secret, the dark side that, if it comes to light, is the object of all possible feelings of guilt, purely unacceptable.

At times, when I feel stressed and am subjected to injustice or harassment, I think that I really could be a murderer. Sometimes I imagine myself as that ripper who smears the walls with blood. Others, like a large-scale exterminator, cold, lucid, and organized.

Identification with the Adversary

The great handicap of the warm E6 is identifying with the adversary, not knowing how to side with himself, instinctively thinking that the opinion of others is fair, that if someone (especially someone whom he recognizes a certain kind of power) says something, that's what he should do. It is difficult for him to recognize his own power, his right. This is the most destabilizing and invalidating aspect of his character.

The Victim

The "good boy" or "bunny" strategy has the side advantage of not taking responsibility. This character is never expressed directly; he does not reveal what he really thinks, justifying himself internally that it is because of his doubts, but in reality, he is overwhelmed by the fear of being confronted or of making mistakes.

I discovered that it scares me to be right. It's always the same story: if I start to be right and they give it to me, the enemies increase and organize to get rid of me. Long ago, I didn't understand why I was terrified of fires and I couldn't watch movies or read novels that talked about heretics or witches being sent to the stake. Now it is clear to me that if I told the truth, I would easily end up at the stake, and maybe it already happened in a previous life...

When it is time to render accounts, this inhibition allows him to criticize the other or feel like his victim, keeping himself safe from any type of accusation. Let's just say he could easily be

guilty of "omission." This way of proceeding also safeguards him against eventual failures: by hiding, he is not exposed to a "realistic" judgment by others.

As a child, I was very cunning. I knew that my mother's motto (E4 sexual) was not «all for one and one for all» (as she used to say) but «one for all and all for me» (me = my mother). They never hit me because cunning made me avoid slaps. In reality, I received them on a psychological level because she told me: "You are alive... you will retire on time."

In intimate relationships, cowardice leads him not to commit himself and to erect a wall of silence that prevents the other from confronting him. Exposing yourself makes the person next to you impatient, but you have the advantage of ending up "innocent" in the event of a conflict.

Withdrawal as Revenge

The ideal of "non-violence" covers up the fear of exposing oneself with an "ethical" argument about how good those who do not fight are and how evil should befall the violent. The separation between good and evil and fanaticism cover cowardice with a mask of compassion.

The feeling of guilt that constantly accompanies people of this character is a smoke screen that hides a real contact with genuine guilt, understood as the adequate recognition of damage caused to another. The Self-Preservation 6 protects itself with the guilt of the accusations: I accuse myself before you do, and in this way, I disarm you, I take away the possibility of saying something against me. If that were not enough, silence and withdrawal will be the most severe revenge because they take away from the other the possibility of understanding and, by refusing as interlocutors, it is impossible to confront them.

Contempt

Another fundamental aspect of the shadow is the great critical and judgmental component, which the Self-Preservation 6 does not externalize for fear of creating a conflict. Modest and humble on the outside, he hides a contemptuous side towards the majority. It is a head cutter, but it cuts them only within itself, while externally it is docile. Deep down, despite his insecurity, he harbors an omnipotent idea in his abilities. «I could go where I wanted». By not really testing himself to the last consequences, he can maintain this narcissistic illusion, compensating for the frustration produced by adapting to the world.

I thought my schoolmates were a bit "silly" and superficial to assuage feeling inadequate and fear of talking nonsense. She told me that I was superior to them (on the outside, she was timid, good, not very confrontational). I was on good terms with all of them (I was voted "best partner" twice) but there were only one or two whom I considered friends.

The Accusation

Guilt is a constant of this great self-accuser, but the shadow, if it could be seen in all its magnitude, would reveal him as a relentless accuser of the world: nothing that others do is right; everything is wrong and should be redone. Behind the façade of docility, there is a dictator who would submit us all to his orders. Typical of Self-Preservation 6 is a reaction to the accusation in three "acts":

First inner reaction: "Someone must be to blame." Second reaction: "Have I not done something wrong?" Third reaction: I look around suspiciously (to make sure they don't suspect me and to see if there is someone to blame). The self-accuser wants to accuse.

The Power

If at first, the Self-Preservation 6 is dependent and seeks protection, its shadow side creates dependency on the other to obtain power and thus control the relationship, to defend against loss. This implies manipulating, something that is not uncommon in a character used to lying, who thinks that if he tells the truth, he can lose the other.

I think sometimes I get to invade with my maternal attitude. It's like trying (unconsciously) to create dependency on the other to, in turn, feel protected. I shower him with attention so that he doesn't have anything to say about me, so that he doesn't abandon me. This means having the other under control (it gives more security!). And being insistent when I see that something is not going as I suppose it should go.

This is a very denied aspect: The chronic fear of rejection and abandonment develops an enormous desire for possession, which manifests itself in a refined and underhanded way. With his availability and tolerance towards all the whims and incontinence of the other, he never comes to a confrontation but exercises a self-sacrifice and devotion that intoxicates. He goes to the background and foregrounds the needs of the other until they have become indispensable in his life. All this happens in a very subtle, imperceptible way, like a spider weaving its web, in which the other ends up being a prisoner.

Dependence

Nice word to point out someone who, «disguising», created dependency in order to depend in turn. The need for protection was great and the fear of being abandoned was even greater. So, it was a matter of ensuring the presence of the other so as not to feel abandoned! To be good, obedient, trustworthy, even when inside there was a: Go to hell!

The method is gratitude: make the other be eternally grateful to you. For this, he sacrifices himself "heroically", he appears committed; not as a superficial person, but as someone who knows how to accept the pain and sadness of the other and who, therefore, can support it even in the most difficult moments (like Hegel's slave).

This is how a docile person can exercise power over someone very strong; he does not realize what is happening and only much later does he understand that he depends totally. No one else will give you that recognition and submission, which have become a drug. The other's desire to be admired is his weak point.

Aggressiveness

If the Self-Preservation 6 is docile when he is afraid, when he feels "in a safe place" and can express all that part of himself that he normally represses, he is relentless. The inhibited aggressiveness then emerges with all its violence and suddenly becomes ruthless:

There was a lot of fear of expressing aggressiveness within the family. That made me feel powerless. It became bad: for example, if my brother provoked me, knowing that his foot hurt, I was capable of stepping on it. Afterwards, I felt bad... but I had stepped on it.

As Claudio Naranjo says, the E6 does not know that he lives with a crocodile hidden in the toilet: the difference between a "beginner" neurotic E6 and a "worked" neurotic E6 is that, in the case of the latter, the crocodile is already spinning around the house... and the person still doesn't realize it.

The relationship with aggressiveness? Well! This is a serious issue... It becomes fear of violence, fear of that monster that inhabits us and that is the "bogeyman" of our inner world, which is transformed into a certain moment, in preaching non-violence... However, the moment comes when one realizes that one is afraid of fear, and that all that "violence" is just a phantom.

He presents himself as a peaceful person but hides an elf, a provocative leprechaun who mocks the other. It can be very subtle and concealed, and still, hurt. "Sometimes I look like a squirrel with nails," says an Self-Preservation 6.

It is a childish aggressiveness, which sometimes emerges at full power and can transform into violence towards people and objects. What the person denies, however difficult to accept, is the desire for punishment: to hurt those who have hurt them.

Many times I found myself transforming my desire for revenge into a hyper-understanding that sees what is behind the behavior of the other and justifies it. The desire to "make them pay" is transformed into a kind of defensive empathy that prevents the aggressive experience from being activated. Anger is felt as if it were evil and, therefore, its legitimacy is taken away.

The Desire for Self-Affirmation

His avoidance of competition and repression of the desire for self-assertion and success is another aspect of the shadow. The E6 Conservative appears cooperative, but is secretly competitive and wants to assert himself, even to the detriment of others. It is as if a taboo prevented him from confessing it openly.

On the other hand, he would seem to give little importance to the judgment of others, but in reality, he is very picky and can feel deeply hurt, without admitting it because it would be a sign of weakness.

I had a hard time admitting that a disapproving gesture or word, not only from some figure I recognized as an authority, but also from people I didn't think could have an influence on my life, made me feel bad. I used to often spend hours thinking about a word spoken. It was as if that word was always there, in the background, ready to come back to the fore as soon as I finished thinking about other things that had priority at that moment.

Repressed Instinctiveness

The good boy or good girl mask also falls into the sphere of sexuality. Behind its sweet and sentimental appearance, the Self-Preservation 6 represses an instinctive part to which it has access only in certain situations of freedom, where it can allow itself the excesses that it usually controls.

Erotic love is the most lacking and the least lived and allowed in this character, who always lives sexuality in a sentimental context and denies the possibility of living its inner animal, focused on the search for one's own pleasure. It is difficult for them to lose control completely but it is easy, on the other hand, for them to find themselves in risky situations as a reaction to a normality that is too controlled.

The same is true with regard to rules and duty. Unlike the social subtype, the Self-Preservation one hides an antisocial that, if it does not manifest itself, is only for fear of the consequences. However, his transgression assumes tones of rebellion rather than the satisfaction of a true instinctive need. That is why it usually ends in outcomes that confirm the basic idea that he should not transgress because he will be discovered and punished. Since he is neither very skillful nor strategic, and also exaggerates the transgression, the Self-Preservation 6 ends up "caught."

The most denied aspect is explosiveness; I am afraid of it because it could harm me or others. As a child, my vitality was penalized; my parents wanted me to be a good and educated child, and they constantly scolded me when I manifested my instinctive part: I was obliged to be respectful and restrained; they wanted me to stay still.

This is how I learned not to feel my vitality, which later became the sensation of carrying a bomb inside ready to explode. When something happens to me that could trigger it, for example, an injustice, I try not to get angry or I walk away, physically or mentally, and distract myself with other things.