Childhood

Cold, violence, and loneliness accompany the childhood of people with a Sexual 6 character. Feeling lonely is something common to all of them, even if they have spent all day with their mother or have had siblings. It is not about feeling abandoned; it is a loneliness that comes from feeling like strangers in a world they cannot understand.

What confuses them most is the absurdity of feeling threatened, or even mistreated, by a mother who should love them. They don’t understand it, they search for explanations and find them only by feeling guilty or inadequate. As if that were not enough, a confusion remains in their heads, disorienting them, which they try to resolve with a vortex of thoughts, living with an ambivalence that generates anxiety—between attacking the bad parent or feeling bad themselves.

The Violence

For many of the Sexual 6, it is the mother who throws them into that abyss: she is either violent or emotionally chaotic. Only as adults do many realize their mother's madness, with cases of borderline personality disorder, bipolarity, schizophrenia. (There is also a majority of mothers that are Sexual E4.) We do not want to and cannot generalize, but surely, it has been a chaotic, ambivalent, anxious mother who did not offer basic security.

Since I can remember, anything that came from my nose meant displeasure for my mother. I reacted in a way that I felt was violent, especially since I couldn’t find a plausible reason for that treatment from my mother, who was supposed to love me. Probably, seen from here and knowing her story, my mother felt so much anguish or anxiety that she manifested herself with excessive reactions. But at that moment, I remember constantly thinking that I didn’t understand anything: I didn’t understand what was wrong with my mother, I didn’t understand what I had done that could cause her so much despair. Her words when addressing me were a constant litany of: "You are my misfortune..." "If I hadn't given birth to you..." and the consequent threats to take her own life. (R.)

The father is often absent and submits to the mother. In this case, a reversal of roles is observed: the mother is the man of the house, she has power, and the father is a more "human" point of reference, a more effectively accessible figure. But their physical or emotional absence disorients and deprives the child of a solid, adequate guide to face the world.

In other cases, the father is normative, authoritarian; their values include obedience and discipline. He frequently adheres to fascist or military ideologies or is himself a military man. In the event that the violence comes from the father, we find mothers who are submissive, weak, and devalued by the man. The child feels that they must obey rules that have little to do with their protection; that they rather serve to make the father feel fair and right, at the expense of the son.

Some parents find false strength through alcohol. Aggression and violence come suddenly, and the threat is general, unpredictable.

The child finds refuge and salvation in silence and in the rigidity of the body.

Frequently, and for whatever reason, my mother violently attacked my sister; her fury was so great that I could only corner myself with my hands on my head, praying to God that it would end soon. Crying was also dangerous. (G.)

My fantasy was: If I don’t move, they don’t see me, and if they don’t see me, everything will remain, nothing will change, the world turns, and I with it, always in balance, in eternal, perennial balance, and so on. I will be safe. (J.)

The immobility of the body corresponds to intense inner activity: irrepressible anxiety, alarmed eyes, rapid thoughts. The child learns to control everything, from objects to people. They can recognize every gesture of the mother, especially if it can be followed by a catastrophe. The eyes of counterphobes are like those of flies: they see 360 degrees. A reciprocal control is established between aggressor and victim, in an indissoluble union.

In many cases, there is also the righteous god of retrograde Catholicism that punishes all vital and instinctive movements, demanding blind obedience from children to their parents, and blind obedience from adults to a controlling force that imposes a life of duties and efforts. A non-human religious authority that, above all, punishes pleasure.

The power that the son bears is all-encompassing. Violence does not have precise points of reference, linked to facts that can be understood. It is in the very power of the parent who holds it. The child receives it and tries to respond with force: the body hardens, and the rage inside becomes granite and cannot dissolve. The child begins to learn that they can respond only with violence itself, a violence that will become preventive, like a shield and weapon always ready.

My defense against crazy and irrational power was to attack as a preventive defense, a reaction to any attempt to abuse... I remember it from when I was little; as I developed, the challenge naturally increased. If I think back to the uncontrollable and unpredictable force that surrounded me when I felt its violence... I have always thought that I could have killed her/them, expelled her/them, and now I say that they could have done it with me. (M.O.)

Being strong is also being strong in thought. As if the brain machine were always active to capture the attack and bring order to the emotional chaos in which they live. Emotions freeze, and the brain goes into overdrive.

The only moment of peace was reading, looking at nothing but the lines of a book, dreaming that one day I too would live those lives, or else identifying with the characters so as not to feel so alone in that terrible life. (G.)

Shame and Shyness

Looking at a photo of me from when I was little, I find myself with the shameful and embarrassed look of a girl about seven years old, with a pale and dull face. The eyes, large

as saucers, have a grim or stupefied look. The head, turned to one side and somewhat tilted, forces her to look from below, as if from a very deep depth. (R.)

It would seem that most of the counterphobic E6s have undergone a transformation between childhood and puberty. From small, silent, submerged in their own inadequacy and shyness, they then become aggressive, armored, and talkative. In any case, there is a background shyness ready to come out when they feel exposed. But the child is ashamed of shyness because they feel that it reveals weakness and a feeling of inferiority.

Shame also refers to their origin, to their family. Many report that they have hidden their family situation. They have been ashamed of the madness, poverty, or violence they experienced at home. They have never talked about their parents with friends, they have never invited their classmates over. Their own origin is experienced as an indelible mark that marks them as despicable people. If it were discovered where they come from and where they live, they would be excluded from the world.

In group situations, I imagined that I was not seen, and this placed me in a position of invisibility from which I could stare shamelessly, with impunity. My fantasy had to do with invisibility. My perception was always that I saw and observed everything while I was not seen. (R.)

The Denial of Pleasure

The child learns very early that pleasure, whether it comes from their body or from external sources, is dangerous and can trigger punishment. However, at a more subtle level, it is a force that can disintegrate because it is connected to destructive emotions and madness. Feeling pleasure is similar to the disintegration they experienced in their own skin; they can't afford it because they are too busy surviving.

Masturbation is not an activity that Sexual 6 children remember as something pleasant and possible. The healthy eroticism of the child who experiences their body and that of their parents does not exist, nor does the freedom to play, shout, or sing. The fear of castration is experienced at a very early stage. They don't know their feces, cannot look at them, and cannot let them go, just as they can't let their emotions flow. From a very early age, they manifest constipation problems, which continue in many until adulthood or forever if they do not begin a therapeutic process.

"Sex made me curious, but physical contact scared me: it was impossible for me to even kiss my uncle. The feeling was disgust, but deep down, it was something that could enter me and destroy me." (G.)

Inhibition of Action

These living conditions make them very capable of protecting themselves, but to feel safe, they must restrict their field of action and experimentation. While the Sexual 6 is the most active of the E6 subtypes, their adventures don't go very far and are controlled. They learn not to explore too much what they don't know, whether it be places or people. Shyness is the most prevalent experience, blocking them to the point where they feel they are living a life looking out the window. They look outside, envy those who move, run, and take risks; they would like to be part of those children, but they prefer to watch.

"My parents never let me go on field trips with the school. In fact, I only remember one outing one day, and I remember it quite comfortably, as if something hadn’t gone quite right, with anxiety."

"The prohibition almost relieved me more, because the permit was loaded with threats." (R.)

Waiting for the Future

In this chaos and unpredictability, hope for a better future finds its way. Everyone, from a young age, imagines and waits for the day when they will be able to leave, perhaps also losing hope that anything can change. Being a child is either a great danger or a great misfortune. The only way out is to grow and escape.

Sometimes, hope appears that love can save them (though they don't truly believe in it), but more often, their imagination travels to distant countries, searching for a possible way of life, or they believe that if they continue to escape, the predator won't reach them.

In many Sexual 6s, this hope solidifies during adolescence when their character strengthens, and they find the courage to express their aggressiveness. Some manage to confront the tyrant at home; many begin to live a double life: social, active, and idealistic on the outside; mute, inhibited, and silently resentful at home.

Strength is intertwined with anger, making them feel less scared, less victimized, more willing to withstand the attack, and more respectable as well. It’s as if they need the threatening other to experience strength, allowing them to craft an acceptable and congruent image of themselves in alignment with their experience of greatness.

Passionate about the lives of heroes and athletes as expressions of the physical contraction they felt, they practiced sports and physical-recreational activities since childhood, sublating the energy and violence they couldn't control otherwise. (M.O.)