E6 Equivalences In The Academic World: Self-Preservation, Sexual and Social Subtypes

DSM - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

The DSM, the manual of the American Psychiatric Association, describes the criteria for the classification and diagnosis of mental disorders. It has reached its fifth version, but here we refer to the DSM-IV-TR version.

We can draw a parallel between the Enneatypes and the personality disorders in the DSM. These differ from clinical disorders in that they are egosyntonic, meaning the person views the symptoms as personality traits.

The concept of disorder is already overcome. Personality is formed from childhood to adulthood, which is why it is more accurate to speak of a "personality type." As for the concept of neurosis, it has disappeared from the DSM categories.

APA, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV-TR, Masson, Barcelona, 2002.

In Claudio Naranjo's model, the Enneatype identifies a character neurosis, or a passional nucleus, which forms the foundation of a type of personality, beyond the pathological symptoms. Passion, in the psychology of Enneatypes, corresponds to a basic neurotic nucleus, and we can recognize in a disorder its dysfunctional extreme.

Personality traits reflect salient aspects of the way of perceiving, relating to, or thinking about the world. A personality disorder is a pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates from the expectations of the individual's culture, and it is generalized and inflexible. It is stable over time and causes discomfort or disability.

Paranoid Disorder We can assimilate the three subtypes of E6 to paranoid personality disorder, which is part of group A: weird or eccentric patients. It is a general picture of mistrust and suspicion that leads to interpreting the motivations of others as potentially hostile.

The paranoid person reads hidden, humiliating, and threatening meanings into reproaches, and in the face of benevolent attitudes, they tend to feel harmed or exploited, doubting the reliability of even those closest to them. Attentions are often misinterpreted, and they are unable to forget offenses or injuries, which generate great hostility for a long time.

Specifically, in the Sexual 6, there is a quick counterattack and an angry reaction to the perception of hostility or insult.

The paranoid feels pathological jealousy and may imagine that they maintain absolute control of the intimate relationship through their mental reconstruction of cause-and-effect links, so they are not fooled.

Without trust in others, they become self-sufficient and feel very autonomous. Their hypervigilance of potential threats leads them to a suspicious, mysterious, and twisted behavior, giving the image of a cold person devoid of tender feelings. Although they appear objective and rational, they often exhibit aversion and stubbornness.

Research on paranoid patients is scarce. Various authors argue that paranoid disorder mainly arises from a chronic lack of confidence, often linked to family abuse.

Cameron underlines how these people carefully look for, and end up finding, minimal negative signals from others, reacting accordingly once the threat has been unmasked. A typical trait of paranoid patients is the constant feeling of threat. These characteristics are common in the life histories of E6.

Million classifies the paranoid into three subtypes:

• Narcissistic paranoid: With a substantial social skill deficit, they were raised in an environment that denied their disorder, iatrogenically reinforcing their ability. They assume a style of contemptuous omnipotence. • Antisocial paranoid: They have lived in a threatening and violent environment. They reject rules and contact with others. They engage in constant conflicts with authority figures or hierarchical superiors. This profile is more aligned with the Sexual 6. • Compulsive paranoid: These are the patients Freud defined as fixed to the anal stage, adhering to rigid norms almost to the point of self-torture. They may occupy socially relevant positions and be a torment for their subordinates. Self-Preservation 6 or Social 6 could reflect this profile.

Cameron: Personality Development and Psychopathology: A Dynamic Approach, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1963; and Paranoid Conditions and Paranoia, in S. Arieti, American Handbook of Psychiatry, Brody Basic Books, New York, 1974. Millon: Personality-Guided Therapy, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999.

Paranoid Style

The paranoid character presents, in its amplified limits, psychotic aspects. Shapiro points to two predominant types: on the one hand, the furtive, restrained, apprehensive, and suspicious; and on the other, the rigid, arrogant, and more aggressively distrustful.

There is chronic suspicion, a basic mistrust. The paranoid considers the world with a fixed and worried expectation and perceives it with a tense and rigid directionality, looking for signs that confirm their anticipations and thus feel authorized to credit or discredit what they see. They are bound to find what they seek.

The reality is distorted as soon as the distrustful person disregards the obvious, considering that it does not represent the essential. In their pursuit of clues tied to suspicious assumptions, the paranoid misses the world as it is. A subjective, autistic, interpretive world emerges, with the primary interest being the capture of hidden motives, underlying purposes, and special meanings.

The essential psychological mechanism of the paranoid is projection, which implies attributing external figures with their own motivations and tensions, which they internally repudiate. The main theme of projection is not the obvious and real but the potential and hidden.

Their behavioral and affective style is one of defensive hypervigilance, with intense investigative intentionality. Thus, spontaneity and expressiveness are distorted by their internal police state. Emotionality is controlled from a rigid directionality.

Benjamin and Shapiro consider that the lack of trust stems from the old feeling of being exposed to injustice, living in a violent environment. Patients often report childhood development with parents who are extremely insecure, distrustful, and fearful of social judgment. The child would learn to expect sadistic behavior from others and to recognize and amplify any signs of danger.

Anxiety Neurosis

In Freud's later elaborations, the passion of fear is recognized in the concept of anguish.

Since psychoanalytic theory focuses on intrapsychic processes, it does not interpret fear as an emotion that influences behavior but rather in relation to the libidinal drive. The source of the drive is defined by Freud as an "energy" on the border between the psychic and the bodily, which implies both a phantasmal dimension and a somatic impulse. The object is what allows for the satisfaction of the drive, whose purpose is relaxation through discharge.

The instances of the psychic apparatus come into conflict: the desire for satisfaction of the libidinal drive, driven by the id, is hindered by the threat of the superego, through the experience of castration anxiety. This psychodynamic, which according to Freudian psychoanalysis produces anxiety, is at the base of what a psychological theory of emotions recognizes as fear.

Taking the psychoanalytic model of neurosis as a reference, Claudio Naranjo defines E6 Enneatype as the closest to the Freudian interpretation that an anxious motivation underlies neurotic behavior.

Referring to E6, we can reference the Freudian category of current neuroses (those that originate in a somatic dysfunction of sexuality), and more precisely, to anxiety neurosis, characterized by anxiety without a specific object. Freud speaks here of repression or insufficient development of psychic sexuality. Sexual arousal does not find discharge and does not pass to the plane of psychic elaboration; it then remains present as anxiety.

The child's anxiety is closely linked to the castration phantom (castration complex) and the relational dynamics of the Oedipus complex.

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The Introverted Thinking Type

Among the psychological types described by Carl Jung, we recognize the E6 in the introverted intellectual type.

58.Carl G. Jung, Psychological Types, South American, Barcelona, 1972.

The psychological type, according to Jung, is a general disposition that differentiates between extraverted and introverted, based on the orientation of the libido, and also subdivides according to the most developed function: thinking, feeling, perceiving, or intuiting.

The introverted intellectual type is imprisoned by the ideas he conceives about the world and his neighbor. Demonstrating the validity of his ideas and disarming the adversary is the main objective of his thinking, which is not born from concrete experience but from subjective premises (something he will not recognize even when his error is proven).

When his product seems good and true to him, it has to be just right, and others must bow down to that truth. He tends to close himself off from all influence.

"I think, therefore I am" is his motto. This would seem to indicate the search for oneself, but the result is the complication of his own thought, which leads him to get bogged down in doubt. He tends to complicate his problems.

He will hardly ask for a favor. He has a negative relationship with the object, ranging from indifference to rejection, and is surrounded by precautionary measures. Jung emphasized his fundamental attempt to subtract libido from the object, as if he were trying to prevent its dominance. He defends himself from external demands and creates a safe and powerful position for himself. His ego aspires to ensure all freedom, independence, dominance, and

freedom from commitments. He detaches himself from the object with violence and seeks to dominate it to defend an illusion of superiority.

This psychological type reveals power fantasies linked to the fear of the objects from which they feel victimized. He fears being influenced by his neighbor's emotional manifestations and uses a lot of energy to defend himself from their influence. The objects have powerful and terrible qualities, and great distrust is established within him.

In the realm of feelings, the introverted intellectual devalues objects in appearance. Silent and hardly accessible, he withdraws into hypersensitive mode to defend himself against the brutality of the object. He is hypercritical and hides behind negative, cold, and inflexible judgments.

W.R. Bion: Basic Emotional States

A disciple of Melanie Klein, this English psychiatrist distinguished volitional, rational, and progressive tendencies in human beings, aimed at achieving goals, contrasting them with regressive, irrational, unconscious, and psychotic-based experiences.

In his research, he pointed out three basic emotional states that he called "basic assumptions," which are the product of unconscious fantasies that generate vital attitudes. These "fantasy mirrors" are background fantasies that dwell in the human psyche. They constitute reactions to original anxieties, which are reproduced within the group.

We have, first of all, the basic assumption of dependency, where the leader is idealized. Nutrition and provision are expected from him, generating an "oral," passive, dependent position.

The second basic assumption is that of attack and flight. In a paranoid universe, the enemy emerges, from which one must defend oneself. There is an inability to assume the conflict itself and to connect with the affective aspects, with the emotional core.

The last basic assumption is that of mating. The prevailing climate is one of "mystical" expectation. In the future, a messianic figure will save the group from hopelessness. It is an idealization, where mating can lead to an idyllic relationship or a "salvific island."

Applied to the E6 subtypes, the warm fearful manifests a more passive, dependent attitude, with a greater emotional component. The Self-Preservation 6 would therefore correspond to the assumption of dependency.

In the Sexual 6, the defensive aspect of attack or flight emerges strongly.

In the Social 6, beyond the paranoid component, there is a more idyllic aspect, one of mystical expectation, the assumption of mating. Something so representative of a figure like Don Quixote, who fights for Dulcineas and for islands that will bring the expected salvific fruit.

Erik H. Erikson and Basic Distrust

Distrust emerges strongly among the descriptors of the fearful character. Erikson presents a solid evolutionary theory based on Freudian analytics. In his research on the experiences of newborns, he observes:

The sense of basic trust becomes the critical issue of the first phase of development [...] and requires a sense of physical comfort and a minimal experience of fear or uncertainty. [...]

If trust has prevailed in the child's first experiences, he will be available to face new situations [...] that first exchange between mother and child is a source of faith.59

59.E.H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, Hormé-Paidós, Buenos Aires, 2009, pp. 39, 43

The primal experience of a hold that offers a solid base of security generates an intimate sensory, emotional, and psychic experience of trust and reliability towards life.

Ronald David Laing and Ontic Insecurity

The insecurity of the Social 6 is not only associated with hesitant rumination, indecision, or shyness. Rather, it is radical: it sinks its roots, beyond the psycho-emotional, into the existential underworld.

In his book The Divided Self, A Study in Health and Illness, R.D. Laing dissects madness and the processes of destructuring from an existential perspective. He addresses the break with (external) reality starting from two basic existential positions: ontological security and ontological insecurity. The lack of security anchorage generates a chronic shelter from the distressing "invasiveness" of the environment. Beyond the affective question of acceptance or rejection, this internal experience of threat is rooted in a fragility of identity with a "loss of being."

On the fragile threshold of ontological security, the subject experiences reality in a persecutory, threatening, crushing, and depersonalizing way. Laing affirms that "the paranoid person experiences not the absence of the other, but the absence of his own presence [...] The other is there, but he is not there for the other person."60

60.R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: A Study on Health and Disease, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1975. 61.Ibid.

After hypervigilance and anxiety loops, both paranoid and confusional, that basic insignificance, that feeling of insubstantiality, marks the construction of character.

As Dr. Claudio Naranjo points out, at the end of his excellent exposition on the E6 character:

In the same way that it is true that, on the psychological level, the E6 individual abandons his power before authority, it is also possible to affirm that it is the very sense of being that he abandons through his projection towards individuals, systems, or ideas endowed with an importance or sublimity greater than life.62

The fear associated with this insecurity goes beyond merely phobic and avoidant issues linked to the social sphere. It approximates a panic buried under the rubble of the noise of being. It is a horror of emptiness and the sensation of being "nothing," of "nothingness," of nullity of being, of annulment, and alienation.

The Link: A Secure Foundation

John Bowlby explains the importance of providing a secure base during the first months of life by both parents:

A secure base from which a child or adolescent can venture into the outside world and return, knowing that they will be welcomed, nurtured physically and emotionally, comforted if distressed, and reassured if frightened.63

62.C. Naranjo, Character and Neurosis, La Llave, Barcelona, 2013. 63.J. Bowlby, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of an Attachment Theory, Paidos, Barcelona, 1989, p. 24.

For Bowlby, maternal proximity and accessibility generate trustworthiness and a cognitive capacity that allows a child's mind to retain the image of the mother even in her absence, during the second half of life. Thus, this bond and secure attachment gradually form a homeostatic system that includes the entire web of basic human motivations.

When "securing" attachment patterns are disrupted by physical separations, illnesses, death, emotional deprivation, parental anxieties or insecurities, depressive aspects, etc., there is a loss of reliability, accompanied by emotional reactions such as anger, anxiety, devitalization, depressive experiences, detachment, coldness, rejection, and emotional or energetic withdrawal.

Bowlby identifies two basic life positions of anxious attachment. The first is resistant anxious attachment, where uncertainty and insecurity result in a tendency to cling, flooding the child with chronic anxiety.

Mistrust predominates in the anxious-avoidant attachment position, which leads to emotional withdrawal in an attempt to become emotionally self-sufficient.

Authors like M. Ainsworth, Main, and Solomon introduced typologies of avoidant attachment (characterized by intolerance to frustration and inhibited intimacy), ambivalent insecure attachment (cautious, with difficulties calming down and unpredictable responses), and disorganized attachment (involving inconsistent behaviors).

It would not be accurate to directly correlate the characters described by Claudio Naranjo to specific attachment styles. Contemporary authors have further developed attachment theory, describing many more variants. However, we can say that the E6 is most often recognized in the avoidant attachment type, as they tend to withdraw from intimate relationships. However, the warm subtype reveals a desire for contact, and the sexual subtype displays a mix of avoidant and ambivalent attachment, with more explicit withdrawal and aggressive attitudes.

It is true that, at their core, all the mental Enneatypes (5, 6, 7), in the face of emotional frustration, prefer to withdraw into their own self-sufficiency and disengage, unlike emotional characters who impulsively seek relationships, displaying an ambivalence between clinging and hatred toward the beloved affective figure.

These attitudes are present across all three E6 subtypes. We find dependent clinging in the "warm" E6, and a counterdependent position leaning toward self-sufficiency in the counterphobic subtype. The social subtype presents ambivalent attitudes, with a tendency toward avoidant attachment, using mechanisms like denial and hypercontrol of affectivity, alongside a compulsory care-giving role. The Social 6 needs to feel needed to avoid a sense of fragility and to maintain distance from their vulnerability, finding it extremely difficult to receive.

Phobic Organization

In the cognitivist model, the E6 can be categorized within the phobic organization. This organization moves between two polarities: the need for protection from a world perceived as dangerous and the need for freedom and independence.

Attachment and separation are considered antithetical, instead of being interdependent behaviors that develop in parallel and coexist. In the phobic personality, one excludes the other.

Phobics tend to respond with fear and anxiety to any affective disturbance that threatens their sense of protection or freedom.

Childhood is marked by restricted exploratory behavior due to a threatening parent, who inhibits the child's attempts at autonomy. These threats may come from direct repression or fear of abandonment (e.g., a parent threatening suicide or illness).

Thus, the child learns to contain their anxiety through great self-control of sensations and emotions, losing access to cognitive elaboration and failing to establish an adequate emotional differentiation process.

Phobic parents often use their child's perceived fragility to justify their own fear of detachment. The child accepts their fragility as fact.

Freud's description of the phobic type, characterized by significant limitations in behavior, corresponds to the self-preservation subtype of Enneatype Six.

Psychopathic, Schizoid, and Phallic-Narcissistic Characters

In his book Character Analysis,64 Wilhelm Reich argues that each individual has a characteristic nature with which they defend themselves from the external world or their own unconscious, limiting their psychic mobility and preventing the full realization of their nature.

64.W. Reich, Character Analysis, Paidos, Barcelona, 1974.

The "character armor" consists of several layers, serving as unconscious defense mechanisms against impulses that society does not tolerate, which become rigid and form stereotyped behavior patterns.

This adaptation to the environment includes various bodily defenses, especially a severe limitation of respiratory function. Character structure serves as an effective strategy during childhood, but it tends to crystallize, and as adults, individuals unconsciously reproduce the deficient and threatening conditions that originally necessitated the defense mechanisms.

Reich's character typology identifies the Sexual 6 with the phallic-narcissistic character. This individual experiences sexuality as an expression of power rather than union with another. They present themselves with great self-confidence, arrogance, and a strong, athletic body. The stronger the inner sense of weakness, the more they seek to

demonstrate strength. They feel attacked and therefore defend themselves by attacking. Men (the majority of this type) flaunt their virility and masculine competence. Active homosexuality and clitoral sexuality can be observed in women, who also seek strength and, at times, physical beauty.

Lowen, the creator of bioenergetics, defines character65 as a:

Fixed pattern of behavior, such as the specific way in which the individual manages their pursuit of pleasure. It is structured in the body as chronic and generally unconscious muscular tensions that block or limit outward impulses. [...] Character is also a psychic attitude, protected by systems of denial, rationalizations, and projections, and polarized toward an ideal ego that affirms its value.

65.A. Lowen, Bioenergetics, Sirio, Malaga, 2011.

Lowen describes five characters, of which the psychopathic character bears the most similarity to Enneatype Six, although it should be noted that bioenergetic characters do not exactly align with Enneatypes. Phenomenological characteristics can be helpful in describing an Enneatype or subtype, but one must be cautious when making such associations.

The psychopathic character solidifies during the phallic phase of development (from two and a half to three and a half or four years old). The conflict revolves around being strong and seducing to maintain power (recognizable in both the sexual and social subtypes, and even E3), or being weak, seduced, and nullified, which corresponds to the self-preservation subtype. This conflict leads to a self-perception where being strong is confused with being tough, and being tender is confused with being weak.

The psychopathic character is structured around the need to obtain and maintain a position of power by achieving goals, without ever being sure of achieving or maintaining them. The same can be said of E6.

The psychopathic character justifies their fear of weakness and intimate contact by transferring the feared seductive and deceitful enemy onto others. They blame others for their anxiety about being manipulated and subjugated, while feeling the need to remain vigilant in order to defend themselves from potential attacks, experiencing the world in dual terms: either friend or enemy.