Passion In The Sphere Of Instinct: How Gluttony Works In The Sexual Subtype

When the passion of gluttony invades the sexual instinct, the emphasis shifts to an attempt to live in an extraordinary state of exaltation, an idealization filled with possibility and hope. Psychic energy is invested in an enchanted and fanciful approach that represses the instinctive need, transforming it into a mental seduction. Gluttony becomes a desire for more pleasure through intellectual seduction, aimed at satisfying idealizations and dreams rather than instinctual needs. The Sexual 7 idealizes the other and lives in his mind a relationship that serves only to maintain an idealization of himself, thus losing the nature of instinct. The search for intimate and sexual pleasure becomes a romantic dream of multiple satisfactions, while deep down, there is a fear of surrender. He is more interested in being chronically infatuated with life experiences, people, and things.

It is as if the Sexual 7 views life through the eyes of a lover. He idealizes the other, invents him, and lives in his head a relationship that serves to maintain another idealization: himself. The search for intimate and sexual pleasure becomes a romantic dream of multiple satisfactions. For fear of surrender, he uses pleasure, laughter, and humor to bond, creating the illusion of an absence of frustration and abandonment. He denies the aspects of suffering that may limit his arousal or ironically minimizes them. Joy! His specialty is turning any negative trance into a positive, creating a love object that gives him satisfaction. The search for pleasure, the natural energy of the sexual instinct, is channeled into satisfying himself with his own mental creations. The sexual impulse becomes a continuous magical flowering of thought. In the background, there is an interest in gaining attention through grace, sympathy, or talent to nurture a narcissistic self-image as a smart and nice child.

It is said that love is blind, and the Sexual 7, with that look of love, lives enthusiastically, maintaining a blindness before the limits of existence. And when he realizes that the difficulties are insurmountable, he is able to convince everyone, starting with himself, that the goal is not worth working for.

The life of the Sexual 7 is a fiery frenzy of experiences. The volume of life rises insatiably in an apparent joy that covers internal discomfort in an attempt to escape pain and fear. In fact, he is not very much in touch with what is pleasurable. Behind the effervescence, there is restlessness and anxiety that transform into agitation and movement. He associates

enjoyment with speed and intensity, confusing quantity with quality. Happiness, for him, lies in finding no limits to impulse or desire, and so he gets into compromising situations, feeling excited and putting his own life to the test. In his flight toward intensity, in the absence of boundaries, in doing whatever he feels like doing at all times, he feels alive.

“Already as a child, I had a lot of freedom and autonomy, thanks to the fact that I always managed to convince my parents of my ability to move around the world. That way, I managed to stop them from controlling me like my classmates. When my parents separated, the routine lacked clear rules, so I got more freedom of movement, no limits. I learned that anything is possible and that I can do whatever I want.” (ILARIA)

This voracity for autonomy and constant excitement makes the Sexual 7 a very impatient character, impulsively leaping from one experience to another. Like a child who wants it now, because the waiting time until satisfying his desire is a malaise. It’s hard to hold the void. And when he wants something, he goes.

We could say that his psychosexual development has been fixed in the oral stage, with a dependence on satisfaction linked to the pleasure derived from maternal nurturing. The mouth and lips are his elective organs of pleasure. Sucking is the foundation of the affective bond, so that what comes from the other becomes something of his own. The passion of gluttony defines the passionate attachment of a character who always wants to incorporate more and more of the good that the outside world offers, with the illusion that this can bring back the love and happiness he lost in childhood.

Freud speaks of a cannibalism that we recognize in the Sexual subtype of E7, avid in its nourishment. With egocentrism, he does not recognize the other as a self-existing individual but as someone who can offer something good. He is a narcissist who places the satisfaction of his needs at the center of any relationship. This greed also appears in behaviors that are dependent on anything offering gluttonous satisfaction: tobacco, alcohol, food, sex, and drugs. Everything, always more.

The child did not develop the ability to become independent from a mother who, to satisfy her frustration, seduced him by promising unlimited gratification. By making the mother fall in love, he seemingly achieves everything but loses touch with the deep need for warm intimacy. As an adult, he will continue to confuse the pleasure of filling himself with breast milk with that of genital intercourse between adults, love with permissiveness.

The combination of illusion, enthusiasm, and fantastic planning is what the Sexual 7 calls enjoyment. Delight is a mental pleasure: an anticipatory idea of what he will experience. More than enjoying, the Sexual 7 gets excited and exalted by something that doesn’t have to be pleasant. He confuses consuming with enjoying, movement with enjoying, effervescence with well-being. He rejoices in the present with the potentialities of the

future, of what may be, rather than with what is real in the here and now. He is more in fantasy than in reality itself.

“Until I met my wife, I didn’t know what it was really like to enjoy. I realized that I was consuming and devouring, but not enjoying or savoring.” (ENRIQUE)

The attraction to any rewarding stimulus or anything that simply catches his attention makes him jumpy and changeable. He is a quick, mercurial character who, when he wants something, goes for it shamelessly, bordering on insolence. The permanent excitement confuses feeling, and for that reason, he is confused and often found among emotional characters.

“I’ve always been a bad student. Since I was little, I was interested in a thousand things at once. After doing them for a while, some ceased to interest me just as quickly. But what has been learned remains, the sensation of what has been lived does not disappear.” (RICARDO)

Humor has been his specialty. Everything is a source of jokes, which he uses as a tool for social interaction, to seduce and to give well. Or to subtly attack with passive rebellion through ironies and the most acid ingenuity.

“I got older and, as I had been raised with the minimum effort and in the absence of good training, I was a terrible student. I soon developed another attitude, which gave me power over others: irony. This was, for a long time, a tool that filled the void, due to lack of studies, vulnerability, and fears, making me feel inferior to others. When someone felt bad, they always had the excuse to say they were joking. The funny thing is that I didn’t accept jokes from anyone and was very touchy.” (PEDRO)

The Sexual 7 shows clear resistance to acquiring the responsibilities that the adult stage entails, to managing difficulties. An eternal child, he is incapable of accepting the consequences of his actions. He refuses to grow up because of his identification with childhood satisfaction. He presents a marked emotional immaturity, with strong insecurity and a great fear of not being loved and accepted. This resistance to growth entails great difficulty in caring for himself and others or establishing equal relationships, especially with a partner. In fact, his childish immaturity easily makes him a liability to them. He hides behind excuses or lies to conceal his inability to grow. He talks about fantastic projects, incredible businesses, great love affairs... These fantasies (generally impossible to fulfill) allow him to seduce with promises of a world without pain, while blaming the other for the bad that happens to him.

“While in university, I remember a great fear of showing myself incapable and not being up to the task, so I avoided any confrontation with the professors. Confrontation that would

have allowed me to overcome the shortcomings I had. Pride, mixed with underestimation of myself, kept me away from what could make me grow. Even though my skills improved, insecurity and the fear of not having the necessary knowledge to manage my professional life still lingered.”

The Sexual 7 presumes to be nice. He is the life of the party, a skilled seducer of young girls or young men, even at notoriously inappropriate ages. He seems very sure of himself, even arrogant and haughty, and it is just a front to hide his fears and indecisions. Behind his almost imperishable smile and his presentation as a jovial and fun person, enjoys hiding someone tremendously insecure, afraid of loneliness.

Once I got married, my wife grew tired of my behavior [the irony] and made me see the damage it caused to others, but especially to her. I used her at times to make fun of things and remain the center of attention in the group. This made me change my approach and adopt another one that he knew well: talking about everything, even without knowing much, with great passion, and, above all, not letting others speak. For me, listening was superfluous; the important thing was showing off my speaking skills. I had mastered those quite well in hand-to-hand combat but not in front of an audience, where my fears manifested due to a lack of self-confidence.

Insecurity is also reflected in the emotional field. Despite his apparent independence and autonomy, the Sexual 7 is in need of large doses of affection and attention, especially from a partner who can offer them. However, due to a lack of awareness of this need, when the relationship becomes more serious and begins to require greater commitment and responsibility, the E7 becomes frightened and often causes the breakup.

“At that time, I had been in a relationship for six and a half years, including a year and a half of living together. When I returned from SAT III, I decided to end it. After six days, I packed my bag and left home. In conversations with my partner, she persistently asked me to stay, to give what we had built a chance. Back then, those words seemed like basic Chinese to me. I truly believed I was leaving for a search, for an idea superior to that of being in a couple. I will always remember the face of my ex-partner during those discussions—exorbitant, not understanding anything at all—and me, with a passivity that made her very angry. I had no awareness of what I was destroying in the blink of an eye. Moreover, I didn't consider how destructive and harmful it was for someone to have the rug pulled out from under them so abruptly and violently. It was like a bucket of cold water.”

“I made the decision to end the relationship suddenly, and the next day I left the house where we lived together. I had been dissatisfied for a long time, but I was afraid the relationship would fail. That’s why I put so much energy into sustaining it. I remember very well that when I came back from my Introductory SAT Program and told her about my experience, I felt like this was the opportunity. I made the decision, informed her the

relationship was over, and acted without turning back. I didn’t feel any empathy toward what she was going through. I maintained a cold detachment, equal in intensity to the indifference that had been present throughout the years we’d spent together trying to make the relationship work.”

We can also find many Sexual 7s who, out of fear of loneliness or need for affection, remain in relationships marked by conflict. However, they are usually unfaithful, at least mentally, often fantasizing about multiple relationships with different people.

“In every therapy session, on the subway, in almost any group, I found a woman with whom I fell deeply in love.”

“In general, I recognize that what I lack in my partner manifests itself as fantasies of falling in love with someone who possesses the characteristics I lack.”

The stories of Sexual 7s often show how children were attached to their mother or father, with an ambivalence of idealization and, at the same time, avoiding the experience of being "consumed" by them.

Like all E7 children, the Sexual subtype takes on the task of making the often depressed or suffering mother happy. Though they have little success, they maintain the illusion of gaining her love by bringing life, grace, and joy. This illusion repeats in adulthood with the compulsion to seduce and distract the partner from their own hell, while they themselves flee by distracting themselves. Committing to a partner awakens the terror of being trapped, without freedom or a life of their own.

In sexuality, they find pleasure in seduction and admiration. They enjoy the cognitive usurpation of the other person: they’re not as interested in love and sometimes not even in the act of sex (more common in the Self-Preservation subtype), but in the excitement of conquest and falling in love. With some frequency, once the other person is conquered, a sexual relationship doesn’t even occur, or it becomes a mere formality because, deep down, the excitement and motivation for the conquest has vanished. What they desire is to verify, again and again, that they can captivate. Once a person is conquered, they move on to the next to show that others cannot resist them. Women or men become prey, which, once "hunted," are trophies. It is relatively common for Sexual 7s to keep track of the people they’ve had sex with, like a seduction marathon. This history of "captures" feeds their self-image. The more trophies, the more they feel valued. This appropriation of attention is achieved through pillage and manipulation, which feeds their narcissistic idea of being superior to others.

“I planned my meetings with the person I liked in a very complex and effective way. I prepared possible answers, seduced and made friends with her acquaintances, even if I

wasn’t truly interested in meeting them, so I could coincide with her more. I managed to have apparently casual and somewhat magical encounters with her. Later, I discovered that I was terribly afraid of having a sincere and open meeting with the girl. The idealization of her was complete, since I barely knew her. The moment I got to know her a little, all that love for her disappeared immediately.”

The Sexual 7 enjoys building anticipation before "making a move," warming up the atmosphere with words and gestures. They are intellectual seducers rather than physical ones, using humor, glances, wit, and even details to suggest desire. They plan their conquest without pause and practically seduce, and even engage in love, all in their head.

“I am skilled at using exactly the right words, hinting or asking for what I want in a tangential, indirect, and subtle way to get what I want. The precise use of words and language games supports my subtle manipulations. With that, I used to create an atmosphere of mystery to be more interesting: unfinished sentences, ulterior motives, half-hidden messages, double meanings, riddles...”

The tongue serves as a form of cognitive masturbation, indulging in the pleasure of dazzling others with one’s ideas: "I’m so cool!" As he speaks, he is captivated by how interesting and intelligent he is. He is so self-referential that he only listens to himself. He delights in his own words, even while politely leaving a little space for the other person to introduce their comment, already thinking about what he’ll say next. He continues to recreate his internal dialogue and never stops talking, even in silence. Intellectual attunement itself is confused with emotional or sexual attunement. Intellectual connection, to him, is a form of seduction.

“I think I started to use that ability (to speak and convince) to compensate for a lack of love. As a child, I was convinced I wouldn’t be chosen in a competition. I would surely lose. So I leaned on my ability to speak and imagine to attract love and admiration. As a teenager, I discovered that there was also sexual pleasure I could offer to be chosen. I felt that being "easy" was the only way to get a guy. Besides, I never felt pretty or worthy of deep interest. That attitude lasted until I had a real relationship, which would have ended quickly if I hadn’t expressed my interest in a serious relationship with my partner. Until then, my relationships lasted two or three months, maybe because they were only linked to the sexuality I offered, with the illusion that they would become deep, long-term bonds over time.”

The Sexual subtype is the most disconnected from the body among the E7s. They don’t pay much attention to what happens to them physically. Perhaps their body serves as a ballast to give free rein to the utopian vision of their ego. Physical needs are seen as inconveniences to fully enjoying life. Sometimes, they physically abandon themselves,

avoiding even the minimal frustrations and obligations that come with having a body and its needs.

This neglect of the body manifests in areas like hygiene and health. There is resistance to acknowledging or accepting sickness; they don’t want to feel discomfort and can self-suggest to avoid physical pain. Among the E7s, they are the most "ungrounded," with less connection to the material world. To "fly," they leave the body behind. The Social 7 maintains a better relationship with their body: they take better care of themselves, eat better (even excessively neat), groom themselves, and care for their image. The Self-Preservation 7, whose connection with pleasure makes them more of a gourmet, also maintains a better connection with the earthly and the senses.

This same chaos and carelessness is reflected in their clothing and appearance. A Sexual 7 can often be distinguished by their style, straddling the line between originality and caricature. The anarchy is almost complete in the combination of garments, such as colors. Their taste in clothing is often poor, creating unsightly compositions of shapes, colors, and sizes that can almost hurt the eye. In this sense, they can be extravagant and bizarre, with an originality that is as humorous and burlesque as it is grotesque and ridiculous. This carelessness also aligns with their tendency to find pleasure not in the body or genitals, but in the mind and fantasy.

This character finds joy in delay, in prolonging the excitement. For example, on a sexual level, he delights in sustaining an erection and postponing orgasm as much as possible, sometimes even avoiding it altogether. He usually postpones consummation, savoring the moment, enjoying the anticipation, not so much because he dislikes it, but because of what the subsequent drop in excitement will bring. The moment it wears off, that excitement fades, and relaxation—or even depression—ensues.

This pleasurable arousal stretching doesn’t just happen in intercourse. It extends to the realization of any project or pleasant experience (unpleasant ones are directly avoided). In some way, he awaits the "cosmic orgasm" in all life experiences. He increases the intensity of future enjoyment by leaving the best for last, so that the experience lasts longer and allows him to continue fantasizing, in an increasingly pleasurable illusion, until finally, the culmination arrives. In this way, the Sexual 7 becomes a kind of mental ejaculator within his imaginary worlds.

“I believe that the hidden limit is the compulsion to reach the peak of the experience, the moment that gives the maximum pleasure. That experience that is the highest, the one that can satisfy everything, that can fill everything. I believe that this search is what makes me a limitless sucker. An unprecedentedly optimistic oral.”

Behind this tendency to postpone realization is not only the avoidance of the energy slump that it implies, but also a deep fear of failure—of not being enough, of not being valid. There’s a fear of not living up to the idealized image he’s created in the other person. The unconscious catastrophic anticipation of eventual frustration can lead him to start sexual relations or a shared sexual life later than other characters (though not on an individual level, since he usually starts to masturbate quite early and does so relatively frequently). This fear of failure, combined with the nervousness caused by continuous cognitive activation, favors sexual dysfunction due to overexcitement.

The distorted sexual instinct, in its literal erotic sense, is expressed in this character not as a spontaneous search for pleasure but as a tendency toward mental seduction, an abuse of suggestion, and the creation of fantasy atmospheres designed to feed his narcissistic self-image. Instead of nourishing the skin, the senses, and the emotions, he seeks illusory gloating. He avoids making love quietly (spontaneously, freely, openly) and enjoying sexual contact.

Contrary to appearances, the Sexual 7 often has many problems enjoying sexuality. In a field where enjoyment might seem assured for a glutton, he becomes neurotic and substitutes genuine contact with lubricious substitutes and non-graphic narratives that distance him from more authentic sexual experiences.