The Characteristic Neurotic Need

The passion of the Sexual 7 is defined as suggestibility, understood as the neurotic impulse to attract both others and oneself. It is a passion for enchantment, for achieving a look that makes one feel special. It is also a form of self-enchantment, creating a bubble of happiness in which one can spend life gently, far from suffering.

The Sexual 7 has specialized in making joy, not only for themselves but for others as well. They know how to spread it, fascinate, excite, and hypnotize, ensuring that others are caught up in their stories and do not make room for discomfort, conflicts, or demands. They are like a child trying to confuse their mother with seductive words and gestures so she doesn’t realize something they’ve done wrong, while also achieving the satisfaction of making her laugh. In this way, they fulfill two needs: avoiding punishment and feeling good about lifting Mom's spirits. The ideal self-image is nurtured, although guilt remains as background noise, which they will defend themselves from throughout life by inventing new, imaginative justifications.

Suggestibility is a distortion through which they flee from an emotional world they have not learned to sustain, and above all, from emptiness. By filling themselves with the fantastic

images of a parallel life and believing in them, they compensate for their lack of confidence in the developmental nature of life. With suggestibility, they avoid the discipline and effort required to satisfy a need. By jumping into fantasy, they avoid checking whether they can actually achieve their desires, escaping potential frustrations and confusing action with thought, all while feeding their narcissistic self-image, which convinces them that they can do anything.

Emptiness appears to them as boredom or a mediocre, flat life. Boredom detonates the fuse—they risk losing the meaning of life or falling into depression. It tastes like death itself. The Sexual subtype, along with the others, fabricates illusory images and plans to feel alive. Suggestion is their way to avoid anxiety and sadness, which lurk at every corner. They disguise an unpleasant internal space by fleeing into an enchanting world, just as they would react to something painful with laughter, seemingly covering it with humor.

A suggestible person is an enthusiast who gets caught up in making situations feel more beautiful, pleasant, and easy than they really are. They are an idealist who tries to view life with colored glasses, dreaming to the point of phosphorescence. A chronic optimist, they are adept at recycling negative facts into something interesting, humorous, or even enjoyable—turning shit into whipped cream. They dream so much that they end up not distinguishing reality from fiction, falling into their own illusion and enchantment. Claudio Naranjo has defined them as a charmer enchanted with themselves. In this sense, the Sexual 7 is the most deluded of the three subtypes of the E7, deceiving themselves without even realizing it, inflating balloons of ideal worlds to which they remain attached. They don’t keep their feet on the ground.

“In my mind, I continuously imagined fantastic situations and experiences. As a young man, I participated in cycling competitions, and then the mere fact of seeing a bicycle race on television made me identify with the winner or the domestique who sacrificed until the end. I remember feeling like a commentator when pronouncing my name... I felt the emotion and even chills in my body, as if I were really there. I got so excited that I even cried with emotion because in my mind I felt that I had achieved it.”

As a child, the Sexual 7 learned to survive by inventing a wonderful reality in which they took refuge, convincing themselves that it was real and true. They were able to avoid the fear of not being loved, not being seen when they were ill or sad, by offering only the image of a happy and joyful child that their parents could sustain. In this way, they learned to feel great and ready to solve the lack, feeding that narcissism that sustains them in frustrating moments or relationships. They rely on the juggling they manage in difficult situations and their ability to leave others fascinated or confused, infected by the same fantasy.

In other words, they have developed the ability to influence others, affecting their way of thinking to lead them to act in the way that interests them. As an expert manipulator in a

world eager for illusion, this E7 offers happiness, making them attractive in the eyes of others. They give off a fragrance of optimism, subtly seducing those around them. Their power of contagion convinces them of their worth, and this self-conviction, in turn, has the power to fascinate.

“I’ve realized that I respond to things I don’t know by making up the answer. I speak with great confidence and charm, without knowing that I’m really making it up. I believe what I explain.”

They build a mental bubble that supports the credibility of the chimera they tell themselves. It also operates as a filter for potential frustrations. A painful situation is transformed into something funny, wrapped in politeness and gallantry. More than convincing, they spread their points of view through their own conviction. Enchantment and spell are not only given through words but with their whole being. Suggestion means an adequate staging that includes the body. The Sexual 7 is a talkative mime, quickly moving from one side to another. This captures the attention of others and makes it difficult for them to think calmly. They speak with ups and downs in their tone of voice, adapting to the content of the speech. No detail escapes their incisive gaze; they know exactly where the other’s attention is at any moment. Their face gestures with grimaces, winks, and tics.

The more credibility and the appearance of solidity a person has in a dream, the more it fulfills the dual function of being an analgesic and repressing anger at the limits and difficulties that relationships entail, avoiding confrontation and conflict. The Sexual 7 is a strategist who happily leaves the other with their problems, without feeling the responsibility or the need to define themselves within relationships and the facts of life. They are skilled at escaping commitments and complications.

Their position of multi-possibility allows them to always take the most exciting, beautiful, and pleasant option at any given moment, maintaining the viability and credibility of a fantasy that adapts to external circumstances that may threaten it.

In this way, the constant flight forward and never backward is characteristic of the Sexual 7. As soon as a fantasy is threatened with dismantling, they react by covering it with another illusion, an even more grandiose invention. When faced with a lie that might be discovered, they create an even bigger one, one that surprises even more. They leave no cracks where frustration can sneak in.

This combination of a wide range of points of view and speed in handling causes a mental invasion, both in themselves and others. There is no time to process each of the multiple options the Sexual 7 presents. It’s not a brainstorm; it’s a downpour. There are so many thoughts that prevent themselves from flowing and feeling life as simpler. As for their interlocutor, given the speed and number of arguments coming at them, they don’t have

time to think or generate counter-arguments or resistances. They soon find themselves so involved in the fantasy of the Sexual 7 that it’s hard to escape.

“I remember, in my youthful pranks, that with a friend, we would sneak into nightclubs pretending to be reporters from a fashion magazine. We entered with a spectacular camera and a super flash that dazzled everyone, taking many photos. When we got to the owner, we told him a story that his club had been chosen for a report, and he ended up inviting us for drinks and more. It was a whole process of managing the owner and the environment in every way: at the word level, with the movements to take photos from certain angles and places, in the interview, invented, with gestures of interest and astonishment, telling stories and anecdotes about the magazine and our work, etc. It was about capturing his attention from many fronts and in a very fast way so that he didn’t even have time to think about what was happening. Sometimes we got so involved in the act that we even thought about founding a real magazine. Other times, we had to improvise a quick exit because the situation got difficult. What gave us the most pleasure was, when leaving the club, laughing, knowing the camera had no film.” (ENRIQUE)

The Sexual 7 is an enthusiastic character, possibly the most exalted in the entire enneagram. In fact, this burning passion is one of the effects they seek, like a drug, in their greedy consumerism of life experiences. When the excitement level drops or becomes difficult to sustain, they jump to another stage, seeking a new source of illusion. This variability makes them inconstant. They start activities they don’t finish and are as creative as they are unstable.

“It’s hard for me to finish things because I immediately start new ones. Although I read frequently, I haven’t finished a book in years, no matter how good or interesting it may be. There’s always a book even more interesting to read that I’ll start but surely won’t finish.” (ROGER)

Although they appear to be in a state of permanent joy—something built on fantasy—that euphoria is fragile. In other words, people with this character type experience frequent mood ups and downs, even though they are always seen as high-spirited. There is a tendency toward manic-depression, although it is hard to perceive the depressive aspect since, when they experience discouragement and feel down, they withdraw and disappear from the world, behaving like a schizoid. They only show the euphoric aspects. The Sexual 7 defends itself with joy from its own potential for sadness. Paradoxically, this flight from discomfort condemns them to chronic anguish.

For psychological maturation, a certain amount of suffering is necessary. However, the Sexual 7 disagrees: “How can suffering be good?" He is so afraid of pain that he defends himself by inventing a future pleasure, based on possibilities that are not real. This state of perpetual illusion, longing for an ideal world of permanent happiness, condemns him to

chronic dissatisfaction in the present, generating a background anxiety that distances him more and more from himself.

In his projection towards the promising future, the Sexual 7 continues to build happy fairytales.

“For me, it is the mind that takes me out of suffering. I am not able to be in it consciously for very long. I project. I am always projecting. When I touch on something that dissatisfies me, a love block or a professional disability, I resolve it in fantasy. I see myself dominating everything, seducing everything, so as not to remain in pain. And I agree with the denied and very painful childhood. There is a lot of projection of falling in love, of the other loving me without limits. But I am disappointed, almost with a programmed clock. There is a stage of enthusiasm, of total infatuation, and then a vertiginous fall to my limits and to those of love itself.” (ANONYMOUS)

In his fantasy world, he will have what he wants, and there will be no frustration. In reaction to discomfort, he plans endlessly in a state of potentiality. It is a chronic hope for something good, happy, and fantastic... Future happiness is invented. In planning, he is able to handle desire and aversion at a high intensity.

“In the future, that ideal may appear, which I never have in the present. So the future is always better than now. Sometimes it's hard for me to value everything I already have in the present, and I worry and make an effort to achieve that perfect future that never comes.” (ROGER)

The Sexual 7's passion for imagination carries with it an attraction to the magical and supernatural, especially the occult, mystical, and spiritual worlds. He is interested in the mysterious, the metaphysical. The abstractness of these territories makes it difficult to delimit, concretize, and verify—something that, ultimately, would mean a limit for his overflowing fantasy.

The Sexual 7 is also a fan of tricks, riddles, and everything that has some secrecy, even miracles. He may even harbor the belief that he has some kind of special and magical gift that attracts people, a conviction that triggers his contagious autosuggestion. The normal world is unsatisfactory for him, and he explores the limits of knowledge, the esoteric... It is common to find him as an astrologer, tarot reader, yoga or meditation teacher, psychonaut, magician, or hypnotist.

“I have a very strong attraction towards abstraction. I studied mathematics, and now I dedicate myself to studying and painting abstract oil paintings.” (ROGER)

“I know more than you, I am smarter, faster, and my ideas are more original than yours. To maintain this illusion, I set a very high bar for the other person, scrutinizing him to discover

where he fails, and so on. I place him internally in a situation of inferiority, and therefore myself in one of superiority.” (CARMELO)

In summary, the basic motivation of this character is to escape the pain and frustration that come with living. He defends himself with humor from his discontentment, deluding himself and trying to prevent any future discomfort. Since the future is unpredictable, what better way to guarantee yourself a promising and wonderful outlook than by making yourself happy and content? Thus, the Sexual 7 creates in his fantasy a platonic, virtual, and unlimited world that he adapts at will to achieve well-being.

To a certain extent, this approach would be adequate, as the ultimate intention in everything we do is to seek happiness and well-being. However, the Sexual 7 takes this attitude to such an extreme that, since suffering is inherent in existence itself, he sees himself in permanent need of escaping from reality as it is. This prevents him from adapting to the world and maturing.