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

The Sexual 8 is a sensualist of relationships. Lust in the sexual sphere has to do with a drive to possess and dominate the other. This urge for dominance can also extend to things and situations.

The Sexual 8 likes to attract attention, to be seen, to be noticed — often through provocation and an aggressive, confrontational use of truth.

For people who fall within this subtype, it’s vital to possess any scenario they’re in — and when we speak of possession here, we mean achieving a kind of command that draws every gaze toward them, projecting an image of strength, confidence, and “authenticity.” They appear as someone intense, powerful, even their very breathing can radiate intensity.

Lust in the sexual sphere walks hand in hand with seduction — the seduction necessary to possess the other. The Sexual 8 displays this seduction not only in romantic or erotic settings, but in any type of relationship. They must take possession of the stage and become the centre of attention in any gathering, and to achieve that, they may provoke or stir up controversy, showing off all their plumage like peacocks spreading their tails.

Gerard: “I can even feel sexuality when presenting a topic and noticing that I’ve entered inside the other. It’s like manipulating the connection so I don’t feel disconnected. Instead of focusing on what’s happening, I make them connect to me through something I believe I’m doing well. That’s why when I give talks or group sessions, I become an emotional showman. Speaking to one person bores me. With a group, the excitement is stronger, and so is the challenge. It’s like cooking slowly, like hypnotising someone — sometimes I can even lead them wherever I want, for good or for bad. Power... I feel a pleasure similar to having sex.”

This subtype is a seducer, but their seduction differs from other E8s: they seduce passionately, crushing the other, threatening or attacking while affirming themselves.

They are the most antagonistic and antisocial of the E8s — the most inclined to “be against.”

If they love attention, the Self-Preservation 8 prefers privacy and satisfaction through control. The Sexual 8, in contrast, craves to dominate through magnetism, accessing power via alliances and charm, appearing like a wolf in sheep’s clothing — more affable, yet more lustful. For this E8, lust means pursuing intensity in bonds — in relationships, in contact with people or things that make them feel alive — because inside there’s a deep sense of emptiness, of inner death, of numbness.

It’s as if that emptiness could be filled through intense contact with another.

“We can say that the longing to feel alive, characteristic of the lustful personality, is in fact an attempt to compensate for a hidden lack of vitality,” writes Claudio Naranjo, who points out that this aggressive drive masks a rejection of a world without which one cannot live. To turn against the entire world inevitably means loneliness — no matter how much one tries to compensate through lust or hide behind toughness. Beneath the armor of the Sexual 8 lies a profound sense of loss and fear of disconnection.

This subtype’s way of escaping that lack of vitality is by seeking intensity, especially through relationships. The lustful tries to possess people, things, or situations, aiming to fill that inner void. Because the sexual instinct is their most neurotic, they pour their salvation-seeking energy into emotional bonds. It’s as if they were saying: “A deep, intense relationship — someone who shares everything with me — will save me from touching my existential void. That will be my paradise.” And thus they cling to relationships as to a life raft — endlessly seeking, exhausting themselves in the process.

Gerard: “For me, lust in the sexual sense is tied to the need for intensity in connection. For me, intensity can take many forms. It used to be mostly about explicit sexuality, but as I’ve worked on myself, I’ve found another kind of intensity, one tied to intimacy. It’s no longer about possessing a body — anyone can do that. Now what matters is possessing a soul, a heart.”

The Sexual 8 is also the most emotional: they believe deeply in love, unlike the other lustful subtypes who are more cynical and distrustful. They look for love in every relationship, though they may confuse it with sexualisation or possession — seeking to satisfy themselves through another. For this subtype, love is a goal, a place one reaches, but sexuality is the gateway. Their lust is really a fevered search for total connection with others. It’s precisely this distorted idea — that one can achieve total connection with another person — that fuels their neurosis. Feeling or imagining such total fusion gives meaning to their drive, but also ensures their suffering, because it’s impossible to make another human being both object and god at once.

Total Connection

This pursuit of total connection rests on a deep physical sensation — the experience that one can exist inside the other emotionally, energetically, corporeally.

In our working group, composed of about a dozen people of this subtype, we met virtually for many months to explore how lust is lived out sexually: intertwining hands, fusing fingers, feeling strength and conviction in union. There’s a sense of satisfaction, of fullness that the lustful E8 chases neurotically — as if reaching that intensity were a return to paradise.

What is sexual lust for an E8? How is it lived? Participants of the group agreed:

It is experienced as an intense passion driving one to seek pleasure, desire, and excitement. There’s a feeling that this intense living will save them from vulnerability, impotence, boredom — from death-in-life. To avoid connecting with those feelings, they pursue erotic intensity — particularly through union with a partner.

The Mother

The Sexual 8 needs connection in order to exist. For that reason, this subtype is also the most romantic: believing in love even if it confuses love with possession, and seeking it as the paradise they were expelled from — longing to return, even if that means destroying whoever stands in their way.

They are like emotional vampires, searching for people they can drain through intense, consuming relationships — vampirising them until the end of time. This is both their dream and their prison, since their whole structure is built around the fear of losing that fusion. This explains their well-known phrase, “I killed her because she was mine.” It reflects the mad idea that relationships are only real when they are total, when the other is possessed, when surrender becomes domination.

And yet, beneath that frenzy, there is also genuine vulnerability — the capacity to open up, to entrust themselves to the few people they dare to love. The wound of this character is often linked to the relationship with their mother. In the biographies of Sexual 8s, as will be seen in detail in the following chapter, it is common that this bond is tinged by humiliation and violence, alongside a deep love for her — an ambivalent mixture that marks the foundation of the Sexual 8’s struggle between tenderness and control.

There is often a certain sexualisation — in men’s cases toward their mothers, in women’s cases as rivalry. The mother tends to be the most important figure in their biographies, and bringing lust into sexuality is often a way of trying to relive the sensation of total union once experienced with the mother. This union was lost in childhood and became, for this E8, the expulsion from paradise — a paradise they try to return to by re-experiencing that total union which only a child can have with its mother. That is precisely where their lust is directed.

“Once, during meditation, I suddenly found myself as a little girl in my mother’s lap, experiencing immense pleasure. And I wanted more of that. I wanted to go back there.” — Leonor

The sensation of total union was replaced by abandonment, humiliation, and injustice — experiences that led the child to swear never to feel that way again and later turned them into the perpetrator, as a way of maintaining the emotional connection through violence. Such testimonies are common in the biographies of these E8s, who from a very young age learned to confuse love with humiliation, violence, and sexualisation.

“I remember my mother beating me, tearing up my back with lashes and yelling at me while I cried. I hated her and loved her at the same time. I wanted to kill her, even as a child. I would think: ‘When I grow up, I’ll kill her, that bitch.’ That thought gave me strength inside; with every blow I grew stronger, more alive, as if the idea of killing her was my revenge. I think that’s why sometimes in relationships I look for that same sadism, as if I were my mother, giving the other that ‘strength.’ Not physically, but emotionally. It’s like I keep plunging the knife again and again, looking for what’s hidden in the other’s wound. Though as a therapist this resource may have helped me, in relationships it makes me seek intense emotion — something that makes me feel alive.” — Gerard

“My mother used to beat me and told me I was a monster. She leaned on me as if I were her partner, but we had no relationship of affection, which made everything deeply contradictory.” — Fernanda

Another frequent element in their biographies is sexualisation by one of the parents — often the mother — which explains why there’s later a strong drive to seek emotional connection through sexuality.

“I’m sure I was my mother’s husband. There was much sexual affection between us. When I had my first son, I realised many things about how my mother treated me.

Once, while changing my baby’s diaper, she said: ‘Don’t put his penis in your mouth; that’s sacred and pure...’ That’s when I realised that my own relationship with her had been entirely sexual — there was admiration, but no affection. She projected onto me what she lacked from her father. I became her saviour, her man — and that prevented me from developing my feminine side.” — Bittor

“My mother didn’t have a mother, and she gave all her love to me and my sister. She was a very good mother, very affectionate, hugging us all the time. There was a strong bond with her. My father, on the other hand, was another E8 — verbally violent.” — Mura

Surrender and Intensity

This search for total connection is rooted in a deeply physical experience—an instinctive urge to enter into the other: emotionally, energetically, and bodily. It is a longing to merge so completely that individuality dissolves—a living experience of fusion.

When this topic came up in our discussion group for people of this subtype, one of the first descriptions we heard was this: “It feels like interlacing the fingers of both hands—joining them tightly, with strength and conviction. Just that gesture alone brings a wave of satisfaction and fullness through the body.”

That is the essence of what this subtype chases—a neurotic echo of paradise lost. The drive is not only to feel connection but to feel it with such intensity that it becomes a return to wholeness, to Eden. Yet, because this desire is rooted in neurosis, it is never truly fulfilled.

When asked to define it, the participants agreed:

“It’s an intense passion that drives us to seek pleasure, desire, and excitement. There’s this belief that living intensely will save us from vulnerability, impotence, and boredom—from a kind of death-in-life. So, to avoid facing those sensations, we compulsively seek intensity—especially through connection with our partner.”

The Sexual 8 needs the bond to exist—to be real, embodied, undeniable. That’s why they can appear the most passionate, even romantic, among all types. They truly believe in love, though they confuse it with possession. Love becomes a lost paradise they must regain, no matter the cost—even if it means destroying what stands in the way of reunion.

They resemble emotional vampires, forever seeking someone they can merge with so completely that the other becomes theirs—absorbed, consumed, possessed until the end of time. That longing is both their goal and their trap, since their entire psychological structure revolves around reproducing this sensation of fusion.

This possessiveness, as we will explore in the next chapter, can express itself subtly—through friendships, groups, or mentorships—or with brutal clarity, as in certain love affairs where the phrase “I killed her because she was mine” ceases to be metaphorical.

The madness here is the belief that authentic relationships must be intense, that they must burn to be real. For the Sexual 8, this burning bond is both an ideal and a survival mechanism. To own, to possess, to dominate—these are the ways they allow themselves to love, because true vulnerability, genuine surrender, feels unbearable.

Only when they risk being seen as fragile can love cease to be conquest and become union. But that is precisely what terrifies them most.

Friendship

Paradoxically, E8s of this subtype struggle to maintain long-term friendships. Their friendships are never mild; they are passionate, consuming, and often short-lived. They get bored if a connection isn’t intense enough, or if it lacks an erotic charge.

“I have a great friend; we share everything. Then suddenly something happens, I feel they’re not loyal, and I pull away. It’s like turning a corner and leaving — no explanation. In the morning they were everything, by evening they’re nothing to me. It’s happened many times.” — Jesús Pérez

At the root lies a difficulty with trust. Friendships allow freedom — people can share themselves with others — and this freedom feels threatening. True trust is reserved only for the partner, and even then, it’s constantly tested.

“My friends have to go through a kind of test of loyalty before they become important to me. In relationships there are no limits, but in friendship, there are.” — Gerard

“I realise no one passes my loyalty test. My partner does, but friends don’t. With them, I use people — you suit me now, later you don’t.” — Jesús P.

“With my partner it’s more fused, not like friendship. I had friends, but they didn’t care for me; that made me care for them, but not in a fused way like with a partner. My partner is everything — my angel and my demon. With friendship, I set limits.” — Muriel

Neurotically, people of this type need to feel accepted with both their light and their shadow — including their violent, dominant, uncompromising tendencies.

They long to be loved even with their darkness. They constantly test this with their partners, offering both their angel and their demon. Deep down, there’s a sense of unworthiness — of not deserving love — and an impulsivity that both drives and shames them.

The “Bad Boy” and the “Bad Girl”

As explored in the following chapter—devoted to the individual and their shadow—the Sexual 8 often presents the image of the “bad boy” or “bad girl,” proudly showing what was once censored in childhood. Beneath that defiant wickedness lies a hidden vulnerability, the very tenderness that was once forbidden.

What they seek in a partner is acceptance of both poles: that someone loves them entirely, embracing both the angel and the demon within.

Yet, their distrust in love makes them test their partner’s devotion endlessly. These trials can become harsh and manipulative, sometimes even sadistic: they take a twisted pleasure in seeing the one they love suffer—so that, afterward, they can save them through tenderness and care. Beneath it all lies the wounded child, craving containment, protection, and reassurance after every storm of rage.

“What defines me as sexual is that I can show emotion to my partner in intimacy. That’s where I allow myself to fall. But the cost is high—I can feel hurt and betrayed easily—so don’t mess with me there. I show my weakness, but only in private. I need my partner to take care of me sometimes; that’s the child within. I only show that part in the intimacy of the home—it’s part of our code as a couple.” — Jesús P.

In the sexual sphere, the Eight’s gaze becomes predatory—intense, direct, unwavering. Desire for them is an act of conquest. Their energy is that of a lioness stalking prey: confident, focused, and instinctively aware of every movement. The hunt itself excites them as much as the capture.

Since the sexual instinct is the most neurotic, those dominated by it constantly need to reaffirm their vitality through erotic intensity. Pleasure is not enough—it must be thrilling, even dangerous. Boredom is intolerable; it triggers emptiness and anxiety. Thus, the partner becomes both the outlet for and the object of this compulsive search for intensity, which keeps them from confronting inner void.

“With a partner I can talk to, live with, and make love to, everything feels much more alive. The intensity makes it exciting—it’s like having something forbidden right in front of me. But I can also slip into manipulation if the other person gives me that space. I tend to consume my partners, and when I feel the intensity fading, I start blaming them for what’s missing. Even arguing can feel alive, because at least it stirs desire. I guess what I’m really looking for is to feel that thrill again—to feel like I’m hunting. But if I’m not being hunted back, it frustrates me. And when I hunt and it ends, that frustrates me too.” — Gerard

The Sexual 8 can appear more romantic than others, but also more contradictory. Internally, they perceive themselves as passionate, generous lovers—sometimes excessively so. Outwardly, however, they may seem cold, detached, even manipulative. Beneath that apparent indifference lies cynicism and pain: a deep mistrust of love that transforms tenderness into strategy.

“At times I’ve felt that the other person is just a lemon I can squeeze through seduction. I use them like a buffer from which I can take what I need—because I once invested too much in love and got hurt. Once I’ve taken what I want, I lose interest and move on, searching for another lemon to squeeze.” — Leonor

When this happens, the Sexual 8 becomes the perpetrator, doing to others what was once done to them. Having been shamed or punished for showing tenderness in childhood—often by their parents—they now identify with the aggressor. To regain the power they once lost, they become the one who dominates and controls. In doing so, they justify their cruelty as justice:

“Since I suffered so much, I’m entitled to never suffer again—and to make sure others can’t hurt me, I’ll strike first.”

In comparison to other Eights, the sexual subtype consumes rather than connects. Their passion burns too fiercely to sustain. The social Nine, by contrast, seeks harmony within a shared “we,” while the Sexual 8 seeks to fuse through a possessive “you are mine.”

“When I feel that a relationship is truly real, it’s as if something sacred has been created between us—as though we’ve carved out our own world apart. It’s an intense, almost mystical sensation. Sometimes it happens in bed, sometimes just through a conversation that feels hidden and alive. I feel powerful when I share that secret space, when my partner submits to my desire. But when that submission fades, I feel betrayed, because I gave everything for it.” — Leonor