E2 Social – Ambition

In the social two, the passion of pride manifests itself as a satisfaction in the conquest of the public.

To awaken a great passion you may not need to develop much intelligence, or pretend it, but a social two could never be enough to be considered a dumb blonde. A social two needs to be someone, and in order to be someone you need to use your mind more. Being a person who wants to be important to be able to feed his pride, he must be able to seduce the social environment, becoming a seducer of groups, a distinguished being and, perhaps, not only someone superior, but with a gift of leadership.

Ichazo spoke of ambition, but we could say that it is a passion to be in a certain sense above; and through such being above, having influence and having advantages. This is the type of person who presents himself to the world as great or important, unlike the sexual E2, who is mainly interested in being important to his partner, or the conservation type, which, as we will see, is a counter-two.

Transformation into the E2 social by Paolo Baiocchi

The therapeutic change of the social two goes through a path of humanization that, in essence, could be baptized as the step from leadership to parity. The journey takes place in very slow stages, small conquests, crises, discoveries, food for the spirit, healings and openings of new existential and relational panoramas. In the following pages we will describe the main areas of therapeutic change, looking at dysfunctional structures and ways to avoid them.

Position of superiority and disorder of roles

The first consideration of the therapeutic change of social E2 concerns the relationship of superiority that it establishes towards the parents themselves and that will later be projected towards other figures of authority, be they professional, affective, etc.

The social two stands above their parents in a way that is not authoritarian, but ambivalent. On the one hand it adopts the role of authority, on the other it wants to acquire from authority all the power to shine. As they say, the social two wants to "sit to the right of the father". At the psychiatric level, when a social two enters a psychotic crisis it usually happens that he deludes in a manic sense frequently believing — at least in our culture — that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The mythological image of Christ accompanies well the manic structure of the social two, characterized by pseudo-generosity, by the inner idealization of affection and by a feeling of superiority. The first movement towards transformation then

consists in putting oneself in the right place in relation to the parents: the place of the child. In other words, the social two has to be contained by the authority of the parents.

In a very special way, it is necessary that the social E2 renounces the idea of having to take care of the difficulties of the parents themselves. How is it possible that he comes to stick to that idea? Normally, incestuous collusion with the father occurs. In many cases, the mother is usually depressed or abandoning or childish, and requires the child to exercise a genitory role, while the father puts the child in a role of parity or superiority. This initial disorder, which also persists in adult life, creates a problem of boundaries and lack of clarity in roles.

Thus, the social two relates in an unclear way with people, behaving amicably and then putting himself on top as a figure of contention, or sometimes also asking to be contained. In this case it is necessary to develop with the social two a lot of clarity in relation to the definition of the roles, paying special attention to the respect of the limits.

Narcissism

Becoming aware of narcissistic personality traits is important work. The social two shows a narcissism based on territorial and sexual competition. The need to distinguish and conquer in these areas is the consequence of a shift from affective self-esteem to territorial self-esteem. The fundamental traumatic experience has to do with a maternal affective deprivation that leads to a state of deep despair, a feeling of not being loved. The sense of loneliness and deep lack — an essentially depressive experience — is transformed into a sense of incapacity and inferiority in competition for territory or for the conquest of the couple. Thus, we move from the system of affection, warmth and affectivity to the reptilian system, relationally cold but capable of generating the enthusiastic impulse of the conquest of the territory and the domain of the couple.

The positive emotions that emerge from the reptilian area of the brain have to do with an authentic manic force characterized by enthusiasm, by a firm confidence in one's own abilities and in one's own perceptions, by a tendency to rapture and by a certain sense of the brightness of objectives that the manic state makes perceive as within reach. The warmth of positive sensations, enlarged by the preeminence of visceral behavior, takes its place in the absence of true intimacy in relationships, where there is a deep affective devaluation. Devaluation and the consequent depression translates into estrangement through feelings of indifference and hatred, so that a certain autistic estrangement in affective relationships is common, accompanied by a disdainful and contemptuous attitude. Just as a child usually demonstrates an attitude of rabid indifference in relation to the mother who moved away for a long period, likewise, the mammalian heart of the social two distances itself from the affective relationship. In fact, at the bottom of the deep wound of affection of the social two there is a lack of despair that, when reactivated, produces a cooling of relational potentiality, a coldness that is transformed into indifference and emotional disinterest. Likewise, erotic mania leads to a constant attitude of sexual seduction, another source of warming in the face of the maternal heat vacuum.

A major therapeutic change in the social two occurs when he stops treating himself as a neurotic and begins to notice the harm he is able to do to others: this means discovering one's own criminal nature as Fritz Perls called it. In my own experience, I spent many years of therapy looking for the causes of suffering and always trying to increase my well-being and strength. When I discovered my ability to hurt others I changed direction and began to worry more than I did to others with the aim of increasing my well-being and strength. The study of myself ceased to consist of the search for my weaknesses and became the analysis of how I behaved in an unclean way with others and how I acted unconsciously as an exploiter.

Fritz Perls separated people into two simple categories: neurotics and "criminals." The former are those who tend to put their own needs in the background to satisfy those of others, the latter present an imposture of opposite base: they are directed directly towards their own objectives, leaving those of others in the background. Although in each person there are areas of life where one or the other of these two underlying attitudes prevail, it is crucial to understand what is the prevalent structure that dominates our behavior.

A neurotic can learn a whole host of skills that help them assert themselves, integrate guilt, bear the weight of loneliness, and develop differentiation and leadership skills. Neurotics tend to submit, so from therapy it is necessary to help them develop the ability to affirm their own territoriality and dominance in order to restore their inner balance and make their relationship with others ethical. Often, in order to fulfill these therapeutic steps, it is necessary for people to study the wounds of their childhood and heal them to recover lost strength, so that they can experience the path of becoming independent and assertive.

On the contrary, those who present a structure of a criminal nature tend to impose their own rules on others implicitly or explicitly. A criminal structure with an aggressive character is imposed through force; who, on the contrary, has a manipulative character, achieves the same objective thanks to less visible control instruments. In the relationship with others, the criminal structure tends to unbalance in its own favor the compensation between giving and receiving. Therapeutic change for these people is to realize how they tend to occupy a position of power and control over others and how they try to take advantage of others.

A first change concerns the development of empathic understanding of others. It helps a social two to develop a sense of guilt, as well as to become aware that his actions threaten his belonging and that he runs the risk of being excluded. It also helps him to stop finding good justifications for every unethical act committed. A change in this regard is to develop the ability to receive criticism and expose their deep motivations.

Each criminal, Perls tells us, has a secret life and a life of cover, showing others and representing an approving social face to avoid the penalties of the law. In criminal structures there is a whole series of hidden intentions, lived in secret and invisible to others.

The secret intention of the social two is to be worshipped, to achieve individual power and success. The social façade, on the other hand, consists of being warm and relational, willing to help in a magnanimous and faithful way.

An important change is therefore to speak honestly, revealing one's own selfish intentions, confessing one's own unethical actions, and showing one's own parts of deep vulnerability.

Just as speaking openly to others is an effective way to show the secret pieces of the ego, asking for and accepting deep feedback and making the effort to understand them translates into an openness to see the effects that one's actions cause to others.

The contrast between the reality of the feedbacks and the ideas themselves in relation to their own characteristic actions evidences by differentiation the justifications and the madness that sustains the passion. The collapse of justifiable thoughts opens up the possibility of seeing with greater lucidity the reality of one's own actions and shows the conscience the passionate motivation to which it is subjected. Only then does the social two allow himself to discover his true intentions, hidden from consciousness thanks to justifications. From this perception can finally be born an initial sense of guilt and the possibility of developing the ability to empathically perceive the other. These transits, over time, tend to favor an ethical development where the tendency to put oneself above is appeased and opens up sensitively to the true needs of the other.

In my experience, I came to realize that many of the emotions I felt were actually narcissistic emotions. Among them, I will highlight the territorial mania and the mania of the protector, the exhibitionist desire and the erotic-sexual desire for conquest. These narcissistic emotions are exalting, strong, pleasant, and above all they are capable of engendering a positive emotional barrier to the emotions of difficulty experienced by the organism. Under a narcissistic structure such as that of the social E2 there is an organism that suffers, either because of the wounds and altered emotions of childhood, or because of the current lack of knowledge and satisfaction of one's own needs, due to the investment of almost all the energy in maintaining narcissistic processes. In other words, the organism that endures the wounds and faults of childhood ends up living chronic emotional situations in the present of adult life. As for consciousness, he does not consider it and does not see it to the extent that he does not consider or see the needs and emotions of other people: the proud one has as little regard for the heart of others as his own.

In the case of territorial mania and genitorial mania — that is, placing myself in the role of the father — the overstimulation of these visceral components leads me to experience a sense of omnipotence and superiority, accompanied by a sense of inviolability and the complete absence of relationship needs.

Territorial mania comes from a sense of the struggle for power and the sense of domination. This perceptual deception serves to fight against the common fear of pain, and is reinforced by the territorial success that, in effect, the social dos usually achieves. My great source of food for such mania was my great commitment to work, where on the one hand I had reaped successes and on the other I had developed a dependence that Americans usually call workaholism.

The mechanism of activation of territorial mania has something to do with competitive challenge: there is another man, real or symbolic, who accepts the challenge and who is actually or symbolically defeated, which translates into a reinforcement of the excited and omnipotent state of mania. Another powerful feeder of territorial mania was the tendency to defy death and feel omnipotent practicing risky sports: motocross, skydiving, hang gliding, martial arts...

Another great source of food was relational: I surrounded myself with less capable, less developed people, dependent on me, so that I could continually win in a secret competition disguised as a pseudo-compassionate goodness that I will talk about right away. This secret and internal competition had the objective of stimulating territorial mania to infinity. The effect this attitude evokes on others is devastating and translates into a slow and chronic sense of devaluation that poisons relationships with people around the social two, who become dependent and adoring. All this had the secret purpose of enslaving the other, subjecting him to my will.

An ingredient of this structure consists in the tendency to blindly believe in one's own ideas and cognitive maps, and enunciate them with such a sense of certainty and truth that a powerful seductive effect is obtained with weak and insecure people. Another way of seducing is, as I have already pointed out, to disguise this secret competition as pseudo-compassion. The structure that is activated in the brain in this case is genitorial mania. Every mammal near a child or puppy experiences an omnipotent sense of love and generosity that serves to overcome the hardships and fatigue of a difficult biological duty. In the case of exhibitionist desire and erotic-sexual drive, the narcissistic emotion engendered by the social two promotes the construction of an idealized image of oneself as victorious, beautiful and desirable. In their relationships, the search for confirmation predominates, which also serves to feed a permanent state of excitement. Exhibitionist desire could be metaphorically explained as the perception of being the protagonist of a film that others watch with pleasure and that generates envy and a sense of imitation.

Erotic-sexual desire, on the other hand, activates sexuality and infatuation in the search for an intense emotional heat that, incidentally, is capable of offering a strong sense of invulnerability, self-importance and courage. Exhibitionism is fueled by public exhibitions where it is possible to capture attention and applause. On the other hand, the experiences that feed the erotic-sexual desire are, on the one hand, the real contacts with the other sex, and on the other a particular form of imagination where the search for stimulation is continuous: sometimes, half jokingly, I have heard it said that the social two possesses a pornographic mind. This exacerbated imagination is a form of drug, similar to compulsive work or the search for competitive territorial

challenges, which allows to feed to infinity the stimulation of erotic desire in order to engender pleasant emotions.

What's left behind

My own story is that of a long work of awareness and attentive listening to the feedback that others gave me to realize my dependence on work and my feeling of superiority in my personal relationships. After having reached this understanding, I began a process of detoxification that undoubtedly involves coming into contact with an organismic pain that I did not know clearly, but that I had already experienced in moments of crisis. Only after a few years did I manage to concretely modify my professional customs, also thanks to a great injection of relational and loving strength received during a month-long community experience with Erving Polster.

As I left behind the dependence on work I entered a mild depressive state but sustained over time, and only after months I realized that my deepest wound was related to the feeling of belonging, to the relationship with my mother and with the group of friends, with panic and with emotional despair. It also took me a few years to elaborate the traumatic losses suffered throughout my life, in which I had not previously stopped. The objective of this work was to restore the function of the affective bond.

The dynamics of superiority, the need for competition, the indifference due to a hidden despair, the individual need for glory and worship, are opposed, in the social two, to the possibility of relating as an equal with one's neighbor. The entire narcissistic structure of the trait is based on the denial of the emotions of the other, whether due to the particular relationship with the proud or due to independent events; likewise, the other is also denied his needs, which do not appear as important in the theater of consciousness of the proud individual. Personal narcissistic desires, in fact, always conquer the spotlight and leave the needs and emotions of others in the shadows.

Buber's practice of the yo-tú relationship represented for me a real treatment for narcissistic cheating. The key to access this level was given to me by Paolo Quattrini. It consisted of asking people what they thought they felt for them, as well as revealing to others the feelings that my heart harbored for them, and finally asking and listening with real interest what they felt for me. This task, which may seem banal, is actually very difficult for those who are affected by such a great narcissism.

Training oneself in listening to what one feels about people, listening to those feelings, whether they are vulnerable or strong, worrying about perceiving the same in others, are tasks that help to shift the point of view of consciousness from the narcissistic life to the organismic life.

The metaphor that could be used is that of the king who lives in a castle isolated from the village. The king is the conscience, the castle is the narcissistic structure, the people are the

organismic needs. The narcissistic life develops between comforts and power games in the castle where the king is dedicated to his vices surrounded by a court that worships him, while the people are treated unfairly and exploited to allow the court to live surrounded by comforts. Practicing a dialogical relationship would consist of talking to the people in order to understand their needs and dedicate the work of the court to the ethical satisfaction of them. For years, I have experienced with great difficulty the implementation of a dialogical relationship with my patients, in order to integrate it and, later, little by little, to be able to export it into my own life. The effect I got was to finally feel connected to people on a plane of parity where I could afford to demand and offer, reject and accept, be accepted or rejected. In fact, I have experienced the healing power that peer-to-peer exchange offers.

Getting out of anesthesia

Once that first illusion of the ego that engendered narcissistic emotions was put into question, a path of contact with organismic emotions began for me. The process consisted of learning to recognize emotions that for many years had been covered up and anesthetized by the narcissistic feeling.

All the emotions denied belonged to the category that we could call vulnerability: shame, panic, despair, resignation, guilt, self-devaluation, distrust, jealousy, envy... I realized that I still didn't know how to name the difficult emotions I felt. In this, the confrontation with friends who were emotionally more intelligent and expert than me was very helpful. Instead of hiding my emotions under the usual façade of an omnipotent leader, I began to show them to people I felt confident in and whose ability to name emotions allowed me to put a face and eyes to my difficulties. By the way, I began to understand and recover the lost language of my organism. As Gedling says, it was like starting to relate and dialogue with a part of me that I did not know and that I began to relate with an attitude of affection, restraint and firmness. The next step was to understand the needs of these emotions. I also began to use my commonly wasted skills to increase my professional and personal power to take care of those needs. Over time I discovered that they weaved the fabric of my affective, personal and family history, and that several of the most painful moments of my life were nothing more than an echo, a repetition of those primitive wounds.

Thus, I began to work on myself in two main directions: the first was to develop existential antidotes to calm these emotions, just as a mother calms the anguish of a child with an act of contention and love; the second was to heal one by one the wounds that made my emotions so strong and recidivist. In this long, still unfinished process, I realized experientially the extent to which I myself was responsible for my emotional states, and how ingrained they were in my emotional story.

The emotions I learned to recognize, modulate, and heal do not belong to a single level, but are spread throughout all strata of the psyche and body. As in Dante's various infernos, some

emotions are more superficial and easier to contact and modulate; others belong to the deeper strata of being, and then they are more difficult to recognize and manage.

In my experience, the deepest stratum is affective despair, then panic and, on top of this, resignation. In an even more superficial state are jealousy and envy, then shame and distrust, and finally in the most superficial stratum of all: self-evaluation and guilt.

Each of these emotions seemed to me linked to particular personal or family experiences that were recorded in my inner world and that had to be taken care of or put in order to be able to relegate the emotions to their natural functioning and deflate them from their excessive activation, so disorganizing for consciousness.