Enneatype 1 – Anger

To understand the Passion Anger, first of all we must distinguish it from rage understood as an emotion.

While by anger we understand the emotional reaction of attack as a response to a danger or an invasion, Anger, on the other hand, is a raging and out-of-control impetus that this personality feels in the face of the existential emptiness caused by the loss of the original condition of fullness.

It is as if, having lost the earthly paradise, the E1 considers this loss a mistake that needs to be repaired.

While for mental characters —and even more so for emotional ones— passion is an attempt to regain existential plenitude through contact with suffering and fear of loss, E1 moves away from both pain and fear, assuming an attitude of repairing superiority of detachment, considered by him a mistake.

It follows then that its repair will be an impulse towards concrete, perfect and action that will eliminate suffering.

The E1 has not, in general, had the experience of having been a guided and cared for child but rather that of a child who was forced to behave judiciously, renouncing instinctiveness, emotionality and expressiveness – qualities typical of his being a child. In short, they invested him with very high expectations that did not foresee the possibility of making mistakes.

The child's sensitivity to the parents' suffering was quickly transformed into a willingness to solve the problem for them.

What excites the E1 is the solution; In this sense, it can be understood to what extent Anger is not an emotional aspect, but a fiery energy that always carries it forward, skipping contact with the feeling linked to the context and the respective mental elaboration.

The E1's attitude of "pushing the river" demonstrates the inner need to try to modify the context instead of considering the possibility of adapting to it; from this derives his feeling of superiority and contempt for those who "are not right."

Anger manifests itself in different styles, depending on the subtype: in the social, as well as in the conservative, Anger underlies a reactive formation that transforms it into imperturbability or benevolence.

In relationships, the E1 demonstrates an automatic tendency to impose his own mental and behavioral rigor, expecting from others the same perfectionism (fixation) that he demands of

himself; controls and demands discipline so that, both at a behavioral and emotional level, an order and rigor are respected that he believes will lead to the elimination of errors

His feeling of superiority derives from a self-certification —since he has a concept of himself as a virtuous and just person— which gives him the merit of occupying a position of authority and dominance.

It is a normative and neurotically ethical character, with the specificity of dictating personal norms that it considers absolute codes. This allows him to transform the desire into a behavioral rule, so that he is exempt from feeling imperfect due to having had impulses or emotions (which he considers defects).