Enneatype 7 – Gluttony

Gluttony is the irrepressible need to savor all that the world has to offer. Tasting without digesting means taking from the world only the most exciting and tasty aspects, and above all easily rejecting everything that hurts or does wrong.

The E7 avoids contact with the feeling of emptiness by "filling the mouth" with pleasant experiences and stimuli, thus cultivating a great ability to always stay on the surface. The E7 believes to fill the void with an illusory layer made up of multiple behaviors tending to displacement and distraction.

The pleasure of the search for stimuli requires a constant movement that prevents the E7 from feeling the lack or frustration that the world obviously faces.

If something or someone disappears, it is enough to head towards another pleasurable stimulus.

Since its childhood, the E7 develops an intellectual background that allows it to understand how to move nimbly in the face of obstacles. This function has been experienced in family relationships, in which E7, in the physical or emotional absence of the father, often took charge of relieving the mother's pain or depression.

For males, this has meant a distant relationship—or rejection—from the father; for women, on the other hand, it has been to fulfill a masculine role, leaving aside the feminine dimension (either in terms of the erotic or emotional aspect).

This support function did not translate, as for E1, into a rigid assumption of responsibilities, but led to a compulsive need to please and be recognized as a skilled harlequin who puts himself at the service of the other without renouncing his own advantages.

Although touched by the feeling of guilt, he tries to escape by distracting the attention of the other (and his own) from his misdeeds.

The weapons he uses to enchant and obtain the forgiveness and approval of the other are cunning and seduction (self-indulgence is his fixation). He takes pleasure in his achievements, confusing cunning with intelligence. Making the other fall into their nets gives him back a narcissistic assessment of himself; he is not interested in knowing the real feeling of the other; their constant search is the feeling of satisfaction product of their own abilities.

Leading a relationship — whether sentimental or social — means, for E7, adopting strategies. In love, friendship or profession, you always have at hand a plan B that can solve both emotional suffering and the weight of a commitment.

To assume a commitment, for an E7, is to find yourself immersed again in that subtle obligation to satisfy the impossible expectations of the family environment (and also to stop). The biggest ghost of an E7 is not being able to escape or not having an exit.