Enneatype 8 – Lust

The passion of Lust denotes a passion for excess, "a passion that seeks intensity, not only through sex, but in all kinds of stimuli: activity, anxiety, spices, high speed, loud music, etc." (C. Naranjo, “Character and Neurosis”).

He has transformed the intensity of suffering into the intensity of satisfaction, feelings, pleasure and the war against the abuses he suffered.

The E8 is an excessive character, the most impulsive of the action characters. Energy consumption, the search for intense stimuli, the attraction to violence and risk, and the effusive manifestation of enthusiasm are typical expressions of Lust.

Lust manifests itself through an uncontrollable tendency towards the satisfaction of impulses and needs; an incessant search for pleasure understood not as surrender to the senses or as well-being, but rather as an intense experience that returns to the individual the feeling of being alive and that can go beyond the barrier of hardness and insensitivity.

In short, we could say that his passion is to obtain here and now satisfaction and gratification, like a teenager. The future does not exist, and the past is not necessary.

It is pragmatic and concrete; you have to solve the problem immediately (and the problem is your need to possess and get satisfaction).

The wound is an offense received, an abuse: the E8 feels and lives with the conviction that it must be immediately compensated. His interpersonal style is revenge (fixation); accounts cannot be left unclosed; when he carries out revenge he finds fulfillment again.

The origin of this character structure lies in a childhood in which he has been denied to be a child; it has not received adequate care both on the concrete level and on the affective-psychological level. In extreme cases we can find abuse and mistreatment that have humiliated and subdued him.

This situation of oppression and prevarication leads him to cultivate within an aspiration to respond to violence with the same vehemence and force, while waiting for the day of final revenge.

He is a child who has had to grow up quickly, who cannot give himself over to weakness, tenderness or fragility.

Learn to fight and defend yourself and others from injustice. The strongest experience is the attribution of being a bad child.

The sense of justice derives, sometimes, from a family context in which the paternal father figure concretely exercised violence, physical or psychological, or abused his power, while the mother — or siblings — is perceived as a victim of this violence and as an object of rescue.

The compulsion to restore one's power at all costs is clearly manifested in the relationship with others. The feeling of justice may also be an ideal, but it is above all a way of settling outstanding accounts.

From this point of view, the friendship relationship is one in which the E8 is committed to defending close people on condition that they do not interfere with its power. Power is to maintain dominance and control of its territory and the people who belong to it.

The E8 has no empathic capability. Considering that he has no contact with his emotions, the bond with others can be very strong and intense not because he is sensitive to the needs of the other, but rather because he is moved by the compulsion to defend who belongs to him. Because of this lack of empathy regarding the affective relationship (sentimental or friendship), he is not aware of the way in which he comes to subdue his relatives, and does not worry about the judgment of others; he comes into contact with guilt with great difficulty.

He is autonomous and often despotic and arrogant. Their motivation is not to show themselves superior but to obtain the satisfaction of their needs.

He learned to be strong; his body proves it: thick skin, solid musculature, well planted, safe behavior without revealing a state of alarm, great resistance to physical and psychological pain.

Just as he does not give himself permission to feel his emotions, he also does not leave room for physical pain, even neglecting the body; even when he suffers, he finds satisfaction in intensity.