Core Theory
Antecedents in Scientific Literature on Character
Trait Structure
Defense Mechanisms
Etiological and Further Psychodynamic Remarks
Existential Psychodynamics
In the Christian world “gluttony” is included among the seven “cardinal sins,” yet its usual understanding as a gluttony for food only makes it appear somewhat less sinful than others. It would not be included among the basic sinful dispositions, however, if the original meaning of the term were not—as is the case with avarice and lust—something beyond the literal. If we understand gluttony more broadly, in the sense of a passion for pleasure, we may say that this definitely is a capital sin—inasmuch as it implies a deviation from an individual’s potential for self-actualization; hedonism is binding upon the psyche and involves (through confusion) an obstacle in the search for the summum bonum and a snare. We may say that a weakness for pleasure constitutes a generalized susceptibility to temptation, and in this light we can understand Chaucer’s statement in his “The Parson’s Tale” to the effect that “He that is addicted to this sin of gluttony may withstand no other sin.”
When I first heard Ichazo’s ideas of Protoanalysis, this was in Spanish, and he used the word “charlatan” for the ennea-type VII individual (and “charlatanism” for the fixation). This word also needs to be understood in more than a literal manner: that the glutton is one who approaches the world through the strategy of words and “good reasons”—one who manipulates through the intellect. Ichazo’s later word for this personality, “ego-plan,” makes reference to the fact that the “charlatan” is also a dreamer—indeed, his charlatanism may be interpreted as a taking (or offering) dreams as realities. Yet I think “charlatanism” is more evocative, for planning is a prominent trait of ennea-types I and III as well, and “charlatanism” conveys additional meanings, such as expressive ability, the role of a persuader and manipulator of words, deviously overstepping the boundaries of his knowledge. More than a mere planner, ennea-type VII is a “schemer,” with that strategic character that La Fontaine (a bearer of this disposition) symbolized in the fox.
Ichazo characterized gluttony as a “wanting more”: I leave it up to my gluttonous readers to decide which may be the deeper interpretation. My own impression is that, though this description is characterologically apt, it points to an insatiability that gluttons share with the lusty. Also, although it is true that sometimes gluttons imagine that more of the same would bring about greater pleasure, it is also true that they more characteristically are not seekers of more of the same, but (romantically) seekers of the remote and the bizarre, seekers of variety, adventure, and surprise.
In the language of DSM III, the ennea-type VII syndrome receives the name of “narcissistic” —yet we must be cognizant of the fact that this is a word that has been used by different authors for other personalities as well.
It is in the picture that Schneider paints of those that he calls “labile” that I find the closest approximation to our ennea-type VII. I think that in Schneider’s classification an ennea-type VII individual might be diagnosed either as that variant of the “hyperthymic” labeled “hypomanic” or as labile. The latter kind of person he describes as “sensitive, highly influenced by the outer world, inclined to self-analysis. Not a depressive, but one who is subject to occasional excesses of sadness or irritation.” At a more ordinary level of mental health, he draws attention to a trait of “being easily satiated and bored with things … A restlessness seems to invade this subject, especially in spring; an impulsive longing for variety and novelty … A special manifestation of this personality is the manifestation of vagrancy.” He also quotes Stier who has made a special study on desertion: “In all these investigations one finds very different things; partly the fear of punishment or nostalgia, partly the purely social vagabonding of the lonely, partly a romantic love of adventures and the pursuit of novelty.”
Since gluttony may be approximately translated into modern terminology as “receptive orality” it is appropriate that as we turn from the literary sources to the psychological ones we begin by considering the orally gratified type of Karl Abraham, characterized by “an excess of optimism which is not lessened by reality experience; by generosity, bright and sociable social conduct, accessibility to new ideas and ambitions accompanied by sanguine expectations.”
The following statement from Abraham addresses itself to the characteristic verbal ability of ennea-type VII:
“their longing to experience gratification by way of sucking has changed to a need to give by way of the mouth, so that we find in them besides a permanent longing to obtain everything, a constant need to communicate themselves orally to other people; this results in an obstinate urge to talk, connected in most cases with a feeling of overflowing. Persons of this kind have the impression that their fund of thoughts is inexhaustible and they ascribe a special power of some unusual value to what they say.”
Whether or not we share Freud’s and Abraham’s view in regard to the stages in the development of the libido and the role of sexuality in the shaping of character, not only is the syndrome that psychoanalysis labels as “oral-receptive” an observable fact, which corresponds to ennea-type VII psychology (just as passive-aggressive syndrome corresponds to ennea-type IV), but its association with happy breast feeding has been statistically ascertained. It may be of interest to note that when Freud used the word “narcissistic” in connection with a particular type of individual, his image corresponded to ennea-type VII features and to the narcissistic personality in the DSM III, more than to those of the narcissistic personality disorder as described by Kernberg.
In “Libidinal Types” Freud says: “The main interest is focused in self-preservation. The type is independent and not easily overawed. People of this type impress others as being personalities. It is on them that their fellow men are specially likely to lean. They readily assume the role of leader, give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or break down existing conditions.”
In spite of the widespread use of “narcissism” in connection with a characterological disposition corresponding to a variety of our ennea-type V, it is ennea-type VII that receives the label “narcissistic” in the DSM III or, at least, we may say that there is in it a juxtaposition of meanings that needs to be pointed out. I will examine the issue in the form of a revision of Millon’s description of the narcissistic personality:
“Narcissism conveys a calm and self-assured quality in their social behavior” Millon begins by saying, and in this way definitely portrays an ennea-type VII person rather than the typically awkward, self-doubting, tense ennea-type V.
“Their seemingly untroubled and self-satisfied air is viewed by some as a sign of confident equanimity. Others respond to it much less favorably. To them, these behaviors reflect immodesty, presumptuousness, pretentiousness and a haughty, snobbish, cocksure, and arrogant way of relating to people.”
Whereas we may speak of covert arrogance in the case of ennea-type V individuals, this is not suggested by their behavior so much as by the content of their speech. Behavior involving a nonchalant sense of being OK is typical of our “charlatan,” in contrast with the awkward shyness of ennea-type V. I continue with Millon:
“Narcissists appear to lack humility and are over self-centered and ungenerous … They characteristically but usually unwittingly exploit others and take them for granted and expect others to serve them without giving much in return. Their self-conceit is viewed by most as unwarranted. It smacks of being uppish and superior without there being substance to justify it.”
Though an expectation of receiving not matched by generosity is something that could be applied to avarice, the style is different in gluttony, as is also the level of exploitation. While in ennea-type V the feelings of superiority exist side by side with even greater feelings of inferiority, in the narcissist the balance is the converse: feelings of superiority being more visible and present to the individual’s awareness, while feelings of inferiority are hidden, denied, and repressed. Only of the gluttons it may be said, as Millon says of narcissists, that “their behavior may be objectionable, even irrational. And that their self-image is that they are superior persons, extra special individuals, who are entitled to unusual rights and privileges. This view of their self-worth is fixed so firmly in their minds, that they rarely question whether it is valid. Moreover any one who fails to respect them is viewed with contempt and scorn.”
The following paragraph from Millon evokes the planning aspect of ennea-type VII as well as the optimism of the oral receptive:
“Narcissists are cognitively expansive, they place few limits on either their fantasies or rationalizations, and their imagination is left to run free of the constraints of reality or the views of others. They are inclined to exaggerate their powers, to freely transform failures into successes, to construct lengthy and intricate rationalizations that inflate their self-worth or justify what they feel is their due, quickly depreciating those who refuse to accept or enhance their self-image.” Most characteristic is the observation that “roused by the facile workings of their imaginations, narcissists experience a pervasive sense of well being in their everyday life, of buoyancy of mood and an optimism of outlook. Affect though based often on their semi-grandiose distortion of reality is generally relaxed if not cheerful and carefree. Should the balloon be burst, however, there is a rapid turn to either an edgy irritability and annoyance with others or to repeated bouts of dejection that are characterized by feeling humiliated and empty.”
Ennea-types V and VII not only contrast in terms of awkwardness vs. self-assurance but also differ in regard to a mental atmosphere—that is predominantly pleasurable in the former and painful in the latter:
“Narcissists suffer few conflicts. Their past has supplied them perhaps too well with high expectations and encouragements. As a result they are inclined to trust others and to feel confidence that matters will work out well for them.” Yet “reality bears down heavily at times. Even the routine demands of everyday life may be viewed as annoying incursions by narcissists. Such responsibilities are experienced as demeaning for they intrude upon the narcissist’s cherished illusion of self as almost godlike, alibis to avoid ‘pedestrian’ tasks are easily mustered since narcissists are convinced that what they believe must be true and what they wish must be right. Not only do they display considerable talent in rationalizing their they wish must be right. Not only do they display considerable talent in rationalizing their social inconsiderateness but they utilize a variety of other intrapsychic mechanisms with equal facility. However, since they reflect minimally on what others think, their defensive maneuvers are transparent, a poor camouflage to a discerning eye. This failure to bother dissembling more thoroughly also contributes to their being seen as cocksure and arrogant.”
I think it will be relevant to include here some reflections of David Shapiro on the impulsive styles in general, since these apply as he himself remarks, both to “most of those persons usually diagnosed as impulsive characters or psychopathic characters” (VIII), and “some of those who are called passive neurotic characters and narcissistic characters”(VII).
While we may say that one is a tough impulsive and the second a soft one, in both of them we may speak of “an impairment of normal feelings and deliberateness and intention.” He includes those conditions described as passive in his discussion because of “the formal qualities of the two sorts of conditions, that marked by impulsiveness and that marked by extreme passivity, shows them to be very closely related. In fact I believe it would be in keeping with the formal similarity of the two sets of conditions to speak of a general passive impulsive style on the experience of impulse … It is an experience of having executed a significant action, not a trivial one, without a clear and complete sense of decision, motivation, or sustained wish. It is an experience of an action, in other words, that does not feel completely deliberate or fully intended.
“These are not experiences of external compulsion or submission to moral principles,” he explains, “but experiences of wish.” Yet “experiences of exceedingly abrupt, transient and partial wish, wish that is so attenuated as to be hardly comparable to the normal experience of wanting or deciding, and so attenuated as to make possible or even plausible a plea of ‘guilty but without premeditation’.” Thus the typical statement “I don’t want to do it but I just can’t control my impulse” which Shapiro comments may be translated as “I don’t feel I ought to do it and I would shrink from doing it deliberately, but if quickly and while I’m not looking my feet, my hands or my impulses just do it I can hardly be blamed” in passive characters frequently takes the form of “I didn’t want to do it, but he pressed and somehow I just gave in.” Just as the Freudians have become aware of this ennea-type VII syndrome in the light of their theoretical assumptions, Jung and his successors have been acquainted with it in the light of their own frame of reference. This eminently future-oriented type is characterized by intuition: “The capacity for intuiting that which is not yet visible, future possibilities or potentialities in the background of a situation.” I quote from Jung’s Psychological Types:
“The intuitive is never to be found in the world of accepted reality-values, but he has a keen nose for anything new and in the making. Because he is always seeking out new possibilities, stable conditions suffocate him, he seizes on new objects or situations with great intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm only to abandon them cold bloodedly … it is as though his whole life vanished in the new situation. One gets the impression, which he himself shares, that he has always just reached anal turning point … Neither reason nor feeling can restrain him or frighten him away from a new possibility, even though it goes against all his previous convictions … he has his own characteristic morality, which consists in a loyalty to his vision and in voluntary submission to its authority … Naturally this attitude holds great dangers, for all too easily the intuitive may fritter away his life on things and people, spreading about him an abundance of life which others live and not he himself.”
Jung’s characterization of ennea-type VII as introverted intuition is only incompletely confirmed through testing, for we recognize the personality pattern in Keirsey and Bates’ portrait of an INTJ (introvert with more intuition than sensing, more thinking than feeling and a predominance of judgment over perception). They observe that INTJ are the most self confident of all the types, that they look to the future rather than the past, and that they are both builders of systems and appliers of theoretical models. “To INTJs, authority based on position, rank, title or publication has absolutely no force. This type is not likely to succumb to the magic of slogans, watchwords, and shibboleths as with the INTP, authority per se does not impress the INTJ …
“No idea is too far fetched to be entertained. INTJs are naturally brainstormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them.
“INTJ manipulates the world of theory as if on a gigantic chessboard, always seeking strategies and tactics that have high pay off … theories which cannot be made to work are quickly discarded by INTJ… .
“INTJs tend, ordinarily, to verbalize the positive and eschew comments of a negative nature.”
I find that ennea-type VII matches the personality associated in homeopathy to Sulphur. According to D. Demarqwue’s Concordances Homeopathiques (published by the Centre d’Etude de Documentation Homeopathique) “the character manifestations found in subjects that are sensitive to Sulphur are not pathogenic. They exist, aside from any important episode of sickness. Gaiety, optimism, the enjoyment of life are not, of course, pathological symptoms, neither is selfishness nor an inclination for philosophical speculation.”
Could not the same be said of the oral-optimistic ennea-type VII, by a person without psycho-therapeutic sophistication? It is a fact that type IV and type V seem sicker than the happy characters—type VII, type III, type II, and type IX. Yet pathology or not, homeopathic experience has recognized the ennea-type VII pattern: a selfish enjoyer with a love for explaining and generalization.
Turning to Matière Medicale Homeopathique by Michel Guermonprez, Pinkas, Tork, (Doin Editeur, Paris, 1985), I find “cyclic behavior, euphoria, imagination, inaction, irritability, selfishness” as characteristics of those for whom Sulphur is the remedy of choice. “Cyclic behavior” is then explained as an alternation of euphoric phases (“sociable, optimistic, charlatan”) and depression.
Particularly interesting, in view of our conception of ennea-type VII as a charlatan, is the observation: “the student believes that he knows everything and does everything well, while being in fact lazy, confusing and negligent.” Also “Illusion of a superior intelligence: systems, techniques, synthesis, inventions, exuberant but erroneous theoretical imagination. Metaphysical and philosophical speculation. Mythomania: beautifully illustrated frauds.”
Along with recognizing that the characteristics of Sulphur people in the experience of homeopaths are the best match to type VII, I notice a difference in emphasis between their view and Coulter’s description (which originally inclined me to connect Sulphur to ennea-type V) for in Coulter’s character description of Sulphur hedonism is not prominent. Since the ennea-type conscious homeopaths I have questioned confirmed the correspondence of Lycopodium to type VI, I have deemed Coulter’s Sulphur the closest to type VII among the Polychrests. I have inquired further and reconsidered the possibility that the loquacious Sulphur (“philosopher” in rags) might correspond to type VII, and I have been pleased to learn of the association of Sulphur to euphoria, which has confirmed this alternative hypothesis.
There is still a difference between my conception of ennea-type VII, and the homeopathic picture: the emphasis on selfishness in the latter. While I have spoken of type VII as a fox whose selfishness is well hidden under a lambskin, homeopathic literature I have consulted doesn’t seem to pay attention to the fox’s clothing. Or rather, it only reports that there are exceptions to Sulphur’s self-interest. Says Coulter: “Some Sulphurs, moreover, demonstrate a complete lack of interest in material things or financial matters. They can be almost simpleminded in this respect. They are not slow, but their heads are so far in the clouds, they are engrossed in thought, that the ‘real life’ around them passes by unobserved.”
To clarify this it is necessary to point out that only the self-preservation subtype of enneatype VII is visibly an opportunist with a keen nose for advantages; in the social subtype self interest is more hidden behind a friendly brotherliness, while the sexual subtype is that of a dreamer whose interests are not of this world.
Gluttony
Ennea-type VII individuals, are more than just open minded, exploratory; their search for experience takes them, characteristically, from an insufficient here to a promising there. The “insatiability” of the glutton is, however, veiled over by an apparent satisfaction; or more precisely said, frustration is hidden behind enthusiasm—an enthusiasm that seems to compensate for dissatisfaction as well as keeping the experience of frustration away from the individual’s awareness.
Whether in the question of food or in other realms, the gluttony of the glutton is typically not for the common, but, on the contrary, for that which is most remarkable, for the extraordinary. In line with this is the characteristic interest in what is magical or esoteric itself, a manifestation of a broader interest in what is remote—either geographically, culturally, or at the fringes of knowledge.
Also, an attraction to that which is beyond the boundaries of one’s own culture reflects the same displacement of values from here to there; and the same may be said of the typical anti conventional tendencies of type VII. In this case, the ideal may be in a utopian, futuristic, or progressive outlook rather than in existing cultural models.
Hedonistic Permissiveness
A pair of traits inseparable from the gluttonous pleasure bias, are the avoidance of suffering and, concomitantly, the hedonistic orientation, characteristic of ennea-type VII personality. Intrinsically connected to these traits are permissiveness and self-indulgence. In connection with permissiveness it may be said that it not only describes a trait of the individual with regard to himself, but a characteristic laissez-faire attitude toward others; such permissiveness sometimes even becomes complicity when gluttons seductively become friends of other people’s vices.
Closely related to self-indulgence is the trait of being “spoiled,” usually employed in reference to an attitude of entitlement to gratification. Also the “play-boy” orientation to life falls in here, and, indirectly, the exaggerated sense of okayness that the individual develops as a protection of hedonism against pain and frustration: the “optimistic attitude” that not only makes him and others OK, but the whole world a good one to live in. In some cases we may speak of a “cosmic okayness,” in which the individual’s contentedness is supported by a view of the world in which there is no good or evil, no guilt, no shoulds, no duties, and no need to make any efforts—for it is enough to enjoy.
Rebelliousness
Of course, without rebelliousness self-indulgence would not be possible in the inhibiting world of present civilization. The main things to be said of type VII rebellion are that it manifests most visibly in a keen eye for conventional prejudices and that it usually finds a humorous outlet. Also, the rebelliousness is mostly embodied in an anti-conventional orientation while intellectual rebellion goes hand-in-hand with a good measure of behavioral acquiescence. This characteristic makes type VII people the ideologists of revolutions, rather than the activists.
Ennea-type VII is typically not oriented towards authorities. It might be said that the glutton has “learned” early in life that there is no good authority, yet adopts toward authority an attitude that is diplomatic rather than oppositional. An aspect of implicit rebellion is the fact that the type VII individual mostly lives in a non-hierarchical psychological environment:
Just as type VI perceives himself exaggeratedly in terms of his relationships to superiors and inferiors, type VII is “equalitarian” in her approach to people. Neither does she takes authority too seriously (for this would militate against her self-indulgence, permissiveness, lack of guilt, and superiority) nor does she present to others as an authority, except in a covert way which seeks to impress while at the same time assuming the garb of modesty.
Lack of Discipline
Still another trait that is both independent enough to be considered as such and yet dynamically dependent on gluttony and rebellion, manifests through the lack of discipline, instability, lack of commitment, and the dilettantish features of ennea-type VII. The word “play-boy” re)ects not only hedonism but the non-committed attitude of an enjoyer. The lack of discipline in this character is a consequence of his interest in not postponing pleasure—and, at a deeper level, rests on the perception of pleasure-postponement as lovelessness.
Imaginary Wish-Fulfillment
The cathexis of fantasy and orientation to plans and utopia, are part of the gluttonous bias that, like a child at the nipple, clings to an all too sweet and non-frustrating world. Closely related to the above and also an escape from the harsh realities of life is the attraction towards the future and the potential: gluttons usually have a futuristic orientation for through an identification with plans and ideals, the individual seems to live imaginatively in them rather than in down-to-earth reality.
Seductively Pleasing
There are two facets in the ennea-type VII personality, each of which has given rise to the popular recognition of the character (“happy” and “amiable” respectively) and which together contribute to the characteristically pleasing quality of type VII character. Just as ennea-type VII is a glutton for what is pleasant and has come to feel loved through the experience of pleasure —he seems bent on fulfilling the pleasure-gluttony of those he wants to seduce. Like type II on the antipodes of the enneagram, type VII is eminently seductive, and is bent on pleasing through both helpfulness and a problem-free, cheerful contentedness.
The amiable aspect of this character is alluded to by such descriptors as “warm,” “helpful,” “friendly,” “obliging,”“sel)essly ready to serve,” and “generous.” Gluttons are very good hosts and can be great spenders. In the degree to which generosity is a part of seductiveness and a way of buying love rather than a true giving, it is counterbalanced in the psyche of the glutton by its corresponding opposite: a hidden but effective exploitativeness that may manifest as a parasitic tendency and perhaps in feelings of entitlement to care and affection. The state of satisfied well-being of ennea-type VII rests partly on the priorities of an enjoyer, partly on the glutton’s knack for imaginary fulfillment. Yet, “feeling good” also serves the ends of seductiveness and seductive motivation may at times make type VII especially cheerful, humorous, and entertaining. The good humor of type VII makes other people feel lighted-up in their presence, and this contributes effectively to the pleasure they cause and the attractiveness of being near to them, to the extent that happiness is, at least in part, seductive and definitely compulsive. The happy bias of ennea-type VII (as in the case of type III) is maintained at the expense of the repression and avoidance of pain, and results in an impoverishment of experience. In particular the “cool” of type VII involves a repression of such anxiety as chronically feeds the attitude of taking refuge in pleasure.
Narcissism
Another group of traits that may be discerned as an expression of seduction may be called narcissistic. It comprises such descriptors as “exhibitionist,” “knows better,” “well informed,” “intellectually superior.” Sometimes this manifests as a compulsion to explain things, such as Fellini seeks to portray in movies where a narrator constantly puts into words everything that is taking place.
We may speak of a “seduction through superiority” which most usually takes the form of intellectual superiority, though (as in Moliere’s Tartute) it may involve a religious, good, and saintly image. The apparent lack of grandiosity in such saintly image is sometimes manifest even in the case of those who actively seek to assert their superiority, wisdom, and kindness. This falls in line with the fact that gluttons tend to form equalitarian brotherly relationships rather than authority relations. Because of this, their pretended superiority is implicit rather than explicit, masked over by a non-assuming, appreciative, and equalitarian style. As in the case of pleasingness, the superiority of ennea-type VII expresses only a half of the glutton’s experience; the other is the simultaneous perception of self as inferior, and the corresponding feelings of insecurity. As in ennea-type V, in both cases splitting allows the simultaneity of the two sub-selves, yet while it is the deprecated self that is in the foreground in type V, it is the grandiose self that has the upper hand in narcissistic personality. A psychological characteristic that is important to mention in connection with the gratified narcissism of the “oral-receptive” is charm, a quality into which converge the admirable qualities of ennea-type VII (giftedness, percep-tiveness, wit, savoir-vivre, and so on) and its pleasing, non-aggressive, vaseline-like, cool, and contented characteristics. Through charm the glutton can satisfy his gluttony as effectively as a fisherman succeeds with bait, which implies that pleasing and charm are not just seductive but manipulative. Through his great charm the glutton can enchant others and even himself. Among his skills is that of fascination—hypnotic fascination even—and charm is his magic.
Along with the narcissistic facet of ennea-type VII it is necessary to mention the high intuition and frequent talents of type VII, which suggests that such dispositions may have favored the development of their dominant strategy (just as the adoption of the strategy has stimulated their development).
Persuasive
We may think of ennea-type VII as a person in whom love seeking has turned to pleasure seeking and who in the necessary measure of rebellion that this entails, sets out to satisfy his wishes through becoming a skillful explainer and rationalizer. A charlatan is of course one who is able to persuade others of the usefulness of what he sells. However, beyond the intellectual activity of explanation, which can become a narcissistic vice in type VII, persuasiveness rests in one’s own belief in one’s wisdom, superiority, respectability, and goodness of intentions. Thus only artificially can we separate traits that exist in close interwovenness: being admirable serves persuasiveness, as also does pleasingness.
The qualities of being a persuader and a knowledge source usually find expression in type VII in becoming an adviser at times in a professional capacity. Charlatans like to influence others through advice. We may see not only narcissistic satisfaction and the expression of helpfulness in charlatanism but also an interest in manipulating through words: “laying trips” on people and having them implement the persuader’s projects. Along with a manipulative motivation to influence others we may consider the high intelligence, high verbal ability, capability of suggesting, and so forth, that usually characterize type VII individuals.
Fraudulence
We have discussed the polarity of feeling OK (and better than OK) and of being at the same time driven by an oral passion to suck at the best of life. We have spoken of a rebelliousness as described in Fritz Perls’ observation that “behind every good boy one may rebelliousness as described in Fritz Perls’ observation that “behind every good boy one may find a spiteful brat.” We have encountered in ennea-type VII a confusion between imagination and reality, between projects and accomplishments, poten-tialities and realizations. Then, we have encountered a pleasingness, a persona-hiding anxiety, a smoothness hiding aggression, a generosity hiding exploitativeness. The word “charlatan” of ennea-type VII in its connotation of fake knowledge and confusion between verbal map and territory has thus an appropriateness to the character beyond mere persuasiveness. Taken broadly, it conveys a more generalized fraudulence (to which all the above add up). Indeed the conceptual label “fraudulence” may be more appropriate than the symbolic or metaphoric “charlatanism” for the ennea-type’s fixation.
More than one defense mechanism seems particularly pertinent to hedonistic-narcissistic character. To say that the type VII individual learns early in life to excuse the indulgence of his wants through “good reasons” implies that the mechanism of rationalization acquires an important strategic function in his life.
Rationalization was described by Ernest Jones as the invention of a reason for an attitude or action the motive of which is not acknowledged. Though it is not always regarded as a defense mechanism, there is enough reason to claim that it is, for even though it does not entail the inhibition of impulse (but, rather, the opposite), it does involve a distraction of attention from the “real reasons” for a person’s attitudes and actions, and in making such actions appear as good and noble, it satisfies the demands of the superego. As Matte-Blanco writes: “Dissipating suspicion concerning the significance of an action, it facilitates the pacific maintenance of repression, and thus it can be considered a manifestation of it.” Rationalization is the more striking, in that it operates and constitutes a way of life—an “explainer” uses persuasion to get around obstacles to his pleasure. Rationalization may be contemplated, however, as a rather elementary defense mechanism that supports the more complex one of idealization. Just as rationalization has not been universally regarded as a defense mechanism, the same is the case with idealization, prominent in ennea-type VII psychology.
First of all there is self-idealization, which in the mind of the type VII person is linked with the denial of guilt and also with the narcissistic attitude and its claims. It may come across as self-propagandizing, even though the self-congratulating individual believes in his idealized version of himself. Idealization also operates importantly in relation to people, and particularly in regard to the mother and mother surrogates. (Just as type VI males tend to be father lovers or father idealizers, tender-minded type VII individuals are characteristically devoted to their mothers and rebellious in the face of authority wielding fathers. In relation to authority figures in general, type VII seems to have adopted a de-idealizing attitude, implicit in its non-hierarchic orientation.)
It is possible to say that the optimistic attitude characteristic of type VII and the joyful mood that is habitual to them would not be possible without the operation of idealization in regard to the world in general and the more significant people in it. In relationship with others as in connection with oneself, optimism entails the suspension of criticality and blaming, and an assumption of lovingness as well as loveability. There is a strong bias toward the feeling expressed by the slogan “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Beyond that, there is a tendency to entertain a “cosmic optimism”—the sense that everything is all-right in the world and that there is no need to struggle.
Beyond rationalization and idealization, we may also mention a relevance of the defense mechanism of sublimation and type VII psychology, inasmuch as sublimation is defined as a turning of instinctual energy to socially desired ends, and the glutton is characteristically one whose self-interest has been relabeled as altruistic motivation. The operation of sublimation helps us to understand the orientation of gluttons towards fantasy, which involves a substitution for the real goal of their impulses by images, plans and the cathexis of their own resourcefulness (i.e., in virtue of which, furthermore, they tend to accumulate tools for doing rather than simply doing).
In Sheldonian terms ennea-type VII individuals tend to be predominantly ectomorphic with endomorphia as the secondary component, yet as a whole seem to be the most balanced in the distribution of the three components. This matches a personality in which intellectual and spiritual interests exists side by side with social extroversion and an active or even restless disposition. Perhaps a constitutional predisposition through a balance between the intellectual, emotional and active orientations explains the intuitiveness of ennea-type VII (highlighted by Jung in his picture of the type). Yet I think it likely that the highly strategic type VII arises most commonly from a background factor in which a good intellectual endowment and genetically determined verbal ability are also present. Just as it is natural for an inborn fighter to settle on “moving against” people in the case of type VIII, it is natural for one who is clever and good with words to become an explainer in his approach to getting his way.
It is appropriate to begin the consideration of the environmental aspect of the nature/nurture equation with the issue of breast feeding, for there is evidence of the correlation between prolonged and happy breast-feeding and a trusting and optimistic personality. As in the case of the relation between unsatisfactory breast feeding and the oral-aggressive shown in the same study, I think that we may consider the finding paradigmatic for a more general relation between happiness in early childhood and cheerful optimism in later life. It is common for ennea-type VII people to report prolonged childhood satisfaction.
When we look at the life history of the cheerful and trusting individual, however, we find that there frequently has been a fall from paradise even more distinct than in the case of type IV, so a regression to the passive and trusting attitude of the child at the breast has taken place in response to the frustrations of later life. Just as type VII does not want to see the harsh aspect of life, it seems that the child has not wanted to deidealize his mother or sometimes his father. Memory in such a case supports fantasy to deny suffering.
I have described such a transition from a happy early childhood to a less happy situation in the life of a type VII individual in The Healing Journey. I was a witness to my patient’s remembrance (in the course of psychotherapy) of the idyllic relationship he had sustained with his nanny before he was old enough to share his meals with his parents and was exiled from the warmth of his nanny’s kitchen to the cold atmosphere of the dining-room, when he was for the first time exposed to sustained contact with his not-so-welcome mother.
Other examples may be less dramatic, such as the following: “At home child rearing ended at the age of two, then we came under the care of our aunt and our parents became like phantoms … I was breast fed until I was two without any kind of schedule. My mother went along with my father in his journeys and they took me with them until I was three, then they left me in the house of an aunt to begin my schooling.” Or:
“My mother was very overprotective and I began speaking early and was graceful and sweet. School was a shock for me. I was completely unprotected before aggression. I was a victim of my class. I sought refuge in a world of fantasy.” Still another: “For me the family was great, life flowed very well, and I had no cares. I think it is at school that I began to be problem ridden.”
A frequent element in the life stories of ennea-type VII people that I have heard is that of an outrageously authoritarian parent vis-a-vis whom a soft manner of rebellion seemed most appropriate. Most commonly this happened with type I fathers whose excessive dominance and sternness was experienced as lovelessness and not only contributed to an implicit judgment to the effect that authority is bad, but to the experience of an authority that is too strong to be met head-on, and also to a correlative misconception of love as indulgence (i.e. as being free from discipline). Mothers have often been experienced as over-protective and permissive (commonly type IX).
“What got my father most nervous about me is that I did not confront him, but I did what I felt, in spite of his rules. My father was physically imposing, I did not face him, but there was no way in which he would control me.”
In response to the question, “What circumstance led you to develop a strategic disposition in face of your parents and life in general?,” one subject explained how his parents were always right and this would have overwhelmed him if he had not cheated. The seductiveness of ennea-type VII is usually apparent in relation to the parent of the opposite sex, and type VII men are most commonly mother oriented (just as type VI men are mostly father oriented). There may be a sense of competing with father in the protection of mother, or caring for her to compensate what hurt father has caused her. “My mother was very seductive and she always presented my father as an ogre, an intimidating man.”
Of course it is also true for ennea-type VII that the presence of a similar character in the family has been a factor: “At home it is as if there were ‘VII’ values, for the things that I heard there are so fantastic and marvelous that it seems you are in another world. Now I can see it better. My father is a crazy VII, for him there is not such a thing as a pound of meat, only cows. We have an industrial refrigerator. Bedrooms, little by little, become pantries. Aside from that he has everything; in an imaginary place, he does. It is as if he has a magical bag and everything becomes reality. I was celebrated for being graceful. My mother used to say that I as not beautiful, but I could conquer the world through charm. Everybody laughs at home and there is freedom to show one’s craziness. My mother likes very much when people express themselves very well and values culture.”
Another factor I have noticed in the story of “oral optimists” as a whole is the frequency with which the father is fearful. In a little piece of research, in seven out of eight instances the father was either VI, VII or V. In another, four out of five responded in the affirmative to the question, “Did you adopt a weak and gentle position because you lacked an example of healthy aggression, because you lacked the image of a strong father?”
Type VII tends to become a pleasure-seeker to the extent that love becomes equated with the indulging of his wishes. Also the love search becomes a narcissistic striving to the extent that the means of attracting love—being ingenious, funny, and clever, for instance—develop into autonomous motives, and the pursuit of a charming and amiable superiority, an end in itself. Thus as in other personality orientations, a particular facet of love becomes a love substitute, and an obstacle towards a satisfying love life.
As in other character types, the ruling passion is supported, day after day, not just by memories of past gratification and through past frustration, but through the interference that character entails on healthy function and on self-realization. As in the case of the other passions, we may understand gluttony as an attempt to fill an emptiness. Gluttony, just as (oral-aggressive) envy, seeks outside something that it dimly perceives that it lacks inside. Only unlike envy (in which there is pronounced awareness of ontic insufficiency), gluttony fraudulently covers up the insufficiency with a false abundance comparable to that of pride. (In this way the passion is acted out without full self-awareness).
Ontic deficiency is not only the source of hedonism (and pain avoidance) however, but also its consequence; for the confusion between love and pleasure fails to bring about the deeper meaningfulness than that of the immediately available. A sense of inner scarcity is also, of course, supported by alienation of the individual from his experiential depth, which occurs as a consequence of the hedonistic need to experience only what is pleasing. It is nurtured also by the implicit fear that permeates the type in its soft accomodatingness—a fear not compatible with the living of one’s true life. Also manipulativeness (however masked by amiability this may be), presupposes a loss of true relationship, a divorcing of oneself from the sense of community, and the fraudulent sense of community, that is part of seductive charm, does not completely mask over that emptiness.
Finally the orientation of gluttony to the spiritual, the esoteric, and the paranormal, while seeking to constitute the exact answer for the ontic deficiency that lies at core, only serves to perpetuate it—for, by seeking being in the future, in the remote, the imagined, and the beyond, the individual only assures his frustration in finding value in the present and the actual.
More than once I have seen a film about the seven deadly sins in which successive stories are presented to illustrate them, and it always seemed to me that gluttony was presented in such a way as to make one doubt whether it was correct to include it among all the more serious sins. In one such story, for example, a man who had been taken in by peasants gets up at night and surreptitiously eats a cake. If we want to understand gluttony, it seems to me that we should consider the taste for food as a symbol of something more important.
Thus, we can reformulate gluttony as addiction to pleasure or intolerance to pain; but it is also true that the search for pleasure is not the fundamental thing, but only the surface of this psychological type and something like an ointment for its sores. Gluttony is an excessive orientation towards pleasure that diverts the individual from his course, by reinterpreting this meaning from an implicit hedonistic ideology that arises as a defense against a hypersensitive attitude towards pain.
If we must choose a single animal for the human type of the sweet tooth, none seems to me more appropriate than the monkey —because of its mobility, its playful spirit and its impudence— but we can also find animals that correspond to the character of the subtypes, and in that case we would say that the monkey itself is the E7 sexual, while the conservationist is more bearish (and this is how Kipling and Disney perceived it in The Jungle Book). Regarding the social E7, we must understand it as the counter-passionate type in which the person, pre-consciously perceiving his or her exploitative and excessive tendency as a sweet tooth, prefers to become a good, loving and even holy person, despite the fact that, in some cases, it is transparent that those who they are good, they hide something from us, as is typically the case with the fox in fables.
Type Seven is one that I have found more difficult to understand from a single idea, but let's say that it is an antisocial masked. In contrast to the Type Eight, which in clinical psychology is called the 'antisocial personality', the E7 is an antisocial who pretends to be very social, and manages to break the rules in a way that is considered acceptable. They are considered acceptable despite their antisociality because they are charming, because they know how to use words very eloquently, and because they advocate that this or that is the right thing to do. They are not rebellious, but rather behave like the fox in fables, which typically appears as very helpful: one who, precisely through his friendly role, gains some advantage.
But, beyond saying that the E7 is determined to take advantage and that it is opportunistic, what supports such attitudes? What conviction supports such a way of living? All you have to do is ask me so that Walt Disney's representation of Aladdin comes to mind, whom he paints as a rascal with great charm who is loved by simple people. He goes around the market stealing an apple here and a banana there, and so he manages to feed himself without bothering anyone too much. And it would seem that everyone thinks he's fine, because he's a good person, quite nice to deal with. But, mainly, I would say that people accept it because they know that we live in an unfair world and that, just as some survive by force, others survive by seduction and little tricks.
Sevens, in the maze of life, know how to get by, and the same can be said about corruption, which is perhaps the worst political problem in the world, based on the feeling that it is not a good thing to take into account to the authorities that are in charge of the world, the laws, the decisions of legislators, and that it is better to take care of one's own interests and those of friends. Isn't this what defines a mob? I don't want to get into the big question of whether they are wrong, but I do want to point out that it is understandable that, in an unjust world, some personal injustices can be understood.
Sometimes I find myself saying to some E7: "You need to suffer more", because they tend to live on the surface of their mind, and their avoidance of suffering entails an avoidance of going deeper into themselves. They become too light people, alienated from their own life and their true purposes. It would also seem that an E7 seeks pleasure too much, as if this were more important than love or obedience to intuition, but I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case, since the deep problem of an E7 is not hedonism but rather the refusal to suffer, and pleasure is sought as a refuge from the possibility of pain, like a protective ointment on a wound.
On the one hand, the E7 do not know how much they suffer, not having the direct experience of suffering, and on the other they flee from the present towards the future or towards the past, either in their thoughts or in dreams, and this implies a rejection of the reality that appears to them as insufficient; but even more true is that reality is painful for them, even if they don't know it. They would need to come in contact with the fact of a more serious basic dissatisfaction than has been recognized.
But why do these characters that psychoanalysis has called 'oral optimists' avoid suffering so much? And why those famous glasses that make everything appear rosy? On one occasion I met a dwarf with a very radiant and apparently happy look, and I asked her to what she attributed her good humor; she simply replied that if she had not developed it, she would have wanted to commit suicide. It was easy to imagine that, during childhood, when he understood that he was not going to grow any more, it was terrible for him, and that for this reason he had to put on the pink glasses and develop humor before everything. And if I wonder, about the E7 in general, what made you suffer so terribly that you have chosen to avoid suffering at all costs? I imagine that this has to do with an excessive fear of suffering; an anticipation that suffering could be life-threatening. In other words, it may sometimes not be so much a great suffering as a fantasy that giving in to suffering could prove fatal. Such an unconscious fantasy, it seems to me, can explain a manipulative attitude towards life, which is an attitude in which confidence in surrender is lacking.
This fantasy seems to be corrected by the experience of suffering, which is particularly difficult for them because they are satisfied people to begin with, and it is hard for them to let go of their habitual joy. In addition, they suffer more than other characters from the discipline that comes with trying to change their habits.
Gluttony is the relentless need to taste everything the world offers. Tasting without direction means taking only the most exciting and fun things from the world, and especially easily rejecting anything that hurts or causes harm. The E7 avoids contact with the feeling of emptiness through “stuffing their face” with experiences and fun stimuli, cultivating a great ability to always stay on the surface. The E7 believes in covering up the void with an illusory layer constituted by multiple behaviors tending towards postponement 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, puts in front of them. If someone or something disappears, it’s enough to just go toward something else pleasant.
From childhood on, the E7 developed an intellectual toolset that allows them to understand how to agilely move in the face of obstacles. This may have originated in familial situations where the E7 would have to alleviate the pain or depression of a parent. This role of support did not become, like in the E1, a rigid assumption of responsibilities, but rather brought them a compulsive need to accommodate and be recognized as a capable harlequin who puts themselves at the service of others while not losing their own vantages. Even when touched by the feeling of blame or guilt, they try to escape through distracting themselves and others from their misdeeds.
The weapons they use to charm and obtain forgiveness and the approval of others are astuteness and seduction (self-indulgence is their fixation. They become complacent through their successes, confusing cleverness with intelligence. Making the other fall in their web gives them a narcissistic valuation of themselves; they are not interested in knowing the true feeling of the other; their constant search is for the feeling of satisfaction found through their own abilities.
Carrying a relationship forward, whether emotional or social, means, for the E7, adopting strategies. In love, friendship, or work, they always have a plan B at hand that they can resolve both emotional suffering and the weight of a commitment with. Taking on commitment, for the E7, is finding themselves once again finding themselves submerged in the subtle obligation of having to satisfy the impossible expectations of their familial environment. The biggest ghost haunting the E7 is not being able to escape or not having an exit.
In the glutton, the pleasure of eating is surely the least important of his or her manifestations, and may even be masked by an excessive dietary-spiritual concern, born of the fact that these characters feel unconsciously guilty over their gluttony and feel bad about it. (They seek to be excessively pure.) It seems to me that in today’s world, there are more people of this character than of others among those who think that “we are what we eat” and favor the macrobiotic or vegetarian diets and more generally, natural medicine.
The passion for more and better that is gluttony manifests itself in a generalized form in interpersonal relations as a desire to be liked, to be popular, to receive admiration. Often, the gluttonous man adores his mother, and his life revolves—as in Fellini’s film 8 1/2—around an idealized image of woman, who represents the beginning and end of all pleasures and the good things in life. But intellectual gluttony is also important, making this the most curious type of character, both in the sense of a search for new horizons and experiences in the concrete world and in the abstract search in the world of ideas. This character feels attracted to the final frontiers of knowledge with all that mystery and the exotic entail.
Referring to an even more fundamental defect than gluttony, Ichazo characterized this type of personality as the “charlatan.” Certainly these characters are loquacious, and their loquacity serves both to exhibit special knowledge as well as to “entangle” others in their ideas, projects, and desires. Their loquacity mainly serves their gluttony—that is, it entails a way of obtaining the object of their desires through good explanations. And these good explanations are particularly important when the question is to go beyond the limits that the environment imposes.
These are “cheeky” characters that get what they want due to their likeableness and their ingenious arguments. But talkativeness stems not only from good reasons, but also principally from the capacity to enchant—which entails not only intelligence and astuteness, but also a certain level of well-being and happiness, without which these people could sustain neither their rise nor their capacity to give advice. To achieve this level of well-being, they naturally have to fool themselves—since the level of pain and conflicts is not intrinsically greater or lesser in one character than in another—and in this self-deception converge the need to maintain a charming façade and gluttony itself, since even more important than the desire to please is the avoidance of pain that this hedonism brings with it.
The gluttonous character is situated in the Enneagram halfway between cowardice and lust. It could be described as masked cowardice, in which the person finds refuge in pleasure in order to flee anxiety. It could at the same time be understood as a toned-down form of lust, in which more intensity is not sought at the cost of pain—as in EVIII—but rather more sweetness. This is not a “motorbike and rock’n’roll” type hedonism, but rather a hedonism of what is agreeable and the avoidance of what is disagreeable. The glutton shares rebelliousness with the lustful character, but this is not an open, direct form of rebelliousness, but indirect and subtle, for which a different word is more appropriate: anti-conventionalism. This character disdains the habitual and always feels attracted to the unusual and innovation.
Maybe the most marked traits of the “narcissist” of North American psychiatry and of the DSM-III are the good image of oneself and feeling one has rights in virtue of a special talent, which certainly applies to EVII. Although these people project a good image of themselves and to a greater extent than other types feel well-being, we can say that this is the fruit of a continuous self-propaganda campaign with respect to the world and themselves that acts as a counterweight to a likewise conscious sense of insecurity. Perhaps this is why the good impression that they try hard to make on others is not motivated by an arrogant, megalomaniac, or extensively superior presentation of self, but rather corresponds to that of a friendly person who insists on an egalitarian approach, while expecting special recognition not only of his or her talent but also as a result of his or her modesty and fraternal disposition.
Very present in this character is the defense mechanism called “rationalization,” which means attributing to one’s own acts a different, more socially admirable or acceptable motivation than the real one—essentially the negation of the gluttonous, opportunistic part of the person, while making a conspicuous display of being generous and obliging. When describing a character of this type, Elias Canetti observes, “they do not even allow you to offer them a cup of coffee.”
An important trait of this character, not yet mentioned, is humor. The chatterbox is not only a pleasant talker, but also a person who amuses and is amused: they know how to laugh at themselves (thus distancing themselves from their true emotions), they know how to amuse and to make others laugh too, defending themselves in this way from being taken totally seriously. When we inspect the observations of the classics in matters of character, we see that the portrait of the gluttonous character appears in Theophrastus under the name of “loquacity.” When defining loquaciousness, Theophrastus, quite significantly employs a special word to capture this characterology: incontinence—in the sense of “verbal incontinence.” He describes this type as one that is continuously talking and who does not give you a minute’s peace.
And when he has left a few (people) speechless, he is the one who then speaks to the groups and dedicates his time to distracting the people who have met to talk about a subject. He goes to the classrooms or to the wrestling school and bothers the students who are having lessons by gossiping with their teachers and trainers.
Evidently, the image that Theophrastus gives us is that of a person who not only talks too much, but also has a great need for contact, is narcissistic, and is lacking in tact with others:
With his verbiage, he impedes the development of a trial or the contemplation of a spectacle at the theater or people from eating their dinner at ease ...
With his loquacity, this man is hardly receptive, but he admits his defect and accepts the criticism of others. It is as if with this show of friendliness, he expects the same condescension on the part of his victims; a similar indulgence to his own.
We also find the chatterbox in the profile of Theophrastus’s “news dealer.” Nowadays, we see the news dealer in the person who is up to date with respect to the latest gossip or the latest academic publications. He or she therefore has information to offer in exchange for ears that listen. We see here how the gluttony of contact, attention, and appreciation are acquired by means of words.
It is clear that in the times of the Commedia Dell’Arte, this type of human was well known, and we find him in the likeable figure of Arlecchino. This is how Carla Poesio presents this character in her book on Italian masks.
I am Arlecchino Batocio, from Bergamo, the humblest of servants of my lords. Who is this little man under the tracagnotto? He seems to be made of rubber, with his jumping and prancing around, with the pirouettes he mixes with his words. He uses a leather mask with two small holes for the eyes. He certainly is not handsome, but rather the opposite. Is he frightening? No! Look at the funny way he moves, his parrot-like voice, the lively expressions that he mixes with the nonsense that comes out of his mouth ... You don’t know whether he is a bit stupid or whether he pretends to be, and the trouble he stirs up is done without malice, and he is the one who ends up the most entangled of all. He does not have much of a desire to work, just a little, he is a servant by trade, who never finds a master who is content with him. His wages are often made up of potatoes and thrashings with a stick. Whether he merits them or not, that is the question. It’s not my fault I’m ignorant, he sustains, and tells whoever wants to hear that when he was going to school a curious accident occurred: a cow ate his books with great relish. How could I interrupt such a substantial meal? I didn’t have the courage. I let the cow eat the spelling book, the Pythagorean table, and all the other sources of science, down to the last page. Since that day on, poor thing, he has not been able to study. This may not be a good excuse, but the story works for Arlecchino, and he himself is the first to believe it … One thing he is never without: hunger. He is eternally hungry. When he is finally about to fill the huge hole that he feels in his stomach—which seems to last him days, weeks, months—ninety times out of a hundred, something stands between him and his meal. And now he dreams. His name, Arlecchino, is derived from the word lecchare (to lick) in reference to hunger and gluttony. (He was probably first called Lecchino and then Arlecchino.)
We will continue our exposition with the seventh enneatype, since this is likewise a seductive, loving character. However, its way of seducing is somewhat different, as is its way of loving. The self-indulgent need an indulgent love above all, and as they prefer that no demands be made of them nor limits placed on them, they also offer the other permissiveness. So much so that La Bruyére, in his contemplation of human characters, highlighted one that seems determined to cultivate vices in others and to sing their praises.
If the ideal love that the proud seek as much as they offer is a passion-love, the ideal love of the glutton is somewhat softer, calmer, and problem-free. It is an agreeable love that seeks to please and which might be called a “gallant love,” in association with court life at the time of Fragonard and the court of of Louis XIV. It is pertinent here to cite what Hipolito Taine says when comparing this form of love with that exalted by Boccaccio:
Boccaccio takes pleasure seriously; passion in him, though physical, is vehement, even constant, often surrounded by tragic and rather mediocre events so as to entertain. Our fables are cheerful in a very different way. Man seeks entertainment in them, not enjoyment, he is joyful and not voluptuous, is sweet-toothed rather than a glutton. He takes love as a pastime, not as a rapture. It is a lovely fruit that he picks, savors and leaves.
We may say that the psychology of EVII tends towards a confusion between love and pleasure—and hence between love and non-interference in the fulfillment of desires. But the expression pleasure-love does not fully evoke the phenomenon of this ever-so-light love of this friendly, jovial character who neither wishes to be a burden to others nor receive anything from anyone. We might well alternatively speak of a comfort-love, which invites us to evoke the agreeable, placid aspect of this form of love-life as well as its limitations.
We are provided with an illustration of the less-than-ideal expression of this comfortable love in the following joke from Rio de Janeiro, which seems appropriate to me in view of the sweet-toothed spirit of the city: a native woman is berating her husband, telling him that the maid is pregnant. The husband replies: “Ah, that’s her problem.” The wife insists: “But you got her pregnant!” He replies: “That’s my problem.” “And me, how do you think I appear in all this?” insists the wife. The husband replies lightheartedly: “That’s your problem.”
The fact that a pleasure seeker beats a retreat when faced with the person or situation that announces inconveniences, commitments, serious obligations, or restrictions is clearly one of the factors that makes gluttonous love an unstable, ever exploratory love. We know that all this increases as relations grow longer. But this is not the only factor, since the personality of the glutton is in itself curious and exploratory; the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
It is precisely the difficulty of satisfaction in the here and now of the real world that is the other important problem in the love life of “oral optimists,” constantly pushing them towards the ideal, the imaginary, the future, or the remote. They think that it is desire that distances them from the present, but it is doubtful that this is any more than a subjective appearance: it is more an implicit dissatisfaction that motivates their continuous flight towards what is different. And it is difficult for the ideal of a totally indulgent sweetness that the glutton seeks to occur in real experience beyond the period of enchantment of a new relationship. Life has its problems, and in the physical world every calculation must be made taking friction into account. Pleasure-love seeks relationships without friction—and knows how to find them, though they can scarcely be called relationships. William Steig illustrates this eloquently in a drawing that, in spite of not referring to love per se, deals with the human condition (The Steig Album). A smiling man balances apples on his head and arms and sug- gests the type of person who is not only skilful but also derives a sense of mastery from interpersonal balancing acts.
There is a generalized friendly attitude in EVII. These are individuals who go to the restaurant and after a short while know the waiter or the cook. They also know the shopkeepers and make conversation easily. Their egalitarian attitude contributes to this and is part of their friendly, like-able, and seductive character. What is the basis for this? Camaraderie? There is an explorative aspect and, what is more, a search for novelty and experiences, a search for possibilities, for marketing, on the part of those who are always seeking to promote themselves. They remind one of the businessman who is searching for a market who, no matter whom he meets, wants to know the situation to see if there might exist an opportunity. The playful aspect also stands out: as they are playful, they approach others like a child does someone with whom he/she can play.
What underlies this non-relationship may be understood on the basis of the information that the Enneagram offers us about this enneatype: it is an enneatype (EVII) that is related to the antisocial characters (EVIII) as well as the self-absorbed, distant types (EV). The more the gluttonous tend towards the lustful, the more they go through life like Don Juans, in search of prey. No matter how gallant they may act, they carry inside themselves an opportunist as well as a schizoid, more interested in him or herself than in others. This form of egoism would be unacceptable for others were it not compensated by, at the least, an equal dose of gallant generosity.
Just as gluttons are generally specialists in making their desires acceptable to others, it is also true that in the specific terrain of love a person with this character tends to have little difficulty in getting his or her own way—even when this entails sacrifices and is unconventional, as in the case of infidelity. I recall a cartoon by Quino that presented a character with the typical physiognomic characteristics of a charlatan, sitting in his medical consulting room surrounded by diplomas. An old lady who has come to see him (presumably because of a heart complaint) is witness to the instructions that the young doctor gives to his secretary: “Call my wife and tell her to get in touch with my mistress to see how they can reach an agreement with my better half with respect to the children’s party.” In the next frame, we see that the old lady has fainted.
The discussion about the character traits of the narcissistic character in the DSM-III highlights entitlement, a sense of rights due to talent, due to superiority. However, the superiority that EVIIs pursue in a love relationship is different from that of people who go through life acting important and assuming a role of authority. In this case, we are dealing with a more subtle form of importance: they do not expect to be obeyed but to be listened to and acknowledged as someone in the know. The man may expect his wife to be his audience, for instance; likewise this occurs in a father with respect to his son. Correlative to the need of chatterboxes to be heard is naturally their not knowing how to listen, though they themselves may not be aware of this, since they offer great empathy in their attentive attitude. Also in questions of parenthood, the love of the self-indulgent is less than what it appears to be, due to their persuasive talent and charm. A father may hardly be present at home and still make himself loved, through presents and smiles, in such a way that his children are not aware until they are grown up of his absence. In this case, part of his love offering will be permissiveness—only sometimes his children perceive it as his not wanting to make an effort, and they intuit that they would feel more loved if he set them limits.
Let us now see what the distribution of psychological energy is like among the three channels of love that we have distinguished in the charmers.
The hierarchy among these three loves is, in general, somewhat different from the case of the proud. While in the latter, love of the divine is practically eclipsed by love of self and love of the other, a religious orientation often appears in the gluttonous, and when this is not the case, one may observe a love of the ideal or an ideal love that corresponds to the sphere of love of the divine in the broadest sense in which I am interpreting this term.
It is precisely religiosity or spiritual desires that may constitute an escape for people with this character. This entails not only neglecting the immediate and the possible for the remote and impossible, but also having difficulty in questions of discipline and a limited capacity to face the deep-seated discomfort of their own psyches. This often makes them amateurs who seek protection in spirituality without entering into a process of profound transformation.
With respect to love for oneself, the self-indulgence of EVII is more like that of an all too comfort-seeking, seductive father rather than that of a good friend to him- self. But pleasure-love is naturally an attempt to compensate for a deeper sense of privation (as the movement between EV and EVII indicates in the Enneagram). One seeks pleasure precisely to flee from the psychological discomfort of anxiety and guilt, fleeing from these in proportion to the lack of affection towards oneself and to self-rejection.
Giving-love, as we have already implied, exists in this character, as it does in the previous one, in the form of seduction. It may be said, therefore, that it is present as strategic friendliness and availability. La Fontaine portrayed these well in his fables about the fox, who is always friendly towards the objects of his desire. We may also talk about an opportunistic-love. The title that a humorist gave to one of his books serves as an illustration of this: To property via marriage.
We have the social projections of two more characters left to examine. The character of EVII is that of a person who does not seem to suffer as much as the others; a happy character, who has a good time, who believes in nothing. EVIIs would appear to be removed from the ills of the world, as they are anti-conventional and critical. Nearly always on the edge of society, in the modern world this type may be embodied by the hippie, and in bygone days by the “priest-hater,” though EVII may be a utopian idealist as well as a friendly bandit like Aladdin, whom Walt Disney Studios managed to portray as a charming petty thief who feels less virtuous than his petty peers in a world in which injustice justifies a certain degree of transgression. This character may also be an excessively accommodating individual who lives off the system like a parasite. A Spanish psychiatrist has given this type a name: light man. We are in the age of the light man, a good-time consumer; an individualist who cares about nothing at all; a hedonist. Many people may think: “What’s so bad about that?,” as if the sin of gluttony—with which this character is associated—were not as serious as other sins, given that pleasure is not as destructive as violence or cruelty.
But among the ills of the world there is one which is fairly serious, that has to do precisely with this light attitude: corruption. If one believes in nothing, if one implicitly thinks that authority is of no use, that the system is corrupted, then one must do what is the most convenient for oneself. And with many people like that, it is impossible for the collective to function.
When Socrates was offered the chance to flee, he preferred to give his life as an example of support for the ideal of democracy, to reinforce the belief in the idea that the people may govern themselves; that even if they make a mistake, a system may in principal be reached in which wisdom reigns. How far we are today from this attitude! We all think, to a greater or lesser degree, that governments are of no use to anyone and that tax returns can be fiddled, because... what does it matter, if nothing functions! The EVII character is more critical and individualistic than the others; but this act of individualism, which could be understood as a love for oneself (or a love for a friend, when it is a friend who is done a favor), does nonetheless have destructive consequences for the collective. I am speaking about corruption. Some “scam” is done so that someone receives another payment, or an international loan is applied for that the country does not need so that ten per cent ends up in the hands of so and so. Something similar occurs in my country, which nowadays is up to its neck in debt, just like in other South American countries: it is of interest to certain individuals to support this economic policy of receiving loans from large foreign banks and to spend more than what is produced.
It may be said that, among the ills of the world, corruption is no less significant than the rest. There are countries that have truly entered into crisis because of it, like Brazil, where EVII abounds, or Italy, where the combination of anti-socialness and the gang-pack spirit is also very notorious (think, for example, how much “love for the family” the Mafia entails). However, I believe that more important than illegal corruption in the course of history (and no less in our day and age) has been a corruption that is unknown to the law but which uses the law as a weapon as well as a shield. Let us call it the intrinsic corruption of the system.
When oppression adulterates and disturbs the healthy, brotherly relationships between human beings, it entails a corrupt authority, and the system that we call “civilization” (which commenced with the taking of power by the males of our species in the Bronze Age) is a system that is not only unjust but also corrupt. It hides behind rhetoric and the media via false ideals and pretended virtue.
If corruption is a response to injustice it may also be said that it perpetuates injustice—particularly when delinquency becomes part of the system.
Historians have written extensively about the corruption of the popes and the church as well as the corruption unleashed by temporal power—whether it be tyrannical, monarchic, or “democratic.” But perhaps nowadays the corruption of the business world is more important, since our times are characterized by the submission of political power to economic power. Thus, it may be that the implicit and perhaps sometimes unconscious preferential attention to private profit over the consideration of what is good for everyone by those who run the organization of global business is the cause of more pain in the present-day world than the sum of the crimes of those who inhabit the prisons.