Social 8(SO8)

Lust in the Social Sphere

When lust meets the social instinct, it manifests as passionate and possessive nature of bonds with others, attempting to keep those they consider weaker happy. However, this isn't a necessarily sweet character, the SO8 often feels as if it's tasked to be the protector of the weak, they also idealize the idea of trust and friendship and once that bond is broken they might not ever forgive and turn to aggression. They are often compared to a person standing up to a higher force to protect those below. Some SO8s can also get lost in this idea of revenge that they forget that those who they are protecting are, in fact, people, and because of that can end up using those "below" as justification for their outbursts. They are also hypocritical in a sense that while they claim to go against conflict, they can produce more of it. In short, this subtype sees themselves as a protector or a buddy, using that as justification for their actions.

Ichazo titled SO8 "Social relations", attempting to keep everyone happy, putting their aggression at the service of protection or justice. Naranjo explained social lust as someone who wants solidarity with the oppressed, putting his vigilante vengeance at their service.

(No Available Trait Structure)

Claudio Naranjo's Social 8 Description

Social E8: An Antisocial Solidarity with the Oppressed

Ichazo's term, in this case, was “friendship,” which seems to me relevant to the friendly attitude of such people, even in their aggression, since it is usually expressed as a demand for justice implicitly in solidarity with the mistreated. Personally, however, I prefer to limit the use of the word friendship to healthy friendship, and alternatively use terms such as “complicity” for the manipulative friendship in which ties are established aimed at power.

Social lust wants to show solidarity with the oppressed, putting its righteous revenge at their service.

This is arguably the least psychopathic subtype of the E8, and often comes off as more of a strong good person than a troublesome person; but it is also true that in this character a whole range of manifestations can be recognized that includes quite aggressive people, particularly due to their rebellious and righteous spirit.

In literature, we find the social E8 in Razumikhin, Raskolnikov's friend in Dostoevsky's “Crime and Punishment,” where he appears as a very friendly and protective character.

Somehow, Razumikhin holds Raskolnikov's life cross. He protects him, takes care of him in moments of maximum devitalization and turbulent, feverish confusion. And he protects him beyond Raskolnikov's distrustful, ambivalent, rejecting, and even hostile attitude.

The faithful friend, that man of iron will and unbreakable tenacity, whose bond is maintained in a granite way, even deploys, in the trial phase, a whole series of activities in his favor, looking for people who have been helped in some way by Raskolnikov to find mitigations. He also devotes himself to the service and care of his sister (with whom he falls in love) and his friend's mother.

Razumikhin performs a whole display of physical care; brings the doctor, buys clothes, supports him, accompanies him, confronts him, but, above all, he does it with enormous dedication and a radical presence, showing a friendship that is proof of all kinds of obstacles by Raskolnikov. Delivery and fidelity without limits. Maximum loyalty.

Faced with Raskolnikov's mental escapes, Razumikhin responds once again with his incessant rooting presence, connecting him again and again with reality. Supporting him and confronting him with his usual vehemence, decisive energy, talkativeness, and cunning. And, above all, with a great capacity for action. A type of energetic action, well conducted and executed, which offers a continuous anchoring to reality and constant support. The display of delivery and presence made by Razumikhin is enormously impressive and moving, not only in practical matters, but when it comes to supporting his friend and his heavy internal cross.

In later literature, the benevolent vigilante reappears in the writer Jack London, whose success derived not only from his ability to express himself, but from the richness of his life, characterized by a great spirit of adventure and the corresponding taste for risk.

Jack London tells at the beginning of this story about his life how he felt motivated to build a yacht and embark on it to explore the world, and in its pages a passage caught my attention in which he declared that his most satisfying experience was of going through a storm in which the energy and sagacity with which he served at the helm of the ship led him to feel like master of a very risky situation. I think that the spirit of adventure of the social E8 is an expression of the pleasure that lustful people generally have in feeling like masters of the situation in cases of risk: powerful in a sense of the word that has nothing to do with narcissism or the judgment of others.

I believe that it is the social aspect of lust, which comes to us as a friendly attitude towards others, and an interest in the common good, which makes reading Jack London so pleasant, whom we perceive not only as an exceptional being, but as intrinsically good: a brother.

The Social E8 likes to explore and feels good in situations that would distress more fearful people, although he has problems with loneliness, being such a friendly and outgoing person.

Idgie's personality, from Fried Green Tomatoes, is typically that of a social E8 by combining antisocial rebellion with great benevolence. She is strong, unconventional, independent, protective, but above all she is animated by a deep sense of friendship, which is the best thing in life, as she declares to Evelyne at the end of the film. Such a friendship has been shown in her acceptance of being suspected of a murder she knows was committed by Big George's mother, who would have been sentenced to death on the slightest suspicion in those Ku Klux Klan days.

E8 Social – Complicity

The social E8 is a kind of social antisocial. If we want to use the categories of modern psychology, the eight responds to the so-called antisocial personality: more or less, a person who is against social norms. Or rather a rebellious person.

But a social eight is a type that is only explained in contradictory terms. It's like a child who became violent defending his mother against his father. His violence arose from solidarity. He has resonated a lot with the phrase of “thundering in the face of injustice”.

The central theme of the social E8 was named by Ichazo as friendship. I do not like to use words that have a universal meaning or that we can associate with great meanings to describe specific games of the ego, since many times we end up using those words to justify these same games. So I feel more comfortable with the word complicity. It has to do with the word loyalty, like that of a child who allies himself with the mother to confront the father and who develops a strong detachment from the paternal bond, for which he surely becomes a difficult child at school. He rejects school because the entire institution is associated with a father-like authority, and he comes to experience intellectual detachment because the intellect is equally part of the father complex. Not surprisingly, patriarchal culture is made up of intellect, authority, and impulse control.

Looking at the social eight with the mind of a Freudian, the concept of complicity will be better understood. We could speak of an Oedipus complex. We could say that the boy needs the love of his mother and that he has no hope of finding love in his father. Therefore, he concludes, “I am going to join with my mother against my father, I am going to protect mom, and I am going to get mom's love.” If we go into Freudian psychodynamics, we might also add that this mechanism is not, after all, composed of pure loyalty, but rather a matter of self-interest.

But, for any person of this character, it is very difficult to go beyond the felt experience of simple loyalty. If we were to ask Karl Marx about the nature of his solidarity with the exploited, I don't think he would be receptive to the Freudian reproach, that he would say that he simply ganged up with his mother against his exploitative father. Or that his affinity with his mother was Oedipal and he had something to do with his own need for love.

It is difficult to make an eight aware of his need for love. We are all moved by love. Each form of disturbed personality is an alteration in the way we act to find love. One acts too cute or too good at school, another is too perfect in his morality, and so on. In an eight, it seems that the main issue is renunciation, the abandonment of love. He thinks it's better to go for power, for pleasure, for what he wants, instead of waiting for love, instead of getting sentimental. For an eight, people who are looking for love are sentimental. So an eight is a character that veers towards the cynical, towards the rough, towards the harsh.

Incidentally, eights are not usually interested in activities related to self-knowledge, since it is a little harder for them to develop this type of insight in their own emotional life: they have a lot of repression from the soft side, as if they had had to bury their inner child to be able to go out to life in an armed way, towards a struggle for existence, red in teeth and nails, as the Darwinists say. An eight is someone armed to the teeth.