Sexual 2(SX2)

Pride in the Sexual Sphere

Combining the Prideful passion with the instinct of relations we get the sexual 2. Passion of Pride manifests here in an extreme sensitivity about being desired or not, and sometimes as a Pride in the number of sexual conquests one has made. This subtype is the most intense of the 2 subtypes, they are obsessed with the desire to be wanted, believing that love is overcoming resistance. They have a superficial personality, they’re also seductive and sexually provocative, almost always intoxicated by love. They constantly move between seduction and aggressiveness, they are generous, indulgent and flatterers but can also be heavily impulsive when their pride is hurt and the love they expect is not given back.

Ichazo called the SX2 "Aggression", someone who believes that love is overcoming resistance, the passionate and possessive intensity for a loving bond with someone. Naranjo described it as a need to feel irresistible and to ensure a stable bond, which is achieved with flattery and seduction, which is usually not fully conscious.

Trait Structure

Aggressive

The sexual E2 finds it difficult to ask. He is incapable of frankly asking for fear of appearing as a human being and not a divine being, so he allows himself to manipulate and adopt an exigent position. Pushing and invading, he takes up more space than the space that is his. He adopts the posture of a deserving narcissist. The vital strategy that he brings into play evokes the obtention of a larger space in terms of attention within his original family.

He is impulsive and his motto is: “make love and war.” When he’s going after a goal, he doesn’t look around, and instead focuses exclusively on his desires, which he confuses with real needs. His aggressiveness is expressed in the form of impulsion in the action. Raising his voice, buying the other with affection or whatever he lacks, making a scene and, similarly to the E8, the end justifies the means and the intensity of the action leads to emotional disconnection, which is sometimes confused with the lusty character. This whole mechanism hides the difficulty in tolerating frustration, limits, and the word “no” as an insurmountable barrier; a border that, in its exaggerated dimensions, feels like humiliation.

The person of this character can become violent, brash, and disdainful. In intimacy, upon reaching a certain threshold of frustration, he reacts with indifference or abandonment without too much contemplation or wasted time. He makes up for the loss by continuing his seduction with another candidate, and covers in this way the feelings of loss, frustration, and pain.

In this attitude he differs from the social E2, who expresses more aggressiveness in the intellectual aspect, with arguments and explanations. And, above all, he differs from the conservation E2, where aggressiveness is hidden under a childish halo of huffs and tantrums more than an explicit violence, and can be turned against himself, in accordance with the gestaltic mechanism of retroflexion. This is something hardly seen in the sexual E2, who is fully capable of pouring all his impulse outwards.

Hypersensitive

Pride is sustained through an aggrandized self-image that, occasionally, has to be protected from the world. When he faces confrontation, criticism… or even at the smallest attack on his image, the prideful response is immediate. The volume of the response has little to do with the stimulus, but rather obeys to his hypersensitivity.

When an arrow trespasses the ego defenses and hits right in the middle of the conscience, unveiling a lie or falsehood, he explodes in hyperreactivity, in the face of a painful concern that he cannot tolerate. Before letting himself be hurt, before recognizing this truth that would destroy his ego-construction, at the slightest scratch in his self-image, he automatically gets the impulse to defend himself from the attack. He tells himself that pride is an emotional state that is “easy to hurt.” It is simply an ancient and primal humiliation that hurt him as a child, and left him without the capacity to distinguish between having boundaries, being criticized, and being humiliated.

The “thin skin” may or may not be conscious, depending on the level of maturity. But what differentiates the sexual E2 from the other subtypes is the “spontaneous” compulsivity of the reaction, this automatism of maximum “freedom of expression” of the impulse.

Idolization of desire

The passion of the sexual E2 is to feel passion. The passion of being dragged and of dragging through the intensity of an idealized and genitalized love. Live out the impulse that gives him meaning and strength, in a way that makes it difficult to refuse or postpone any desire, especially in love. The desire is converted into an uninhibited momentum in search of immediate gratification, with manipulative strategies, whatever it takes. He is, in this way, impatient and fickle, chasing what he doesn’t have but believes he deserves.

The most important desire is the desire to be loved and pleased, that of being special in love. It is difficult for the sexual E2 to accept: that which he needs most, he is unwilling to give in. That is what he needs is to learn to love. So his difficulty is in the romantic commitment, compromise, and depth.

He searches for a type of love that serves a neurotic need that could never be satisfied. That which he lacks is what he now searches for unconsciously, and he does this by repeating a type of deficient love based on seduction in the place of this being provided by his parents in the family. His tank is empty, this painful sensation that indicates that not everything is so great and so full of love, bordering on envy and putting in danger the whole ego structure.

Impulsive and Without limits

Someone so wild and impulsive needs freedom. This happens due to a lack of limits; he takes pleasure in violating the rules, in the name of feeling more than thinking. As affirms a sexual E2: “for me, rules are simply optional guidelines.”

There is, in this character, a phobia of feeling the limits imposed on him by external forces. The addiction to the emotional state of the moment gives him an air of freedom that can be confused with the spontaneous truth that, in reality, responds to a difficulty in renouncing the immediate gratification of the impulse. It is for this reason that he appears incongruent and irresponsible.

The sexual E2, since childhood, is used to getting what he wants, like an echo of the oedipal situation in which he got a place of intimacy with the parent of the opposite sex. A place that did not belong to him and that he achieved through seduction—induced ambiguously by his own father or mother—while displacing the parent of the same sex, with whom he has, generally, a conflictive relationship.

He is the wildest and most free of the E2 subtypes. Much more than the conservation E2, without going further, who adopts an infantile position with the sacrifice of a big part of his liberty in order to obtain a privileged relation with the parents, and has to be the best boy or the best girl, which leads to a greater loss of free and spontaneous impulse.

Freedom or, rather, the feeling of being “free” is related with the lack of limits, which were never imposed on him, or that came from an excessive authority that was seduced to overcome the fear of being crushed to death.

Dependent

Apparently independent, he flaunts his freedom, which he confuses with debauchery. But in reality it is a hidden, sly dependence; a dependence that is unspeakable even to himself for it would shatter his idealized image. He needs the other to feel validated, as well as this contact, affective and carnal, where he obtains what he desires.

In denying the lack, the reason the person comes to therapy is usually a relationship issue, where he feels abandoned and the edifice that sustains his pride is destroyed.

Histrionic

Currently the word “histrionic” is used to define the whole emotional stage of the E2 character, especially the sexual E2, who is a specialist in dramatizing emotion. He is also called “histrionic,” for his intense feeling of emotionality and impulsivity; the emotion goes far beyond reason, and is prone to “emotional outbursts.” But the word histrionic is very precise and refers to his theatricality.

The staging of this emotional scene may have nothing to do with his profound emotions. It is only a representation to obtain something else, while hiding the real need that triggered the energetic mobilization. Oftentimes this is unconscious, as all the motivation or sensation is related to the aspect of deficiency, to something that doesn’t align with his aggrandized self-image, so it is relegated to the unconscious through the principal mechanism of the E2: repression.While staging scenes is characteristic of the E2 in general, the expansive and aggressive theatrical capacity of the sexual E2 makes him the most scandalous and shameless subtype.

Histrionics is, in the sexual E2, particularly obvious. As much as he is a prisoner of the shell of his character, he is the best actor specialized in expressing warmth in his distinct declensions. He differs from the conservation and social E2 due to his free and shameless expression of passion. He can surrender to his effusions so much that he lacks the words to express all that he feels and neither his eyes, nor his hands, nor his whole body are enough to communicate his feelings; he wants to break through the other with his voice, with his gaze, and with the fire of his passion.

The very impetuous personalities are still very much capable of expressing rage and struggle, in an emotional catharsis similar to what an actor experiences during a climactic scene. Through seduction he can attain new, higher levels of creativity and expressive wealth: catlike rhythm, submissive gaze that wants to penetrate the other, a mix of tenderness and force, of heat and instinct, a great liberty in physical contact, a natural disinhibition to nakedness, and all sorts of expressions of eroticism that produce an enormous pleasure.

Rebel and Transgressor

In the E2 lives the pitiful sensation of being a fraud, which makes him feel like a fake and, thus, guilty. One of the ways of escaping this is disinhibition and the transgression of the social rules, not as a result of some real autonomy of judgment and action, but rather as an expression of the neurotic need to stand out, with the end goal of obtaining admiration from the people that arouse his interest.

The sexual subtype takes this to the field of erotic-affective relations, including love triangles. He considers himself a depository for new social rules through sexual freedom, with an exhibition of vitality and a feeling of superiority in regards to the most common relationship bonds.

It is not difficult for the sexual E2 to become an advocate for the triumphs of the libido, even with modalities that are provocative or scandalous according to common sense, like a form of narcissistic self-satisfaction.

He needs to feel exalted in relationships where he imagines himself to be at the center of the other’s desires, and intensely emotional, without which he feels dry, empty, threatened by the isolation and dangerously sad. All this is accompanied by the fantasy that it is the others who need his welcoming generosity, when in reality it is he who needs to constantly feel validated in his worth.

Hedonist

The sexual E2 is a hedonist; his search for pleasure serves the avoidance of pain and of any situation that could potentially lead to frustration, which he cannot tolerate. How could someone tell him no? Or not respond to his need to be adored!

To avoid facing this limit he can entangle the other in a persistent promise of pleasure. These seduction games quench the sexual E2’s hedonism as well as his need to break the routine with new experiences. As pointed out by Claudio Naranjo, the desire for pleasure can be considered a substitute for it; and the E2, with his need to eliminate any problematic, bothersome, or non-gratifying part of his life, searches for it in love. His low tolerance to frustration, when he doesn’t feel wanted, leads him to a state of anger and agitation that serves to break the dreaded routine.

Hedonism turns him into a consumerist of relations and objects, as he is indulgent in his intense desire to give and to obtain pleasure.

Idealized self-image

The sexual E2’s image is inflated and grandiose. Radiant and magnificent in fantasy, he is not grounded in reality and facts. It is a dream, but a contagious dream, that convinces himself and others. It is different from the E3’s narcissism, whose marketing of the image is endorsed by titles, by an agenda full of concrete things he has achieved, by hours spent at the gym, by a big wardrobe, or by an excessive taste for cosmetics and plastic surgery.

The image of the vampire, of the femme fatale, who needs to taste and attract, is the ideal compensation from a childhood wound. And the energy invested in preventing this idealized image from crumbling is what provokes a disconnection from the depth of himself.

This theatricalized image, putting on a scene with all the attributes of a liar, made up of intimate music in the voice’s tone, provocation in seductive gestures and in the clothing, and of a suspiciously exaggerated capacity to give.

Lack of consequences

In this discrepancy between the reality and the self-image, the sexual E2 imagines himself as great, generous, and helpful.

He lives in the present in an excessive manner, as if to accord himself today what was promised yesterday. He tells you: “I’m going to help you” with everything. Or: “you know you can always count on me.” Or: “I’ll support you in everything you do.” But when the time comes, the promise is not translated into concrete action. It’s more of a sentiment that exists in that given moment, the fruit of an emotional impulse that sustains his image. And when the occasion comes, there is not much of a service provided.

Universal donor

Someone who feels so superior to others believes that he has much to give in every sense. Someone who continually flees pain, and searches for pleasure through love, cannot give precisely that; love, as he doesn’t have any. But on the contrary, he presents himself as a great donor of love.

Given his feeling of prideful superiority, his high principles in life, love and relationships lead him to see himself as a moral wonder, so he stops taking into account the consequences of his actions as being real.

By structuring his character, his need for affection and to feel like the center of the world transforms into the act of giving love and care. And in all this giving, one thought never leaves him: he hopes that others will recognize all that he has done for them. In his aggrandizement, he pays more attention to what he will receive than what he does for others. It is a continuous action to ensure that others see him, and with a self-image so great, the gratefulness he expects never comes, which causes the pertinacious frustration.

This effort is characteristic to the sexual E2, which can in turn inflate his ego, conjuring in this way the buried idea of not deserving of his internal humiliated counterpart.

Anti-intellectual

The sexual E2 is the most emotional. The sexual E4, also expert in very intense and dramatic emotional manifestations, values nevertheless a more intellectual component in order to exercise sufficient competency in argumentation. In the sexual E2, the incontestable argument is his emotion; things are determined because “I feel this way.” This is his assertiveness, based in his feeling more than thinking and that, in his impetuous disinhibition, brings him a false sense of security and the propensity to be able to obtain everything.

His understanding of reality is based more in emotion than in an objective vision of the facts; emotion contaminates everything in the present moment, and in the name of emotion anything goes. He passionately identifies with emotion and is not interested in the logical world and in structured thought, which seem burdensome and arid to him.

The cognitive or intellectual capacity is devalued in all E2s. It is true that this trait is less present in the social E2, who creates a self-image of a responsive, serious hyper-adult. The conservation E2, identifying deeply with his basic needs, are the most interested in concrete actions to obtain what they need. The sexual E2 feels more than he thinks, and values the emotional and sentimental world much more than the cognitive. This attitude finds its origin in the main defense mechanism: repression.

Competitive

The competitive field for the sexual E2 is above all in sentimental relationships. His struggle to feel unique and unforgettable becomes concrete the moment a third person appears and has the potential to overshadow him. In this case he can turn to a passionate lovesick energy, even though it isn’t clear whether he is interested in the object or in the competition. He also doesn’t ask himself if he desires a lover or a friend, because his interest lies in beating the competitor in order to feel that he is the best in the eyes of anyone. He feels his passion, and believes it, but once he charges forward the prey might no longer have any value for him.

Unconventional

The gestures of the sexual E2 are open, informal, and relaxed. He seems spontaneous and laidback, he feels at home everywhere and occupies a large space that he invades. He is unconventional in his characteristics, as much in his clothing as in his behavior, since he loves to break the mold, he wants to stand out from others at all costs. He is capable of doing in public things that others would only do privately, like taking off his shoes, putting his feet on the couch, showing a scar on a private body part, sleeping in the middle of a meeting, etc., regardless of social conventions. He wants to “do whatever I want, wherever I want, with whomever I want.” He is therefore a provocateur, sweetened by his seductive strategies and by his fear of rejection.

Erotic movements

The energy reaches the most distal parts of the body, giving the skin a warm and rosy appearance. The look, lively and bright, will denote the emotional state in which the person is, a trait that it shares with the rest of the rigid characters of the bioenergetic classification. Already more specific to E2 is the muscular armor in the form of “chain mail,” a form of defense that it shares with the E7, and that supposes a systematic and general rigidity. This “mesh,” which is distributed just below the skin, at the level of the fasciae, is a very efficient mechanism for draining anguish, as it redistributes static energy throughout the body surface. In the old art of war, chain mail was a metallic armor made up of iron or steel rings intertwined with each other in such a way that the energy of any blow was dissipated between all the rings; in short, an effective formula to absorb bumps and minimize damage.

This efficient drainage makes the E2 and, especially, the sexual E2, rarely experience anguish. This is converted into soft and undulating movements, erotically charged and that often confuse the interlocutor, who receives a double message: on the one hand, of provocation; on the other hand, of not taking responsibility for the intentionality of the movement, which is removed from consciousness through the psychic defense mechanism of repression. Its erotic, seductive movement provokes sexual reactions when in reality this is not its function.

This sensual, undulating movement, provided by the muscular defense in “chain mail,” allows a differential diagnosis to be established with other characters that do not have this representative agility and mobility.

Seemingly loose hips

Juanjo Albert affirms, speaking of the hysterical character (the E2): “The defensive function of erotic pseudo-contact and genital sexuality is carried out through its specialization and training to detect the risk of commitment and emotional delivery, and withdraw immediately when that's how it happens.” The most extreme form of a sexual E2 gait is the spitting image of the vampire, whose seductiveness is conveyed not only by her sinuous and exaggerated movements but also through the tone of her voice, the emphasis of her phrasing, her captivating gaze, her voluptuousness expression, and the swaying of the hip, which suggests a promise of orgasm without guarantee.

This typical contouring, as well as the retracted position of the hip, could mean health and connection with sexuality, but in reality it does not. E2’s “charged pelvis” is energetically ready to express its force through orgasm, but discharge movements are limited by its rigidity, with reduced anterior pelvic excursion.

Affectivity disconnected from sexuality

The apparent freedom and looseness of her hip hides the main conflict of this character. This movement is not fully connected to the chest, due to one of its main tensions, in the diaphragm. This is the most active muscle in breathing, so it is involved in the perception and expression of the emotional world. Responsible for increasing or decreasing the signal that is perceived in the chest, it favors or prevents the passage of impulses that come from both the abdomen and the hip, that is, from the world of needs or sexuality, respectively. In this character, the diaphragm is contracted enough that the energetic connection between the hips and the chest is compromised. The diaphragmatic contraction dissociates affections and needs, disconnects the emotional world of sexuality. We cannot speak of a diaphragmatic blockage in a character with emotional connection and expression, but we can speak of a tension that hinders the energetic passage.

Difficulty in delivery

It can be affirmed, reading the tensions and blockages of the sexual E2 body, that there is a difficulty in deep loving surrender, and this is its most significant split.

As Lowen puts it, “Today's hysterical character does not refer to genital contact but to deep, loving feelings.” That is why tantric practice, bioenergetics, integrative body therapy, psychodance, or any other body technique whose objective is the union of the genital impulse with the love impulse have great healing potential for this character.

Cheerful

Compared to the other subtypes of the passion of pride, the sexual one presents a look of contentment and expansive joy.There it differs from the social E2, whose expression is less static, a little more serious and stiff, due to the feeling of importance that invades him. That same joy and smile of the sexual E2 are accompanied, in the conservation subtype, by a look and a boyish face, which often makes it seem younger than it is.

Big spender

Money provides this character with crucial autonomy. Here too, the sexual E2 relies on his own resources: showing his economic needs humiliates him, and his independence is more a gesture of pride than of inner freedom.

Economic resources are subordinated to emotional ones and to the need for intimate contact. The sexual E2 shows carelessness in saving or in the possession of goods. It may have to do with a basic arrogance and the need for immediate satisfaction in the intensity of the moment. He therefore tends to spend what he earns, but more on others than on himself.

Lack of care can lead to not managing money, not checking your accounts, not knowing how much you earn, or not repaying loans.

The power that the sexual E2 entrusts to money is, therefore, that of being at the service of significant relationships, to receive affection and admiration in return. The way to obtain them ranges from generously providing the children's decorations to giving wonderful gifts to the couple or friends, and in this way feel great and make the other feel that he is the center of her attention. He even puts his own survival at risk by following a romantic ideal of generosity, which prevails over any other consideration.

Due to the hunger for love, the sexual E2 experiences more pleasure in giving and spending than in retaining or possessing. For him, the pride of “giving” is an overcompensation for lack, for the painful feeling of worthlessness. This is what leads him to overreact. Under the mask of abundance, the counterpart of the miserable beggar is manifested through the ghost of the fail. It is precisely this opposite that leads to excessive self-sacrifice: if he does not feel he deserves love for himself, he makes sure that he at least deserves it for the services rendered.

Fear of failure

In his relationship dynamic, where he is the one who gives and not the one who receives, the sexual E2 has a hard time imagining that someone could take care of him, if necessary. From his pride he can demand but not ask, since a refusal would do him a lot of damage. This, together with the need for freedom and autonomy, favors the ghost of failure, because he imagines that if he is not capable of giving, he will not have a place in the world, he will be alone.

Claudio Naranjo's Sexual 2 Description

Sexual E2: The chosen one of the man or woman. Seduction.

In Madrid I never set foot on the street, because every time I appeared at the door of the Ritz, a legion of gentlemen threw their cloaks on the ground so that I could walk on them, placing before me a carpet that had no end.
Mata Hari

The sexual E2 moves between seduction and aggressiveness, and combines fascination and sensuality. It is the most explicit, spontaneous, and wild of the three subtypes. Just as the social E2 seduces from the intellectual, and the conservation, from tenderness, the sexual does so from the carnal. It's invasive and if they want something, they take it, just like sexual E4 or E8.

They clearly put their empathy at the service of seduction more than out of true interest in the other. They know how to weave webs from which it is difficult to escape because they become passionate when they are in conquest. They are a person who knows they are special and wants to be unforgettable; their only desire is to be adored again.

Their basic interest is finding romantic union, fusion, and they confuse being desired, where they are a master strategist, with being loved and valued. They may be a prodigal and indulgent parent, or a passionate and attentive lover, or both.

If they encounter resistance they press and provoke, to disarm the objections. They can also accuse in a furious manner, approaching the E8. Behind their outbursts of anger lies the melancholic desire for a total and enveloping connection with the other, an aspiration close to E4.

E2 Sexual – Conquest

The sexual two is the E2 par excellence, because if we say that this character is a seducer, we can also add that the sexual two is the most visibly seductive of all.

In American enneagram culture it is more common to say that the two is a “helper”, in view of my characterization of the E2 in the 1970s as a “Jewish mother”, but this has the drawback of a lack of discrimination regarding the difference between a truly helpful character and one that rather seeks affection and recognition through kindness.

These are people who can say, “I'll do anything for you,” but when the opportunity comes to charge them for such an offer, it becomes clear that they are inconsistent with their offers of help. That is why it seems more accurate to me to say that the central theme is seduction (that is, an expression of affection through which interest, loyalty, affection, protection, etc., of others is intended), and only apparently help.

The term vampiress proves a lot, and so does the expression femme fatale. Both refer to a beautiful person, but dangerously beautiful, who needs to hold you and could end up devouring you.

The sexual E2's need to seduce implies a need for the other's desire; But to say that desire is only sexual would be to see only what is most apparent; researching the matter by asking such people what they want may yield more original responses, such as “I want everything.” Just as we think of Helen of Troy as an archetype of the woman for whom a war is waged and for whom men are willing to lose their lives, we can say that sexual E2s aspire to an irresistibility that can inspire greatest passions. It's just that most of these people can't be honest enough to say, “What I really want in a man is for him to be a pocket Samson,” or “I want a giant who will give me everything I want and when I want it.”

It is understandable that some people think that inspiring a great passion can be a way to solve everything in life, and that sexuality can involve money, castles and essentially blank checks: that is how the sexual two thinks.