Social 3(SO3)

Vanity in the Social Sphere

Vanity in the sphere of adaptation makes the individual desire a good public image. They do whatever they need to do to keep up their prestigious image, as their biggest lie is the image of who they are. Social 3s are seduced by the images of the world and feel as if they have to replicate what society values themselves, their need for status and recognition fuels them as it lets them forget their lack of self worth. Their focus is on how they are seen, and they will change their image to fit the values of a particular social group in order to be seen in a good light. Their image cannot be stained, everything must stay admirable. They know how to climb the social ladder, know when to speak up, when to stay quiet, when to act, when to stay still. They are the 3 whose vanity is the most obvious to others, yet ironically, the least obvious to themselves. In short, while the SP3 wants recognition for their productivity, SX3 for their attractiveness, the SO3 wants it for their achievements and status.

Ichazo titled SO3 "Prestige", describing it as a need for a good public image, a passion for shining in the eyes of others that is supported by a falsification of one's own self-image. Naranjo defined it similarly, as someone who wants to shine and be admired, accomplishing it through the cultivation of their image.

Trait Structure

Competitive

“Anything goes to stay on Olympus,” Juanjo Herrera will say when analyzing the film “Eva al desnudo,” In the machinery put to the service of its basic objective: success and social recognition, this subtype displays the most powerful and unprincipled competitiveness.

The forms that competition takes may be appropriate, but the substance is ruthless. The social E3, in its self-image as good, hides all the manipulative action aimed at destroying the opponent through tricks and lies. It is rarely going to be confronted directly; it will always be with more or less subtle denigrations. Power is exercised from the shadows with a smile and without disheveled hair, avoiding any space of intimacy. Their efforts are aimed at not losing their good image and social position, through their social attractiveness and friendliness, rather than good performance of tasks. All his efforts are focused on maintaining a leading role that allows him to control the situation.

Envy is one of the silent engines of his action. At work he will go after his ambitions with crude chameleon tricks and showing his “merchandise” at all times: what he has or with whom he is related. He will also use his sight to detect the one who has the power, which he will access through the right silence, the right word, the appropriate action that he imagines may please him. Once a place of recognition has been achieved, the struggle continues, now seeking constant adaptation so as not to lose the privileges achieved. He can have no limit here to trample on anyone, or to build lies that invalidate whoever interferes in his path to the podium. This is one of the character traits that best evidences his connection to E8, along with revenge.

Vengeful

If he fails to achieve his objective, or is discovered in his fraud or in his true intentions, he tries to maintain a good image; there will be an opportunity to exact a cold revenge where everything will be worth it. The manipulation of information, smear and slander are frequently used in this subtype. The strategic lies to discredit the other are so well concocted that he himself loses the notion of the limit between reality and fiction.

Histrionic

The social E3 remains unperturbed to not touch or show his anger and pain. His armor is therefore not to lose the forms or show signs of emotional weakness. So how does he express the histrionic trait? Well, through impatience, its disguised form of anger. That of not getting what he wants when he wants: that is what destabilizes his unflappable attitude and draws the veil of his anger. If he doesn't manage to be the center of attention because his seduction is no longer worth it, he touches his limit; he does not tolerate this because his fraud is exposed and he is fired with dramatic and exaggerated outings that show his intolerance.

Chameleonic and Simultaneously multifaceted

We could call the social E3 simultaneously multifaceted. In everyday life he is capable of watering the plants, talking on the mobile, and taking care of the roast in the oven while he eats an apple, and thinks about the next thing he has to do.

In his perfect adaptation to the environment, he learns how to be in any situation, how to dress, what to eat and what to drink, and whether to shut up or speak. From control, it synthesizes what is most convenient, and passes off as natural behavior studied in detail, away from the slightest spontaneity.

Inverted masculinity and femininity

The social E3 woman has a lot of masculine energy (logical, rational, and action-oriented). She has not known how to take from the mother; the tender, receptive energy; she didn't absorb the loving and protective part of her. She feels complicit among the men, like a colleague who helps them to be even more men. She admires strong guys and feels like a warrior with a hard shell to protect herself from everyone and everything.

The social E3 man does not learn to use the energy of the father, whom he looks at with fear, hiding his emotions. He has a more feminine appearance. And afraid of the strength of him; to make up for it he fantasizes himself as some kind of uptight guy. Among his friends he will seek out the strong and mighty.

Both men and women suffer from dystonia: they associate force with violence, as with an out-of-control explosion. It is healthy for both to experience the strength of the masculine and the feminine in a group; allowing themselves to enter a space that is neither seductive nor competitive.

Manipulative when giving and receiving

The social E3 hates to feel indebted, so they feel that they must give more than they receive. It cannot even give to the same extent; he has to give more and, if he can, better. To make sure he's going to receive, he hits a commodity exchange where he has to come out on top. It is not about altruism, compassion or generosity; it is a strictly commercial counterpart.

Appropriationist

The social E3 only moves on safe ground, based on what others have done. Analyze, filter, optimize, and generate a new product with no room for inspiration. He does not trust being able to create for himself, being too ambitious and a controller overly concerned with the judgment of others. Giusy puts it very well: “metaphorically, the creativity of a social E3 would be cut and paste.”

Avoidance of the experience of death and Frozen

Faced with death, the social E3 is emotionally blocked. He stops feeling, he freezes with a cold absence so as not to face the pain and sorrow. This is how Francesco remembers the news of the attack that father surfed: “We did not know how he was, they did not give details of how the wounded were. I had a tremendous slump and I was completely frozen.” After cooling down, he chose anger, manifested outward or inward, rather than grief. He does not allow himself a space to cry, to loosen up; he is afraid to connect with the body, to feel the heart and overflow with emotion.

Death means for a social E3 the degradation of the body and the total loss of control. He associates it with the body becoming unpleasant, with “losing face.” Giusy remembers: “In a directed fantasy, I always saw myself dead, and I contacted the disgusting part of my body. Mice, insects, worms ate me; I felt rotten liquids oozing from my body.” Faced with the evidence of his own fragility, this character panics.

He is afraid of dying alone and of physical pain. The anguish that he perceives with the experience of death is processed without emotional content, defending himself with the mechanism of denial. He remains “in the denial of the fact, the first phase of mourning,” says Eustaquio. He avoids thinking about death from the omnipotent feeling that he will never die; death is a thing that happens to others. In cases where he has had a constant presence in the family environment, the feeling of being the bearer of death is generated in the social E3.

Until he loses a loved one, he does not become aware of his own mortality. The proximity of death, moments of physical danger, tragic news or illnesses prefer to process them rationally and, rather than break down in pain, they will focus on action. “With cancer I didn't miss a single day of work,” says Ana. To which Haydée adds: “A few minutes after my father died, I went to the phone and started making arrangements. My father died at 3:30 in the afternoon, and at six he was already in a funeral home eighty kilometers from home.”

As an adult, he associates death with an internal non-being, with an interior desert, with a cold, dry depression. If he allows himself to accompany a loved one in this transit, he experiences a quality of love that opens his heart, and then he lives a purity in delivery, a transcendental experience. “At my father's farewell I felt a lot of love, of a quality that is difficult to explain,” recalls Haydée.

The approach to death can also become something frivolous. The social E3, instead of mourning, think about what clothes to wear to the funeral. In some cases, the Hoffmann process has served to mourn all the deaths that had not been mourned at the time.

Attached to money

The social E3 risks, even too much, but it is certain that in the face of economic risk it will know how to procure the means to maintain its status. He doesn't like to ask but he doesn't give up anything; try to get others to give you without having to openly ask for them.

He seeks from a young age to be financially independent. He doesn't keep an eye on his bank account, he doesn't save, and he spends more than he has. It is about spending, not about investing in things that later give revenue. He is generous with other people's money and more “greedy” when it comes to his own.

Another way of spending is indulging others with gifts, fine foods, etc., as a way of buying friendship. It is a question of generosity as a matter of image; “It is frowned upon not to be generous,” Yolanda clarifies. The social E3 tends to give the couple things that he actually likes but not necessarily the ortho. They are manipulative gifts: “look what I brought you… and then it ends up in my room, or is it so that I can wear the perfume that I like.”

If living with austerity is what he takes, he will do it, facing the gallery, but he will have a Mercedes Benz in a parking lot not far from there. He rubs shoulders with powerful people with a higher purchasing power than his, and behaves with them as if they were from the same clan, a prisoner of internal insecurity. Although he does not have it, it seems that he has, because of the attitude of a rich patrician that he knows how to adopt. A social E3 would have a hard time obeying the mandate of a new Messiah who came with a “leave everything and follow me.”

Attached to the image of his house

A social E3 can't live anywhere; he looks for wide spaces that he decorates with his own style. His is a charming house. It is not only the place where he lives but also a showcase to show what he is and what he has. He enjoys receiving friends or important people who will appreciate the style that permeates every corner. He takes care of all the details and perfumes a house with flowers, candles, and incense that oscillates between a certain chaos and immaculate cleanliness.

Scatologically modest

This is a topic that a social E3 would prefer not to talk about. He is neat in his personal cleanliness, in some cases to the point of generating a reaction formation that leads him to wash himself several times a day. He would eliminate fart, snot, poo and pee, as it seems to him something very unpleasant that educated people do not show in public. Equipped with a discriminating sense of smell, he hates bad body odors.

He is usually constipated by a masochistic fixation that leads him to contain. He is able to get on with the task at hand rather than satisfy physiological needs. He keeps farting to himself, which is allowed only in an isolated bathroom, away from other ears, but if the evidence betrays it, he justifies it as “uncontrolled gas,” and if the fart is not his he suffers thinking that someone may suspect that it comes from him. When he is away from home he finds it difficult to defecate.

Seductive

The social E3 is little passionate, little sexually active; sexuality puts him at the service of pleasing, until he is sure of being loved. It matters more to him to feel that the other likes him than the experience of sexuality itself. And he is more interested in seduction than deepening relationships. He has sex thinking about what the other likes, more than his own pleasure. Being a good lover becomes one more task, and sex another product for sale. In the love encounter, before the orgasm, he feels fear of losing control, an interference that makes it difficult for him to give himself deeply in love.

If he connects with the instinctive part, he likes aggressive sex, which he filters as something dirty that he has to hide: he prefers a lover with whom he can unleash his beast and maintains a less exciting relationship with his partner.

Among men, problems of impotence, premature ejaculation, lack of desire, and pain in the penis may arise; and among women there is a tendency to frigidity.

Studied

The social E3 dresses himself giving meaning and attributes to clothing, which he turns into an instrument for his social movements. He dresses to please, he is striking in his appearance, and daring in his shapes and colors. He has his own style, studied in detail so that he never goes unnoticed. Casual clothing and brands coexist in his wardrobe, and we can find everything from garments to go to the African jungle to the most elegant attire for a palatial dinner. He has the poise to show off his wardrobe and although the clothes are cheap they look expensive, because of the way he wears them.

Cheater and Liar

He turns his traps into a strategy; they do not eat away at his conscience. As Francesco explains: “I start studying a couple of days before the exam, and I tell myself that I am so good that I will pass without doing elbows. And I approve.”He builds traps to get what he wants from others, selling his merchandise as if he were really interested in the other's needs, or with strategic flattery.

He invents himself just as he invents stories, characters or events that can embellish his image or be useful in his social climb. And he uses lies to defend himself wherever he finds someone who can unmask him. The identification with his or her mask is so global that the lie itself can be part of a character that does not differ in any way from the person.

Professionally independent

He tries to avoid bosses and strict schedules. For the social E3 it is very important to have freedom and, in the event that there is a boss, he tries to maintain his independence by seducing the authority: he already “sneaks in,” he measures his actions to gain spaces of power that give him certain privileges and, if he can, the boss will end up becoming a friend.

Repressed fear, embarrassment, and violence

The social E3 denies fear, it skips it with action. “In my childhood and youth I was very afraid, and out of shame I masked it with counterphobic attitudes,” recalls Ana.

When he brings out his rage, he truly uses a precise and lethal scalpel. He lives with the feeling that there is in him a murderous instinct so great that, if he left it free, it would turn him into a criminal. “I feel so dark inside that I think he could kill; that's why I repress myself,” confesses Francesco. “When I feel an attack,” Haydée adds, “the first thing that comes out of me is total hatred and the desire to kill.” Giusy comments that at times she has felt diabolical and Yolanda says that, in her case, “rather than being aggressive as a first initiative, I am reactive, and I also tend to direct aggression towards myself. I am afraid of suicide.”

Internal laziness

A working social E3 forgets about its basic needs. He postpones eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom, in order to finish what he is up to. Despite spending all day doing things, he feels lazy.

Eustaquio adds a nuance to this paradox: “We are trustworthy, hardworking, but outward, in outward tasks. But we do not take care of ourselves in the things that do us good for ourselves.” Ana agrees: “If you save it for your leisure, since leisure time never comes without homework, you don't do it.”

Laziness is mixed with a lack of discipline; It is difficult for him to maintain a commitment to himself, especially if it is something that belongs to the care of his spirit. The spirit is not something concrete, it is not seen, so he does not trust that it has a value. As forcefully as he is determined and striving in egoic actions, he neglects to remember the subtlest and deepest parts of himself.

This character becomes an expert in giving recommendations that he himself does not carry out, unless they are imposed as a task.

Interested friend

The social E3 knows a lot of people but has few friends. He tends to choose his friends from among the sexes he is attracted to, and his relationships are never disinterested. He has difficulty being with someone who is simply a friend, because deep down there is a mercantilist interest: if the other has money, power, prestige, wisdom, beauty... then he wants to have him as a friend. Look in friends for something that you can not only value but also use. He does not know how to go towards the other from the heart, he feels unarmed and vulnerable. “If you're going to introduce me to the President of the Republic,” admits Francesco, “it doesn't take me five minutes to show up. On the other hand, if you tell me: “go make friends,” then I am very afraid and in tremendous anguish.”

By masking emotions, he can be envious and manipulative without being noticed. He can convey superiority in a veiled way when he is apparently extolling others. He expects the other to recognize and value him, and rarely breaks this automatic mechanism, and simply lets himself be and enjoy the friendship. He validates his prestige in terms of the other.

In relationships, he feels faithful even after being unfaithful. It is justified because she spends most of her time unconsciously seducing you, infidelity. He breaks off a relationship from one day to the next because, up to that moment, he has maintained the impression that nothing was happening on the outside. He avoids confrontations and prefers to send his lawyer before putting on a show.

Envious

He envies the possession of objects but hardly something that he lacks inside, such is his internal disconnection that he only goes for the external. “Today,” says Francesco, “it is different for me: I see other good therapists and I would like to manage the therapeutic relationship as they do. But this is recent. Before, I wanted objects, things, and that didn't satisfy me: I bought them and felt just as empty. It was a fixation, it became something obsessive.”

Jealous

Jealousy is aroused especially if he senses a rival. Which might seem normal, but it is that the social E3 deeply neglects his partner, from the lack of intimacy, stops looking at them, until someone who can threaten their place does not appear. Live the third in discord as someone who is worth more, or who is more beautiful, or who has something of great value, so not only is his love relationship at risk, but he can lose his power, his status, his importance, his prestige. The presence of a rival brings with it the monster of social failure.

Ambitious

His effort in social climbing and making a career is different from the ambition of the social E2. Both plan strategies and seduce people who can take them to a recognized place, but the E2 sells itself as great and expresses its generosity with great warmth, while the E3 sells its work or its organizational efficiency and, above all, its efforts, with a feeling of insecurity within himself. Play more at being useful and carefully study what you need to make multiple profits, but you always have to be correct and adequate.

Cold

Emotional coldness obviously has to do with disconnection from your affective world. She doesn't know what she feels and for him, feelings are more like obstacles that get in his way, instead of guides to choose what she wants and what she has to do. Similarly, although he can be empathic, he does not take into account the other's emotions, which are not on his map. People are objectified, accounting notes that he keeps between what he receives and what he gives. It's no wonder that in intensely painful situations he can appear unperturbed; he never loses the mask.

Impatient

Time for social E3 is the time you have to do your things or wait to achieve what you want. More than a time to live is a useful time. And it had better be quick, for it cannot tolerate a vacuum or inactivity. It is about a character pushed into the future (of his successes), a fantasized future or that he has to realize at full speed. Experiencing the here and now would mean for the social E3 to flow with life, to enjoy himself, but he has neither the confidence nor the hope that this will be enough to live on.

Claudio Naranjo's Social 3 Description

E3 Social – Prestige

For the distinctive passion of E3 social, Ichazo proposed the term prestige: we can say that the three social is someone who has the passion to shine — not only through work, but also in the way they present themselves to others. It is as if he had an intrapsychic propaganda department. By bringing the desire for prestige, understood as a passion for social recognition, to a need for applause from everyone and not just from a few, it consumes excessive energy that naturally interferes with spontaneous action.

None of the E3 subtypes are described in the DSM-IV, which surely reflects the fact that the corresponding traits, oriented towards good performance, practicality, and success, are idealized by modern culture, in which it can be say that the social three, in particular, has become the modal personality of the secular and technocratic world.

Social E3 is the most chameleonic of the subtypes of the three. He is also the most vain of the vain. Regarding the other E3, he is a strong and reactive character, lover of power, even if he manages it not directly, but through the people he supports.