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February 19 - May 19, 2023
The Sexual Six can look like a Type Eight because both types can appear intimidating, strong, and powerful. However, in contrast to the Eight, who tends to be fearless, the Sexual Six is motivated by an underlying fear, even when they don’t consciously feel it or show it.
The Six working consciously in this way can make ready use of the tools healthy Type Threes use: self-confidence, an ability to manage feelings, and dedication to results.
The Nine Point may then represent a place of security and comfort that Sixes can retreat to in order to find safety in a dangerous world—but also a way of getting further stuck in inactivity when stressed.
Navigated consciously, a Six can use the “move to Nine” developmentally by establishing a healthy balance between watching out for dangers to their well-being and being able to relax in the security of supportive relationships.
Self-Preservation Sixes can travel the path from fear to courage by saying things directly instead of being vague; making decisions instead of staying lost in questioning; and having the fortitude to fulfill their own needs rather than always looking to others for support and protection.
Social Sixes can travel the path from fear to courage by forgetting about what their duty is or isn’t and connecting in a more purposeful way with their own instincts, their own intuition, and with life in general.
Sexual Sixes can travel the path from fear to courage by learning how to be more vulnerable.
TYPE FIVE REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who withdraws into thinking and detaches from feeling as a way of taking refuge in the inner world.
The central drive of this archetype is to find security by minimizing needs and using resources economically so that external demands can be limited and controlled.
In Fives, the natural human need for people can be displaced into a thirst for knowledge, such that internal support comes through information and firm boundaries instead of social connections.
In Naranjo’s words, introversion consists of “a movement away from the outer to the inner, and sensitivity to inner experiences.”4
The Five archetype represents the model for preferring the relative safety of the intellect to the rigors of social and emotional life and sees knowledge as the most secure and satisfying form of power.
In the face of conflict, difficulty, or hurt feelings, this stance sees withdrawal and distance as the best strategy.
psychological theorist Karen Horney’s description of the person who favors “resignation” as a solution to life’s conflicts, finding inner peace through maintaining an attitude of “not caring” and declaring himsel...
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Naturally austere and laconic, Fives are minimalistic and economical in the things they do, which reflects their concern with making the most of what resources they have and an ability to get by on limited supplies.
While Fives excel at objective analysis, they can be overly analytical and unemotional to the point that it can be hard for them to connect with others.
The primacy of the use of the head center also means that these types process information from the outside world mainly through their mental function—through thinking and analyzing data from the environment.
Fives become adept at avoiding situations in which fear might arise.
Finding other people either threatening or depriving, Fives essentially give up on receiving the sustenance provided by relationships and find satisfaction in knowledge and intellectual interests instead.
They often pride themselves on having an ascetic or minimalistic way of life.
Defensively reducing their awareness of their feelings protects them from experiencing troubling emotions and also limits their (potentially dangerous) need for the support of other people.
Fives also intellectualize—talking about feelings without actually feeling them.
Fives like systems of knowledge
Fives don’t like surprises, and they dislike being subject to situations in which they might have to deal with the emotions or the emotionality of others.
Fives’ avarice thus represents a fearful grasping of time, space, and energy, motivated by an underlying, unconscious fantasy that letting go would result in catastrophic depletion.
Fives’ core beliefs keep them fixated in a world of scarcity because these self-limiting ideas sap their motivation to do the work it would take to realize the falsity of their underlying assumptions.
Naranjo also highlights the fact that Fives tend to “dwell in abstractions while at the same time avoiding concreteness,”21 and that this avoidance of the concrete is a way of maintaining their hiddenness—they are able to offer their perceptions to the world without having to betray the deeper substrate of emotional attachments, motives, and values underlying those perceptions.
It’s important to remember that Fives don’t consciously unhook from emotions—rather, they experience a more automatic letting-go of emotion, a more generalized lack of awareness of feelings, or an unconscious interference with the generation of feeling.22
Because Fives do not live in their emotions, they may be more vulnerable to the effects of emotional pain; they have not built up a tolerance for or a comfort with their emotions and so may not know how to deal with painful feelings.
While they can be emotionally sensitive at a deeper level, it doesn’t feel safe to express this, so they may stop believing in their capacity for deep feeling.
Conflict threatens to force Fives to expend energy they believe they don’t have, so they avoid conflict and can disappear without walking away.
The Self-Preservation Five acts out avarice by building and maintaining boundaries. The Social Five acts it out by adhering to specific ideals related to groups and ideas. The Sexual Five acts it out by seeking an experience of trust with a worthy partner and expressing romantic ideals.
according to Naranjo, that Self-Preservation Fives and Social Fives are more removed from their feelings, whereas Sexual Fives are more intense, romantic, and sensitive inside.
The Self-Preservation Five is the most “Five-ish” of the Fives. These Fives express avarice through their passion for hiddenness or for having sanctuary.
Self-Preservation Fives have a need for clearly defined boundaries.
They have a feeling of having to be on guard and a difficulty with expressing anger, though they may communicate anger passively by withdrawing and hiding or going silent.
the least communicative of the three Five subtypes.
Self-Preservation Fives limit their needs and wants because they believe that every desire could open the door to their becoming dependent on others.
One Self-Preservation Five I know who can seem outwardly quite sociable explains that she watches how other people interact and then acts in similar ways, modeling what she does on what she observes, using her ability to adapt to what is expected of her as a kind of camouflage.
Self-Preservation Fives have strong inhibitions against showing aggression in particular. They will very seldom show their anger.
For Social Fives, the passion of avarice is connected to knowledge. These Fives don’t need the nourishment relationships provide because their passion for knowledge somehow compensates for what they might get from direct human contact.
The name given to this subtype is “Totem,” which communicates their need for “super-ideals,” or the need to relate to people who share their intellectual values, interests, and ideals.
The Social Five’s passion is the need for the essential, the sublime, or the extraordinary instead of what is here and now.
Social Fives are looking for the ultimate meaning in life, motivated by an underlying (potentially unconscious) sense that things are meaningless unless the ultimate meaning is found.
They look for meaning to avoid a fearful sense that the world is meaningless, but in their search for meaning they orient themselves so much toward finding the quintessence of life—the extraordinary—that they may become disinterested in everyday life.
This tendency is the prototype of what is sometimes called a “spiritual bypass,” in which a person looks for and devotes himself to a higher ideal or a valued system of knowledge as a way of avoiding doing the emotional and psychological work he would need to do to grow and develop. They may believe they are transcending their ego, but their adherence to their spiritual values or practice is their way of escaping from their everyday emotional reality into a “higher” intellectual system that they have idealized.
In the Sexual Five, avarice is expressed through an ongoing search for a connection that will satisfy their need for an experience of the most perfect, safest, and most satisfying (idealized) union.
Sexual Fives live in an inner world filled with ideation, theories, and utopian fantasies about finding unconditional love.
Fives can expand their ability to share more of themselves with others by intentionally using humor, playfulness, and intellectual curiosity to help them to manage any anxiety they might feel when opening up more socially. The Five working consciously in this way can make ready use of the tools healthy Type Sevens use: creative thinking and an interest in people in support of an engaged focus on interacting more deeply with others.
The Eight Point can be a place of comfort for Fives who allow themselves more freedom to assert themselves and enforce the boundaries they need.
