Instinctual variants - static or dynamic?
Just wondering re the instinctual variants - are they static? Can they be determined on their own, or do they take on different meanings depending on what E type you are?
I'm tossing up btwn 4w3 and 9w1 at the moment, and reading the descriptions of the different type stackings on the moonshine website, I relate to the sp/so variant of type 4, but not of type 9.
"Language is the Rubicon that divides man from beast."
I don't know your type, but instinct variants are static, for the most part. They are basically a more fundamental driving force, as opposed to how you process information or certain behavioral fixations you have. sp's are essentially concerned with...well...self-preservation. They seek a sort of a personal harmony and security by making sure all of their needs are met (this is not selfishness; it is a legit instinct). so's are concerned about being part of a group, or something external, and having a collective harmony/security. they generally are concerned with others' opinions of them, as this directly contributes to their position in the social group. sx's are mainly concerned with intense "extra-personal" experiences, sometimes referred to as intimacy, but not limited solely to that. Intimacy is just a good example of the drive of the sx. They want to experience - not in the same way as EP's, but in a more direct and intensely passionate way.
Hope that helps!
4w3-5w6-8w7
See, the way you describe them, I would say I'm sp. And you'd think it would make sense that an Si-dominant would be a sp variant. But idk, reading some of the other descriptions, sp variants sound like they're interested in stability (financial, etc) which isn't me at all. I can relate to sp if it is concerned with inner harmony and wellbeing, but being in a secure, comfortable environment isn't one of my priorities at all. I couldn't really care less about external comforts if there is a feeling of harmony between the people present. And I value spontaneity over security.Originally Posted by strrrng
Do you think that describes a sp variant at all?
"Language is the Rubicon that divides man from beast."
I'm about evenly split between sp and sx, too - for most of the same reasons you give above, except I might place a little more emphasis on minimizing external discomforts as opposed to caring "less about external comforts", especially if I can simply go do my own thing in the case of not-enough-harmony between people.
All the instinctive variant descriptions have substantial parts that do NOT apply to me, hence my difficulty.
SLI
Instinctual variants - not for life
I call shenanigans on the idea of instinctual variants, but my point here isn't to be inflammatory. I don't think the idea that we are one instinctual type for our entire lives makes sense in my experience. I'm not going to argue that some people aren't socially oblivious and don't care that much for belonging, and I'm not going to argue that some people can do without intimacy. That'd just be dumb, and obviously false.
What I want to know is, if I'm supposed to be driven by a set of three instincts that has been set to order since I burst out of the womb, why would I ever lose my social sensitivity, or overconcern with my survival? Why would I (or anyone else) change my priorities about what really drives me?
I just don't see myself fitting in any one pattern over the course of my life.
Everyone fits all 3 to a degree. Ordering them just points out which are focused on most. Here's an interesting enneagram page complete with stereotypes of e-type/instinct combos.
http://www.enneagramdimensions.net/a...life_paths.pdf
2nd and 3rd to last page have the most interesting information.
ILI (FINAL ANSWER)
Any individual who is not stagnating, I think, will develop around their instincts. I will never value society, competition, or being a part of anything greater (barring the spiritual), but that doesn't mean for instance that I lack social skills.
Your instincts are your areas of focus and relative personal importance. If you're an sx-dominant (such as myself), you will have a consistent personal emphasis on your intensity radar, for example. What I've done with this over the years of course has changed, and even within the years themselves; but I place consistently emphasis on measuring everything by how much magnetism it holds over me, or how intense the feelings it stirs up in me are, or other sexual instinct sorts of things.
You'll have to go into more details about this loss of "overconcern with your survival". As it stands, I don't know what you've experienced or why it's broken your faith in instincts.
I guess, for me, any thoughts of mutilation give me a strong visceral response. I'm the kind of person who can't even look at surgical pictures without getting sick. I guess as a young child I was rather quick to avoid pain and danger. But as I have gotten older, life just seems so long that I don't really care to protect myself so much. In fact, I've gotten pretty reckless to spice up life.
I can't make head or tail of the social instinct either. Seems to me that these would be in flux; for example I've gone from being self-conscious to indifferent about my presence in a group. I don't mean to make this thread all about me. I'm just talking from where I know best.
So, in other words, it's all just about which things you value more? Like if I value intensity over protection, I would have SX stronger than SP? And if I value my individuality more than my role in society, I would have SP stronger than SO?
You've got the basic idea now, but those definitions do need a bit of work.
This site should help: The Enneagram Blogspot: The Instinctual Variants
ocean-moonshine is another popular one, but I think it's a bit painfully abstract and "mystical" for someone just learning the Enneagram as you appear to be.
You mean the table and the circle with all the names, right?
Thanks, this was helpful.
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@Thanks Arthur: I've learned a lot about the 9 types and wings and tritypes, but I dismissed the instinctual variants as being simple and uninformative. Someone I know told me that it was at least as important as knowing your basic type, so I wanted to figure out why.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as judging you. It's just that ocean-moonshine only recently started making any sense to me, and I figured you might be in the same boat as me.
As for why the instincts are important, that's a wholly different question. The whole reason they're known as "subtypes" is because they interact very intimately with your etype to the extent that a self-pres Nine is going to have very different issues to a sexual Nine, for instance. Or, more broadly, if you have a casual interest in the Enneagram, they're certainly apparent in real life enough to make them worth looking into. I can understand the mindset of discarding things that don't seem to make sense or have much of a point.
To clarify, you're basically calling bullshit on the idea the instincts are fixed, which is about correct. The instincts exist, but they are not set in stone.
This is the one ridiculously laughable assumption that all typology systems seem to share, which is that type is fixed and unchanging. Given that type theory as it stands is long since positively proven not to be linked to neurological processing, the idea that type is fixed can only be considered factual if type is modified to fit personality traits confirmed to be fixed and unchanging. No type theory has bothered to do that, and as such the premise is bollocks.
What do these signs mean—,
, etc.? Why cannot socionists use symbols Ne, Ni etc. as in MBTI? Just because they have somewhat different meaning. Socionics and MBTI, each in its own way, have slightly modified the original Jung's description of his 8 psychological types. For this reason,
Just one example: in MBTI, Se (extraverted sensing) is associated with life pleasures, excitement etc. By contrast, the socionic function(extraverted sensing) is first and foremost associated with control and expansion of personal space (which sometimes can manifest in excessive aagression, but often also manifests in a capability of managing lots of people and things).
For this reason, we consider comparison between MBTI types and socionic types by functions to be rather useless than useful.
-Victor DarkAngelFireWolf69, Dmitri Lytov
Well in my opinion I like the instinctual variants. I think it makes sense from a biological standpoint and further I think the ordering is less important than the actual classification of each instinct. Just being able to split the generic mush of human personality into three distinct categories is an extremely useful peice of knowledge.
Secondarily, I think all personality classifications are subject to dynamics and gradients, meaning type can change over time and people can be various degrees of intensity in different types. For example, a person can change from being an introvert to an extrovert. Further while two people may both be introverts, its unlikely that they exhibit the same intensity of introversion. The change over time is called dynamic, and the variability in intensity is called gradient. No one will agree with this idea on here, but thats because they are stupid and brainwashed by a fantasy world.
Anyways, great.... so I don't think that people are strictly ordered into instinctual stackings that are static and unchangeable like cystalline structure. However, I also think part of your problem with accepting the instinctual stackings is your misunderstanding of them.
I'd suggest trying to look beyond what you think you know and try to understand what they really mean.
Usually I'd take the time to share my understanding of the stackings in an exposition of the theory, but usually this leads to ashton and other idiotic members complaining about me mentally masturbating down their throat. Personally ashton is a fuckhead, and never contributed anything intelligent to a conservation on personality or philosophy. Probably never will, I wouldn't be surprised to see him working at a gas station in 5 years, working the graveyard shift, with a laptop setup and a webcam pointing at him while he rips some newbie a new asshole asserting his supreme dominance from a want to be intellectual working at a gas station who thinks he has prophetically brilliant viewpoints on the nature of politics and economics, with things like "HEY GUYS GAMMAS ARE BETTER THAN BETAS" and "HEY GUYS FUCK THE POLICE"and "HEY GUYS I CAN HAS DO ECONOMICS" and "HEY GUYS LOOK AT ALL MY PATTON QUOTES LOL".... "HARHAR SOCIONICS NEEDS FACTUAL ACCURACY".... fuck him...... don't be like that fuckface, go out and read and engage your mind in theory and learn what the fuck the instinctual stackings are instead of ramble on with your pseduo mike savage rants on economics, betas, police, and politics....
Sexual types for example aren't just about fucking.... only a fuckhead like ashton would be stupid enough to interpret such a statement literally. He would say "Oh sex = sticking a penis in a vagina".... I can has do psychology!!!! See I broughtto this discussion by giving this discussion a real world factual grounding, yea me, I am so great. WELL FUCK, NO YOU ARE NOT. Because sexual types are more about the deep psychology of sex. Sexual types share a connection with the idea of legacy and creativity.
When two people have sex its the primal drive that leads to creation of a new entity. A child. Sex is the urge to create. Intellectuals create ideas, they have a "brainchild". Artists create works of art and craftsmen create things also. All this drive to create something is very similar to the sex drive. Its creativity and libido. It's also a way to express yourself and not fade into oblivion. The same way a person's child survives them beyond death, a person's art work or works of craftsmenship or ideas survive them beyond death. People know this and they create to have a legacy, to matter, to exist beyond their immediate life. All of these urges, are linked to sex. It's not just sticking a penis into a vagina and moving back and forth. Sexual subtypes are not just about fucking all day long. They are about the libido and the urge to create, to have something survive them, to have a legacy that exists beyond them, to place an imprint on this world and not fade away, its a fundamental desire of all things that live and die.
Take this in contrast to something like a self-preservation type. They just want security, shelter, and such things. Think of a squirell gathering nuts in the winter, trying to accquire the necessary resources for survival. Or a bear hibernating. Or a beaver building his dam. Self-preservation types are after security and survival. In a primal sense this means, food, shelter, water, and weaponry. In a modern sense this means finaces, job security, and other things. Self-P types are also likely the types to be extremely organized and hoard stuff. They are also likely to hoard stuff with sentimental value. The widow who keeps all her dead husbands belongs to a point of creepiness is self-p. The librarian who has an extensive collection of organized intellectual works is self-p. The person who keeps tons of photos as memories of their friends is self-p. The person who meticulous saves and manages their finaces is self-p. The home improvement specialist who lives in the same house and repairs things to a fine quality is self-p. Self-p is about security, preservation, and survival. Contrast this with sexual types. A sexual type would rather risk themselves for the chance to have that imprint or legacy on the world, a self-preservation type would rather survive for tommorow.
Take two extremes.. the sx/sp stacking with the so/sp stacking.... polar opposites, the so/sp is typically the social guardian, a pilar of the community, participates in society and community, but with the alterior motive of building a society with good logistics and resources and security. They are typically teachers, politicians, public servants, and belief passionately in participating in society in order to have a robust social infrastructure abundant with resources. The so/sp is also a little behind in sex, intimacy, and legacy. They are too busy participating and making sure their is a secure and stable infrastructure that things like deep connection between themselves and close friend and themselves and romantic interests or creating something unique and leaving an imprint is just a low priority. They are behind in this attribute of development. At best they realize their weakness and use their so/sp attitude to have a niche in their grand social infrastructure for people to expreience sx. At worst, and more common, they don't realize their weakness because they are narcissistic and drugged on self-love and they bulldoze over an niches in their social infrastructure for people to experience sx, and subsequently cry themselves to sleep over the fact they feel empty and unloved, which only drives them to more hate and bitterness. Either way they emphasize the social and self-p roles with sx on the backburner, embodying the notion of the typical social guardian.
The sx-sp is a 180 degree turn. They are about legacy, creativity, imprint, expression, libido, and so forth. But they also have an alterior motive of security and trust and self-preservation. This makes them more detached from people in comparison to the so/sx who is the live of the party type of person, socially graceful, and fun and exciting to be around. The sx-sp is more stormy because while they want intimacy and connection they don't want to loose their security and trust, so this leads to a more stormy and dramatic personality. Further they are behind in so, so they have trouble fitting in completely into society. They are good stable loyal partner once a relationship is established, but outside of this they are slightly alienated and dramatic. Beethoven is an example of sx-sp. They are contrasted with so-sp.
so-sp would rather stay with the herd so to speak and play things calm and reasonably. While the sx-sp is more stormy and dramatic and would rather pursue after their desires. In a sense the sp of the so-sp is perservation and conservation of society, their social network. And the sx-sp is perservation of sex, their desire, libido, or legacy - keep the dream alive so to speak.
Social types are less about being popular and more about the concept of social networking... being connected to people and social resources. social types may not be world wide celebrities, they could be introverts, the ISFj who is a member of the church community and find her relationship to that network to be highly valuable.
@Aleksei: Yep, you summed it up better than I could.
@HaveLucidDreamz: This is very interesting. So I guess what you're saying is that, when someone actually does happen to have a clear instinctual stacking, that they will naturally be driven to satisfy their needs as seen by their instincts. But they'll still want all of them satisfied, and people don't necessarily have one fixed instinctual pattern.
It was a bit long, so I'm not sure I got everything you meant.
yea it was cluttered because it was more of an ejaculation of thoughts than a strictly ordered essay.
But you got the general point. The instincts are actual subtle things that don't mean directly what they are. For example, the sexual instinct may characterize behavior like an old architect wanting to create a huge building as a last great work that he can be remembered by and is his legacy. At first glance its hard to see how such an act or desire has anything to do with sex, but it does. Each instinct branches out further and further into a subtle connection to various types of human behaviors and at a fundamental level each of these connections overlap against each other at the boundary between instincts. An individual is the makeup of all these instincts and behaviors at play in an internal network or drama. The personality is partly a matter of choice into which aspects of what instincts are at play. These preferences are both a matter of nature and nurture, probably a matter of genetic makeup and a matter of personal experiences. Stackings are just ways to characterize which elements are more strongly accented in your persona. At a higher level, its rather intuitive, like I said so/sp are typically the social guardians. They participate in organizations and are concerned with resources and finaces and logisitics. While they have a sexual instinct, its less emphasized. It's behind a little. But they still have it and they may have more sex than a true sexual instinct variant... but they don't appreciate it as much. Remember what I said above, the instincts do overlap... the sexual instinct does cross the boundary between sexual instinct and social instinct. Sometimes people have sex for social reasons and not for the intimacy. Sometimes people have sex for finacial reasons and not for the intimacy. In the case of an so/sp, they may have a wife, and they may have sex with her, and they may have children, but its also probably typical for them to feel a little alienation from their wife and children although they are a happy well off socially prominent family, they may feel a little disconnected and may feel a lack of intimacy. They may have married and had children to fit in with society and be a pillar of the community and do what they felt is right, but they may not fully appreciate the intimacy as much as a pure sx type. Further they may find it easy to be around people and network and socialize and be connected with people in a community and be a player in that community, but they may lack deep connection to people, lack creativity or libido. Simply going through the motions and being a good upright civil servant, that sometimes feels disconnected regardless of their sea of resources and people that surround them. It's also likely such a type feels this desire, but because of their focus into so/sp matters, they are behind the curve dealing with these issues that sx types dealt with early on.
This sounds really depressing, I know that certain people are behind in certain areas, but its just life, people have strengths and weaknesses, but at the highest level, people can learn to help each other out, learn to use your strengths, learn to have pride for those strengths, put them to good use, and help others out, and make up for other peoples weaknesses and people can do it to you in return. Lets be idealistic for a second and consider an so/sp who meets an sx/sp. The so/sp may be able to be opened up to a new world of deeper intimacy through the sx/sp, and the so/sp may be able to help the sx/sp opened up to valuable resources and social networks. Things work out and both parties get what they want, yea it sounds like an ending to a happy rpg where everyone in the party gets their goals accomplished and they work together.
Of course you also have the cynical attribute to this all, sometimes people become bitter about their weakness and resentful and envious. I think a good example is this article that was posted a while back about school officials cracking down on kids who give partial attention to their best friends and not other people in the class. They want everyone instead to treat everyone fairly and impartially, citing that having a best friend makes other kids feel left out. Likely this is so/sp being resentful over the sx-intimacy that naturally develops between people. It's a classic split between the sexual and social instincts of humanity. Sexual instinct just wants to bond with a person, be with them, share moments with each other, etc... while the Social instinct just wants community, fairness, and so forth. At worst, these instincts socially or internally become in conflict with each other and out of balance. The order is toppled and what results is a revolution of sorts until one becomes re-ordered.
Internally people likely have this effect also, the internal needs become unbalanced and a personality change takes place, usually this is a era in ones life where they undergo great personal change. Much like those cheesy movies were the unpopular kid becomes the coolest kid in the school. Such movies display a significant change in the character, and such real life changes are usually the result of shifting instincts or other personality attributes, like plate tectonics shifting beneath the surface of the earth. Our personalities sit atop the mantle of our primal id and desires and shift through the flow of reality and our experiences. At the bare bones level we are just natural beings like the star or the planets, but we have consciousness, free will, and meaning. Our character can be understood as these shifting plates or continents if you will. The instincts give an incredibly useful tool for understanding this, and the instincts themselves may not be exactly what they seem.
That's what I'm saying, most of all pay attention to the last sentence in the above paragraph.
Oh I'm also saying I don't like ashton, but that's only a side point, a diversion from more important points.
Ok. I get it. So beyond our personality/image motivations we have three sources of instinctual motivation that drive us: need for legacy, need for lifestyle protection, and need for belonging. People tend to have a blind-spot, which explains the stacking, and this is causes an (often uncanny and inexplicable) feeling of deficiency. Then again, the instincts are not exactly what they seem on the surface.
Not sure who ashton is, or why he's relevant.
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Another question I have, since someone raised this on another forum while I've been asking around: are instincts the 'primary' needs, with personality needs as secondary? And, if so, are personality types 'strategies' for meeting these needs? I'm confused about this guy who claims that many problems are due to personality strategies not being in alignment with instinctual stackings.
For example, sx/so type 5 is drawn to protecting boundaries, which isn't helping much. And sp/so type 4 is drawn to issues of emotionality and depth, and this type must learn to overcome this natural tendency to better suit its needs.
Here
http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...-subtypes.html
Basically read those two articles and then take some time to try to see it in reality, and then decide if you still don't like the idea of instinctual stackings.
I don't think the point is to distinguish your weakness, I know when I first started I tended to look at the instincts like this.....
sx last => Doesn't get laid, asexual, poor sex drive, can't bond with others
so last => awkward, bad social skills, alienated
sp last => bad with money, unorganized, sloppy
The fact is all the instincts are much deeper than this, try to fit the theory to your experience and not the other way around. If you find this doesn't characterize you well, try to read between the lines and look deeper into the nature of your personality and the way the instincts work.
Not related to anything in the discussion at all in any way, but...
I have this theory that sx types can tend to misidentify as being asexual, because the way they're drawn to the relevant sex is by chemistry/magnetism/their sx-dar, while society bombards them with images of idealised women in lingerie and whatever.
I know myself and two other "ex-asexuals" have been in the boat of kind of misunderstanding our own sexuality because it's so at odds with the messages sent in by greater society.
Anyway, I think you've been neglecting that sx-firsts are, in addition to having that creative urge, drawn to things by intensity. The more something arouses some anything in the sx individual, the more that individual is drawn to that something.
IOW the sexual instinct is not just one of transmission, it's one of seeking completion.
Yeah. Those descriptions as transmission, etc. didn't click with me at all. I was thinking, "What, but none of those are strong in me at all?" Then again, my instinctual center is not only last, but my instinct-tritype is 9.
While I'm not really qualified to comment, being a gut triad type, I think whether you're head/heart/gut is actually unrelated to your instincts.
The main problem is you have to really know yourself to be able to accurately divine your instincts, I think. I think it took over a year of casual interest and gradual lightbulbs (and many false self-typings) for me to get my instincts correct and understand what they mean.
And of course the cruel irony of the enneagram is that it gives you such a neat system that it actually distracts you from accurately and truthfully looking at and inside of yourself.
You could be sp/sx also
but ya intensity, makes sense, but probably more so in the sense of arrosal, like being sexually arossed by something intense. Sx types are likely to feel arrossed and attracted/repulsed by things.
Something like love or compassion though I think isn't related to the enneagram, its more of a fundamental thing. Sexual instinct is just an instinct, one of three biological instincts.
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