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If the gesture of anger is to run over, that of avarice is one of holding back and holding in. While anger expresses greed in an assertive (even though unacknowledged) way, greed in avarice manifests only through retentiveness. This is a fearful grasping, implying a fantasy that letting go would result in catastrophic depletion. Behind the hoarding impulse there is, we may say, an experience of impending impoverishment.
Yet, holding on is only half of ennea-type V psychology; the other half is giving up too easily. Because of an excessive resignation in regard to love and people, precisely, there is a compensatory clutching at oneself – which may or not manifest in a grasping onto possessions, but involves a much more generalized hold over one's inner life as well as an economy of effort and resources. The holding back and self-control of avarice is not unlike that of the anger type, yet it is accompanied by a getting stuck through clutching at the present without openness to the emerging future.
Just as it can be said of the wrathful that they are mostly unconscious of their anger and that anger is their main taboo-it may be said of the avaricious that their avarice is mostly unconscious, while consciously they may feel every gesture of possession and drawing up of boundaries as forbidden. It might be said that the avaricious is internally perfectionistic rather than critical of the outer world, but most importantly the difference between the two ennea-types [I and V] lies in the contrast between the active extroversion of the former and the introversion of the latter, (the introversion of a thinking type that avoids action).
Also ennea-type I is demanding while ennea-type V seeks to minimize his own needs and claims, and is prone to be pushed around in virtue of a compulsive obedience. Though both types are characterized by a strong super-ego, they are like cops and robbers respectively, for the former identifies more with its idealized superego-congruent self, while ennea-type V identifies with the overwhelmed and guilty sub-personality that is the object of super-egoic demands.
The polarity between pathological detachment and the attachment of holding-on echoes the polarity in ennea-type I between anger and an over-civilized compulsive virtue. Neediness in ennea-type V is deeply hidden in the psyche, behind the veil of indifference, resignation, stoic renunciation. And just as perfectionism nurtures the anger that sustains it, we may also say here that the prohibition of needs (not simply from their satisfaction but even from their recognition within the psyche) must contribute to the impoverishment of life that underlies the urge to hold on.
Ichazo's word for the fixation corresponding- to ennea- type V is "stinginess," which stands, I think, too close to "avarice" - the ruling passion or emotion. "Meanness" with its connotation of an unknowing failure to give would come closer to capturing the dominant aspect of the ennea-type V strategy in face of the world: self-distancing and the giving up of relationships. Still better, however, is to speak of being detached, withdrawn, autistic, and schizoid.
Type 5 vs Type 1
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