# SO Instinct Thread



## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

It could be i'm ignorant and lazy, but how come there is no SO Instinct thread here? Are they SO rare, or what?


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## ZiLi (Mar 26, 2019)

Yeah. They are rather rare. The sosx at least is. We do have a decent amount of sosp' but very few of the sosx. I'm not sure why that is though. It can be that historically speaking you'd be the men who would had been the 1st to fight for a community ideology and therefore died amongs the first as heros who never got to breed kids before death.

There is a difference between the sosx and the sosp that could be further discussed by those whom are on those instincts.

My call on the groups would be sub grouping them either with dom instinct like it's been done, by lacking instinct, or by same secondary instinct. I can't tell what is sane, or if any of it is that, but could be done for the sake of laughs.


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## bigkoumanefor (Mar 31, 2019)

I think I am so/sx =)


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

I am a SO I believe. Though, I do wonder why there are so few on here. 

Are you a SO @contradictionary?


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## nablur (Mar 9, 2017)

so/sx here


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

I am yet to fully subscribe to this instinct matter but i do think i am SO/SP. Which is an odd because as far as i see the pattern, most SO are EXFX.

Anyway, does anybody have a clue why there aren't so many SO? At least in this forum? 
@ZiLi and all, any good reading on SO topic, i may need to read more. 

_Sent sans PC_


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

I think cuz So gets alot of shit. So maybe there's more but they just don't say.


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

contradictionary said:


> I am yet to fully subscribe to this instinct matter but i do think i am SO/SP. Which is an odd because as far as i see the pattern, most SO are EXFX.
> 
> Anyway, does anybody have a clue why there aren't so many SO? At least in this forum?
> @ZiLi and all, any good reading on SO topic, i may need to read more.
> ...


That is interesting! Well even if you are SO there is nothing wrong with that and being an INTJ. I think that probably means your more well rounded than anything else. 



Lord Pixel said:


> I think cuz So gets alot of shit. So maybe there's more but they just don't say.


Oh, I didn't know that? Why do SO's get more shit?


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

Ashes4719 said:


> That is interesting! Well even if you are SO there is nothing wrong with that and being an INTJ. I think that probably means your more well rounded than anything else.
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, I didn't know that? Why do SO's get more shit?


People with So last and Sx first, idk there are alot of them on the forums, not just this one but in general and one major topic they like to discuss is how much shit So is and So ppl are lol. It's like a form of bonding.

You don't see the same passion for what ppl with Sp last think of Sp or ppl with Sx last think of Sx.


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

Lord Pixel said:


> People with So last and Sx first, idk there are alot of them on the forums, not just this one but in general and one major topic they like to discuss is how much shit So is and So ppl are lol. It's like a form of bonding.
> 
> You don't see the same passion for what ppl with Sp last think of Sp or ppl with Sx last think of Sx.


That is so sad  Well they probably just want to complain about something and since there are so few people with so they can do that.

Well, I guess maybe I have a different understanding of So but I think we care about people a lot. So is all about groups, team working and working together. We appreciate communication and value group understanding. If you just have everyone focused on-one-one communication that is how factions are formed. I think there is a need for all three


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

Ashes4719 said:


> That is so sad  Well they probably just want to complain about something and since there are so few people with so they can do that.
> 
> Well, I guess maybe I have a different understanding of So but I think we care about people a lot. So is all about groups, team working and working together. We appreciate communication and value group understanding. If you just have everyone focused on-one-one communication that is how factions are formed. I think there is a need for all three


Yea.

I'm just saying I don't think So is rare, or that there's not alot of Sos. I think that people get into instinctual variants and see SX folks roaring at the top of their lungs how cool it is to be SX, and how shit it is to be So, and then some people just don't look into it enough or talk about it because the popular opinion is their IV stack is shit lol. Is it actually shit? How can an IV stack be shit? It's just your stack.

It's like being a Justin Bieber fan at a hardcore metal concert lol. You quietly step backwards and leave once everybody starts spitting on your favorite songs.


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

Lord Pixel said:


> It's like being a Justin Bieber fan at a hardcore metal concert lol. You quietly step backwards and leave once everybody starts spitting on your favorite songs.


HAHAHAHA :laughing: I think that was a great analogy! I totally agree with you and that makes sense. I was talking with someone earlier when I first joined and they were saying the same about the MBTI INTJ type as well. So, I get it.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Lord Pixel said:


> Yea.
> 
> I'm just saying I don't think So is rare, or that there's not alot of Sos. I think that people get into instinctual variants and see SX folks roaring at the top of their lungs how cool it is to be SX, and how shit it is to be So, and then some people just don't look into it enough or talk about it because the popular opinion is their IV stack is shit lol. Is it actually shit? How can an IV stack be shit? It's just your stack.
> 
> It's like being a Justin Bieber fan at a hardcore metal concert lol. You quietly step backwards and leave once everybody starts spitting on your favorite songs.


This is my suspicion. I don't think SO doms are incredibly rare on this forum or anywhere else, I think that SO is equal parts misunderstood and maligned and as a result posters either don't want to identify as having it in their stack, or are unable to recognize it because they don't really get what _it_ is and how it can manifest through the types.

Until people let go of the thought that to be SO is to be an in-clique girl from a '90s teen drama and that bog standard tribal bullshit like status jockeying and manipulation is the sole province of SO (SX and SP would never ever of course! h, fewer people are going to want to identify as SO... regardless whether it's the most accurate label for them per most of the literature or not. 

Having a natural preoccupation with/sensitivity to group dynamics incl. power dynamics does not necessarily mean you will want to be actively engaged in them all the time or succumb to them easily yourself. Sometimes it just makes you good at seeing them, where they exist but where others overlook them even while subconsciously participating in them... which can lead to one getting rather sick of them, depending on other factors.

Anyway: I'm probably SO/SX, or that was my thought the last time I did really think about it. I could be SX/SO. I'm definitely (wildly) SP deficient though so there's no denying it's in there for me.


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

baitedcrow said:


> This is my suspicion. I don't think SO doms are incredibly rare on this forum or anywhere else, I think that SO is equal parts misunderstood and maligned and as a result posters either don't want to identify as having it in their stack, or are unable to recognize it because they don't really get what _it_ is and how it can manifest through the types.
> 
> Until people let go of the thought that to be SO is to be an in-clique girl from a '90s teen drama and that bog standard tribal bullshit like status jockeying and manipulation is the sole province of SO (SX and SP would never ever of course! h, fewer people are going to want to identify as SO... regardless whether it's the most accurate label for them per most of the literature or not.
> 
> ...


Yea, I see other people claim they want no parts in group dynamics and don't see they are part of it anyway all the time.


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## Catwalk (Aug 12, 2015)

SOC/SX or SX/SOC, I am. I don't find the distinctiveness useful.


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## mistakenforstranger (Nov 11, 2012)

Lord Pixel said:


> Yea.
> 
> I'm just saying I don't think So is rare, or that there's not alot of Sos. I think that people get into instinctual variants and see SX folks roaring at the top of their lungs how cool it is to be SX, and how shit it is to be So, and then some people just don't look into it enough or talk about it because the popular opinion is their IV stack is shit lol. Is it actually shit? How can an IV stack be shit? It's just your stack.


Seriously, Sx is so glorified on this forum and in almost every Enneagram circle I’ve been a part of. From what I’ve seen, most people who act online like they’re the _most_ intense, obsessive, and “sexual” in everything they do, and therefore MUST be sx, tend to be quite tame once you see past their facade. I bet half the people who type themselves as Sx aren’t even that type, and are more likely Sx-secondary.


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## pwowq (Aug 7, 2016)

mistakenforstranger said:


> Seriously, Sx is so glorified on this forum and in almost every Enneagram circle I’ve been a part of. From what I’ve seen, most people who act online like they’re the _most_ intense, obsessive, and “sexual” in everything they do, and therefore MUST be sx, tend to be quite tame once you see past their facade. I bet half the people who type themselves as Sx aren’t even that type, and are more likely Sx-secondary.


I can be extremely intense, in a comfortable and appropriate manner. My intenseness doesn't smear itself OVER others. I really dislike when people smear their shit over everything with zero thought on the consequense of permanent isolation. _'Damn SXs! Burn ya selfs or chill down, naow!'_


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

Social instinct finally get their own thread and what's the first thing they do with it?

Talk about themselves? Further the understanding of So (as Sx doms did recently in our thread)?

No, first order of business on the topic of So is: bash Sx.

I can't say I'm surprised.



Lord Pixel said:


> People with Sx So first...like to discuss is how much shit So Sx is and So Sx ppl are lol. It's like a form of bonding.


Fixed.

If anyone would care to go over the sx threads they'll find it's actually almost always So dominants ankle biting Sx dominants rather than the reverse. I wonder if you imagine it's the reverse bc of how reading about Sx makes you _feel_:

Sx says: I jump off the roof, lol.
So hears: I'm cool, you aren't (or 'I'm different' which So don't like to hear?)

I suspect So dominants, due to their nature, can have an internal negative reaction to Sx dominants and feel some need to cut us down (especially with the 'group monitoring' quality often found in So). Although I'll note some social dominants appear more tolerant of 'individuals'/'differentness' than others. 



mistakenforstranger said:


> From what I’ve seen, most people who act online like they’re the _most_ intense, obsessive, and “sexual” in everything they do, and therefore MUST be sx, tend to be quite tame once you see past their facade.


I hope you've factored for the nature of the instinct: Sx dominants often can't reveal what's behind their (public) facade. With certain things we can only allude to it at best. Our very nature can be considered 'publicly unacceptable' which is exactly where the So 'policing' can get started.

There's a damned if you do, damned if you don't set up being created here: if you try to show your sx nature you're "crazy" or "exaggeration personified" or something else negative. If you don't (fully) show it, you're a mistype or "glorifying". 

As you can see in this thread, according to So, Sx should be ashamed of/change our nature. But how can a Sx dominant use So values to judge ourselves? I can laugh at myself, I can calculate the odds of my life going towards tragedy but what I can't do is self-reject or alter my instinct. Which means this is all just simple feel-good-about-yourself 'us vs them' bashing. 



> I bet half the people who type themselves as Sx aren’t even that type, and are more likely Sx-secondary.


On this we agree (Riso/Hudson said half of sx dominants are mistyped due to poor Sx descriptions).


I hope this thread gets back on topic. I'd love to understand So better.


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

I do wonder how So/Sx or So/Sp shows itself? Like especially So/Sx? I guess I am curious as to how the group dynamic can morph in an intense one-one interaction? Just someone who can easily adapt to both scenarios?


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

Dare said:


> Social instinct finally get their own thread and what's the first thing they do with it?
> 
> Talk about themselves? Further the understanding of So (as Sx doms did recently in our thread)?
> 
> ...


These are the same old complaints you hear everywhere. Sx does this alot. You think this Sx "bashing" would exist if Sx didn't bash So, since that's what the complaining in this thread is about anyway. I don't think so.

You can even go to another enneagram forum and see Sx folks "SO, ugh, I can't vibe with those ppl, SO ppl ugh so fake, SO ppl are the worst ugh....." just give it a rest.

Understanding So is simple, So sees group dynamics and the roles people fill in a group.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

enneathusiast said:


> Bottom line: When I hear people complain about another instinct I'm listening for a contrast of preferences underneath along the lines of the rest of your post below.


That's the thing. _Most_ of the people back thread weren't complaining about SX-the-instinct in the wild as much as they were complaining about how the placards for the different instincts are written in this zoo and how that influences where the crowds go. I think Pixel brought the stuff about SX up to begin with and he's made it quite clear that he actually likes SX doms. 




> But it does have to do with how SO looks at the SX instinct and offers a glimpse at the biases against it.


If you're clinging to the idea that SO has some generalized bias against SX, you won't ultimately get clarity, so I hope you aren't. That will color your reading of things.

The "it" I was referring to there was the way I see some SX and/or SX-identified people reacting to their own biases and _ideas about_ SO. The point I was making was that the reactions are less in response to actual SO people doing actual SO things, and more in response to the Platonic abstraction of SO they are carrying around in their heads.

The "it" you're referring to is, I think, my statement itself and what you think you can glean from it. But you'd be wiser to take it as how one likely-SO dom conceptualizes SX and/or how she sees dynamics on this forum playing out more broadly (and it is broadly, because I wasn't even just referring to properly typed SX doms when I described them). If you feel like you're getting something useful from it though, good.



> BTW from my own personal SX-first experience, SX has nothing to do with peacocking. That could take place with SO-first or certain types as well.


"Peacocking" taken literally indicates a mating display, and striving to be chosen for merging by an other - having that drive permeate even unrelated activities - is definitely SX territory. I won't debate it because I know that if someone wants to go survey this forum and look for the kind of thing I'm meaning coming from people with sx in the stack, they'll find it. (I don't exclude myself from that, either, as an SX second who on paper relates about as much to sx/so descriptions as to so/sx) 

But sure, any type can show off when they're trying to actually attract someone, and other types can end up preoccupied with status displays, too. The motivations aren't necessarily the same though. SX status displays are very "I'm best/strong and beautiful/pick me," SO-motivated status displays are usually more like "I'm a paragon of community values, admire me, give me influence." 




> This seems most relevant to SO-last and not simply SX-first. IME SO-last doesn't want to be absorbed into social expectations.



Sort of, yes: That is, I think that when I've seen the dynamic I tried to capture in paragraph 2 "in the wild" it occurs most often and most dramatically between SX/SP people and SO doms - less so with SP/SX, maybe because they aren't always as obvious and vehement in their pos/neg reactions to things. And less so with SX/SO people, or not in the same way. 

But since SO is an instinct that, as you said, everyone has, a need that everyone needs to have met... I've noticed most that SO-last people seem to resent being _made aware of _social expectations and group dynamics at least as much as they avoid participating in them. I don't necessarily see them consistently just not getting involved, including in some of the more down and dirty political ways. But often either they lack awareness of what they're doing, or they are extremely resentful of having attention called to it. They can be quite difficult to deal with in some situations from an SO perspective, yes, because they may want to participate and try to participate, but when they participate they may also 1) want not to be held accountable to group norms and to other group members, despite benefiting from the presence of both when they choose to be involved, or 2) want everyone to pretend they are more removed than is true, and aren't engaging in social behaviors we can clearly spot them doing. 

It can equate to an expectation that we (SOs) muffle our natural awareness of group dynamics and help them preserve this illusory sense of being an island among men, in order to interface with/accommodate them without a scene being caused.

I actually wonder if other types also feel like they are vulnerable to being "gaslit" and sometimes parasitized in this way by people blind to their dominant instinct. I do think that as an SP-last I have a tendency to brush off more SP-heavy people's concerns for stability and physical safety as being based on nothing and looking at it this way makes me wonder how much frustration I've been causing some of my SP buds by accusing them of being big babies and what not. :smug:


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

Ashes4719 said:


> I am a SO I believe. Though, I do wonder why there are so few on here.
> 
> Are you a SO @*contradictionary*?


I did some instinctual variant research yesterday. I relate with So and Sp :wave:


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

I want some social acceptance because it's necessary for survival and my need to connect, but I cannot pretend to like anyone I dislike
That's not who I am. That's like asking me to pick up a gun and kill a guy that didn't violate anything I believe.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

baitedcrow said:


> That's the thing. _Most_ of the people back thread weren't complaining about SX-the-instinct in the wild as much as they were complaining about how the placards for the different instincts are written in this zoo and how that influences where the crowds go. I think Pixel brought the stuff about SX up to begin with and he's made it quite clear that he actually likes SX doms.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I thought I was so/sp or sp/so, but now idk


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

mp2 said:


> It took me a while to realize I was So first. Initially, I confused the idea of being Social first with the idea of actually being a _social_ person, which is an easy mistake to make, of course, and it kind of makes me want the So instinct to be called something else in order to avoid such confusion, because I think it's pretty easy for people who are really So first, but extremely introverted/avoidant/out of place/reserved/whatever, to hear the word _social_ and immediately realize they're not _social_ at all.
> 
> I'm the least _social_ person I know, and for the most part I'm too reclusive and really complete shit at even understanding social/group dynamics, but then pretty quickly I realized these things are what lead me to realize just how So first I am, and not due to me being something else(was pretty convinced I was Sp first for a while, and then Sx, and then Sp again), and as far as typology goes it's been the most helpful thing for me to understand the Social instinct.
> 
> So I think it's a combination of two things(just speculating) that likely there are many more Social dominants here and in other communities who are mistyped, and also Social dominant types who aren't mistyped but don't want to get involved in the fray and the shitshow that is typical of internet Enneagram communities :tongue: which is what I typically do as an observer here, but I just wanted to share my experience, so...


Thank you for sharing! I am still figuring out the instinctual variants so this is helpful for me. I have only taken the test once and I got 2W3 and So so that's what I put but I didn't really know the meaning behind them. Plus, the explanation was so small and vague.

I also went with it because I am a pretty social person and was like up that sounds good. I do value one-on-one interactions a lot so I think the wording of certain explanations can also make people confused.
@baitedcrow

I really enjoyed reading your post and thank you for the insight! First, how did you have the courage to hop in a car with a random guy you met at a bar in another country? 

Also, that is a very interesting way to compare So/Sx vs So/Sp. When I was first reading through the instinctual variants I was thinking Sx and maybe So/Sx but I get uncomfortable when people want to have a serious intimate conversation with me. It is just a lot at once and I usually am not in that headspace. Sometimes, people tell me things when I hardly know them and I just feel uncomfortable with that. I am happy they are telling me and feel comfortable enough to tell me but just the right away intensity is a lot. When emotions become intense or too negative quickly, I want to pull away. I am pretty sure my partner is an Sx or Sp or a variation of the two and we have worked well together but there are times when he justs wants a lot of "us" time and I want to go out and do things 

Do you have any good sources that you have read that talk about this? Like I mentioned above I have tested as 2W3 So but I would like to get to know more about the types


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Ashes4719 said:


> I really enjoyed reading your post and thank you for the insight! First, how did you have the courage to hop in a car with a random guy you met at a bar in another country?


It's really not "courage." I'm not going to say that every SP last will relate but I relate this tendency I have back to being SP last. There are whole realms of potential worry based on physical safety, basic comfort and financial and domestic stability that it just doesn't even occur to me to take seriously. I think about them, but moreso from a perspective of "if I can't maintain a certain amount of stability I'll look like an idiot" or "if I am helpless at practical tasks others will have to pick up the slack for me and that isn't fair to them." I don't usually think about them for their own sake.

When I do catch myself taking them seriously for their own sake (sometimes life forces that, of course)... I get annoyed with myself, because they strike me as petty in the grand scheme of things. I know that people who get to observe me up close see it as odd. I am in some ways a person with clear neurotic tendencies. They're just not necessarily focused where a lot of people would imagine "neurotic tendencies" should be focused if you're going to end up with them. I struggle with certain types of social anxiety - less so one on one, I can in fact be very charming in smaller groups - and with My Place In The Universe and with my concerns that humans aren't capable of creating any society healthy enough to make humanity worth giving a damn about. 

Getting into a car with some dude... I don't completely lack a sense of caution or anything, I definitely have a radar (it's rather refined in its way) and would turn down some people, but I'm also seemingly more likely than average to take that kind of risk, at least in certain circumstances and when I feel like I can learn from it.

In a way my "self" matters much less to me than one might think.



> Also, that is a very interesting way to compare So/Sx vs So/Sp. When I was first reading through the instinctual variants I was thinking Sx and maybe So/Sx but I get uncomfortable when people want to have a serious intimate conversation with me. It is just a lot at once and I usually am not in that headspace. Sometimes, people tell me things when I hardly know them and I just feel uncomfortable with that. I am happy they are telling me and feel comfortable enough to tell me but just the right away intensity is a lot. When emotions become intense or too negative quickly, I want to pull away. I am pretty sure my partner is an Sx or Sp or a variation of the two and we have worked well together but there are times when he justs wants a lot of "us" time and I want to go out and do things
> 
> Do you have any good sources that you have read that talk about this? Like I mentioned above I have tested as 2W3 So but I would like to get to know more about the types


I really dislike relying on the usual stack descriptions to try and parse stacking for people because I think they can become _either_ overly abstract or overly detailed in ways that stray away from the fundamental dynamic of how each set of (dominant - > secondary - > blind spot)s function. It can complicate the discovery process.... for instance while I relate a lot to type 5 SO descriptions and less so to type 5 SX descriptions, I often relate as much if not moreso to type 5 SX/SO descriptions as to type 5 SO/SX descriptions. 


One resource that I found very useful that I think is overlooked is just a set of notes this blogger took during a Riso/Hudson training session. 

NB: He speaks of SO as representing a kind of "mechanical energy," but IIRC he is a type 5 like me, and for a 5 SO needs are heavily filtered through issues of intellectualization, overwhelm and withdrawal. I think it's possible that other base E-types will relate to this way of describing SO less than I do.

ETA: I also like this breakdown of multiple "ranges" of instinctual stacking based on the relative strength/weakness of the second instinct. To be clear, I don't believe that people fall neatly into one range or another, by and large. That amounts to over-analysis. However I do think that looking at things this way highlights how variably the combinations of dominant/secondary instinct can manifest. Ex. for SO/SX:



> the so/sx version is what I call lightside (soc as unquestioned dictator, just as in warmside so/sp), and on the other end is the darkside (soc as chairman, sx as vice chairman who sleeps with the chairman). and the midrange, that lovely muddy area in between where soc is the boss but sx at least has its own corner office.
> 
> lightsiders vs darksiders is almost like a phobic/counterphobic split in attitude. the lightside is engaging, ingratiating even, and is the closest to what has become the stereotype for so/sx. unmistakably friendly, amusing, eager to attend to others in a personal, customized way. also hesitant or unwilling to upset the delicate chemistry or harmony of individual or group dynamics, since soc cohesion is at a premium. some famous lightsiders: mister rogers, steve carrell, george foreman, ben affleck, zach braff, michael jackson, and bill clinton.
> 
> ...


Needless to say, I personally lean toward the "midrange" and/or "darkside" SO/SX ranges they've tried to define in terms of my general bearing and self-expression. The more stereotypical "lightside" range, not so much.


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## Ashes4719 (Apr 2, 2019)

@baitedcrow 

Thank you so much for sharing these! I am going to take a look at them later tonight. I appreciate your insight into all of this. I think the MBTI theory is a little more common or is talked about more often so I have been having troubles finding reputable sources that talk about Enneagram and Instinutal Variant. it's also nice to read about how people have associated them with things they have done or how they act. 

I also agree that people don't fall neatly into a box but I do like learning about these theories and what I have learned so far has been really helpful for me and the different relationships I have.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

This has been a really interesting discussion. For a long time I thought I was Sp/So. I still might be, I’m not sure, and as always it partially depends on interpretation, but at some point a couple of years ago I started to take more seriously the So/Sp possibility. Kind of like @mp2, I’m extremely introverted so I didn’t believe I could be a “social” anything. I am definitely not naturally sociable, and networking and making friends doesn’t come easily to me at all. In fact, I relate to some So-last descriptions that talk about things like finding it hard to keep up with multiple relationships and not wanting to impose myself on others. 

But what made me consider the So-dom possibility is that I’m constantly thinking about the social stuff, much more so than the other instincts, and that’s where my anxieties are. I’m much more likely to be worrying about whether I said totally the wrong thing in a social situation than, say, a health-related matter. I’m fascinated by the workings of various kinds of group dynamics and social systems - politics, for instance, or even the culture of a forum like PerC, and typology is part of that because it helps in understanding how people fit together.

I guess I’d say I want to avoid negative so-related things, more than positively seeking them out. For instance, I wouldn’t necessarily say I positively desire to belong to groups, it’s more that I need to not be in a social environment where I feel like I don’t belong. I’d much rather be alone than in a group where I feel like I’ve been excluded. I’ve occasionally looked for other forums to join but a lot of the time I feel like I don’t belong there, even if I can’t quite articulate why. I don’t need or even want people to turn on the warm fuzzies especially to make me feel welcome. It’s more subtle than that.

So does that make me an So-dom? I’m not sure, but interesting to ponder anyway.

As for the discussion about Sx... people often say Sx is glorified but I don’t see it that way. I notice a clear difference between the Sx-doms on this forum and someone like me, and yes, it has to do with words like passion and intensity. I have to confess to finding some Sx-dom posts on here a bit OTT, but that could be a me problem. I can even see how Sx-doms could have legit frustrations with Sx-last types. I mean, if you’re an Sx-dom and you want to be in a relationship with someone who can meet your intensity, I’m not the person you want to be in a relationship with. I’m not the one talking about devouring people’s souls or whatever the sx-dom kids on the street say these days. 
@Ashes4719 If you’re looking for more resources on instincts, you might want to have a look at Beatrice Chestnut’s subtype descriptions It’s a different interpretation than what’s been discussed in this thread so far, but it’s another perspective to consider. I don’t really subscribe to any particular school of the Enneagram (I don’t even necessarily subscribe to the Enneagram, really) but I still find it worth discussing so long as critical thinking is applied.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Octavarium said:


> As for the discussion about Sx... people often say Sx is glorified but I don’t see it that way. I notice a clear difference between the Sx-doms on this forum and someone like me, and yes, it has to do with words like passion and intensity. I have to confess to finding some Sx-dom posts on here a bit OTT, but that could be a me problem. I can even see how Sx-doms could have legit frustrations with Sx-last types. I mean, if you’re an Sx-dom and you want to be in a relationship with someone who can meet your intensity, I’m not the person you want to be in a relationship with. I’m not the one talking about devouring people’s souls or whatever the sx-dom kids on the street say these days.


Thinking on this a little more, I don't think people are mistaken in interpreting it as a kind of glorification, but I think a lot of it just comes from how active SX threads tend to be + the expressiveness of the variant (two things which seem related anyway). 

I like lowest common denominator descriptions of the instincts. So for me it makes the most sense to think of SX as related to attraction and the kind of high-key chemical bonding that produces infatuation: it is essentially an extension of the mating drive, the metaphorically-but-not-literally sticky part of it. Infatuation is, of course, notorious for skewing perception so that things may be interpreted and experienced as being more extraordinary or extreme than is strictly true. Like when a friend falls hard for someone and talks them up to the point that you think he's a sexual messiah and her obvious soul mate... but when you meet him he's really an okay but kinda schlubby guy next door, and you can tell by how little they have in common that it probably won't actually last, but at that moment, for her, it's still all a _very big deal._

SX as a dominant instinct sort of seems, to me, to do a similar thing at times... It influences a person to perceive/feel things intensely more consistently than it leads them to pursue experiences that are objectively intense. (It also motivates people to seek out stimulation, but some people are easily stimulated, so I don't know if this always means seeking it out in very unusual/edgy places.)

Get a bunch of SX doms or SX-identified people talking together, though, and they can end up reifying the subjective lens of feverishness/potency through which they view the world, and making it sound like they have access to some kind of trippy bonus layer of reality that no one else can tap. Which is not, of course, really the case.. at least I don't observe that as being the case. It's more that for SX people that kind of infatuated energy that most of us will naturally experience at one time or another leaks out into everything else as well. Things that look perfectly tame from the outside can still seem to SX doms like a _very big deal_ and if talk is all you have to go on they will, at times unintentionally, tend to make what goes on in their lives and their minds sound like a _very big deal_ even when it might bore the pants off someone else should they be the ones experiencing it.

When most people are learning about instincts, they're doing it on the internet, and talk really is most of what they have to go on. Hence... 

It does make me wonder which parts of our shared lens(es) SO and SP doms could end up unintentionally reifying if we actually managed to keep threads going for a prolonged period.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

I've never heard anyone say reifying. What's that?


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

Why is SX _still_ being shit-talked on this SO thread?

Insecurity? The joy of passive aggressiveness?

*Move SX discussion to the SX thread* where it belongs (and can be appropriately challenged with citations etc, none of this 'I feel like SX is_____ from my bitter, flawed perspective' bs).

Making an entire post here talking about nothing but how crap SX is after being asked to stay on topic, after never having posted/participated in the recent SX thread, only daring to talk down SX with your social buddies around has a certain look to it doesn't it? 

Then again some people feel safer in echo chambers where you can say anything than in open intellectual discussion where you will be challenged and held accountable (expected to prove what you say and be open to better understanding -- aka intellectual honesty). 

Then again it's not like any of this is new. I recall a thread in the INTJ subforum in 2017 where someone asked about INTJ + SX. I didn't participate bc by the time I got to it a certain INTJ (I'll let you guess who) had already got in there and shit-talked SX saying how we (implying all SX doms) "embarrass ourselves" with our 'peacocking'. 

I let a lot of negative SX talk slide (even when it directly contains a negative value judgement), but an entire SO thread down talking SX as it's main topic is wildly inappropriate.

Be inaccurate and proud, be hateful even (both revealing more about you than anything else), but do it in the appropriate thread and *stay on topic*.


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

LoL. Please.

Ok more on SO. I think i am the totem. Will someone worship me? :laughing:

_Sent sans PC_


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

contradictionary said:


> LoL. Please.
> 
> Ok more on SO. I think i am the totem. Will someone worship me? :laughing:
> 
> _Sent sans PC_


Meditate and tap into some of that SO cult building instinct.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

Dare said:


> Why is SX _still_ being shit-talked on this SO thread?
> 
> Insecurity? The joy of passive aggressiveness?
> 
> ...


You’re the one who’s taking this thread off topic. Who’s shit talking Sx? Who’s “Making an entire post here talking about nothing but how crap SX is”? If you’re referring to my post, I didn’t even mention Sx until several paragraphs in, in when I did, I 1) made it clear that I was talking about _my_ reactions, not some kind of objective truth about Sx-doms, and 2) said that Sx-doms have legitimate frustrations with other types. If that’s ‘hateful’, then you and I have very different understandings of what that word means.

And who says people can’t challenge posts in this thread? Haven’t you been doing just that? (Although with no citations, I’ve noticed). So if you’ve got a specific critique of anything that’s been said in this thread, go ahead and post it, but please stop taking this thread off topic with you’re posts about the thread being off-topic. Follow your own advice. Wouldn’t you’re complaints about negative Sx talk be better off in a different thread?

And so I don’t become part of the problem, I won’t be saying anything more about this issue.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

@Ashes4719 Another resource on instincts I forgot to mention is here: https://www.personalitycafe.com/enn...ce-thread-instinctual-variants-stackings.html lots of material on instincts from different sources has been gathered together in that thread, so there’s a lot to go through there.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

@Octavarium I'm guessing she means me, but no, I'm not trying to "shit talk" SX either... just thinking out loud about why the attitude toward it on-forum is getting perceived a certain way by some members, using personal observations to do so. (Re: citations, I believe "aggressive," "competitive" and "on display" are used to describe SX in the Riso/Hudson notes I linked... I'm not pulling my impressions out of nowhere by any means, in fact I think they are mostly rather standard.) I see the topic as part of the meta-discussion of _this_ thread because it has helped cause dramu in _this_ thread. People are free to disagree with me. Nothing I said seems super offensive/negative to me but my bar for what counts as offensive/negative might just be higher. I also dunno if I participated in any INTJ SX threads in 2017, I'd have to go look.

I'm not directly engaging here because I don't think that'd be productive but don't take it personally, I don't think it was directed at you.

ETA: I already gave an account of how I think SX backs up my dominant, I would like to hear contrasting accounts or examples of how SP backs up SO for people that think they might be SO/SP.


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## pwowq (Aug 7, 2016)

I'm highy concerned of, aware of and wanting to create a healthy dynamics between people incl me. Wanting everything to flow. The base idea being ability voice concerns/objections without the dynamics between people turning into fist fights, bullying, neglect and ignorance.
I will go after people and issues destroying the healthy social dynamics in place.

Above is true at work, where I've been for 5 years now. I don't have formal power over people but I can influence the place from my position as an organisational outlier, a _roamer_. I'm at a perfect position to create the social dynamic I long for.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

So, SOs (and other dear readers): 

I listened to this podcast recently, where the host goes over notes from a panel on the instincts that included Russ Hudson, Mario Sikora, Beatrice Chestnut and Tom Condon. What is discussed up until about the 13 minute mark is mostly nonsense and not always Enneagram related, but the talk after serves as a good compare and contrast of the different notions of the "instincts" that exist. 

My understanding of them - which is partly cultivated based on what seems most internally consistent and in line with my experiences - matches up best with that of Hudson and Sikora, although I disagree with both of them on a few points still. I think Sikora's conceptualization of them as three clusters of evolutionary drives/behaviors, and of variants/stacks as biases, is better than Hudson's idea that they are "energies within the body." But I think Sikora's take that only synflow instinctual stackings (so/sx, sx/sp, sp/so) exist is way, way too stringent.

I was aware before that I tend to prefer Hudson's take on them to most others, as it is the neatest/most to the point/easiest to apply in my opinion. But I was completely ignorant of Sikora. His work is very much geared toward applied organizational/business psychology, which I find valuable in that it's very practical compared to some Enneagram theory and dislike in that I don't give a crap about business and it runs a bit shallow.

*He characterizes the SO instinct as "Navigating,"* which is a way at getting at the core of it that I do like and want to draw attention to. (SP is "Preserving" and SX is "Transmitting" which also aligns with my preferred interps pretty well). Links to some of his articles for perusal/commentary at your leisure, if you're into that sorta thing:

General info:
Enneagram Learning International Blog
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-instinctual-biases-how-shape-your-behavior-home-mario-sikora/

All Articles:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariosikora/detail/recent-activity/posts/

Blog:
http://www.awarenesstoaction.com/blog-enneagram-learning-international/?author=3

NB: he tends to use the word "extroverted" very loosely and then dials himself back a bit in the footnotes.


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

baitedcrow said:


> I listened to this podcast recently, where the host goes over notes from a panel on the instincts that included Russ Hudson, Mario Sikora, Beatrice Chestnut and Tom Condon. What is discussed up until about the 13 minute mark is mostly nonsense and not always Enneagram related, but the talk after serves as a good compare and contrast of the different notions of the "instincts" that exist.


Thanks for the link. Seems the fast forward was disabled so I set it to 3x speed to get to the instincts (at about 13:30).

It all sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Now I remember why I didn't bother with the instincts for 15 years until one day I stumbled upon the experience of them for myself. Some day maybe I'll figure out how to share that. For now, I just like hearing other people describe their own experience of the instincts.

The one thing that stood out was a reminder of Mario Sikora describing the social instinct as "navigating." I believe he identifies himself as SO 8 which for me gives his interpretation of the social instinct some validity (I don't know about his interpretation of the other two).

*Could anyone SO-first describe how "navigating" does or doesn't fit your experience?* Being SO-last myself, I've not only been minimally aware of and had difficulty "navigating" various social structures but for the most part I didn't even want to be bothered with it (felt like a waste of time to me - though I know it can be useful).


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

enneathusiast said:


> It all sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Now I remember why I didn't bother with the instincts for 15 years until one day I stumbled upon the experience of them for myself. Some day maybe I'll figure out how to share that. For now, I just like hearing other people describe their own experience of the instincts.


Yes. It is by far the least fleshed out piece of "theory" in Enneagram if I'm not mistaken, people tend to pull it out and use it for...whatever they want, really. Trying to make it all make sense in my head/make it usable is why I'm on such a research/concept-building binge about it right now. Maybe I'll just eventually give up, who knows.

I think I find value in both internal and external perspectives of the variants and would need/want both to develop well-rounded personal definitions of them. In fact, that's part of why I think Sikora's framing of them as _biases_ rather than just _variations_ is useful - it's hard to uncover the exact nature of one's own biases without more objective or at least detached/neutral/uninvolved input. 

Anyway I'll probably reply to your Q myself at some later point, but I want to give people that aren't me more floor space than I have been.


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## L P (May 30, 2017)

Does SO have to do with searching for a sense of purpose? I feel like SO alot for me is constantly looking for some purpose to embody in a group, and on a larger scale some purpose I fulfill in the world, constantly searching for that niche where who I am is meaningful just as I am.


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

Lord Pixel said:


> Does SO have to do with searching for a sense of purpose? I feel like SO alot for me is constantly looking for some purpose to embody in a group, and on a larger scale some purpose I fulfill in the world, constantly searching for that niche where who I am is meaningful just as I am.


Yes. For larger things than just living and let live. 

_Sent sans PC_


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

baitedcrow said:


> *He characterizes the SO instinct as "Navigating,"* which is a way at getting at the core of it that I do like and want to draw attention to. (SP is "Preserving" and SX is "Transmitting" which also aligns with my preferred interps pretty well). Links to some of his articles for perusal/commentary at your leisure, if you're into that sorta thing:


Thanks for valuable readings, you've been very helpful. 

For me it is not so much of 'Navigating' but more like 'Coordinating', if that making any sense. 

_Sent sans PC_


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

contradictionary said:


> Thanks for valuable readings, you've been very helpful.
> 
> For me it is not so much of 'Navigating' but more like 'Coordinating', if that making any sense.


It does make sense, but I'm usually too hands off to really "coordinate" so it's not quite my experience most of the time. (I am attentive to how other people's attempts at coordination are working though, I guess I'd rather just whisper in the ear of a more earnestly social person to give them ideas on how to proceed.) This is where I think input from a more extroverted SO dom would start to be useful - really _social_ SO dom, as it were.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

@baitedcrow @enneathusiast You’re right about the instincts being an especially underdeveloped part of the theory. It’s the area with the most blatant contradictions between theorists, e.g. should you type yourself with descriptions of the instincts independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, ignore combined type/instinct (subtype) descriptions until you’re at a sufficiently advanced stage of Enneagram study? Or is it a mistake to rely on instinct descriptions independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, do you need to include subtype descriptions in your typing process? Here we have different theorists giving the exact opposite information and advice. Not to mention significant differences in what each instinct actually is.

I’m not sure what I think of ‘navigating’ as a name for the social instinct. I like Mario Sikora for his ability to think critically about the Enneagram, question established ideas and cut through a lot of the bullshit that gets repeated in Enneagram circles, but I’m less keen on his additions and modifications to theory and his way of presenting the types. Trying to answer the question about whether I personally relate to ‘navigating’, bearing in mind that I’m not totally sure whether I’m an SO-dom, honestly I’ve no idea. I don’t even know where to start answering that question. Do I like navigating social structures? What does that even mean? Networking? No. Ok, I just read over his instinct descriptions to refresh my memory, and based on that page preserving is the best/least poor fit for me, (navigating and transmitting are both too extraverted) but there’s a lot that I don’t relate to in all three descriptions, none of them sound very much like me, so these descriptions don’t work for me, whatever my dominant instinct turns out to be.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Octavarium said:


> I’m not sure what I think of ‘navigating’ as a name for the social instinct. I like Mario Sikora for his ability to think critically about the Enneagram, question established ideas and cut through a lot of the bullshit that gets repeated in Enneagram circles, but I’m less keen on his additions and modifications to theory and his way of presenting the types. Trying to answer the question about whether I personally relate to ‘navigating’, bearing in mind that I’m not totally sure whether I’m an SO-dom, honestly I’ve no idea. I don’t even know where to start answering that question. Do I like navigating social structures? What does that even mean? Networking? No.


I can't really speak for Sikora but when I think about how I _think_ SO functions in me, it's easy for me to imagine it as being like steering a boat, either steering my own boat to avoid social problems and get to a social destination, or helping to steer a group to reach a destination and avoid problems. Or perpetually studying the use of_ tools _of social navigation, even, and trends in other boats' directions. That's why the imagery seems suitable to me. But, I think my conceiving of/experiencing it in a more mechanistic way could be a 5 thing / and INTJ thing / a me thing.



> Ok, I just read over his instinct descriptions to refresh my memory, and based on that page preserving is the best/least poor fit for me, (navigating and transmitting are both too extraverted) but there’s a lot that I don’t relate to in all three descriptions, none of them sound very much like me, so these descriptions don’t work for me, whatever my dominant instinct turns out to be.


IIRC Sikora emphasizes typing people based on how they act more than on what they "relate" to, basically using default behaviors as tells. I wouldn't take it as far as he does in terms of trying to erase people's experience of themselves from the typing process, but it is part of why I like his descriptions, whether or whether not they really have a 1-for-1 relationship with say, Beatrice Chestnut's instincts. I definitely feel like I can classify coworkers reasonably well using his system, if I consistently observe them. In some cases I doubt they are aware of the behaviors they show to other people regularly, and might not "resonate" with the classification I'd assign to them. The downside to Sikora's typing is that I think it is at very least much _easier _to pinpoint a person's motivations/preoccupations with their help/their introspective insight... provided they're reasonably self-aware and willing to be honest.

But it's easy for me, because while I don't relate to all the details of any SO description, I almost always relate more to SO descriptions than to the others (occasionally I'll find an SO desc that emphasizes extroversion/sociability to too great an extent, then the accompanying SX will look more like me). Including Sikora's. I also relate more to type 5 SO descriptions than to others. The only confusion I experience is when I look at stack descriptions, especially for type 5: behaviorally and attitudinally I straddle the dividing line between SO/SX and SX/SO descriptions almost always.

If people trying to type me from outside the black box placed me as something other than social, I'd guess it would be due to failure to perceive that social withdrawal _is_ one of my go-to tactics for "navigating" the social world.


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## mistakenforstranger (Nov 11, 2012)

Octavarium said:


> @*baitedcrow* @*enneathusiast* You’re right about the instincts being an especially underdeveloped part of the theory. It’s the area with the most blatant contradictions between theorists, e.g. should you type yourself with descriptions of the instincts independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, ignore combined type/instinct (subtype) descriptions until you’re at a sufficiently advanced stage of Enneagram study? Or is it a mistake to rely on instinct descriptions independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, do you need to include subtype descriptions in your typing process? Here we have different theorists giving the exact opposite information and advice. Not to mention significant differences in what each instinct actually is.


Yes, this has been my exact problem, because on the one hand, I relate wholeheartedly to Beatrice Chestnut's take on sp-4, and what lead me to type as sp/so, but then Tom Condon's take on sp-4 doesn't resonate at all (While social and sexual 4 do), and when I think of sp by itself, read descriptions of sp, it seems the least important of all the instincts to me and I'm pretty terrible at sp in general (I'm also inferior Sensing, and many descriptions of sp seem heavily Si/Sensing oriented, but I'm pretty sure at this point I'm not sp-dom, knowing others who are sp and how overboard with sp they can be compared to me), so yeah, based on my own experience I don't know what's the right approach either ha. I think Riso-Hudson's take on instinctual subtypes here may the closest to my own involvement with people I've known of those particular subtypes (I'm not sure how others feel about their take on their own type and I'm sure it could always use more elaborating/fine-tuning but I don't see much to disagree with either). https://sites.google.com/site/upatel8/personalitytype4

As far as Mario Sikora's take on instincts. While I'm not very familiar with his work, and would have to read more, on first glance, I find this summary of Sx being "Transmitting" to be rather Social in nature (Does anyone else?), or at least, I could see it equally applying to Social:



> The behaviors and attention patterns in the Transmitting domain include:
> 
> 
> Broadcasting/Narrowcasting—*attempts to send attention-getting signals* *to the broadest group*; once a signal is received by someone the attention goes to that individual. (See here for more information.)
> ...


The way "Broadcasting/Narrowcasting" is described could apply to so/sx too. Their attention goes to individuals they "click" with (The sx part) in the groups they're a part of. Asserting, while could be in the sx-domain, also seems Se-based too, like someone like Donald Trump would fit that as an ESTP 8w7 (A very assertive combination, as it is), but he wouldn't be Sexual yet is often mistaken for Sexual too. And Social is definitely concerned with leaving a mark/having a legacy. That seems so inherently Social. Why wouldn't it be?


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

I think your questions address something to keep in mind regarding the two approaches to the instincts.



Octavarium said:


> ...should you type yourself with descriptions of the instincts independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, ignore combined type/instinct (subtype) descriptions until you’re at a sufficiently advanced stage of Enneagram study? Or is it a mistake to rely on instinct descriptions independent of type, and, to avoid mistyping, do you need to include subtype descriptions in your typing process?


It seems like Naranjo's approach is to determine which of the 27 instinctual subtypes a person is, not simply which of the 9 types they are. So, I would think if someone takes to using the instinctual subtypes they should look at 27 subtypes instead of simply 9 types. Otherwise, why bother considering instinctual subtypes? With this approach there's also no reason for a discussion thread about the social instinct like this because with the subtypes the social instinct is used only to describe a variation of any given type. In other words, there is no separate social instinct to look at in general but only a social subtype of each type.

The three instincts looked at independently of type is a relatively new development and I think it's this attempt to define the instincts separately that's creating all the different interpretations. The instincts were never really a thing unto themselves with the enneatypes. IMO, trying to make them so basically attempts to look at something new by using labels not designed to do so.

Personally, I don't use the instincts as commonly discussed but some derivative I found by forgetting about the labels and looking at the actual experience being described when people contrast their preferred instinct with the other instincts. I think it's only in contrast that they can be understood independent of type (which comes out naturally sometimes when people talk down other instincts which is why I don't mind when people do that).


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

mistakenforstranger said:


> And Social is definitely concerned with leaving a mark/having a legacy. That seems so inherently Social. Why wouldn't it be?


I believe he's trying to relate SX back to the mating drive, and implying that the desire to leave something lasting of yourself in the world is an extension of the drive to reproduce. This is one of the things that gives me the most pause when reading Sikora and trying to fit myself into his ideas, though: I think you'd have to go back to "motivations" to tell the difference between SO legacy and SX legacy.

That's also why he places the broadcasting/narrowcasting (transmitting) dynamic with SX over SO. He's suggesting it's an extension of mating display, putting yourself "out there" to try and draw magnetic interest, then connecting with the interested parties you prefer.

I think SO can display too (and so does Sikora - he idiosyncratically believes that all SO will have SX as secondary, in fact). But the difference would be that SO displays are ultimately meant to affect overall group position or group coordination efforts, whereas SX displays occur without respect to how it will affect the group overall, they're about "me" and to a lesser extent about specific "yous".

(In reality though, in a social species, it's really hard to completely separate these two types of display and competition because social status and the group impact individual sexual viability and individual sexual viability can impact social status and the group. Again, you might have to go back to trying to determine the anxiety causing the behavior/the primary motivation.)

If you are going to try and look at how broadcasting/narrowcasting could apply to people with both social and sexual in the stack, I am partial to the interpretation of the second instinct as being less-neuroticized and therefore often used in service of the first instinct/primary drive, so... I think I would associate broadcast --> narrowcast with sx/so and narrowcast --> broadcast with so/sx. (narrowcast --> broadcast being like... establishing discrete points of contact to help enlarge and amplify the message one ultimately wants to transmit to the group or society.)


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

mistakenforstranger said:


> Yes, this has been my exact problem, because on the one hand, I relate wholeheartedly to Beatrice Chestnut's take on sp-4, and what lead me to type as sp/so, but then Tom Condon's take on sp-4 doesn't resonate at all (While social and sexual 4 do), and when I think of sp by itself, read descriptions of sp, it seems the least important of all the instincts to me and I'm pretty terrible at sp in general (I'm also inferior Sensing, and many descriptions of sp seem heavily Si/Sensing oriented, but I'm pretty sure at this point I'm not sp-dom, knowing others who are sp and how overboard with sp they can be compared to me), so yeah, based on my own experience I don't know what's the right approach either ha. I think Riso-Hudson's take on instinctual subtypes here may the closest to my own involvement with people I've known of those particular subtypes (I'm not sure how others feel about their take on their own type and I'm sure it could always use more elaborating/fine-tuning but I don't see much to disagree with either). https://sites.google.com/site/upatel8/personalitytype4


I used to fairly confidently type as SP/SO, but one thing that started to make me think I might be SO-dom rather than SP-dom is that I’m not that focused on SP themes like the ones described on that Sikora page. It takes effort for me to think about health matters. If I feel ill I’ll usually just assume I’ll be ok in a day or two and I think of medical appointments as something to be avoided wherever possible. I’m not overly concerned with finances either. I’m fairly responsible with money, not generally inclined to spend recklessly, and I don’t necessarily mind thinking about these issues when I need to, but I’m not at all obsessive about it, and I don’t get anxious about money unless I have a definite reason to do so, so as long as I have enough money for the things I need/want it’s not a major concern. Money is a means to an end for me. I’m also not overly anxious about physical safety. Again, I’m not likely to do anything risky or reckless, and I do like my comfort, e.g. camping holds no appeal for me because I want to be somewhere that’s warm, comfortable and has an internet connection, but safety it not what I’m focused on.

But then I read So-dom descriptions, and some of them are too extraverted for me to relate to them much, but the themes sound much more like my fascinations, my concerns, the things I _do_ get anxious about even when there’s no definite reason to worry. I already talked about how I relate to SO instinct themes in my first post in this thread (post 48) so I won’t say any more about it here.

The problem is, the instinct descriptions conflate a few things that don’t necessarily go together. Are the instincts about introversion/extraversion, what you’re good at, what you’re obsessed with in a potentially unhealthy way that might make you not good at it, e.g. SP-doms risking their health by overeating, SO-doms not being sociable because of social anxiety, or what?


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## Huzei (May 26, 2019)

baitedcrow said:


> It does make sense, but I'm usually too hands off to really "coordinate" so it's not quite my experience most of the time. (I am attentive to how other people's attempts at coordination are working though, I guess I'd rather just whisper in the ear of a more earnestly social person to give them ideas on how to proceed.) This is where I think input from a more extroverted SO dom would start to be useful - really _social_ SO dom, as it were.


Why are you hands off? Do the have somesort of tendency to proceed in a manner that is making you work that way? 'Most of the time' so that means occasionally you do take control; whats happening there that is triggering a response instead of a reaction? What changes smooth classyness into firmness?

So. Youd consider an extroverted sosx more social in admin sense I understand. And yes, in a way as the draining is absent, they are. But. They broad manage, meaning low to medium focus. Meaning the can control the outcomes of vast groups, while finding it very difficult to lead leaders. I guess thats where whispering becomes valuable.


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## Huzei (May 26, 2019)

So. Sosx seems diplomatic in a way. F.e. You mentioned avoiding dilemmas. For me, drilling into them and taking care of the outcome is a must. I let things be/dont engage only when I calc theres zero potential for learning/growth for that case/person/project in it left at all. If the issue is neg by nature Ill deal with it quickly. If its a positive issue, such as:

Too much success
Too much pos feelings
Too much drive compared to abilities
Too much competence compared to drive
Too much innovation compared to the era we live in
Or other pos issues, Ive got a completely other style in as how to handle it. Bc the latter requires a take that makes people still hold on to their say project, but with a lesser or more advanced way of functioning. So what they do is great, but how they do it will generate either limitations or positive burnouts. So that needs attention indeed. Luckiest thing is to surround yourself with people with pos issues, they are of succeess to their core.

Great analysis about how those two theorist differ by how the form obs. Ive noticed the same there before. But consistency obs coworkers and doing the hidden analysis Consistently! ...sneaky a bit? Then again. Dont worry, all intjs are natural born stalkers. The more - the higher IQ.

Baited. You need to calc that when they're desc sosx they allocate a portion from the cluster to the extroverted sosx. That why those desc are occasionally perhas too pushy for your tastes. Also, if the game is theorized by an extroverted person.. the projections are usually in the subjective hypothesis, to some extents anyway

Social withdrawals are for sure 5thing, as the fear steps in. There are also other factors to it. What Im interested in is, can you control it? Can you say, ok now I have a binge to retreat, instead Ill go for the opposite say for the sake of growth or soc outcome or which ever inner/outer motive theres strong nuff to flip that one around? And when you do do it, how that like for you?

I would def type you as one of the two. But for what ever reason Im having a fascinatingly hard time defining which of the teo you are. You sound a lot like Mmmm tho. But then youre way over my league in classyness. I guess we are about to find out.


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## Huzei (May 26, 2019)

baitedcrow said:


> I believe he's trying to relate SX back to the mating drive, and implying that the desire to leave something lasting of yourself in the world is an extension of the drive to reproduce. This is one of the things that gives me the most pause when reading Sikora and trying to fit myself into his ideas, though: I think you'd have to go back to "motivations" to tell the difference between SO legacy and SX legacy.
> 
> That's also why he places the broadcasting/narrowcasting (transmitting) dynamic with SX over SO. He's suggesting it's an extension of mating display, putting yourself "out there" to try and draw magnetic interest, then connecting with the interested parties you prefer.
> 
> ...


Outstandingly fascinating is the legacy dif. Would you say sosx and sosp have it knotted closer or would you go for the lack of an instinct to prevail both mot and desired outcome? Because for me the legacy is an amplification of total impact. I dont mind about its expected timeframe, as I know how those work when the seed is there and light and water starts to pour on it. But I care very much for it to be beneficial for a more pos construct in the future, applicable to all segments and sectors of life. Even universally applicable in my opinion. Yet. Somehow, I find that sosxs are even more of that than the sxsos. And that stunns me, lots. Its as the sosx wants to leave that legacy in a way fame incorporates larger amplification of it all. Just amazing, really, as I then again use the leverages (fame, soc relations, soc abilities, access to UHNW groups & influence over them through respect, the math group, IQ groups, geomilitar-pol groups, innovation thinkthank lab teams and what not) to what ... find the most special thing? Thats kinda egotistical isnt it? Yak. Ive got a major deficiency here it seems.

But yeah. Placing yourself out there to filter out and test is the thing. You as an sxso want as much experience, data, liberty and stamina to kinda net it all and then be a bit picky about what you then invest time in and if its all genuine, then its time to push it to its max, ideally replacing yourself say professionally. At that point for the 1st time in ones life, you FEEL the professional peak. And, its a relief. Its like you REALLY have made it. Then, you chill and only give advice when asked for. The active leading part is now over. Other people stronger than you have taken the wheel of that boat. Then they invite you over at the country clubs. The youngest over there is around say 65, and there you are, councilling with those that .. give direction to trends. Thats a cool thing. They are pretty humorous too, youd think our avg age is 5 at best if you had no visuals on us.  but yeah, the many sosxs of that specific group are way more interesting aroung legacy motivations than myself. I find that inspiring. Well itd be weird for me to inspire then, at half to to a third of their expertise in terms of years.

No, theres def a sosp group too. But yes sosx works like that paragraph presents it. The problem of defining grops with whats the first instinct disresonates with reality. Spsxandsxsp, they get eachother well. Mirror imaging? I dont know. On the other hand anyone with 1/10th of a brain can adjust and handle any type, E or instincts with a bit of a talent. While someone whos mentally handicapped will provoke clashes even with someone with whom the person has all the aspects in common with. That handicap is ego. Inferiority/superiority complexes.

Still looking into what you meant by those 3rd last and second last paragraphs. CD, can you translate to an idiot here to get em too?

The narrow broad theory is how I have understood it too, and seeing it working at soc conjuctures only makes me believe in it just more.

That last phrase make me feel I got the answer, at least partially, I was promised to get this weekend. )


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## mistakenforstranger (Nov 11, 2012)

baitedcrow said:


> I believe he's trying to relate SX back to the mating drive, and implying that the desire to leave something lasting of yourself in the world is an extension of the drive to reproduce. This is one of the things that gives me the most pause when reading Sikora and trying to fit myself into his ideas, though: I think you'd have to go back to "motivations" to tell the difference between SO legacy and SX legacy.
> 
> That's also why he places the broadcasting/narrowcasting (transmitting) dynamic with SX over SO. He's suggesting it's an extension of mating display, putting yourself "out there" to try and draw magnetic interest, then connecting with the interested parties you prefer.


Yeah, I get that, but I just see that thing more in Social (at least Broadcasting itself, not for "mating" purposes) than Sexual, like it would apply way more to sx/so than sx/sp, and the reason for that is the secondary Social, not Sexual. I suppose I would use Seduction/Allure as a way of describing sx there (and I see he includes seduction in his sx description) instead of Broadcasting/Narrowcasting. Agree about motivations making the difference. 



> I think SO can display too (and so does Sikora - he idiosyncratically believes that all SO will have SX as secondary, in fact).


That's weird, and I completely disagree that there isn't a difference between dominant instincts with a different secondary instinct. A so/sx is very different from a so/sp.



> But the difference would be that SO displays are ultimately meant to affect overall group position or group coordination efforts, whereas SX displays occur without respect to how it will affect the group overall, they're about "me" and to a lesser extent about specific "yous".


Yeah, like even when so/sx do connect to one person with their sx, they still have the overall group (or groups) in mind that they're interacting with at the time. I've seen this play out a parties and such, where they just keep the group dynamic going rather than connecting with one person. I think sx would just be more indifferent to Social in that case, if they were latched onto someone in the moment. I'm not sure if I would say it's about "me", but rather "us" (two people) or "You and I", like I think the Fauvres describe sx as pair-bonding, and that makes sense. I see it as a there's no me without you, kind of thing, in some instances.



> (In reality though, in a social species, it's really hard to completely separate these two types of display and competition because social status and the group impact individual sexual viability and individual sexual viability can impact social status and the group. Again, you might have to go back to trying to determine the anxiety causing the behavior/the primary motivation.)


Yeah, but I do think sx tend to have a more overtly "sexual" display at times too _just for the sake of it_, and in that I get what Mario means with peacocking and whatnot (although, I think it can be subtly displayed too, which is often overlooked), that Social would be doing so more because of the "trend", for instance. So, sx would focus more on their individual sexual viability while Social on how it impacts status. 

Hmm, just a thought but viabilty seems a bit more related to sp, whereas sx can be less interested in the viability and more the high of the "burning out" phase. It's partly why I'm not even sure if Sexual instinct is interested all that much in doing so for purposes of "reproducing", like Mario suggests, despite the term of "Sexual" and attempting to connect it to evolution.



> If you are going to try and look at how broadcasting/narrowcasting could apply to people with both social and sexual in the stack, I am partial to the interpretation of the second instinct as being less-neuroticized and therefore often used in service of the first instinct/primary drive, so... I think I would associate broadcast --> narrowcast with sx/so and narrowcast --> broadcast with so/sx. (narrowcast --> broadcast being like... establishing discrete points of contact to help enlarge and amplify the message one ultimately wants to transmit to the group or society.)


Yeah, I don't know I think it's just making it too complicated when he could just use a better word. I find the instincts are far more simpler on the surface than the descriptions tend to make them out to be.



Octavarium said:


> I used to fairly confidently type as SP/SO, but one thing that started to make me think I might be SO-dom rather than SP-dom is that I’m not that focused on SP themes like the ones described on that Sikora page. It takes effort for me to think about health matters. If I feel ill I’ll usually just assume I’ll be ok in a day or two and I think of medical appointments as something to be avoided wherever possible. *I’m not overly concerned with finances either. I’m fairly responsible with money, not generally inclined to spend recklessly, and I don’t necessarily mind thinking about these issues when I need to, but I’m not at all obsessive about it, and I don’t get anxious about money unless I have a definite reason to do so, so as long as I have enough money for the things I need/want it’s not a major concern. Money is a means to an end for me. I’m also not overly anxious about physical safety.* Again, I’m not likely to do anything risky or reckless, and I do like my comfort, e.g. camping holds no appeal for me because I want to be somewhere that’s warm, comfortable and has an internet connection, but safety it not what I’m focused on.


Yeah, that sounds in line with sp-secondary. Sp-doms I know worry about that stuff and usually try to stay on top of it. Again, why I can't see myself sp-dom because it's usually the last thing on my mind. For me, it's more of a "I should be better at this/work on this..." but I'm not. I'm not sure if that's how the blind-spot position functions, or if that's my "neurotic" fixation with sp lol.



> But then I read So-dom descriptions, and some of them are too extraverted for me to relate to them much, but the themes sound much more like my fascinations, my concerns, the things I _do_ get anxious about even when there’s no definite reason to worry. I already talked about how I relate to SO instinct themes in my first post in this thread (post 48) so I won’t say any more about it here.


Some of the shyest people I've known have been Social-doms, for the very fact that they're worried so much about people and how they're being perceived. At the same time, some of the most extroverted people I've known and who are the life of the party have also been Social-doms. There's a wide variety.

So yes, I do think the idea that one's first instinct is "neurotic" holds true, or at least where your worry is, and where I think the conversation tends to miss out on in these discussions, which I'm glad to see it brought it up in the discussion, because that's how they tend to _really_ show up. 



> The problem is, the instinct descriptions conflate a few things that don’t necessarily go together. Are the instincts about introversion/extraversion, what you’re good at, what you’re obsessed with in a potentially unhealthy way that might make you not good at it, e.g. SP-doms risking their health by overeating, SO-doms not being sociable because of social anxiety, or what?


I think it can be what you're good at (at a certain stage in your life, since I see a lot of people who have had to overcome the "insecurities" of their instinct in a way before they get to that point; Sometimes I don't see this struggle in others too, so it depends), but also where you're most affected by/sensitive to as well. I see it mostly in terms of where your focus goes. I've even seen one source say your dominant instinct is where you're most _damaged_. :shocked:



> e.g. SP-doms risking their health by overeating, SO-doms not being sociable because of social anxiety, or what?


Yeah, it seems contradictory, but this is more how I see it showing up, whereas someone who is so-last, for instance, tends to not care as much about it, so there isn't the "worry"/neurosis associated with it. Not that a so-last couldn't have social anxiety too, but I don't see that worry in them about Social because they just don't think about it all that much (until maybe they're forced to do so). 

I'm just putting forward my understanding of instincts, so I don't really know if it's right or not. Just that's been my experience and curious if others see it the same way.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

mistakenforstranger said:


> Yeah, I get that, but I just see that thing more in Social (at least Broadcasting itself, not for "mating" purposes) than Sexual, like it would apply way more to sx/so than sx/sp, and the reason for that is the secondary Social, not Sexual. I suppose I would use Seduction/Allure as a way of describing sx there (and I see he includes seduction in his sx description) instead of Broadcasting/Narrowcasting. Agree about motivations making the difference.


This kind of seems like a terminology preference rather than disagreement about the content of what he’s saying on this one point. (Or my interpretation of what he’s saying, or what I’m saying.) 



> That's weird, and I completely disagree that there isn't a difference between dominant instincts with a different secondary instinct. A so/sx is very different from a so/sp.


I don’t like this part of his system either, I can see ways of interpreting my experience of people to make more than enough room for the additional 3 stacks. I would like to see some kind of synthesis of Sikora’s ideas and say, the ideas people have about contraflow and synflow. It’s very interesting to me that it’s the contraflow stackings (SX/SO, SO/SP, SP/SX) that he doesn’t believe he is able to observe, and the synflow stackings (SO/SX, SX/SP, SP/SO) that he does believe exist.



> I'm not sure if I would say it's about "me", but rather "us" (two people) or "You and I", like I think the Fauvres describe sx as pair-bonding, and that makes sense. I see it as a there's no me without you, kind of thing, in some instances.


I see SX as encompassing chemically charged “pair-bonding” too, but I don’t think it’s limited to that – there are other behaviors (related to reproduction) that necessarily precede pair-bonding and also don’t fit well into either of the other instincts. There is nearly always some kind of “pick me” or “win me” that comes before the “us” that pair-bonding creates, IME. I would tend to consider them both different "phases" of the expression of that instinct. 

NB: "display" as part of SX isn't even specific to Sikora, it's part of the Riso-Hudson take as well. Ditto "aggression" and "competition." I think that since both SO and SX are considered more "outward pushing" than SP, it can be easier to confuse some of the associated drives and behaviors on a superficial level. A lot of the more negative traits that are IMO most sensibly associated with SX (specific sorts of domination/jealousy/attention-seeking behaviors) end up being pinned exclusively on SO, and that's part of where SO's weird rep comes from.

(Also, I specifically have to relate SX bonds to the kind of chemical pair-bonding that leads with limerence - even if it doesn't end there - because I don’t buy that all one-on-one or even all “intimate” relationships are functions of SX. It seems to me that a lot of long-term relationships slide into being driven more by SP or SO as time goes on. The caveat to that is that I don’t think a relationship has to actually be sexual to have a pseudo-sexual chemical intensity – I kind of want to refer to the “romantic friendships” of yore as an example here.)



> Hmm, just a thought but viabilty seems a bit more related to sp, whereas sx can be less interested in the viability and more the high of the "burning out" phase. It's partly why I'm not even sure if Sexual instinct is interested all that much in doing so for purposes of "reproducing", like Mario suggests, despite the term of "Sexual" and attempting to connect it to evolution.


When I say “viability” I mean to others, as a potential mate – and I don’t think it makes sense to shoehorn that into SP or SO, because sexual competition can undermine security in either other area. For instance, WRT SP, a lot of mating displays in many species that are intended to increase reproductive fitness decrease the animal’s individual fitness. A 15 year old boy that tries scaling an overpass to impress a girl on the ground below and falls and breaks his arm is “doing” SX and sucking hard at SP. A peacock’s tail is a hindrance when he needs to hide or run from predators. 

Sikora does see SP as always supporting SX, though. I'm guessing he is making a connection between things like being physically healthy and attractive and having a nice home, etc. and how that can be used in SX displays.

Unfortunately IMO when you try and narrow the definition of “SX” to be about something as abstract as having a “high” it becomes too unmoored from anything concrete or objective for me to consider it usable. The whole “instinctual variants” thing is already nebulous/unstructured enough, too much so, really. Becoming overly removed from some external point of reference (like “evolutionary drives” as one possibility, even if it’s kind of contrived due to being an attempt at working backward from something that was unclear to begin with) is what gets us so many conflicting interps of instincts from so many well-regarded Enneagram theorists, and what gets us the “if it isn’t flattering to me it’s not part of the instinct I identify with”/”the instinct I identify with is the one whose descriptions I find easiest to spin in a way that’s flattering to me” attitude that you sometimes see on Enneagram forums. Basically it becomes a free-for-all and wounds the consistency/the usefulness of the concept. 

Splitting drives into three categories based on their purpose to the organism is probably a paradigm I’ll stick with for now, because it has the potential to provide more clarity than any other I’ve found so far (at least for me). I might find a better one later, but I haven’t yet. Most of the debate I’m interested in is about which drives/behaviors really belong in/are motivated by which of the three categories (in general) and how to determine which of the three categories are motivating an ambiguous behavior or attitude in a particular instance.

I don’t think something has to be literally motivated by the “original evolutionary purpose” of a category (literally screwing/literally conceiving for SX) to be interpretable as derived from it or related to it in terms of the underlying psychological drives or perhaps patterns. In fact having “energy” from a given instinct/realm leak out into situations where it’s not directly or practically applicable is kind of a hallmark of the dominance of that instinct in my mind.



> Yeah, I don't know I think it's just making it too complicated when he could just use a better word. I find the instincts are far more simpler on the surface than the descriptions tend to make them out to be


I don’t really think “the instinctual variants” exist as such, I think we just have to pick how best to sort existing, feet-on-the-floor-level motives/behaviors/tendencies. So I’m leery of under-complicating them by saying they are simple on the surface even when they _do_ seem that way to me. I’ll bet they seem simple on the surface to Sikora and some of the other theorists too, and I find _all_ of their takes on them hit or miss when it comes to how they match up with my own surface read. 

@Huzei I might reply to you some time later this week.


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

Fear, desire, anger. Trigonometry of motivation.

I am starting to understand all this now.


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

mistakenforstranger said:


> I'm not sure if I would say it's about "me", but rather "us" (two people) or "You and I", like I think the Fauvres describe sx as pair-bonding, and that makes sense. I see it as a there's no me without you, kind of thing, in some instances.


Yep, that is the definition of SX; if you don't instinctively '1 + 1 = 1', you're going to have problems justifying SX in the dominant position.



> Yeah, but I do think sx tend to have a more overtly "sexual" display at times too _just for the sake of it_, and in that I get what Mario means with peacocking and whatnot (although, I think it can be subtly displayed too, which is often overlooked), that Social would be doing so more because of the "trend", for instance. So, sx would focus more on their individual sexual viability while Social on how it impacts status.


I thought Mario's "transmitting" (SX) description was terrible. Describing us (all) as extroverted... Why would a magnetism type talk about accomplishments -- why would we want to draw people on a 'status' basis? (SO much?). And more... I like that you noted any display we SX doms do may be "for the sake of it" (self expression) and that it may be subtle. 

The fun part for me is deliberately not signaling and having a fellow sx pick up something 'unseen' anyway. That's what's exhilarating (finding 'the one'/being found by 'the one'), not trying to capture as much attention/status as possible (no wonder Mario imagines all SX doms to be sx/so). 

I'm aware a fellow 5 sx here said they don't 'peacock'. The same is true for me; on a regular day I wear very little makeup, mostly neutral colored clothes and I look slightly down as I walk -- being careful to not draw attention/'connection' (I'm not socially anxious in the slightest, this behavior is SX driven in me). When I did meet my 'one', it was as Chestnut describes for the 5 sx: we formed a union in a fairly quickly/non fanfare way.

Of course, different sx dominants will behave differently but applying cliches to everyone of a type is way off the mark. It's very problematic to venture beyond the most basic core description (which defines the instinctual type) in anything more than an exploratory, this won't apply to all, qualified way.



> Hmm, just a thought but viabilty seems a bit more related to sp, whereas sx can be less interested in the viability and more the high of the "burning out" phase. It's partly why I'm not even sure if Sexual instinct is interested all that much in doing so for purposes of "reproducing", like Mario suggests, despite the term of "Sexual" and attempting to connect it to evolution.


Re "burning out" I see that idea around (the SX = salmon swimming upstream idea) and while I believe that's true to some degree for some SX doms (unfortunately I've behaved that way at times), there is also a corresponding idea sometimes associated with SX of 'life', 'creation' and a sensitivity to 'life force' (vitality) especially within ourselves (this ties into the SX can = sensitivity/draw to high energy idea). Of course it's possible to feel most alive when risking death... (which may be the motivation).

So, while I don't think this life/death quality will apply to all SX dominants (or is exclusive to SX), I do suspect that "burning out" is only one side of the coin there, at best. I'm also not sure about SX being about reproduction in any broad way either, just as SX is not about sex in the simple sense. I see 'legacy' as more SO personally.



> I find the instincts are far more simpler on the surface than the descriptions tend to make them out to be.


Agreed.



> Some of the shyest people I've known have been Social-doms, for the very fact that they're worried so much about people and how they're being perceived. At the same time, some of the most extroverted people I've known and who are the life of the party have also been Social-doms. There's a wide variety.


So true. This variety aspect doesn't come up much unfortunately. The same can be said for SX doms and SP doms. For example of the three SP doms I've known best, one was extremely fixated on money, the other on 'home making' (nesting & nurturing) where the third's neuroticism falls on physical safety (from potential physical threats -- he's very into martial arts etc). 



> So yes, I do think the idea that one's first instinct is "neurotic" holds true, or at least where your worry is, and where I think the conversation tends to miss out on in these discussions, which I'm glad to see it brought it up in the discussion, because that's how they tend to _really_ show up.


Right -- the stays at home introverted social dominant writing the manifesto, the abstinent SX dominant hoping to only be with 'one' in their lifetime, the SP dominant who climbs Mt Everest to focus on physical survival the entire time -- you've got to go beyond appearances into the neuroticism/sensitivity driving the behavior.



> I think it can be what you're good at (at a certain stage in your life, since I see a lot of people who have had to overcome the "insecurities" of their instinct in a way before they get to that point; Sometimes I don't see this struggle in others too, so it depends), but also where you're most affected by/sensitive to as well. I see it mostly in terms of where your focus goes.


Yeah, talent and focus/neuroticism won't align perfectly (indeed some have a 'negative' fixation and tend to avoid or do it badly -- e.g., the antisocial social dominant) but overall I think it's fair to expect a positive correlation between dominant instinct & ability for most, by a certain age as you implied anyway, simply bc people tend to get good at things they research/ponder/practice. 

I agree that it can be very innate/effectively a talent you were born with for some. The 'system' of romantic relationships (what makes them work well long term) is very easy/intuitive for me (but the price for this 'gift' is paid by my lack of vision/innate value of/ability in my SO 'blind spot').



> Yeah, it seems contradictory, but this is more how I see it showing up, whereas someone who is so-last, for instance, tends to not care as much about it, so there isn't the "worry"/neurosis associated with it. Not that a so-last couldn't have social anxiety too, but I don't see that worry in them about Social because they just don't think about it all that much (until maybe they're forced to do so).


Exactly. It's only dawning on me now that if I'm going to be a (good) leader of sorts in a corporation someday I need to take learning SO stuff more seriously. 



> I'm just putting forward my understanding of instincts, so I don't really know if it's right or not. Just that's been my experience and curious if others see it the same way.


I mainly see things the same way


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## Huzei (May 26, 2019)

Baited. Fair game 2 1/3. Or was it THE naked gun?

CD. Thread on fire. Who wouldve guessed? 😉


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## contradictionary (Apr 1, 2018)

Haha. It's always nice for an so to watch a discussion run well and deep with such growing mutual understanding.

Funnily, i learned a lot from the "miscommunications" happened here too. Blushing is imminent. 

Nothing goes without purpose. I feel like 'coordinating' opcorn:

_Sent sans PC_


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

I really feel like I've been ignored in this thread


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Sarge said:


> I really feel like I've been ignored in this thread


You sort of were, I noticed. I was just caught up moreso in other discussions/other things IRL. I thought it might be a little late to answer your Q about the word "reify" as the definition is very Googleable but what I meant by it was: to take something that's mainly abstract or conceptual or subjective and treat/talk about it as though it is concrete and objective. For what it's worth at this point. :tongue:


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

baitedcrow said:


> You sort of were, I noticed. I was just caught up moreso in other discussions/other things IRL. I thought it might be a little late to answer your Q about the word "reify" as the definition is very Googleable but what I meant by it was: to take something that's mainly abstract or conceptual or subjective and treat/talk about it as though it is concrete and objective. For what it's worth at this point. :tongue:


oh . . . that happens a lot with type, like one person asking me to give concrete examples to prove my type, and idk how to do that, so they'd like me to make a journal about myself to determine my functions, but I'm convinced that if I made a journal about myself, someone would find it and I'd be in a world of trouble, I have to look out for myself because no one else is


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## illicit iridescence (Dec 31, 2011)

Octavarium said:


> ... you might want to have a look at Beatrice Chestnut’s subtype descriptions It’s a different interpretation than what’s been discussed in this thread so far, but it’s another perspective to consider.


Ah, well, supposedly enneatype One So/Sx reporting in... 

I was doubting Sx/So for the last two weeks or so, but this rings a bell, pretty loudly. When reading both So and Sx descriptions, what struck me most was the difference in focus. I relate wholeheartedly to the 'being an exemplary example' part, whereas I don't have such a strong drive to perfect others. Also, I felt quite some shame / guilt reading parts of the So-descriptions, whereas it was easy to shake off the less pleasurable Sx-descriptions once I took on the imaginative mantle. I know it's a rather intuitive approach to pinning down my stacking (and using one source is of course a bit iffy), but it makes so much sense to me. Before that, I had pegged myself So mainly because of my natural gravitation towards 'the good cause', and my tendency to get triggered by and get hooked on information related to my 'place in this world' (and that of others too). I mean, if you want my attention, start talking about the status quo of the world, of politics, of nature, anything societal. Also more on a meso / micro level: who am I and what is my place and significance among my coworkers, among my friends? I love discussing other people's places in the world with them too. For some reason that stuff just fascinates me and resonates with me.

I like how the title of the So-One thread says "non-adaptability", even though it hurts like hell. I would like to believe that I have left all the negative stuff that's mentioned in the description behind me, such as feeling superior. I hope that I have grown beyond that (even though it may be largely subconscious). But in most, if not all things I do, I feel like I should set an excellent moral example. Sometimes I am aware of how much I want / need to be that good kid, that role model that those in my vincinity can copy in doing and not doing. That kid in me is so sensitive. And I get disappointed when those people do not follow my lead (moreso the more important that person is to me). On which I can look back and say, "wow how silly". Yet, this was me, and this probably still is me to a certain extent. I think I can even say through life experiences I have learned (or at least tried) to be perfectly flexible (and thus adaptable), according to what the situation at hand demanded from me. 

Reading the stuff about being the teacher is also embarrassing for me. Although I do think it is not really confined to showing teacheresque behavior. I actually am a teacher (not the stereotypical teacher though), but I've also been called a dad (I'm not, fyi), and I think the One-So first could be easily applied to the dad-persona too.

However, parts of the description like "they tend to have more confidence in themselves than in others" are parts that I believe need some nuancing. I do have confidence in myself (and my potential to do / get better), but I do have confidence in other people's abilities as well. I can acknowledge without any hesitation that someone is better at something than I am (not that uncommon when you work at a university). I can admire someone for a particular skill. But underneath, I wish I was that good, so I can help others with that level of expertise, and the public recognition for it is nice, even though I will always downplay a compliment. 

Don't burn me down


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

I found a couple of sets of notes from Instinct workshops involving Russ Hudson that I wanted to post here, mainly because I've heard it said that each of the instincts can be broken down into several sub-areas and that those with a given instinct dominant will still generally not be "strong" in all three sub-areas. I've not found info on what those sub-areas supposedly consist of elsewhere, though. I'm copy-pasting them instead of linking because they were collated on another forum. 


* *




Introductory notes:

~ instincts are "the intelligence of life" -- intelligence of billions of years of evolution 
~ personality is an activity; instincts are where the personality gets energy for that activity
~ ego issues feel like life and death because the activity of the ego is "plugged into" the instincts
~ instinctual matters feel non-negotiable / these are where the ego puts its foot down
~ the non-dominant instincts (even the blind spot/last instinct) are not missing. they just aren't as much of a preoccupation
~ fixation is imbalance
~ when other people are acting out the neurotic version of our personal blind spot instinct, it drives us nuts

~ presence is the only source of choice. without presence we have no choice but to keep running the same ego programs. presence brings the gift and capacity to do something different
~ when we're not present, the heart feels abandoned/rejected. the pain of that is the source of the passion. the story on compulsive replay is the fixation
~ personality is "the reaction to loss of presence that we call type x"

~ inner work cannot be done by negating things. grace is the bringing in of that which is in line with what the person more deeply needs. (in terms of the instincts, this means that squashing the dominant instinct doesn't work; instead, it's helpful to become more attentive to the genuine functioning of the non-dominant instincts - they already exist and operate in us, we just have to learn to let them into our awareness and give them enough space)
~ awareness to recognize where the seeds within us already are for bringing our own authentic expression of the blind spot into being. (iow, working with the blind spot instinct by discovering where it already exists authentically within us, and nurturing our own authentic expression of what is there)
~ we can only be truly aware of the undistorted instincts when we are present, and to the degree we're present
~ when we're present, we're listening to what the body needs moment to moment instead of making decisions based on our history and reactions


All three instincts manifest in one-on-one and intimate settings. 

All three instinct manifest as different flavors of love:

SP: building a nest, having a life together. it's easier to create a foundation together. wanting continuity, stuff you can rely on

SX: activation, immersion in the other. spark / fire / spice

SO: buddy, a person you can take on life with. helping each other do things, being "for" each other


~ each instinct can be distorted through slackness or through rigidity/overdoing
~ for each instinct, Russ described three arenas or "zones" (his word) that the instinct deals with. He said most people have stronger and weaker areas within each instinct, that very few people are strong in all three zones for a particular instinct, even their dominant one. I'll mostly use the word "areas" because I associate "zones" with hierarchical divisions and these are not hierarchical or progressive, just different.
~ obsessing about an instinct is not superior to overlooking it


It was mentioned that many people who thought they were soc-last, later find out they are soc-middle or soc-first once they actually understand the instinct. Social instinct is not about "liking to be in groups" or liking to socialize.

It's worth repeating that we do experience even our blind spot instinct. So when you read through the notes about each individual instinct, don't assume something's wrong just because you KNOW that's your blind spot and yet your experiences don't quite match. Stack is a weighting of how much attention and ego activity gets directed around the matters pertaining to each instinct. No one is completely devoid of any of the instincts.

Keep in mind that a person who has a particular instinct dominant in their personality does not necessarily express all the characteristics of the unfixated instinct. For instance, depending on the person, an ego distortion of the soc instinct might cause a soc-first individual to be preoccupied with excluding people or gatekeeping, whereas the undistorted instinct is very accepting and cooperative. Another example, also on soc instinct, is that an ego distortion depending on type) might cause a soc-first individual to try and squelch individuality in an attempt to achieve a "smooth" group dynamic; whereas the undistorted instinct is interested in who you really are and supportive of individuality. So if a characteristic in the list strikes you as "wtf??", maybe consider whether it might have to do with the difference between the natural instinct vs. the ego distortion.

In our blindspot instinct, we tend to feel perpetually like little kids, feeling unable to handle things in that area, putting ourselves down "I'll never get it together" in that instinct. Try to notice the ways in which you already do handle some aspects of the blind spot successfully. Find where you're already doing your blind spot instinct and doing it well, and start from there.

Also, in our blind spot instinct there is a tendency to procrastinate. Maybe we even feel the impulse of that instinct, but we put off acting on it. Again, bringing attention is a good place to start.


SP Instinct

~ "life tries to have life in abundance"
~ conserves energy a lot (contrast with sx spending) - noted that most wild animals spend a large amount of time resting / even so, the sp instinct knows how much is enough, and when rested enough will get up and do other things
~ "the journey toward a sense of wellbeing"
~ kind attentiveness to ourselves
~ concern about resources, having enough/fear of scarcity
~ safety/security, comfort, back-up plans
~ awareness of "chronos" time (clock time, quantitative time); "crisper about deadlines"
~ time as a resource: how you use it, accounting for it
~ when rigid or anxious about this instinct, there can be a sense of chronos time being scarce, time always running out
~ when sp is dominant, one-on-one relationships emphasize someone to nest with, build a castle with; long term relationships common due to focus on stability. sp is realistic about commitment, not going with every whim of feeling. the ability to look back and say "look at what we've built/created together" -- things are taken care of and now we can enjoy it; cozy. endurance in relationship builds love and trust
~ one distortion is go-go too much, another distortion is lethargy. if you attend to the body's messages, either of these will correct itself.
~ sp-dominant tend to feel self-contained and place higher value on privacy
~ a danger for sp-first is to remain fearful/limited/stuck in a rut


sp areas:
~ health and wellbeing: physical needs such as hunger, fatigue; noticing what the body feels like after one thing or another
~ practical know-how / finances, work / establishing your practical foundation in life / attention to what needs to be dealt with
~ domesticity and nesting, making home a nice place to be


Important!: It has been noted that the descriptions of enneagram's SP instinct closely resemble those of socionics Si information element - link to discussion. A clear distinction between the two has never been made. It is likely that in development of Socionics certain SP-characteristics have been borrowed to add to description of Si. For individuals who strongly express SP traits this often serves as a point of confusion in their socionics typings (e.g. a ILI sp/sx or sp/so may be typed as an SLI due to being sp-first).


SX Instinct:

~ spends energy a lot (contrast with sp conserving)
~ "intelligence of the evolutionary process" / the drive to evolve / the sx instinct is what "attracts us to go beyond what's comfortable for us"
~ doesn't care about comfort; makes us leave the comfort zone to explore new things
~ throwing caution to the wind and going for it
~ attraction: what we're attracted to and what we attract / magnetism (and its opposite, repulsion)
~ display/showing off to get the other interested 
~ on the most refined level, sx is the fuel for choosing to grow/evolve (e.g. inner work)
~ Russ differentiated between "liking" or "being inspired" vs. being "turned on"/aroused. the sx instinct is about turning-on/arousal. (my comment, think about the irresistible pull implied by "magnetism")
~ when we are tuned into the sx energy, we're more aware of the energy itself (e.g. the sense of arousal) than "the relationship" / a sense that the energy is pushing us into certain behaviors / sense of being compelled toward something (again, the flip side of this is revulsion, being compelled away from something)
~ sx makes you feel more alive, vigorous
~ awareness of "kairos" time - sense of it being the right time for something in a qualitative sense
~ fear is of not "getting to something" (climax, literally and figuratively), restlessness, sense that your life is, or needs to be, moving toward some kind of climax
~ a danger of sx-first is going out of control, "flaming out"/volatility


sx areas:
~ "edge" - exploration, pushing the envelope, risk. can involve aggression (the energy of hunting)
~ broadcasting, charisma, display (pouring out the energy) / think of animals doing the dance/spread/strut to attract the other gender
~ fusion - total involvement, enjoyment of completely losing yourself in whatever it is -- a person, a pursuit, etc.


Important!: The descriptions of enneagram's SX instinct in some ways overlap with socionics Fi information element. SX instinct is associated with feelings of personal attraction and repulsion, which can be interpreted as introverted feeling Fi - following one's internal feelong reference points. For individuals who strongly express SX traits this often serves as a point of confusion in their socionics typings (e.g. a SEI sx/sp may consider Fi-leading types due to being sx-first).


SO Instinct:

~ ability to adapt behavior
~ beginning place of altruism (as animals became more complex, the young needing longer care, a need arose for an instinct that could override sp to ensure the survival of one's children even if one's own life goes)
~ soc is subjectively experienced as caring ("giving a damn")
~ play (for fun) (or flirting in case of romantic play)
~ acceptance, interested in who others really are 
~ soc decides what we say "yes" vs. "no" to socially, it's how we read situations and people and decide where to invest
~ soc brings a certain humility because of the sense of interdependence. less overestimating the relative importance of one individual self
~ most communication is soc (except for territorial (sp) and mating (sx))
~ awareness of the other (compare with sx awareness of the energy between two people, soc brings awareness of the other as themselves, as a person in their own right) and of how one's self and the other are affecting each other
~ cited a study in which the biggest factor for longevity was friendship
~ bonds between species (e.g. humans and pets) are examples of soc instinct
~ one way of looking at all the major spiritual teachings are as an expansion of the soc instinct; ultimately, including all life within the soc instinct's movement toward win-win
~ under ego distortion, the soc instinct is involved in war, group dominance - though those are soc in combination with sp (survival/greed) and/or sx (competition). straight-up/undistorted soc instinct is always win-win.


soc areas:

~ reading people and adapting behavior 
➙ sp wants other stuff to adapt to the self; soc is willing to adapt self in light of others' needs 
as an example, suppose you feel the room is too hot and you see a thermostat on the wall. sp just turns down the thermostat, but soc gauges others' temperature - if everyone else in the room is dressed lightly, soc does not turn down the thermostat.

~~bonding, affiliating, communicating / creating connection~~
➙ attraction is sx, but creating and maintaining bonds/relationship is soc
marriage is primarily soc

~~contribution and participation~~
➙we're wired to contribute. regardless of stack, self-esteem suffers when we feel we have nothing to contribute or what we contribute isn't wanted or doesn't matter. 
➙ valuing each others' contributions falls in the soc area as well.

When soc is the blind spot:
~ opportunities to be with others are seen in terms of "what will it cost me". Can be a feeling of not caring, of being excessively selfish.
~ talking to self, may be really talking to self even when ostensibly talking to others, interrupting
~ always a feeling of not having made one's contribution even when one actually is contributing




And from a "Spiritual Instincts" discussion:


* *




Self-Preservation (SP)

Manifests in 3 zones, each with their particular distortions (the distortions are when we are not in that instinct, but when we are reacting to our fears around that instinct). When the SP instinct is distorted, it runs between Rigidity and Flaccidity in these three zones:

1) Health and Well being - Health, rest, exercise, hygiene, attending to the needs of the body. Becomes distorted as excessive exercise and dieting, eating disorders, trying too hard to be healthy. Or comfort over development, a kind of numb nesting, eating junk food, not sleeping, poor sleeping habits, addiction to alcohol, ect.

2) Practical know-how - How to attend to practical affairs of living, liking the basics of life, maintenance, repair, adaptability to circumstance, ability to work, to put one's affairs in order, to handle the necessities of our world. Distortion is workaholism or people who can't get to work (don't necessarily mean job), can't take care of themselves.

3) Domesticity - maintaining a home, a foundation, a base or nest from which pursuing one's passions and callings can be supported. Distortion is the Nest/Tomb, never leaving the home, can't get out, hoarding, purging, or excessively rigid about structures and routines - house has to be spotless, must be in bed at certain time, eat certain foods, control of regularity.

Russ talked about trainings running late and all the self-pres start worrying about how long it's going - got to get home, have to eat something, have to go to the bathroom, training will be so early the next morning i'll be so tired. Asks, are you really tired or just responding to fear?

How do I organize my life so as to serve my awakening?

Self-pres is the most powerful and basic force in the universe, it is the sustaining of life. Drive to life. Will to be. It's not just survival, it's also thriving. Sensation, not cognitive. 

Body system reading the environment, what is the body telling you? It's not that you obey every call of your body, but that you fully acknowledge it and act from a state of presence about those sensation. Not rejecting the intelligence that comes through self-pres. Conservation and restoration of energy.

Sp is more important doorway for enlightenment because it is about one's existence in the Now.
No identity/compensating state, sitting in the problem.

One-on-One is SP - Domestic, stable, trust, nesting, co-habiting, coming home together, sharing, long and deep, comfort, trust, being here with your partner, creating something together, marriage vows, sustaining something.

SP sex is about touching, body contact, sensations, closeness.

SP is trusting sensation as intelligence. Knowing when to conserve. Awareness of time and space, "the appointed time" - knowing the appropriate place and time (creating a sacred space) when called into action by presence. Everything can be made a sacred space. "We cannot awaken unless we are in god's household".

SP Blindspot - Person feels childish, unable to rest, to land, can't take care of themselves, always needing outside support, procrastinating SP matters.

3 Levels of Development:
- Unconscious - I will survive, even if I must destroy you, even if I must destroy myself. This is survival of the ego at it's purest. "I deserve it".
- Growing - arranging my life so that I begin to feel well and have the capacity to function.
- Illuminated - surrender of oneself, energy and body, to be a vehicle for essence. to make space, all space, for essence.


Sexual (SX)

"Attraction/Repulsion." NOT bonding.

Manifest in 3 Zones, and distortions:

1) Edge/Aggression/ Pushing the envelope - Moving towards what draws you energetically, drive towards what is exciting and interesting, element of risk, of overcoming boundaries, destructive. Salmon swimming upstream to [blocked due to guideline #4 violation] and die. Most aggressive version of their type. There's an element of risk and exhaustion. Jealousy and Competition, over-aggression, over-spending energy, can be heartless, this is hunter-prey dynamic. Everything else sidelined. Recklessness.

2) Broadcasting/Charisma - Display, broadcasting one's energy and reading the energy of others (not attunement - that is social, this is "where's the juice?"), phallic sending out signals of one's "feathers", what one is all about. Trying to intrigue and being intrigued. Peacocking. *this is not being aware of the other, attuned, connected or bonded*. Where the other "is at" is social. Projecting energy, trying to attract, "feelers" out looking for the juice. Trying to draw you in, like energetic "pheromones".

3) Immersion/Fusion - completely absorbed, immersion, not just in others but in passions. without the heart center it becomes spiraling, self-absorption, tends to mix with narcissistic issues, tries to resolve left over childhood b.s. Male mantis being eaten by females, male spiders being eaten by females. The question is what do I fusing with? You don't fuse with just anything (there's a picky-ness here... hunter waits for prey... finding the right game, the perfect mate, the right spark. It's not connection. There is a specific intelligence to the attraction, see my example below of plagues and arranged marriages), the nature of the attraction-immersion is that there is a specific something that draws attraction and immersion is sought in.

Russ said about 50% of people who think they're sexual aren't SX in most cases, but are misunderstanding the two instincts, which is often not their fault but the fault of poor information.

Once resources are gathered by SP, they want to be used, activated (SX). Doing something with them is social (SO).

Being turned on, spending energy, driven to spend energy, not a choice. Chemistry and fusion - not intimacy.

-Attracting and being attracted. Also repelling. Time to hunt, mate and go out - aggression and competition - Display - flowers are an example.
-In presence, we're drawn to what makes more life and energy, when we're distorted, we move to what gives the ego more energy.
-To be used up by existence, fused with essence, letting no barriers get in the way. Nothing stops you from union with the beloved.
-Surrender, obliterated by beloved, going all the way.
-In sex, we can't be intact.

SX is the part of us that doesn't tolerate veils and barriers. The transforming, creative force. competition is the engine of evolution. Breaks things up, shakes things up, sexual is a destabilizing force, but also reconstitution.

Sexual is the reconstituting of separate elements coming together in new ways - creativity.

Energy that gets us off our ass, gets us to feel fascinated.

Instinctual wisdom and intelligence - Jess and Russ talked about cultures with arranged marriages, more so and sp than sx, and how that made those cultures more susceptible to being wiped out by plagues. attraction has intelligence.

-intensity - intense about what? intensity needed because intimacy can't be felt.

People high in SX often have erratic lives.

- Social is affection and tenderness. Sexual is an energetic synergy. The sexual is not discriminating, because that implies choice, which is social. the sexual has no choice about what it's attracted to, but the instinct has strong attracts and strong repulsions (i'm not saying sexual is interested in everything, more like the opposite - sexual is attracted to very specific elements, but as far as the WHY or the pursuit of that attraction, there is little to no control. Likewise, the sexual instinct has an incredibly hard time engaging with something it's not attracted to.)

sx-last: postponing the sexual. Not that one doesn't have sx, have passion, have attraction, but it's constantly postponed, corked. passion is kept in a jar. Sx-last person feels unattractive, ashamed, unconscious "I'm boring and lucky to have friends". Sexual can always be talked out of - "I would pursue this, but my work/this person needs me." Seems disruptive or unruly. SX is done self-consciously.

3 Levels of Development:
- Unconscious - seeking peaks states of energy and intensity to point of self-destruction, or neurotic about where the energy fix is coming from, manipulating, forcing, hung-up on how to squeeze most intensity. obsession with object. addiction to object of attraction.
- Growing - activated energy for creation and fulfillment, energy that undoes the log-jams.
- Illuminated - be on wave of creative life force, energy fully engaged in awakening, sx generated in service of essence, the real juice is awakening. complete transmission. Sacred Prostitute - Jess mentioned Virgina Satir - said she wouldn't work with a client if she couldn't imagine making love to them, otherwise there would not be a complete transmission.


Social (SOC)

"Adapting/Bonding"

Shows up in 3 Zones:

1) Reading and Adapting - Discerning and reading people's emotions, states, mirroring, how to 'plug in' with people, connecting to where someone is, not what you need from them but where they really are. Learning, adapting new behaviors - when you have a child, you need to be able to learn new behaviors and accommodate them in your life.
Distortion - back and fourth on participation and support, staying connected in crap relationships for fear of sabotaging being plugged in. Fear of banishment. Losing identity. Going overboard to maintain relationships and overboard in reactions to relationships.
(*Discussion on Autism as the very lack of this capacity, with additional compensating mental capacities. One of the women in the group is a researcher at Johns Hopkins who studies Autism in children. Difficulty in sensory integration in autism, not able to take in info of the environment because there is too much, unable to make meaningful connections because too much data. This Zone is that capacity to discern, to plug in, to connect.)

2) Bonding and Affiliating - Create and sustain connection and to know the appropriate nature of the bond. Co-dependency is a way we don't listen to the social instinct.
Distortion - group merging. groups merging around particular ideas on small and large scales. Individualism fails. Nazi German. Smaller example - our class started side-tracking and joking and bonding over joking, Jessica had to stop the fun because we had to continue on with the real work.

3) Participation/Contribution - Having an influence, a contribution, a betterment in the lives of others. When animals and people can't contribute (like in experiments or in concentration camps) they commit suicide or die. Something in us lives by connecting to the human journey.
Distortion - Chronic Reaction to group values. Chronic rebel, chronic supporter. Gang mentality. Consumed by roles. Fixation on affiliation - for or against, ideology is human created. Fixated on something constructed by humans. Identity is asleep. Outlaw.

Social is not just networking, hanging out, liking groups.

The birth of emotion, link between instinct and emotion. Developed roughly 350,000,000 years ago when animals started to care for their young. Colonies and herds form as protection systems for young. Link between parents and children. Birth of social instinct is the parent-child bond - your survival is just as, or more important than mine, your survival is my survival. To care for someone and to receive care.

-Ability to create bonds that are instinctual.
-Involvement in life of others - bonding and connecting.
-Affiliations - what to give my time and energy to, what do you serve and align with?

Play is a big part of social instinct, engaging for the sake of engaging, not needing a reason, not so serious. Americans don't know how to play. Play has to be justified and regulated. Low socials too serious, focus too much on exchange, concerned with 'getting mine'. Humans and animals learn and develop through play.

Connection to emotions tend to be warm, approachable, accessible.
Curiosity. "Who are you? This is who I am."

Social instinct is birth of altruism.

This is about having a call and answering it.

SP - ground of being - time felt as resource, chronos.
SX - dynamicmism of creative being - time felt as chrios.
SO - articulated world, conscious of the great mandala and one's place in it, time as cycle.

Social Blindspot/SO-Last: How do I be with others? Finding ourselves outside participation in life. New connections are a pain in the ass, visit or phone call not a possibility but a drain "what will this cost me?" Interaction seen in terms of exchange, like money. People and connections as burden. There is unconscious shame - defective, broken, emotionally retarded, don't know how to love.

The key for social lasts is not that they have to create or pretend there's a connection, but to find the connections that are already there. The so-last will think it's up to them to make the social happen, so they won't do it at all, but that's the projection by so-lasts on the social sphere.

3 Levels of development:
- Unconscious - Collapsing into or mirroring group, denial of self, lack of self-initiation. Chronic reaction to group values.
- Growing - i have something to contribute, what am i serving?
- Illuminated - surrender to finding one's place in mandala.




The proposed sub-areas for SO are:



> 1) Reading and Adapting - Discerning and reading people's emotions, states, mirroring, how to 'plug in' with people, connecting to where someone is, not what you need from them but where they really are. Learning, adapting new behaviors - when you have a child, you need to be able to learn new behaviors and accommodate them in your life.
> Distortion - back and fourth on participation and support, staying connected in crap relationships for fear of sabotaging being plugged in. Fear of banishment. Losing identity. Going overboard to maintain relationships and overboard in reactions to relationships.
> (*Discussion on Autism as the very lack of this capacity, with additional compensating mental capacities. One of the women in the group is a researcher at Johns Hopkins who studies Autism in children. Difficulty in sensory integration in autism, not able to take in info of the environment because there is too much, unable to make meaningful connections because too much data. This Zone is that capacity to discern, to plug in, to connect.)
> 
> ...


I believe my concentration generally goes more to 3 and 1, probably in that order, and rarely goes to 2. I also see quite a bit of 1 and 3 from SX in myself. I think I trip over SO more than SX so consider it dominant - possibly I'll be convinced otherwise one day - but both are much stronger in me than SP. I am proficient at sub-area 2 in SP but mostly because it enables me to pursue more SO-ish and SX-ish concerns. Curious about other people's perspectives... this seems like the sort of thing that might relate to core Enneagram type. (Ex. "Contributing" in a broad sense does not necessarily require me to directly engage with people, as a 5 this is very... convenient for me. Reading people is also easy to do from an "observer" role/while still withholding.)


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

@baitedcrow Thanks for collating and posting all of that.

TBH though it’s reading stuff like this that makes me think the instincts might just be bullshit. If each instinct has different sub-areas, and strength in any one sub-area doesn’t correlate with strength in other sub-areas of the same instinct, then in what sense can anybody meaningfully be said to be dominant in one instinct or another? Couldn’t someone relate most to sub-areas across multiple instincts? I suppose each instinct might be more than the sum of its parts in some way, but it’s not clear to me how that works.

Some of the stuff in those writeups was surprising to me, e.g. SO being more playful and SO-lasts being more focused on exchange. I've only ever seen SX described as playful. I always thought it would be the SO-doms who would be most focused on exchange, since the sense of how all the gears fit together would engender a sense of how you might be useful to others and how others might be useful to you. In fact, I'm sure I remember reading something (I thought by Riso/Hudson, but I'm not entirely sure) saying that SX is focused on the juice or energy in an interaction, rather than who might be helpful to you, which is more SO. SO being warm was also surprising; in my experience, it's usually SP that's described as warm, where SO is cooler. Yet more examples of blatantly contradictory interpretations of the instincts.

Honestly I'm starting to think I could justify having any instinctual stacking, which is the same way I feel about cognitive functions. I didn't relate to any of the instincts from these descriptions; I had the same issues with these as with the Sikora descriptions discussed earlier in the thread. And if I don't find any of the instincts a great fit, I'm sure there will be others who feel the same.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Octavarium said:


> Honestly I'm starting to think I could justify having any instinctual stacking, which is the same way I feel about cognitive functions. I didn't relate to any of the instincts from these descriptions; I had the same issues with these as with the Sikora descriptions discussed earlier in the thread. And if I don't find any of the instincts a great fit, I'm sure there will be others who feel the same.


It was a simple copy paste, not a lot of work, because they're second hand. 

Anyway: don't be fooled by my scrap collecting and attempts to make instincts as sensible as possible in my own head - this is quite close to my opinion. The definitions that people use for instincts are highly variable and the distinctions are more or less arbitrary. (What stuck out to me about this set in terms of differences was that Hudson seems to have moved so extremely far away from the popular idea of SX as 1-on-1. The idea of cost or exchange being a sticking point in social interactions for SO-lasts makes some sense to me, in that being aware of how the group functions together and of group well-being (SO) might theoretically draw one's attention away from personal needs to some extent. The question could become "what role am I playing?"/"what function am I serving?" moreso than an explicit "what's in it for me specifically?" This is just me trying to fill in blanks, though. ) 

"Instincts" don't represent anything too meaningful in terms of serious psychological inquiry IMO. Like all the rest of the Enneageam, LSD and meditation are probably at least as responsible for the end result as credible research has been, lol, and instincts are one of the more poorly developed aspects of Enneageam. I don't really think of them as "bullshit" but that's because I have learned to process talk about them as propositions for a hypothetical method of categorization and not as a strict truth proposition.

I still like trying to iron out internal models of systems like this and placing myself within them, personally. I don't know if it's so much a useful introspective exercise as just an enjoyable (to me) habit. I certainly don't think all or even most people will fit neatly and when I talk about being "convinced otherwise" about my own type(s) it's almost a matter of being swayed to prefer other interpretations of the instincts and myself in a borderline literary sense. 

Unfortunately it's difficult to talk about this sort of thing at all without seeming to (my favorite word) reify a purely conceptual structure.

ETA: I think, though, that part of why the talk of "sub-areas" intrigued me may be because it does expose the biggest flaw of the framework, the one that most often makes it hard to meaningfully adapt both from actual person to actual person and even from core type to core type. You might be able to group the "zones" or even more granular components of the instincts together conceptually, but that doesn't guarantee any real world relationship. If a person's attention/neurosis goes about equally to say, 1 area of each instinct, you'll have to progress to advanced yoga levels of interpretation to assign them a category. If core type did have some relationship to which sub area a person was preoccupied with, would it still be meaningful to put, say, an SP 5 and an SP 7 under the same instinctual heading? Splitting them up is almost a tacit admission that in practice the categories are overbroad.

My major point of confusion over my own best fit is related to exactly this: I think about and manifest traits from 2 of the areas of SX and SO almost equally. I go with SO over SX because I feel SO is generally more problematic for me.


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

Hudson makes his position on the Instictual Variants clear in his book The Wisdom of the Enneagram. I'd ignore third party information claiming "Russ Hudson said..." whenever it directly contradicts this:



> The Self-Preservation Variant
> Most people can easily identify this Instinctual Variant. Self-Preservation types are preoccupied with getting and maintaining physical safety and comfort, which often translates into concerns about food, clothing, money, housing, and physical health. These issues are their main priority, and in pursuing them, other areas of their lives may suffer.





> The Social Variant
> Most of us are aware that we have a social component... the Social instinct however, is actually something more fundamental. Being able to adjust ourselves to others and be acceptable is a fundamental, survival based human instinct. People who have a dominant Social instinct are preoccupied with being accepted and necessary in their world. They are concerned with maintaining the sense of value they get from participating in activities with others, be they family, group, community, national, or global activities. Social types like to get involved, and they enjoy interacting with others for common purposes.




















> The Sexual Variant
> In the Sexual types, there is a constant search for *connection* and an attraction to intense experience-not only sexual experiences by any situation that promises a similar charge. In all things Sexual types seek intense contact... *They are the "intimacy junkies" of the instinctual variants*. On the positive side, Sexual Types possess a wide-ranging explorative approach to life; on the negative side, they have difficulty focusing on their own real needs and priorities.











https://archive.org/stream/TheWisdo... by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson_djvu.txt


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

Dare said:


> Hudson makes his position on the Instictual Variants clear in his book The Wisdom of the Enneagram. I'd ignore third party information claiming "Russ Hudson said..." whenever it directly contradicts this:


Just a reminder that Russ Hudson never wrote an Enneagram book of his own (that I know of). He co-wrote the books with Don Riso. From what I've seen Riso was the primary influence of the books and the Enneagram Institute until his illness and ultimate death. Since Riso's passing I've noticed Hudson coming into his own and having a somewhat different take than the books where he was listed as co-author. This can especially be seen in the Hudson notes that have appeared on the instincts.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Dare said:


> I'd ignore third party information claiming "Russ Hudson said..." whenever it directly contradicts this:


Yes, you would: the perspectives he is evidently sharing in workshops and on panels - as reported by multiple unconnected sources, the podcast and other set of notes I posted earlier in the thread and this page for Hudson training vids corroborate a lot of what's in the recently posted notes and in each other - seem to in some ways contradict or emphasize different points than your own preferred definitions. To more open people this will just pique curiosity. People's ideas about already-fuzzy concepts may or may not remain entirely static. Hudson was known to have the opinion that instinctual variants was a concept still in need of crystallization. There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that there's been a trajectory shift 
in the thrust of his ideas over time.

Anyone who is really curious can actually attend conferences and workshops, etc. Otherwise, digging into the Enneagram-sphere (blogs, podcasts, the odd video Q&A or more serious forum poster) will put you into contact with people that do attend and their materials, and you can evaluate the trickle down, or refuse it, as you like.

@enneathusiast Is there anything in particular that gave you that impression beyond hand-me-down notes (or did you mean notes in newer editions of their books that I'm not aware of)? I've gotten the same idea, but don't like to call it out as such because it seems very speculative. I just see that Hudson's apparent definitions have notable differences from the ones he and Riso published together.

(When it comes to SX, to quote the Module 4 summary of that video series, getting people to "distinguish this vital energy from heart-based qualities such as intimacy and affection" is a point he seems keen on pushing, maybe because it's one of his areas of departure from other popular instinct interpretations. And Social helping to "create and maintain connections with *intimates*, friends, and colleagues," to quote the series summary, is quite contrary to an idea of SO as intimacy-avoiding. Basically he seems to have reshuffled qualities so as to attribute more bonding, even in intimate relationships, to SO vs SX, among a few other things.)


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

I watched "Integrating Your Instincts Through the Enneagram with Russ Hudson" and thought it was pretty interesting - unfortunately I got too absorbed in something else to really pay attention at the end, but what I see quoted here seems in line with what he was talking about. If it seems to contradict things he's stated before, it's because his ideas have evolved over time, as ideas have a tendency to do.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Remnants said:


> I watched "Integrating Your Instincts Through the Enneagram with Russ Hudson" and thought it was pretty interesting - unfortunately I got too absorbed in something else to really pay attention at the end, but what I see quoted here seems in line with what he was talking about. If it seems to contradict things he's stated before, it's because his ideas have evolved over time, as ideas have a tendency to do.


You mean this one? Or the whole series?






YouTube says I've seen it but I might rewatch when I get home, too.


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

@baitedcrow
Ah yeah. I watched the whole series, or at least most of it.


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

baitedcrow said:


> Yes, you would: the perspectives he is evidently sharing in workshops and on panels... seem to in some ways contradict or emphasize different points than your own preferred definitions.


Hudson is the president of The Enneagram Institute. That website currently states "Sexual types seek intimacy". This isn't me cherry picking but rather correcting your mistake. Notice how after you posted that questionable information, someone commented on how confused they felt after reading it.



> To more open people...


Am I meant to feel badly that I'm not open to the spread of false information? This wasn't the usual ignore-worthy sx shit talk you get up to with "sx = peacocking + limerence" or similar, this was core features of sx you decided to try to erode this time while claiming "Hudson says" when, in fact, Hudson does not say that. Please don't claim he does without evidence (while there is current evidence to the contrary available). 



> There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that there's been a trajectory shift in the thrust of his ideas over time.


Then write that disclaimer. Take responsibility for what you write. Otherwise it looks like it's you who has the agenda and is pushing unbacked ideas for personal reasons.

If you're just here to talk random ideas in a brainstorming type way (and part of that just happens to be talking down sx constantly), just mention you aren't to be taken seriously (for typing purposes). You've seen now that it confuses people/makes an already muddied topic even muddier. But maybe that's what you want...

Hudson moving away from 'one-on-one' or similar language doesn't necessarily mean he's moved away from those ideas btw. It may mean he's simply refining his language (since he knows there is a _massive_ mistyping problem -- he believes 50% of SX are mistypes). It seems obvious from his current descriptions (below) that he is going above and beyond to try to clear up the mistyping. 

Terms like 'one-on-one', 'intimate', 'bonding' and even 'connection' can be very confusing for typing purposes (of course all types 'bond' etc). I see he's now using "fusion" with SX to try to really bring the 2=1 point home (while acknowledging both other types, SP & SO, are capable of having intimate relationships -- duh). But note the specific word "intimacy" he still reserves for SX. This is consistent over time and across different enneagram experts. 


* *






> *Self Preservation Instinct*
> 
> People who have this as their dominant instinct are preoccupied with the safety, comfort, health, energy, and well-being of the physical body. In a word, they are concerned with having enough resources to meet life’s demands. Identification with the body is a fundamental focus for all humans, and we need our body to function well in order to be alive and active in the world. Most people in contemporary cultures have not faced life or death “survival” in the strictest sense; thus, Self-Preservation types tend to be concerned with food, money, housing, medical matters, and physical comfort. Moreover, those primarily focused on self-preservation, by extension, are usually interested in maintaining these resources for others as well. Their focus of attention naturally goes towards things related to these areas such as clothes, temperature, shopping, decorating, and the like, particularly if they are not satisfied in these areas or have a feeling of deficiency due to their childhoods. Self-Pres types tend to be more grounded, practical, serious, and introverted than the other two instinctual types. They might have active social lives and a satisfying intimate relationship, but if they feel that their self-preservation needs are not being met, still tend not to be happy or at ease. In their primary relationships, these people are “nesters”—they seek domestic tranquility and security with a stable, reliable partner.





> *Sexual Instinct*
> 
> Many people originally identify themselves as this type because they have learned that the Sexual types are interested in “one-on-one relationships.” But all three instinctual types are interested in one-on-one relationships for different reasons, so this does not distinguish them. The key element in Sexual types is an intense drive for stimulation and a constant awareness of the “chemistry” between themselves and others. Sexual types are immediately aware of the attraction, or lack thereof, between themselves and other people. Further, while the basis of this instinct is related to sexuality, it is not necessarily about people engaging in the sexual act. There are many people that we are excited to be around for reasons of personal chemistry that we have no intention of “getting involved with.” Nonetheless, we might be aware that we feel stimulated in certain people’s company and less so in others. The sexual type is constantly moving toward that sense of intense stimulation and juicy energy in their relationships and in their activities. They are the most “energized” of the three instinctual types, and tend to be more aggressive, competitive, charged, and emotionally intense than the Self-Pres or Social types. Sexual types need to have intense energetic charge in their primary relationships or else they remain unsatisfied. They enjoy being intensely involved—even merged—with others, and can become disenchanted with partners who are unable to meet their need for intense energetic union. Losing yourself in a “fusion” of being is the ideal here, and Sexual types are always looking for this state with others and with stimulating objects in their world.





> *Social Instinct*
> 
> Just as many people tend to misidentify themselves as Sexual types because they want one-on-one relationships, many people fail to recognize themselves as Social types because they get the (false) idea that this means always being involved in groups, meetings, and parties. If Self-Preservation types are interested in adjusting the environment to make themselves more secure and comfortable, Social types adapt themselves to serve the needs of the social situation they find themselves in. Thus, Social types are highly aware of other people, whether they are in intimate situations or in groups. They are also aware of how their actions and attitudes are affecting those around them. Moreover, *Sexual types seek intimacy*, Social types seek personal connection: they want to stay in long-term contact with people and to be involved in their world. Social types are the most concerned with doing things that will have some impact on their community, or even broader domains. They tend to be warmer, more open, engaging, and socially responsible than the other two types. In their primary relationships, they seek partners with whom they can share social activities, wanting their intimates to get involved in projects and events with them. Paradoxically, they actually tend to avoid long periods of exclusive intimacy and quiet solitude, seeing both as potentially limiting. Social types lose their sense of identity and meaning when they are not involved with others in activities that transcend their individual interests.





https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-works

I hope this current information, direct from the source, is helpful to some.


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## enneathusiast (Dec 15, 2012)

baitedcrow said:


> Is there anything in particular that gave you that impression beyond hand-me-down notes (or did you mean notes in newer editions of their books that I'm not aware of)? I've gotten the same idea, but don't like to call it out as such because it seems very speculative. I just see that Hudson's apparent definitions have notable differences from the ones he and Riso published together.


I went to a Riso/Hudson training in the early 1990's. It was pretty much all Riso's material and Hudson just seemed along for the ride. All the Riso/Hudson books had that same feel of coming primarily from Riso. Riso became seriously ill many years later after coming back from China I believe. It was around this time that Riso seemed to fade more into the background and Hudson appeared to be running more of the show over at the Enneagram Institute. At that time I noticed Hudson's take on the Enneagram began to evolve as distinct from Riso's. I don't know what Hudson contributed to the Riso/Hudson books. I just find the books strongly reflect Riso's take and not necessarily that of Hudson's.


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

Dare said:


> I hope this current information, direct from the source, is helpful to some.


No, direct from a source. I don't know what Hudson's priorities are WRT updating the materials on EI.com or picking what gets put there. Because it used to be associated with Riso as well and he is not too long deceased relatively speaking, their joint work may not yet be beyond consideration when it comes to deciding what to put on the EI site, for all I know. (2012 -2019 really isn't long, taking into account the age and continued popularity of Riso's work.)

But that is not the One Voice Of Hudson. He does a prolific amount of independent teaching/lecturing through workshops, etc. You can't really "correct" assertions about what he's saying _in workshops and trainings_ with info from EI.com. 

(ETA: The next day and I have to remark on still being baffled/delighted with this. "Corrections" that bear such flimsy relation to what's actually been said/done as to nearly be non sequiturs are hip enough to make a pattern out of I guess. )

Per summaries of those workshops, retreats, training sessions and panels, provided by _their own advertisements_ and by attendees*, several of which I've linked at various points, he consistently emphasizes that SX =/= "intimacy" as such or 1-to-1, that intimate relationships engage or require all of the instincts in different ways, especially long-term relationships. Advert for Hudson's training vids:



> You’ll distinguish this vital energy (SX) from heart-based qualities such as intimacy and affection


The notes corroborate this perspective (of Hudson's). *They were also clearly flagged as found notes in my first sentence in the post,* with all that that _should_ imply to thinking people about the context of any proceeding discussion.

He does use the word "fusion" in a way that seems somewhat comparable if more specific because it's also about energy and attention, but now places fusion as one of three zones within SX overall (see training vid info, notes). And he's teaching (like here, with his voice) that a person with a dominant instinct often isn't strong in all three zones. That implies that there may be some SX doms that aren't as into "fusion." 

Some of his SX zones, or in the pre-zone era some of the adjectives he uses to describe SX, mention/include stuff that you seem to dislike SX being associated with, like competition or display. This is not unbacked or "misinformation": all anyone has to do is click links and read. The worst you could say is that people's notes will tend to reflect what stands out most to them about his teaching and may contain isolated misunderstandings of what he said: we all filter/misunderstand/mishear occasionally. But... that's why I pointed out they were workshop _notes._ 

Anyway they are often in agreement with each other on stand out points (the rejection of the 1-to-1 formulation of SX is a stand out point). 1 person misunderstanding things in a certain way is possible but 4 doing it independently is um... less so.

I also didn't personally say that SX doesn't seek intimacy - if anything I'd say the problem is that nearly everyone does in some way, thus making it less than stellar for differentiation - but really, I don't think "SX" is an objective _thing_ vs. a category the boundaries of which could be set in multiple ways, so arguing about this as though the answer is definitively one or the other is fundamentally stupid to me. I make determinations about which to use when I use them based on other factors, like comprehensibility or ease of differentiation.

AFAIK the user who posted about being "confused" by the notes also has a fairly long-standing position of skepticism toward the instincts. I also suspect she's more well/deeply read on these points than you are (and probably more than I am), and that that's part of where the skepticism came from. I really cannot take credit, though since confusion about confused/muddled concepts is appropriate I wouldn't mind doing so.

It's not really up to you to curate what info/avenues of discourse people do or don't have access to here and it's a disservice to discussion that you're so invested in trying. 

You pretty consistently seem to cite the most 101 sources, underlining your fave bits to make them artificially stand out (underlining stuff and saying it with conviction doesn't actually make it more true JSYK), in a bid for certainty that _doesn't actually exist _within the "Enneagram scholarship" community overall. Nor does it exist in terms of empirical support for one interpretation over another. You need to listen/read/watch more stuff, even if it's not as easily accessible, before giving lectures. This is a case of false clarity being enabled by shallow research. "Don't know what you don't know."

And really, you need to think on this: Someone saying something 1) that is not in agreement with the definition you like of the instinct you identify with, and 2) that you wouldn't want to be associated with or don't identify with, is not slagging off on the _instinct_, let alone on _you_. You take everything that gets said about SX extremely personally. Why?

I'm not even sure that what is on EI.com about SX that you've quoted grossly disagrees with what I've quoted, especially from - for instance - the video training summaries. You're just magnifying the bits that you like best (ie the ones having to do with "intimacy") from the descriptions you cited. Overall though...



> [...]all three instinctual types are interested in one-on-one relationships for different reasons, so this does not distinguish them. *The key element in Sexual types is an intense drive for stimulation and a constant awareness of the “chemistry” between themselves and others.*


Maybe if he didn't use "intimacy" in the same sentence as "key element" there was a reason for it. When he did use "intimacy" WRT SX it wasn't even in the actual SX definition and it wasn't to identify the "key element" of the instinct. It was used to split a hair in the SO definition. That is very little to go on compared to all the rest if you're trying to claim he is comfortable closely associating SX with "intimacy."

Certainly the above is in keeping with my basic understanding of how he sees SX now, based on what I've seen/read. The emphasis is on chemistry and activation (or stimulation), which may or may not include real intimacy, and is not the only stuff that can generate intimacy. 

If you choose to read people's workshop notes, you may - like I did - get the distinct impression that the reason he thinks he sees people mistyping as SX is _precisely_ because SX is being identified with _forms_ of intimacy (like nesting and long-term relational stability, or affection and bonding) that he seems to think are better classified as SP or SO.


* I would never ask people to take notes written by people I don't really know as _perfect_ resources, obviously - none of them are my notes, I just copied them over because the politics of linking between typology forums used to be sticky sometimes. Again, that's why I introduced them as workshop notes I'd found lol.

However if you cross-reference the sets I've found and then compare to other available takes like the podcast from way back or this guy's training notes, you will find certain common agreements that suggest credibility. A couple of apparent contradictions too, which is even more interesting. (ETA: Most of them exist between the 2008 set of notes and the 2012 sets - the 2008 set also doesn't include information on "zones" the way the training vids and 2012 sets do. Makes it seem like the contradictions could represent evolving ideas themselves, but... it's hard to tell.)

But maybe various people who do Enneagram podcasts and/or used to post on EIDB/go to Enneagram workshops several years ago and/or write the material for Hudson's training adverts made a plan to start manufacturing bad takes about what Russ Hudson says, ones that under-emphasize SX intimacy relative to other associated traits, just to mess with one touchy SX-identified person on this forum in the future? That's about where I'm at here with this one.  

(I am going back to not reading/responding to your posts now, heads up. I think anyone that wants to grasp my opinions on the apparent differences between contemporary Hudson-only vs. Riso-Hudson and on why it may be worthwhile or interesting to post/read notes people take during his _workshops_ and similar - since new ideas like "zones" _have_ been introduced there - probably has enough to go off of without me entertaining a silly internet argument. It's only a matter of time before the "I've determined you're the type I need you to be to be able to dismiss the content of your arguments and criticisms instead of actually engage with them, here are the contrived reasons, how convenient for me" stuff starts.)


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## Dare (Nov 8, 2016)

baitedcrow said:


> ...it used to be associated with Riso as well and he is not too long deceased relatively speaking


He's been dead 7 years actually.



> The worst you could say is that people's notes will tend to reflect what stands out most to them about his teaching and may contain isolated misunderstandings of what he said


Exactly. Or they made a note themselves but later forgot it was them who made that point etc. That's all precisely my concern.



> I also didn't personally say that SX doesn't seek intimacy


Right, you just posted it but take no responsibility for the content: "it wasn't me".



> I also suspect she's more well/deeply read on these points than you are


How could you know what I've read? You have no idea what you're talking about.



> You pretty consistently seem to cite the most 101 sources, underlining your fave bits to make them artificially stand out, in a bid for certainty that _doesn't actually exist _within the "Enneagram scholarship" community overall.


I don't struggle with certitude/beliefs/anxiety and am very comfortable with unknowns -- perhaps you're projecting.



> You need to listen/read/watch more stuff, even if it's not as easily accessible, before giving lectures. This is a case of false clarity being enabled by shallow research. "Don't know what you don't know."


It was a correction not a lecture. What you're doing here is more the lecture (hello reactive superego). 

It appears what's really needed is for you to learn how to not make assumptions. But it's interesting you associate quantity with quality, you have this egalitarian view of ideas too -- that explains a lot.



> And really, you need to think on this: Someone saying something 1) that is not in agreement with the definition you like of the instinct you identify with, and 2) that you wouldn't want to be associated with or don't identify with, is not slagging off on the _instinct_, let alone on _you_.


It's the best-practice definition widely accepted, not the definition I like. It's curious that you can't see my non attachment.

The thing you appear to not understand is that I'm simply correcting an error. Same as I did when you wrote something that suggested 5's are the smart ones of the enneagram. That isn't a matter of opinion, it was simply wrong. Saying (or posting) sx isn't associated with intimacy is along the same lines. 



> You take everything that gets said about SX extremely personally. Why?


This is coming from a person who just told me I'm not open and I'm speaking about something I haven't read sufficiently about (clearly it's you who takes it to a personal level). To me it's just information, it needs to get graded (true/false/valuable/high rating etc), it's not personal. 

And btw I've read everything out there on the instincts. Most is speculation which is fine for amusement but after reading everything I came to the same conclusions the 'experts' have (it gets very wishy washy very quickly beyond that). 

People having their personal pet theory with nothing to back it up and presenting it as more than that violates my values including truth and information clarity. No surprise given I'm a 5 who seeks understanding.

Enneagram already isn't taken too seriously which is a shame bc it's a helpful tool for people (if they can type correctly). It's helped me immensely & I sincerely appreciate it. Naturally, while I'm still around, I don't want people muddying the waters more than what they already are, potentially spoiling it for others. 

I feel confident to say something on egregious sx comments bc I really know the type. I've been studying enneagram for two years now, with the instincts as my main focus. If I appear to be dialing it in with what you call 101 resources, I have my reasons. 



> I'm not even sure that what is on EI.com about SX that you've quoted grossly disagrees with what I've quoted


You think I just went to the effort of pointing out Hudson associates SX with intimacy for no reason? Read what you posted again. 



> The emphasis is on chemistry and activation, which may or may not include intimacy, and is not the only thing that can generate intimacy.


He said, very plainly, "Sexual types seek intimacy". You come across as playing games with this sort of stuff btw.



> A couple of apparent contradictions too, which is even more interesting.


I'm glad you can admit there were contradictions between the notes. This is exactly why they need to be taken as 3rd party information only (not taken too seriously/have a disclaimer). 

What I find interesting is that you acknowledge the information is questionable in this regard here --exactly my concern-- and yet there is no 'yeah, that's true' acknowledgment out of you, instead you prefer to argue.


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## Super Luigi (Dec 1, 2015)

> The Instinctual Stackings of Enneatype Four
> Social/Sexual
> A positive connection to others helps them stay focused.


Source

True :toast:


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## d e c a d e n t (Apr 21, 2013)

baitedcrow said:


> (I am going back to not reading/responding to your posts now, heads up. I think anyone that wants to grasp my opinions on the apparent differences between contemporary Hudson-only vs. Riso-Hudson and on why it may be worthwhile or interesting to post/read notes people take during his _workshops_ and similar - since new ideas like "zones" _have_ been introduced there - probably has enough to go off of without me entertaining a silly internet argument. It's only a matter of time before the "I've determined you're the type I need you to be to be able to dismiss the content of your arguments and criticisms instead of actually engage with them, here are the contrived reasons, how convenient for me" stuff starts.)


It can be entertaining though


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## baitedcrow (Dec 22, 2015)

@Remnants










* *




Unfortunately, I think hullabaloo like this can serve to intimidate people out of actually joining the discussion sometimes, lest they get caught in the crossfire. I posted the notes for potential disussion, not to trigger someone into another episode of never ending misreading/word twisting/goal post moving, so..... I don't want to work at cross purposes with myself too hard. Too busy doing the same in other areas of life anyway. :wink:


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## mistakenforstranger (Nov 11, 2012)

What I'm curious about atm, if anyone has any thoughts, is how can you tell a distortion of the dominant instinct from the blindspot? Even in the notes posted on the previous page, it's described the same way. With sp, for instance:



> 2) Practical know-how - How to attend to practical affairs of living, liking the basics of life, maintenance, repair, adaptability to circumstance, ability to work, to put one's affairs in order, to handle the necessities of our world. *Distortion* is workaholism or people who can't get to work (don't necessarily mean job)*, can't take care of themselves.*





> *SP Blindspot *- Person feels childish, unable to rest, to land, *can't take care of themselves*, always needing outside support, procrastinating SP matters.


So potentially a "distorted" sp-dom could look/act like a sp-blindspot? Or, if you can't get to work (distortion), then you need outside support (blindspot), so you'll function like a sp-last, yet are really an sp-dom. How do you tell the difference? Which I assume could be true for the other instincts in various ways, as well. 

I skimmed the other argument going on, but I wonder if the reason Russ Hudson is taking this approach to instincts now is because he originally typed himself for years as sx-5, but now I think (correctly) types as so-5, so he's saying stuff like this... 



> Russ said about 50% of people who think they're sexual aren't SX in most cases, but are misunderstanding the two instincts, which is often not their fault but the fault of poor information.





Octavarium said:


> TBH though it’s reading stuff like this that makes me think the instincts might just be bullshit. If each instinct has different sub-areas, and strength in any one sub-area doesn’t correlate with strength in other sub-areas of the same instinct, then in what sense can anybody meaningfully be said to be dominant in one instinct or another?


I don't think they're bs, as I can see them operating in people, but it would be nice if all the Enneagram authors could get their story straight on what they are. I tend to think they make it way more complicated/important to the theory than it needs to be. It kind of feels like Russ is just reinventing the wheel. I haven't watched the lectures, though.



Octavarium said:


> Some of the stuff in those writeups was surprising to me, e.g. SO being more playful and SO-lasts being more focused on exchange. I've only ever seen SX described as playful. I always thought it would be the SO-doms who would be most focused on exchange, since the sense of how all the gears fit together would engender a sense of how you might be useful to others and how others might be useful to you.


I think Socials can definitely be playful, especially so/sx. So-lasts actually seem the least "playful" to me. 

As far as sexual instinct = intimacy, Katherine Fauvre is another author who has emphasized this, and I don't think it's wrong to do so: https://www.katherinefauvre.com/sexual



> The "sexual" Instinctual Subtypes are driven by the ongoing search for intimacy and one-to-one relationships. The focus of attention is on "the beloved" and "our intimate world." The primary desire is for a mate, which is manifested by an imbalanced perceived need for wholeness, affinity, and closeness in a continual search for "the other half."
> 
> 
> The concerns of the sexual Instinctual Subtypes involve issues of intimacy - for example, "to be intimate or not to be intimate" or "how to be intimate." The survival strategy is abstinence or promiscuity. The common theme statements reflect an inclination to define oneself in terms of the mate and the relationship, such as "what am I?", with this Instinctual Subtype being defined by "how comfortably and successfully I experience my relationship" - i.e., issues dealing with "how am I perceived by my intimate partner?"


Oh, and I see it's described as playful here too. I don't think that's _always_ the case. Katherine Fauvre herself isn't all that playful.:tongue:



> The energy projected is described as "high energy" and is often experienced as "intense" and laser-like, appearing to be intently focused, *and is usually playful and light*, yet penetrating in nature. There is a sense of energy and vibration, the search for the mate, the need to display their strength and beauty, like the peacock showing its feathers or, in some manner, acting out the mating ritual or dance.


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