Posted by Tal on March 01, 1999 at 15:02:47:
In Reply to: 5w8 posted by DeadRinga on February 24, 1999 at 19:34:41:
> heres a thought, someone mentioned earlier on this board that a 5's connection to 8 wasn't actually normal, but was a self defense mechanism. could we then say that it's actually a "counter phobic" 5 in teh same way 6's have a counter phobic side.
Seems to me you could... You could even go one step further and say that 5's and 8's are the reverse of each other. Both of these types' problem stems from intrusion of the outside world. 5's perceive the environment as hostile and withdraw from it until they feel they are competent enough to go out and operate sufficiently well. Conversely, 8's are usually quite comfortable within their given environment, and that comfort allows them to feel safe asserting themselves when something threatens to *change* that environment. Both types can be very similar in terms of how they view things. When 5's feel comfortable (for instance, at home), they'll react as 8's do most of the time (because 8's usually feel comfortable asserting themselves regardless of environment). i.e. because they feel safe/competent at home, their next worry becomes the 8ish desire to make sure the security of that comfort and autonomy isn't threatened. The same is true of 8's who start to act 5ish when unsure of themselves--they feel unsafe being dominant and retreat to study the threat so they can better understand it (and later assert themselves once more).
The relation is quite similar to the phobic 6/counterphobic 6 one... phobic 6's fear security will be *taken away* while counterphobic 6's are usually completely unfamiliar with security and so view it with mixed feelings--they seek it but are simultaneously very skeptical of their ability to find it.
I think even 7's experience this dichotomy to a certain degree--there is a difference between phobic 7's who have never had restrictions placed on them and thus seek to maintain freedom to experience, and counterphobic 7's who feel deprived and are out to experience everything as a way to counteract that feeling of deprivation.
I find the relationships between security-seeking types (5,6,7,8) much more difficult to comprehend than those of the love-seeking types (1,2,3,4), so personally I can't really say whether 5 and 8 really are opposite polarities of the same type in the same way that phobic/counterphobic 6's and 7's are. Part of the reason I think there *is* a difference in the 5/8 relationship is because in a normal situation it's almost impossible to tell whether a 6 or 7 is phobic or counter-phobic, but usually very easy to tell 5's apart from 8's.
Ultimately I think that phobic and counterphobic 6's both have the same aim in mind (to be secure), it's their method and outlook that changes. To a certain degree, this is true of 5's and 8's too (5's feel the world has already rendered them incompetent while 8's are concerned that the world might do so in the future). But on the other hand you could also point to the very different outward natures of 5's and 8's as an indicator that their differences are much more significant than just phobia/counterphobia.
Personally I don't know which is true :)