Type Eight

Eights are power-oriented. In the eight’s might makes right view of the world, power is the one course open for them. “Power is mine to take and use.” Because the eight takes full ownership over power, eights carve through “reality” with direct force, as opposed to believing that they need to adapt themselves to, or seduce, others in order to exercise power. Since the eight is instinctively engaged in wielding the power they have, taking the power that others have and holding onto the power that others want to take from them, this is a naturally assertive and dominant character, one who is not vulnerable to intimidation and doesn’t back down. They are the least squeamish type and have the stomach for anything.

Eights are independent. Since the eight is power-oriented, they rely on themselves to make things happen in life. They are pro-active and like feeling masterful. This is not masterful in the intellectual or legacy-building sense but a visceral, primal mastery. At a deeper level, feeling masterful wards off internal vulnerability and means that no one can overrule, weaken or humble the eight. They avoid weakness, passivity and feelings of submission in favor of being strong and unbroken. Having sloughed off so many human needs, the eight is heavily focused on the prosecution of their own ends. They are tough enough that they don’t even have a need to seek out external validation for their toughness.

Eights are animalistic. The eight’s animalistic drive fuels the eight with energy, edge, guts, action, intimidation, fearlessness, vitality, hunger and lust.  In order to keep the aggressive mind free from any principle or legal/ethical constraint, the eight’s psyche employs the psychological mechanism known as denial. Denial keeps the eight out of touch with vulnerability and the experience of being human. Weakness is like a pit of despair that eights are wired to avoid falling into. They don’t have to make a conscious effort at not falling into it. Others either don’t exist or momentarily exist as a distraction to either be defeated or tossed aside. Eights are outsiders because they pre-emptively reject society and its institutions in favor of taking every act of aggression, every confrontation, every mission to its furthest extreme. Eights relish playing right at the edge. The eight’s drive to do and finish things their way on their terms eventually consumes all else. If they don’t recognize the limits of their self-interest, eights can cross the line where society ends and outlaw status begins. 

Eights are willful. Eights possess anger in its purest form. This is to say, an anger that hasn’t been cut, spiked, laced or tinged with softness, vulnerability, trauma, hurt, grievance, narcissistic slights but remains a raw engine of self-assertion, an expression of raw will. This anger goes hand in hand with the eight’s feeling of masterfulness. It is an anger that refuses to yield but also to overcome, crush, move or reshape anything that resists or seeks to obstruct. This anger, stripped of emotion, produces an individual who at their baseline is cold, tactical, authoritative, self-confident and detached, as in detached from human concerns such as needing to be understood or vindicated. The eight has repressed their capacity for empathy, affection or remorse. They view emotional expression as a weakness and stand unmoved to human suffering. They see sentimentality as a liability and introspection as a flaw. They are not interested in dwelling on what they have lost or what they hope for. This anger stripped of emotion is a tool of control and dominance enabling the eight to manipulate and move against others without guilt, stripping the eight down to instinct and willpower and pitting them squarely into the present moment where they are consumed with control and action.

Eights are aggressive. The eight rarely refuses a job and are not deterred by the prospect of a difficult outcome even if a difficult outcome means that others will be deprived of an essential need. Since eights are fundamentally independent and like feeling masterful, being assertive is not a good to an eight unless it is for their own benefit. Therefore, the assertiveness of type eight runs on an aggressive mind. Distinct from just outwardly aggressive behavior, the eight’s aggressive mind is the key instrumentality in their exercise of power. The eight’s mind for war mechanizes ruthlessness, anticipates battle as a given, views relationships through the lens of leverage and position, pushes things towards the moment of truth rather than look for compromise, sacrifices short-term gratification for long-term gain, and takes pleasure kinesthetically in states of tension, not peace. Given that the eight is thus built best to function and compete confidently in pressure, it can be said that the eight’s entire being is oriented towards conquest. Eights are determined to base all their power moves on what benefits them. Ultimately, this dominance, the eight’s confrontation with the world, the againstness, is an internal one, in the sense that denial prevents any vulnerability from breaking through, prevents guilt from interrupting function, and prevents memory from causing pause. Over time, this internal process leaves eights with inner rot, inner decay. They deaden.

Eights are cunning. Eights have an animalistic, pre-rational intelligence about power. They have a sometimes eerie socio-relational sense of where to find power, how to use power, and when to take power – not through reason but through instinctive bodily attunement. Similarly, eights know how to maintain the psychological high-ground and are not above creating situations that undermine others’ authority. Since they are not constrained by truth or principle, the eight can cultivate an impression of good intentions in order to camouflage the excesses of their power orientation. They pull strings so as to masterfully exercise power even over the consequences of exercising power.

Eights are invading. Given that eights like feeling masterful, they build an internal world in which their will is the strongest. This reinforces the idea that others will yield if pushed hard enough, that they the eight can predict, shape and outmaneuver every reaction, and that their own instincts and strength override other people’s judgment. Others are assumed to be weaker-willed, less calculating or merely just pawns in a larger plan. This sense of invincibility creates a blindspot for the eight to subtle power shifts, hidden loyalties, accumulating resentments and counter-agendas but on the other hand the reduction of others into tools, objects, and things fuels the eight’s rapacious drive. Because the eight likes feeling masterful, it’s not enough for the eight to just exercise power, but rather, to exercise power masterfully. Exercising power masterfully is not about refinement but about imposing one’s will so completely that there’s no resistance left.

Eights are dictatorial. Eights have internal finality when it comes to exercising power. This internal dead calm replaces the need for moral reflection. There is no apology, no second-guessing and no need for escapism. Dissent is irrelevant. The eight doesn’t have a need to rationalize, justify or theorize their actions but merely acts upon. When eights seek to control the environment it is not because they fear being harmed or controlled, but because controlling gives them the leverage to wield a greater degree of power. Through power comes control and through control more power is wielded. Now with the control they have, the possibilities for wielding power in an even more masterful way become realistic. The lust to realize these possibilities sets into motion the total objectification of the people they have or believe they have control over.

Eights are sadistic. If eights have reached the point of inflicting violence, they feel nothing emotionally while committing it. They are merely using brutality systematically to maintain power. There is no remorse and no volatility – just domination, using cruelty instrumentally to punish disloyalty, insubordination or risks to their ecosystem. Because the eight has objectified the people they have or believe they have control over, they will use force and other ruthless means to maintain dominance and ensure compliance to their will. Since the eight is out of touch with vulnerability, they do not experience remorse or guilt for their use of force. Having established rule through fear, they are willfully cruel and self-serving in their use of power, acting with total impunity not out of any interpersonal sensitivity or spite but just because they have the might to do so.

8w7s are adventurous and subversive. The impatience of the 7 wing combines with the 8’s power-orientation to make for an individual who is always on the move in the conquest of more territory. They exercise power through more subversive means.

8w9s are consolidating and traditional. The inertness of the 9 wing combines with the 8’s power-orientation to make for an individual who is heavily involved in the consolidation of their own territory. They exercise power through more traditional means.

Distinctions:

Both eights and twos are energetic and assertive. However, the assertiveness of type two does not run on an aggressive mind. Eights are aggressive-minded. The two energy and assertiveness works more in the service of volunteering and sacrificing themselves to others. Also, similarly to eights, twos have an interest in exercising power. However, twos are much less apt to take ownership over power and thus are left to take a more indirect approach to exercising power that involves being warm, seductive and charming.

Some threes can be dominating and therefore easy to confuse with eights. But for threes, dominance is a means of showing off and courting admiration. For 8s, dominance is an end in itself. In conflict, Threes lose ground because they get tied up trying to defend their past accomplishments, before they go back on the attack. An eight will stay more on the offensive without having to step out of the action to self-promote.

Although both types are strongly motivated by deprivation, eights instinctively turn their deprivation into action and drive (i.e. empire building) Fours remain more locked inside the emotional pain of their deprivation kicking and screaming. Its as if the four were more concerned with the emotional intensity that being deprived fuels them with and less concerned with actually obtaining those things that they have been deprived of. Also, although both types can be quick to disagree and argue, Fours don’t enjoy fighting. They don’t like to get into arguments and they don’t quickly forget about the arguments they get into it. It can weigh on their nerves, cause them to go inward and reevaluate their relationship with the person they got into the argument with. For eights, getting into an argument is not a big deal and something easily forgotten.

Both fives and eights are cunning. However, the fives’ cunning utilizes better foresight and tries to exert power more through remote control, from a distance. This difference boils down to the fact that fives are vulnerable to intimidation. Eights are not. What eights lack in foresight, they make up for in guts.

The six’s avoidance of vulnerability is self-protective/defensive (“others want to hurt, leave or control me.”). The eight’s avoidance of vulnerability is predatory/offensive (“others either don’t exist or will momentarily exist as a distraction in order to be defeated”). Whereas with sixes the goal is safety, with eights the goal is supremacy, invulnerability, dominance. The six is holding their guard against others whereas the eight is playing others down. Eights are independent because they have suppressed and buried their emotional needs such that the eight does not even acknowledge it. Sixes are independent because they react against their emotional needs and try to overcorrect. Eights turn to stone inside. Sixes burn themselves out. The six’s rage is explosive – rooted in pain, insecurity, abandonment and trauma. The eight’s rage is emotionally cold. The eight doesn’t explode but enforces. Also, sixes are a study in contradictions, often showing profound remorse and empathy for victims of abuse. 

Sevens focus on options. Eights focus on leverage. Furthermore, dominance is an end in itself for Eights. For sevens, dominance is a means of having the power to subvert and rebel, to undo society, so to speak.

Eights are independent-minded. Nines seek mental reassurances.

Eights and ones have different internal engines. Eights are fundamentally driven by instinctual domination—not ideology. For eights, power is its own justification, not something that needs to be rationalized. In contrast, ones are driven by ideology, grievance and identity-based obsession. The One’s cruelty is theorized— not just acted upon. Furthermore, for eights, emotion is weakness and really only useful to instill fear. In contrast, ones are highly emotional, prone to fits of rage, tears, and in many cases fantasies of betrayal. The One’s Anger is not pure and uncut but expresses and channels vulnerability. Contrast Adolph Hitler who was a 1 with Joe Stalin who was an 8. Hitler’s speeches and rise to power was full of melodrama (1’s disintegration to type 4) and theatricality but also vulnerability, pain and having been emotionally hurt/damaged/let down in the past whereas Stalin’s rise to power was largely built on emotional absence (8’s disintegration to type 5). Many Ones are dictators. Being a dictator or even a mass-murdering dictator does not make the person an 8. Furthermore, eights typically have little to no vision, no desire to create a new and perfect order but just a drive to win, dominate and outlast in the immediate moment. Ones (more so 1w9s) in contrast typically have a world-ordering impulse. And in contrast to the One, the 8’s ruthlessness is not motivated by either hate or ideology but power and survival. It is a tool that ensures their place at the top of the food chain. It’s law of the jungle—rooted in instinct.