attachment
love » fear
The Artist seeks to discover inner truths and share them with the world. The Artist is creative and holds a detailed model of the people closest to them.
Characterized by love and fear, the Artist has an intense connection to the world which they want to share with others.
Some of the other archetypes offer a rough introduction to the realities of the world, but the Artist offers the gentlest.
The Artist is typically smart, like the Observer, but in an intuitive way, not an analytical way. These two archetypes may find themselves at odds over differing definitions of intelligence.
Emotions are arguments, each arguing for survival in one of three arenas:
SELF
The self argument argues for the extended self: You, your family, close friends and valued possessions.
WORLD
The world argument argues for survival in the physical environment, making the feeler confront danger.
SOCIETY
The society argument navigates the complexities of human society, arguing for survival in the tribe.
Eristic order describes the usual order of an archetype's emotional arguments. There's always a self, world and society argument, but the order and expression differs between archetypes.
Your eristic order goes like this:
SELF
WORLD
The 'default' emotional order, the 1-2-3 order of self-world-society is the most energy-efficient, with a balanced intuitive and rational approach.
Benefits: A strong sense of self
Drawbacks: A weak sense of time
Emotions are dualities, having one of two forms that can be felt at a time:
SELF
LOVE/DISGUST
Love argues to add to or nurture the extended self, while disgust argues to remove from the self.
WORLD
FEAR/ANGER
Fear argues to model and understand the world, while anger argues to modify or destroy the world.
SOCIETY
GUILT/PRIDE
Guilt argues to do work for society, while pride argues to be a high-quality member of society.
Your first argument is the argument of the self, expressing in the love form.
Love is the most common first argument, serving in the role for four archetypes.
First-slot love archetypes are inherent cooperators who make for good allies, co-workers and community members.
Benefits: Passionate, warm, caring
Drawbacks: Possessive, self-absorbed
Your second argument is the world argument, expressing as fear.
The rational, analytical inner voice offered by fear makes for a grounded archetype who acts with careful observation.
Fear makes for a powerful check on love which may seek to look past reality in favor of the extended self.
Benefits: Attentive, thorough
Drawbacks: Paranoid, disbelieving
Emotions are felt in beats, like heartbeats, all three arguments made each beat.
Beats span from one base emotion to another along the LFGDAP scale.
Generally: Farther up and farther to the right are more energy-intensive.
Each beat has a point-of-view shaped by its base emotions.
The Artist is characterized by attachment, which is feeling love and fear in the same eristic beat. It doesn't necessarily make this archetype an overly attached person, but it does mean they tend to be attentive and observant. They're careful of the connections they make because those connections tend to be intense.
Attachment is love and fear, the internalizing self and world arguments.
Attachment leaves lots of room for other emotions.
It's unique among the fear-containing emotions because it lands on fear instead of starting there. As a result, attachment has access to fear but may not show fear's trademark rationality when choosing what to be attached to. In other words, the Artist may habitually love the wrong people.
Attachment as a driver of work will almost always produce good results. Unfortunately it may not produce useful results, or results that society wants. The Artist that aligns with society is rare.
Emotions have energy costs:
In a beat, the lower energy emotion is felt first.
The Artist makes a good pairing with the Fixer. A shared mission can bring these two archetypes even closer together.
The Artist may also get along with the fear-dominant archetypes, which are good at zeal.
Relationships built around exhilaration, the fleeting combination of guilt and pride, can be tempting to the artist, but may be destructive, distracting the Artist from bringing his or her vision to society.
Because attachment is so important in relationships, the Artist generally has an easier time connecting than the other archetypes.
The Artist will typically have trouble finding his or her voice in a group. Of the three archetypes with a world-third argument (the others being the Hero and the Lancer), the Artist is the only one without an externalizing argument. The Artist may have a harder time making a slash without disgust or anger on-hand.
The Artist may have a habit of attracting 'big' personalities that do use a lot of disgust and anger. These types will generally view the Artist as someone who will bend to their will. The Artist is however ultimately loyal to the self. An Artist archetype with a guarded extended self will do great in any group.
Groups, cultures and societies need to satisfy all six base emotions for their members.
They'll typically do this in one of three patterns:
Attachment/envy/zeal cultures are typically family- or individualism-oriented and hardworking.
Devotion/contempt cultures have strict rules, devoted followers and a disdain for outsiders.
Satisfaction works for smaller groups which focus on avoiding fear, guilt, disgust and anger.
All cultures are characterized by one of these three patterns.
The Artist is great at fitting in within the attachment/envy/zeal pattern, since they are characterized by attachment. The Artist pairs well with the Fixer and with archetypes prone to zeal, such as the Observer.
The Artist and the Fixer both fit in well to the attachment/envy/zeal pattern.
The two stable societal patterns are attachment/envy/zeal and devotion/contempt. Cultures are generally defined by one of these two patterns.
In an attachment/envy/zeal pattern, the Artist will fit right in. They might have problems in a devotion/contempt culture:
Devotion/contempt cultures have simpler-but-stricter rules, which may alienate the Artist.
The core of the Artist's issue in such a culture lies in the difference between attachment and devotion: guilt. Because of this shortfall, the Artist may be more prone to feeling shame, or compounded feelings of guilt.
The Artist typically goes with attachment over devotion, leaving an unmet guilt need.
The Artist relies on his or her individual perspective, which may clash with the collectivist notions of a devotion/contempt culture.
When in a devotion/contempt culture, the Artist should take care to regularly experience emotions with guilt, particularly envy, remorse and exhilaration.
Envy, remorse and exhilaration supplement the Artist's love and fear well.
Artists who don't experience guilt-containing emotions will be racked with shame or envy, depending on the culture they're in.
Beats (combinations of love, fear, guilt, disgust, anger, pride) have opposites:
Since the coping emotion has the same arguments (self/world/society), but in opposite form, it effectively "turns off" the characteristic emotion, giving you a way out of overwhelming feelings.
The coping emotion serves as a sort of shadow archetype, characterizing you in times of extreme emotion.
The attachment and hatred pattern leaves 'holes' which may be filled by shame and mania.
The Artist copes with hatred, the all-externalizing emotion of the self and world, of disgust and anger, love and fear's eristic opposites. This form of coping might involve the following:
Revenge: The combination of disgust (deeming something as not-self) and anger (a need to act on the world) can lead the Artist to revenge.
Obsessive hatred: Previous objects of attachment may become objects of obsessive hatred.
Demonizing: Seeking to satisfy disgust and anger, the Artist may demonize others, even when they aren't involved with the Artist.
The Artist may seek out emotions with disgust, or ruminate on memories that trigger hatred, in order to cope. This combination provides immediate relief from overwhelming attachment.
Emotions can become addictive, like a drug that's made in your head. The addictions usually involve the emotions that make up your archetype's characteristic emotion:
Addiction to love, or the emotions here, looks like codependency.
Addiction to fear looks like depression and anxiety, with duress as depression.
When threatened or in danger, the Artist will have a tendency to experience the fawn response, which is like a lower-level form of attachment, the combination of love and fear.
Fawning is of course appropriate when peacekeeping is a valid option. But it may get in the way of the other four Fs:
Emotions model and modify their spheres of influence—the extended self, the physical world or the feeler's tribe/society.
| Self | World | Society | |
| Model | Love | Fear | Guilt |
| Modify | Disgust | Anger | Pride |
It can be useful to think of the three dualities as pairs of opposite emotions.
They're also called the internalizing and externalizing forms of an emotion.
Love & Disgust
model/modify
Your extended self
Fear & Anger
model/modify
Your physical world
Guilt & Pride
model/modify
Your tribe/society
Virtues help you avoid the negative effects of an emotion by consciously producing the results of its opposite emotion. It's like coping but conscious and intentional. Here are your archetype's virtues:
Keeping secrets and revealing information only at the correct time. Using love to function as disgust.
Withstanding or overcoming fear. Acting as anger (the 'do something' emotion) would when feeling fear.
Read all the other archetype descriptions here:
The people most similar to you will be your own archetype:
These archetypes share your eristic order:
These archetypes have the same first argument:
Archetypes with the same missing/third argument:
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