The Lancer
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argues for
family survival
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↑
argues for
physical survival
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↑
argues for
tribal survival
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Benefits
Intelligent, creative, observant
Drawbacks
Anxious, fawning, avoidant
Benefits
Well-groomed, constructively critical
Drawbacks
Perfectionistic, irritable, abrasive
Emotions work like a jury of the three arguments, which combine in beats. Eristic beats are fast, like a heartbeat.
The Lancer leads with fear and lands on disgust to form the characteristic beat of duress.
The Lancer uses fear and disgust primarily through the duress beat, making for an independent, resilient, and incisive archetype.
Duress is the eristic one-two of fear and disgust. It's a quick, smart, incisive emotion.
Duress goes from fear to disgust, abbreviating guilt.
Duress's world-self order is rare. Attachment for example is a self-world emotion. That's the normal order. Duress hacks this with the self argument of disgust. The Lancer thinks and feels in this disgust-powered world-self order by default.
Duress in its strongest forms feels like being trapped. Lancers are resilient, tough-minded people, except when it comes to social situations. There, they may have to depend on their blind spot, the argument of society.
These are the beats the Lancer is good at.
These are the beats the Lancer struggles with.
These are the beats the Lancer more rarely uses.
Personal rankings: Your score percentage for each archetype is calculated when you complete the test.
The base emotions are like underlying survival needs.
Hatred fulfills disgust and anger, for example.
Duress fulfills fear, guilt and disgust, leaving love, anger and pride unfulfilled.
Explore how the 9 emotional archetypes position across 15 behavioral dimensions. Switch either axis or select a preset.
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Attachment/envy/zeal cultures are typically family- or individualism-oriented and hard-working.
Devotion/contempt cultures have strict rules, devoted followers and a disdain for outsiders.
Satisfaction culture, usually for smaller groups, focuses on avoiding fear, guilt, disgust and anger.
The Lancer is the most individualistic archetype. The key for this type of feeler is either embracing that or trying to overcome it.
The Lancer is great at tackling big, deep-dive problems that require focused thought. Unfortunately, big problems are best tackled by groups. The Lancer often can't get into a position of power to lead such a group, and even if he or she could, it probably wouldn't work out well.
The most important tool in embracing individualism for the Lancer is self-compassion, or moderating any disgust that's pointed inward by instead acting out of love.
Honor is vital to the Lancer to govern anger. A Lancer's sense of honor will usually see them behaving well in society. When the sense of honor clashes with society's rules, however, the Lancer can run into trouble. You should note the difference in your internal rules and society's external rules.
Humans are inherently social creatures, so the Lancer's individualism comes at a big cost.
The Lancer's most common issue in this regard is working on projects that don't benefit others. The archetype's weak guilt argument can make it difficult to identify society's needs. Unlike the Observer, the Lancer isn't naturally adept at zeal, mostly because of this misplaced society argument.
The Lancer only has any hope of fitting one societal pattern, attachment/envy/zeal:
The Lancer almost fits well into the attachment/envy/zeal cultural pattern.
The biggest gap in the Lancer's emotional toolbox is in feeling envy, the combination of guilt and disgust. The Lancer will tend to substitute duress for this emotion, missing the subtle nuance of the differences in the world and society arguments. Survival is the ultimate emotional truth, but world survival and society survival are very different things. The farther a society is from real-world survival needs, the worse the Lancer will do in it.
The Lancer has almost no hope of fitting into a devotion/contempt culture:
The Lancer will step on lots of toes in a devotion/contempt society.
In short, the satisfaction of disgust through duress makes contempt seem pointless to the Lancer, who would rather practice zeal (anger and pride). Contempt is ultimately an abbreviation of anger, which the Lancer needs to satisfy the full emotional spectrum.
Since the coping emotion shares the same arguments (self/world/society) in inverted polarities, it effectively pauses the characteristic emotion, providing relief from overwhelming intensity.
The coping emotion serves as a shadow archetype, characterizing the feeler in periods of acute emotional stress.
The Lancer copes using frustration, the combination of love and anger.
Frustration can be impulsive and uncontrolled, especially in the Lancer, who won't tend to be great at either base emotion of love or anger.
Coping using frustration may look like:
Rumination: The Lancer can escape duress by feeling anger towards loved ones.
Too-big challenges: Tackling difficult problems can elicit frustration for the Lancer, who can sometimes use it as an escape from duress.
Burnout: The combination of love and anger as tools to cope can lead the Lancer to burnout.
The Lancer's coping emotion is the Hero's characteristic emotion, making them complementary archetypes.
The Lancer is naturally good at honor and discretion which work like fear and disgust.
The Lancer should aim to develop courage and compassion, which work to moderate fear and disgust.
The hardest-to-develop virtue for The Lancer is fairness, corresponding to their blind spot.
Virtues act like the opposite of their emotion—coping made conscious and disciplined. For The Lancer, developing fairness actively balances their unengaged pride argument.