Will is one of the aspects of Essence, an element of the true human potential. In childhood it can be cut off and lost from one's sense of who one is. The absence of this aspect will be felt as a sense of castration, of a lack of inner support and a lack of personal confidence. This deficiency is then usually defended against by creating a false will. The false will is a willfulness, a hard and rigid kind of determination, a stubbornness. This false will is an imitation of the real Will which has been cut off. It is a psychic structure constructed out of self-images and object relations from the past. The essential Will, on the other hand, is an aspect of Being, an existential presence, an actuality in the present. It is flexible and realistic, and does not have the rigidity and hardness of the ego will. It manifests as a natural, spontaneous and implicit sense of inner support and confidence.

In the face of the loss of the sense of holding, your basic trust in the universe disappears. You come to feel that the universe is against you, or at least not with you, and so the specific reaction arises of willfully pitting yourself against what is. The specific reaction, then, for this ennea-type is that of willful action. This stance, which characterizes ennea-type Two, is one filled with pride and stubbornness in which you assert, “I am going to get my own way.” People of this ennea-type have a strong willfulness; it is important to them that things go their way and that what they make happen is important because otherwise, they feel castrated and humiliated. The fake will is very crystallized, and there is a stubborn resistance to feeling that they can’t have their way since that would make them feel castrated. So instead of feeling that whatever is happening is just what’s going on, you feel that your will is ineffective and hasn’t worked if things aren’t happening the way you want them to or think they should. This reaction of willfulness against the sense of humiliating castration implicitly contains not only the belief that you have a separate will and can choose and determine what happens, but also that you know how things should go.