Four (Enneagram)
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According to Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, Enneagram Type Four is called the Individualist.
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[edit] Basic Description
The desire to create and seek meaning is emphasized in the Individualist. They are emotionally driven, passionate people, who want to be recognized as special and distinguished from others. They are, at their best, compassionate, empathetic, and refined. This often leads them to artistic endeavors of various sorts, or alternatively, to relationships that would bring them intense feelings whether sublime or despairing. On the flipside, their emotional turbulances and excess fantasizing can cause difficulties with living in the moment, rather than in the past or in the future, chronic dissatisfaction and depression, and conflicts with others.
[edit] Motivation and Passion
Passion/Fixation: Envy
Basic Fear: "To have no identity and personal significance". Personal identity is felt tentatively to the Individualist, which they compensate by cultivating a fantasy or ideal Self that would in one way or another define them. They fear ordinariness.
Basic Desire: 'To find themselves and their significance'. The Individualists heighten their experience with imagination and emotional reactions. They see beauty in suffering, and will hold on painful moods if those give them meaning.
Parental Orientation: Disconnected from both parents, since "neither can understand." Creates longing in self for a "good parent" - a saviour - who can understand them. It is not that fours do not want to express their feelings, they just want someone to discover them; and frequently make people work too hard to find out what they are.
[edit] Personal Theme
From a very early age, fours felt singled out by others. They see the various personal qualities others have that are not given to them, which causes them to focus on absence, on differences, and on personal alienation. They are the gray ducklings poked fun of by their bright-feathered peers and abandoned by their parents. They are the orphans and outcasts.
In time, however, they began to feel that they're singled out for a reason. They interpreted their alienation and suffering as evidence of their finer sensibilities, and even their personal defects, which in the beginning tormented them, are now worn as marks of pride. However, in their psychic recesses there remains an emptiness longing to be filled by another, and it is that emptiness, that tension between lack and fulfillment, which drives the fours in a search for meaning and personal identity. Unfortunately, given their fixations on fantasy and comparison with others, this search can often feel (and become) fruitless.
[edit] Wings
[edit] Four with a Three Wing: The Aristocrat
[edit] Healthy
Healthy 4w3's can be both successful and inspired. They leave a personal touch in all the works they do, while maintaining some connection with the larger world. They enjoy public attention but are also committed to private self-exploration.
[edit] Average
Average 4w3's can be provocative and attention-grabbing, whether through art or life. Their emotional turbulances are more on the surface than the more withdrawn 4w5's, and it often translates to immediate and widespread interpersonal impact. They can have problems with vanity and self-indulgence, and can resemble sevens in their love of luxury and pleasure. But unlike sevens, sensations are not sought in themselves but as another accessory to their fantasy identity. They tend to "hide away" once the problems with self-image caught up with them. They can also be competitive, play emotional games, and cause "dramas" of various sorts.
[edit] Unhealthy
When 4w3's are unhealthy, they are prone to hysteria and shallow/melodramatic emotional displays. They can have pronounced issue with self-image and shame. They feel justified to act selfishly because of their suffering. Narcissism and jealousy is also common.
[edit] Famous 4w3's
Prince, Michael Jackson, Judy Garland, "Blanche DuBois", "Madame Bovary", Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Gamart, Crov
[edit] Four with a Five Wing: The Bohemian
[edit] Healthy
Healthy 4w5's brings profound creativity and insights of the intrapsychic sort. Their emotions are more under-the-surface than 4w3's, and more private modes of communication (such as writing) are preferred. They have intellectual as well as emotional insights and can often synthesize experiences into something intensely personal yet timeless.
[edit] Average
Average 4w5's are devoted to cultivation of a personal worldview, often by philosophical or artistic means. They are more likely than the 4w3's to be reclusive and out-of-touch with the greater social world, and to compensate they adopt unconventional/eccentric ways of life. They can be purposefully obscure and enigmatic in their expressions, then have an elitist and contemptuous view of those who failed to understand them. They tend to withdraw for prolonged periods under stress which can leave them further isolated. As a result, they are prone to hallucinatory states and total alienation.
[edit] Unhealthy
Unhealthy 4w5's inhabit a terrifying fantasy-world of their own creation. Their emotional torments are turned inward, causing severe depression and self-destructive thoughts. While average 4w5's can romanticize death, unhealthy 4w5's plunge into it.
[edit] Famous 4w5's
Johnny Depp, Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, Virginia Woolf, "Lin Daiyu", Søren Kierkegaard, John Keats, Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac
[edit] Instinctual Variants of the Four
Self-Preservational Variant
On the average levels, self-preservational Fours are the most practical of type Four. They are very concerned with the mood, atmosphere, and beauty of their surroundings, and can become self-indulgent in meeting those needs. They often have an aesthetic focus, are devoted to high-quality physical or emotional experiences, and can become frustrated if "the shades are off" their ideal. Some have a reckless streak, taking risks and playing with fate, as means to intensify their feelings. Others, while less adventurous, nonetheless fantasize to be consumed in some forms of risky affairs. Fours of this variant also have a heightened need for autonomy which can make them ambivalent and fickle in relationships.
Social Variant
Social fours are most characterized by a feeling of shame. They like to think of themselves as completely unique and one-of-a-kind, and can alternate between feeling socially inept and disdainful of others. They are somewhat more socially engaged than the other two variants of fours, often by adopting "personas" of some sort that they know are idealized versions of themselves. They also identify with alternative groups that in one way or another reinforce their outsider status. However, they can be easily overwhelmed socially and withdraw for long periods of time. Unhealthy social fours are extremely self-conscious and can have trouble with even the most casual human encounters.
Sexual Variant
The Fours of this variant are emotionally intense, and they express themselves through relationships and high-pitch lives. They have a competitive streak, and their emotions toward another (especially their love interests) run the gamut of total devotion and burning hatred. They are also the "face" of romantic poets and tortured artists, working in fervour on their art in between their outbursts of temper. They typically lead very unconventional lifestyles as a kind of personal statement. When in stress fours of this variant express their envy more openly, and can act out through violence or self-harm.
[edit] References
Riso, Don Richard. Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. ISBN 0-395-40575-0.
Riso, Don Richard and Russ Hudson. The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Types. New York: Bantam Books, 1999. ISBN 0-553-37820-1. --Mathew 16:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Links
| One: The Reformer | Two: The Helper | Three: The Achiever | Four: The Romantic | Five: The Observer |
| Six: The Loyalist | Seven: The Enthusiast | Eight: The Leader | Nine: The Mediator |
