The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge

by Beatrice Chestnut

This strategy can make Fives seem aloof and uncaring, but they are much more sensitive on the inside than they appear.

Fives feel more comfortable with thoughts than emotions, so Fives automatically focus on the mental or thinking part of a situation and make any emotions related to what they are thinking about unconscious.

Whereas other types, like Twos and Nines, have difficulty erecting boundaries between themselves and other people, Fives have no problem putting up and maintaining boundaries—in fact, they tend to have the opposite issue: they can have too many boundaries.

The passion of Type Five is avarice, or greed. However, avarice as it applies to the Five personality does not necessarily imply a desire to hoard money or wealth or material goods, as greed is often commonly understood. For Fives, the central motivation of avarice is to hold onto what they have in light of an early experience of not getting much from others.

Fives’ core beliefs keep them fixated in a world of scarcity because these self-limiting ideas sap their motivation to do the work it would take to realize the falsity of their underlying assumptions. Contrary to their thinking when under the sway of this fixation, the world does provide abundance, especially if you believe it does.

One of the easier ways for them to form connections with others is through the sharing of knowledge and expertise—both as a way of demonstrating their competence and participating in a kind of connection that is less threatening.

It’s important to remember that Fives don’t consciously unhook from emotions—rather, they experience a more automatic letting-go of emotion, a more generalized lack of awareness of feelings, or an unconscious interference with the generation of feeling.

if you find it desirable to isolate yourself, you need to be able to do without external supplies or stockpile them yourself. As people who have given up on getting others to satisfy their desires, Fives need to be able to build up their resources on their own.

“an individual who feels full and substantial can stand more pain than one who feels empty.”25

The truth they don’t see is that they have the capacity to generate more internal resources and a greater wellspring of energy, especially if they allow for more support and nurturance from the outside. Their belief in their inner scarcity blinds them to the greater possibilities for abundance in adulthood.

The Self-Preservation Five is the most “Five-ish” of the Fives.

Self-Preservation Fives limit their needs and wants because they believe that every desire could open the door to their becoming dependent on others. Desires, then, are either sublimated in specific interests or activities or erased from consciousness.

For Social Fives, the passion of avarice is connected to knowledge. These Fives don’t need the nourishment relationships provide because their passion for knowledge somehow compensates for what they might get from direct human contact. It’s as if they have an intuition that they can find everything they need through the mind. Needs (for people and for emotional sustenance) get displaced into a thirst for knowledge.

In contrast to Sexual Fives, who are iconoclasts, Social Fives are admiring people—individuals who admire others that express their ideals in extraordinary ways.

Social Fives are looking for the ultimate meaning in life, motivated by an underlying (potentially unconscious) sense that things are meaningless unless the ultimate meaning is found.

Social Fives can look like Type Sevens in that they can be fairly outgoing and display a great deal of excitement about interesting ideas and people. The Social Five is typically more “out there” than other Fives, in the sense of being more social and able to engage. Social Fives differ from Sevens, however, in that they are more reserved, less self-interested, and less emotional than Sevens.

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In the Sexual Five, avarice is expressed through an ongoing search for a connection that will satisfy their need for an experience of the most perfect, safest, and most satisfying (idealized) union. This Five may look like the other two Five subtypes on the outside, having all the regular Five inhibitions and introversion in the area of relationship, but the Sexual Five places a special value on one-to-one or intimate connections.

Sexual Fives seek something like the ultimate mystical union—an experience of the divine in human relationship. And this can also happen with the search for good friends or a spiritual teacher.

This Five suffers more, resembles the Four more, and has more overt desires. This is the countertype among the Fives. It may not be completely obvious from the outside, however—they may seem very much like other Fives until you touch their romantic spot and inspire their romantic feelings.

The Sexual Five’s search for a high exemplar of connection is so exacting that it’s very hard to pass their test with consistency if you are the person in relationship with them. It’s very easy for the Sexual Five to be disappointed.

ULTIMATELY, AS FIVES WORK ON THEMSELVES and become more self-aware, they learn to escape the trap of walling themselves off from the sustenance of emotional connections with others—thereby intensifying their inner sense of scarcity—by creating a stronger connection to their own emotions, learning to believe in their own abundance, and opening themselves up to receiving more love and support from others.

many Fives feel relatively comfortable with their defensive posture because it allows them to feel safe and in control.

Recognize when you may be thinking about feelings rather than actually experiencing emotions.

Fives can support themselves in their self-work and expansion by consciously calling on the gifts Eights have in expressing anger in productive ways, making big things happen, and asserting themselves to impact people in positive ways. Instead of always having to survey what’s happening from a safe distance and think before doing anything, they can act more decisively in the world.

TYPE FOUR REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who experiences an inner sense of lack and a craving for that which is missing, and yet can’t allow for the attainment of what might provide satisfaction.

While this entails an understandable frustration with regard to deprivation, an overidentification with the frustrated, deprived state leads to an inability to take in that which would provide fulfillment.

The Four’s resonance with the Shadow can also be seen in the fact that they have a natural gift for understanding the deeper emotional level of experience and seeing the beauty in darker emotions that other types would rather not feel, much less acknowledge.

Type Fours are thus the prototype for that part in all of us that feels dissatisfied with who we are. We all have the capacity to feel bad about what we see as our flaws, and to grieve and long for what we see as lacking in our lives. We can all become depressed in the face of feeling inadequate when we don’t fit the idealized image of what we believe we have to be to get the love we want.

The natural strengths of Type Fours include their large capacity for emotional sensitivity and depth, their ability to sense what is going on between people on the emotional level, their natural feel for aesthetics and creativity, and their idealistic and romantic sensibility. Relatively unafraid of intense feelings, Fours value the expression of authentic emotion and can support others with great care, respect, and sensitivity when they are experiencing painful emotions. Fours are highly empathic and can see the beauty and power in painful feelings that other types habitually avoid.

they can overdo their focus on pain and suffering, sometimes as a way of avoiding a deeper or different kind of pain. While they have a gift for emotional sensitivity, they can become attached to their feelings in a way that can prevent them from thinking objectively or taking action.

However, when they can wake up to the ways in which they dwell in suffering or dramatize their emotions as a way of distracting themselves from their deeper need for love, they can express a special kind of wisdom that is informed by deep emotional truth.

Their respective coping strategies are designed to gain approval from other people in three distinct ways as a substitute for the love they seek but fear or believe they can’t get as they are. While Twos strive to have a likable, pleasing image, and Threes create an image of achievement and success, Fours present themselves as unique and special.

They dream of finding an idealized, special love connection that will make up for or reverse their loss. But because they can’t help feeling hopeless about ever regaining what they lost—both as a natural response to feeling deprived and a defense against being disappointed again—they often get stuck in feelings of grief, melancholy, and shame, which makes it difficult or impossible for them to really open up to receiving the love they long for.

For non-Fours, the Four coping strategy can seem counterintuitive, as it rests on feeling bad about yourself as a way to avoid feeling worse about yourself.

In relation to others, Fours have a tendency to both feel like a misfit and want to stand out as unique and special.

In a relationship or in a specific circumstance, like a job or a class or a social gathering, Fours will automatically focus on what they see as ideal and absent—on what is missing that would make the situation better or what isn’t working well because something specific is lacking.

They can inject drama into everyday experiences or the expression of their emotional state as a way of amping up the mundane aspects of life that may depress them or make them feel ordinary or deprived.

According to the Four perspective, emotions point to the inherent depth and truth of your experience of yourself, and so authentic emotions shouldn’t be denied, as they reflect what is special and uniquely you.

Perhaps more than any other Enneagram type, Fours possess the gift of empathy. They make great therapists and friends for people who might need emotional support. Unlike some other personalities, who may urge you to “look on the bright side” when you are feeling down, Fours have the experience and the emotional courage to be with darker emotions like sadness and pain.

The archetype of the Four also resembles that of the suffering artist who sees the beauty in pain and uses his sense of the tragic and the romantic to express deep feeling through artistic creation.

It is the good things about themselves that Fours relegate to unconsciousness and don’t own or see.

because they focus much of their attention on the past and the future, they tend not to see and take advantage of what is positive in their immediate, present lives.

Fours may not only fail to see their own natural goodness, they may also take on Shadow aspects of their family or group, unconsciously carrying the Shadow—the darker feelings and parts of reality that others don’t want to acknowledge—of the larger collective. And this may intensify their inability to see themselves in a positive light.

Each of the three Type Four subtypes, then, is motivated by a different need related to suffering: the Social Fours suffer, the Self-Preservation Fours are long-suffering, and the Sexual Fours make others suffer.

Although this Four experiences envy like the other Fours, they communicate their envy and suffering to others less than the other two Four subtypes do.

Envy is less apparent in the Self-Preservation Four because instead of dwelling in and expressing envy, this Four works hard to get what others have that he or she lacks.

Endurance is a virtue for them, and they hope their self-sacrifices will be recognized and appreciated, though they don’t talk about them very much.

This Four tends to be a humanitarian with an empathic and nurturing disposition, someone who protests for the sake of others and is sensitive to the needy, the dispossessed, and victims of injustice. This is their way of projecting their pain outward, addressing it through others’ suffering instead talking about their own.

They try to take care of others’ pain or work to ease the “suffering of the world” so they don’t have to fully deal with their own suffering.