The Wisdom of the Enneagram

by Don Richard Riso

Over time, the Five’s mental associations, comments, and ideas begin to fit together into what we call the Inner Tinker Toy. This Tinker Toy can become the Five’s dominant reality—the filter through which they experience the world. Increasingly, adding new ideas, reconstructing old ones, and attempting to see how different parts of this mental structure might fit together become the main pastimes of Fives. Since they are successful at coming up with new ideas all the time, this becomes a powerful way to prop up their self-esteem and to defend the self. But moving their attention more completely into the Inner Tinker Toy causes Fives to abstract and conceptualize the world rather than experience it directly, and this inevitably leads to a loss of contact with Essential guidance. Simply put, playing with ideas gives Fives a temporary sense of confidence but not a solution to their