|
|
People who pull back from the world and live in their mind.
May be wise, farsighted and knowledgeable or abstract, stingy and schizoid.
Fives, Sixes and Sevens share a general undercurrent of fear and form another "emotional Trio." Unlike Twos, Threes and Fours, people within this group are not confused about who they are or how they feel. Instead they tend to unconsciously anticipate the dangers of life and have a baseline habit of reacting fearfully. Fives are generally thinkers, people who live more in their heads than in their bodies. They have specific struggles around taking action and asserting their wills in the world.
A Five's fears are specifically social - they habitually guard against being invaded or engulfed by other people. This is the most explicitly antisocial of the Enneagram styles. When defensive, Fives can be withdrawn and standoffish as a way to manage their hypersensitivity to others. Generally, they fear close relationship as it can lead to feeling overwhelmed, smothered or swarmed.
Fives tend to live in their thoughts, in contrast to Fours, who live in their emotional imaginations. People with this style have well-developed abilities to analyze and synthesize knowledge. They may be perceptive, wise and objective, displaying an ability to stay centered and logical when others around them are losing their heads.
Awakened Fives usually strike some balance between interacting with the world and withdrawing from it. This style is frequently associated with knowledgeable competence and, sometimes, genius. When healthy, Fives express themselves in the world and actively offer the fruits of their knowledge. Teaching and writing are frequent occupations but whatever they do, healthy Fives seem to insist that their talent for knowledge count for something beyond itself. There is an idealistic quality to this drive that makes them willing and sometimes courageous contributors. They are also sympathetic listeners, but able to view events from a distant enough perspective to avoid getting personally upset. This contributes to a kindheartedness that wishes others well.
More defensively, Fives can slide from nonattachment into disassociation, the inner state of being cut off from feeling. An entranced person with this style is hyperaware of the world's demands, and then passively responds by withdrawing. Most outsiders see a Fiveís capacity to pull back as a kind of independence. It's a defense as well; the Five is making a strong antisocial boundary to compensate for being overly sensitive in the first place.
Cutting themselves off then becomes a habit. The idea is, "If I can just learn to live with less I'll avoid the influence of others." This leads to the tendency to hoard, to keep and save what little they have in order to need less and stay withdrawn. Fives can hoard time, money, space, land, information, or emotional availability. It doesn't matter what is hoarded, the pattern is the same. The person tries to protect against flooding by stacking up supplies on their dry inner island.
Entranced Fives also stay distant from their own emotions by living in a world of information and ideas. The more they cut themselves off, however, the more they struggle with feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and compulsive need. It's like trying to talk yourself out of being hungry. At this point a Five may be slow to know how they feel because they can only reach their feelings through a lengthy sequence of thought. Entranced Fives worship gods of reason and try to look distantly down on their own emotions. They may also act superior towards other people as an expression of the same defense.
When Fives are deeply entranced, they may become schizoid and unpredictable, as though disassociated parts of them are taking turns talking. They can project an absent, vaguely shocked aura or be pointedly antisocial. A Five could sit through a party at which they said nothing and later claim that they had a good time. Or they might alienate others with nasty, sneering commentary and unpredictable aggression.
The habit of disassociating emotions becomes so developed that they lose basic touch with reality. They may develop weird phobias of invisible objects like germs. Aggressive episodes are possible, followed by bursts of acute paranoia.
FAMOUS FIVES
Performance artist Laurie Anderson, St. Thomas Aquinas, Playright Samuel Beckett, Author Paul Bowles, The Buddha, Director Tim Burton, David Byrne, Actor Richard Chamberlain, Agatha Christie, Van Cliburn, Montgomery Clift, Former CIA Director William Colby, Michael Crichton, Daniel Day-Lewis, René Descartes, Joan Didion, Joe DiMaggio, Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Author Loren Eiseley, T.S. Eliot, the cultural aura of England,
Chess player Bobby Fischer, E. M. Forster, Greta Garbo, J. Paul Getty, cybertech novelist William Gibson, Jane Goodall, Author Graham Greene, H.R. Haldeman, Hildegarde of Bingen, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Howard Hughes, Jeremy Irons, Franz Kafka, Director Philip Kaufman, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Author Dean R. Koontz, Arthur (The Amazing) Kreskin, Director Stanley Kubrick, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, Cartoonist Gary Larson, John le Carré, Author Ursula K. LeGuin, Photographer Annie Leibowitz,
Vladimir Lenin, George Lucas, David Lynch, Author Norman MacLean, Reporter Robert MacNeil, Movie critic Leonard Maltin, Novelist Ian McEwan, Larry McMurtry, Singer Natalie Merchant, Thelonious Monk, Actor Sam Neill, Joyce Carol Oates, Georgia O'Keefe, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Al Pacino, Italian sculptor Paladino, Michelle Pfeiffer,
Keanu Reeves, Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Oliver Sacks, Author May Sarton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ebenezer Scrooge, Poet Gary Snyder, Philosopher Susan Sontag, Phil Spector, George Stephanopoulos, Actress Madeleine Stowe, Max Von Sydow, Jules Verne, Author Ken Wilber, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." - Logan Pearsall Smith
"The miser puts all his gold pieces in a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it's the same as if it were empty." - Andre Gide
"A bashful dog rarely gets fat." - Swedish proverb
"It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them." - Thomas de Quincy
"To whom you tell your secrets, to him you resign your liberty." - Spanish proverb
"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes." - Jonathan Swift
"Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do." - Goethe
"Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve" - Tehyi Hsieh
"Sometimes I think, sometimes I am ." - Paul Valery
"One can acquire anything in solitude, except character." - Stendhal
"One does not write a love story while making love." - Colette
"It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae, that people are to be helped." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Books are a finer world within the world." - Alexander Smith
"Those who know their minds do not necessarily know their hearts." - La Rochefoucalt
Five With a 4 Wing
The difference between the 4 wing and the 6 wing in Fives is like the difference between Art and Science. 4 wing brings an abstract, intuitive cast of thought, as though the Five were thinking in geometric shapes instead of words or realistic images. May be talented artistically and inhabit moods like Fours do. Combine intellectual and emotional imagination. Enjoy the realm of philosophy and beautiful constructs of thought. The marriage of mental perspective and aesthetics is the best of life for them. When more defensive may seem a little ghostly, have a whisper in their voice. Fluctuate between impersonal withdrawal and bursts of friendly caring. Can get floaty and abstract. Act like they're inside a bubble, sometimes with an air of implicit superiority. Cliché of the "absentminded professor" applies especially to Fives with this wing. Environmentally sensitive and subject at times to total overwhelm. Touchy about criticism. Can be slow to recover from traumatic events. Melancholy isolation and bleak existential depression are possible pitfalls.
Five With a 6 Wing
The 6 wing brings an orientation to detail and technical knowledge, along with the tendency to think in logical sequence. Especially intellectual, far more analytical than Fives with a 4 wing. Can be loyal friends, offering strong behind-the-scenes support. Kind, patient teachers, skillful experts. May have a sense of mission and work hard. Sometimes project an aura of sensitive nerdiness and have clumsy social skills. When defensive, they can be unnerved by the expectations of others. May like people more but avoid them more. Especially sensitive to social indebtedness. Could have trouble saying "thank you." Fear of taking action, develop "information addiction" instead. Ask lots of questions but don't get around to the decision at hand. When more entranced, they develop a suspicious scrutiny of other people's motives but can also be blind followers. Misanthropic and Scrooge-like when defensive. More able to keep their feelings cut off in a constant way. Can be cold, skeptical, ironic, and disassociated. A Five's 6 wing can be phobic or counterphobic. Counterphobic 6 wing brings courage and antiauthoritarian attitudes. When defensive they may mock authority, or angrily tell others off. Tend to "push the envelope," experiment, find what the limits are.
Instinctual Variants by Thomas Condon - The Changeworks
Self-Preservation
Chief defensive tendency is to withdraw. Sensitive to feeling saturated by the world, Fives with this subtype lose their sense of privacy easily. Can feel knocked over by people's expectations. In isolation they refind their lost sense of balance and build up to the next round of social stresses. More alienated than the other subtypes. May hide in books, live alone or need their own room where they can close themselves off. Take little from others. Sometimes thin. Likely to hoard time and space. Have solitary hobbies and interests, seek comfort and solace alone.
Intimate
Intimate Fives trust only a few people but then do so totally. Friendship is based on the sharing of confidences. Intimacy is equivalent to exchanging secrets. Can go from enigmatic, deliberate distance to intense, unguarded openness. Seductive invitation to sharing secrets; seek a total merging. When entranced can be a little kinky.
Social
Social Fives connect with groups of like-minded people. Enjoy living in the flow of a group interest, sharing knowledge and affiliations. May prefer specialized or esoteric areas of knowledge that exclude all but the initiated. Could live in high society, know the "right" people, belong to the best clubs. Might enjoy speaking a professional language that few people understand. Can be quite friendly but, at times, terrific snobs. Romanticize secret elitist group membership; concerned with titles, degrees, credentials, etc. Realm of academia.
Tom Condom's site : http://www.thechangeworks.com/
Back to the top
|
|
