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TYPE 4 go to FIVE WING go to THREE WING

From Are You My Type, Am I Yours? ,
by Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Romantic (number 4) Fours are motivated by the need to understand their feelings, to search for what is missing and for what life means, and to avoid being ordinary. They are ÒromanticÓ in the sense of having an imaginative or artistic personality.

Twos, Threes, and Fours constitute the heart center of the Enneagram. Fours need to express their feelings and to be seen as special. Since they compare reality with what could be, they find fault with who they are and what they have.

(Three subtypes of 4Õs: Self-Preservation Fours, Relational Fours, and Social Fours)

Fours cope with, and divert attention from, their need to be special and their feelings of loss in the following ways, depending on their subtype. As they develop, Fours will move beyond these limitations, learn to live in the reality of the present, and feel truly deserving of love.

Self-Preservation Fours: ÒDauntlessÓ

¥ I crave intensity and stimulation in order to feel alive and avoid the dullness and meaningless of mundane existence.

¥ I am attracted to being close to birth, death, catastrophe, and serious illness.

¥ I have plunged into dangerous situations, for example, taking risks, breaking laws or rules, taking chances with my money, engaging in promiscuity, or entering into unhealthy relationships.

¥ I can be determined and persevering in pulling myself and others through crises.

¥ I rebel strenuously when people attack my ideals, tell me what to do, or try to change me. I may hurl sarcastic remarks or fly into a rage.

¥ I focus intently on my creative work or causes.

¥ I can see myself excluding everything else that is going on around me and ignoring the necessities of day-to-day survival while I pursue my goal.

¥ I like to point out angles that others have not thought of.

¥ I take great offense when people assume they know what I think and feel.



Wings

Wings are the types on each side of your number. Fours with a more developed Three wings are usually more lively. The Five Wing is responsible for a more contemplative or intellectual personality.

Fours with a strong Three Wing tend to be energetic, active, outgoing, competitive, ambitious, attention seeking, and elitist.

Fours with a strong Five Wing tend to be objective, quiet, unconventional, original, enigmatic, alienated, pessemistic, analytical, and withdrawn.

Occasionally, people present the persona of one of their wings--rather than their actual type--to the outside world.


Arrows

Your personality is also influenced by the two types that are connected to yours by lines, the arrows of One and Two.

We have a natural connection to our wings and arrows. They often come into play without our knowing it; their positive aspects when weÕre feeling tranquil and integrated, and their unhealthy aspects during times of stress. When we want to change something about ourselves, we can try consciously to incorporate their favorable and to avid their negative traits. You may want to read the chapters on Threes, Fives, Ones, and Twos to learn more about your wings and arrows.

There is quite a difference between a Four with a dominant Three wing, and a Four with a dominant Five wing.

If you lean toward your Three Wing, you are probably extroverted and sociable, upbeat, image conscious, and possibly flamboyant. You can summon up energy and productivity through this wing. Keep in check the urge to impress others, and donÕt lose focus on your creativity.

If you lean toward your Five Wing, you have traits in common with the head center as well as your heart center. Since Fives are generally introverted, you are likely to be serious, intellectual, and reserved. If your emotional energy feels overwhelming, steer yourself toward this more objective wing. Watch out for the tendency to be negative or reclusive, however.

Your practical One Arrow can be used to bring out your ability to organize, to be objective, and to act on your ideals. It can influence you to become less self-indulgent and less controlled by your feelings. Be aware of the tendency tobe self-critical, guilt ridden, or demanding.

Your Two Arrow can help you to be more accommodating, less self-absorbed, and to act on your ideal of service to others. Watch this arrowsÕs influence on you to become codependent or manipulative. Sometimes Fours with a strong Two arrow try to get someone else to prove their worth, or they become ill to get their parterÕs attention.

Healthy Fours are gentle and bond well. They are appreciated for their warmth, passion, and wit and for their ability to perceive what is beautiful in life.



Romantics in Relationships

What Fives (Fours?) Say About Twos (Helpers)

I Like Twos Because They

¥ treat me with kindness, generosity, and sensitivity

¥ help me feel appreciated and liked

¥ are at ease with people, which takes the burden off me when we socialize

¥ have a good sense of humor and appreciate my wit

¥ admire my calmness and steadiness

¥ express their feelings well and inspire me to express mine


I Have Trouble with Twos Because they

¥ want to socialize more than I do

¥ are not willing to challenge me

¥ get too emotional and embarrass me by showing off

¥ constantly seek approval

¥ donÕt say what it is they want

¥ intrude on me when IÕm busy


How to Get Along With Twos

¥ Appreciate their warmth, generosity, enthusiasm, and sense of humor. Thank them for their help and insights. Then Thank them again. And again. And again and again

. ¥ Reassure them often that theyÕre special to you. Be romantic and give them cards, gifts, hugs, and so on.

c ¥ Join them in their enjoyment of life, and give them space, too; Twos have a conflit with dependence versus independence.

¥ Appreciate their ideal of wanting the world to be right and beautiful.

¥ Keep in mind that Twos may get very close to someone and lead them to think thay are their best friend but disappear when they feel too needed, engulfed, or suffocated, especially extroverted Twos.

¥ Talk with them about their favorite subject: PEOPLE.

¥ Be gentle and tactful when you have a criticism and donÕt tell them they are being illogical or taking things too personally unless you do it very gently.

¥ Let them know you approve of or admire their appearance and their accomplishments. Some Twos want everybody to know you love them!


You Can Give Twos Extra Support in these Ways: ¥ Take an interest in their life and their problems, and donÕt let them transfer the focus to yours. ¥ Ask them to tell you honestly how they feel and what they want rather than telling you what they think you want to hear. ¥ Encourage them to learn and accept help. Twos feel embarrassed to ask for anything. ¥ Encourage them to risk expressing their anger and engaging in conflict. Take care to discuss boundaries that are safe for both of you. ¥ Encourage them to follow their personal and creative pursuits.


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The Tragic Romantic (number 4)


The Dilemma

Fours remember adandoment in childhood, and as a result they suffer from a sense of deprivation and loss. Their inner situation is reflected in the literary prototype of the tragic romantic who, having attained recognition and material success, remains steadfastly focused upon the lost love, the unavailable love, a future love, and a picture of happiness that only love can bring. To understand this world view, you need to project yourself into a state of mind where decisions are based upon the shifting chemistry of mood as upon the perception of actual facts; and where conversations are remembered as much for their feeling tone and innuendo as for whatever words were actually expressed.

Depression is a frequent mood. It can bring life to the kind of halt where days are spent in bed, the mind regretfully attached to some unalterable past mistake. ÒIf only, if only.Ó Attention locks, like a record needle stuck in a deep cerebral groove. ÒIf only I had acted differently. If only there were one more chance.Ó

Fours are unanimous in their understanding of the black mood of depression. Some accept it fatalistically, succumbing to prolonged periods of self-isolation. Others fight their depression through hyperactivity, staying constantly on the run. Still others challenge their emotions through a profound artistic exploration of the shadow side of human experience. The Fours . . . have known depression, but they also describe a mood called melencholy, which is attractive to them, like a twited emotional refuge that springs from loss and pain.

Melencholia creates an atmosphere of sweet regret. Like depression it stems from a perception of loss, but here sadness is transformed into a mood of mistiness along bleak shores. Fours feel intensely alive in the shifting emotional mists; nothing is permanent because oneÕs mood may change tomorrow.

The core issue is loss and a subsequent lowering of self-esteem. ÒWould I have been abandoned if I were more worthy?Ó Fours live with the conviction that there was an original source of love that was taken away. . . . There is often a history of literal abandonment and the need to grieve for early loss; however, feelings of abandonment are painfully recrated in adult life by a compulsive attraction to the unavailable and (usually unrecognized) habit of rejecting whatever is easy to obtain.

Fours unconsciously focus their attention on the finer points of what is missing, so that by comparison, what is available seems to lack appeal. They particularly yearn for a passionate, fulfilling relationship; they assume the stance of the lover longing for the beloved. One of the sweetest shades of melencholia is the coupling of sadness over the loss of love with the romantic anticipation of an ideal future mate. There is the sense that the present is only a rehersal for the future when Òmy authentic self will be reawakened through love.Ó

When real life gais start to materialize, though these may be the fruits of years of anticipation and effort, attention will predictably shift to that which is missing in life. If you get thejob, you want the man. If you get the man, you want to be alone. If you are alone, you want thejob and the man again. Attention cycles to the best in what is missing and, by comparison, whatever is available seems dull and valueless.

Romantics are likely to sabotage real gains. When attention is brought to bear on the day-to-day events of a real life love affair, Fours can become aggrily disappointed at having to pick up their partnerÕs socks and having to tolerate another personÕs ideosyncrasies. The image of a splendid future that was to emerge through love is threatened by the factthat an actual relationship contains some very boring moments. Small quirks in a partnerÕs presentation turn into major irritants. . . . There is a rage at having to accomodate to someone elseÕs tastelessness and a fierce need to protect oneself for the future reawakeneing through love.

When it appears that intimacy may require a sacrifice of elite standards, Fours will want to drive their partenerÕs away, to force them to leave before the image of a precious and authentic relationship is corrupted by a negative influence. It becomes clear that the partner is to blame. Feeling bitterly disappointed, Fours will want to say the worst, in order to make it perfectly clear just how much theyÕve been let down.

Once the relationship is drivenback to a safe distance, the Romantic will begin to miss itonce again. There is a push-pull pattern to relationships: pushing away what is available and pulling for what is hard to get. The grass is always greener at a distance, as attention shifts to the high points of an absent partnership.

Fours keep life at a safe armÕs length. Not too far away, lest the familiar edge of longing turn into blck despair; but certainly not too close. For although there is great yearning for intimacy with another, actual intimacy triggers the fear of being found deficient and potentially reabandoned. If the partner tires of being at armÕs length and threatens to leave, asudden illness or intense rcrimination may follow, as the Four once again pulls for the relationship. Fours pull out all of the emotional stops when abandonment looms. There are theatrical scenes and wild accusations, suicidal gestures and deep despair as the original loss is recreated in a highly dramatized way.

Fours say that the highs and lows of their emotional life open up an intensified level of existence that is beyond ordinary happiness, a level far richer than that for which other people seem to be willing to settle. There is the sense of being an alien outsider to ordinary reality, of being unique and stangely different, of being an actor who is moving through the scenes of oenÕs own life. To give up the suffering of a heightened emotional life would mean sacrificing the sense of being special that drama tens to generate. For a Four the prospect of becoming happy can also threaten to close access to an intense emotional world. Worst of all, there is the risk of settling fora pedestrian vision and an ordinary life.


The preoccupations of point Four include:

¥ The sense of something missing from life. Others have what I am missing.

¥ An attraction to the distant and the unavailable. Idealization of the absent lover.

¥ Mood, mnners, luxury, nd good taste as external supports to bolster self-esteem.

¥ An attachment to the mood of melencholy. Depth of feeling as a goal rather than mere happiness.

¥ Impatience with the Òflatness of ordinary feelins.Ó Needing to reintensify oneÕs feelings through loss heightened imaginaton, and dramatic acts.

¥ The search for authenticity. The feeling that the present is not real, that the real self will emerge in the future, through an experience of being deeply loved.

¥ An affinity with what is real and intense in life. Birth, sex, abandonment, death, and cataclysmic happenings.

¥ A push-pull habit of attention. Focus alternatives between the negative features of what one has and the positive features of what is distant and hard to get. This attention style reinforces:
¥ Feelings of abandonment and loss, but also lends itself to
¥ A sensitivity to other peopleÕs emotionality and pain. An ability to support others in crisis.


Family History

The underlying theme is childhood loss. Fours descibe many variations of being abandoned by someone important in early life. They often describe a literal abandonment, the most common example of which is divorce, in which a beloved parent went away.

¥ ¥ ¥

There are several theories of depression that are anchored in the idea that childhood anger was turned inward against the self. Romantics commonly describe feelings of loss that have resulted in recurring depression during their adult life.


Anger and Depression

There is often a feeling of rage at having been deprived, of anger at the abandoning parent, who has caused such grief, when others have been given more. This anger is likely to appear as biting sarcasm, as a need to verbally cut others down, to even the score of having been so badly hurt. More often than not there is no practical opportunity to get angry at someone who has either vanished or is likely to withdraw under fire. as a result, a RomanticÕs anger is usually directed inwardly as an intense self-criticism for not being worthy enough to have merited love.

This inwardly directed criticism makes Fours feel helpless and produces long periods of inaction, during which there appears to be no possible course of action toward happiness. Depression is based on feelings of sadness over having lost a basic valuable human connection. It is the stance of the separated lover, yearning for a way to reunite.


Depression and Melancholy

Fours liken depression to being imprisoned in a black pit. They withdraw into themselves, move into a solitary part of the house, and gradually eliminate outside contact. There is the feeling that life has never been this bad before and a conviction that the situation will not change. If the depression deepens, offers of help begin to sound absurd in the face of the difficulty. . . .

The mood of melancholy stems from the same sense of loss that produces a wretched depression. It is a sensibility that transforms the conviction that one has been deprived into a bittersweet yearning for things that are impossible or that can never be. Fours say that they prefer the richness of melancholia to what other people describe as happiness. It is a feeling of sadness that calls up imagery and metaphor, and the feeling of being connected to distant things. Melancholy is a mood that elevates the life of an abandoned outsider to a posture of unique tempermental sensitivity. . . .

It is very easy to spot a Four who has become depressed. There is an ongoing lamentation for whatever is missing in life. The lament has become so self-preoccupying that it is impossible to turn attention to more productive things.

Melancholy, however, although it is also based in yearning, casts ordinary events into the dimensions of the aesthetic. Yearning takes on the quality of search, and depression is transformed into a poetic appreciation for the human condition. . . .


The Joys of Privacy

There is a fine line between living oneÕs life as an artistic expression and becoming preoccupied with pain as a way of supporting an aesthetic self-image. The connection between deprivation and artistic expression is as old as the image of the artist who starves in a garret rather than compromise the creative life by selling out to a lucrative livihood. Life as art and life as pain are often intertwined, in that suffering can sensitize oneÕs appreciation for what is most essential in life, and mobilize an atmosphere of inner tension that can be made meaningful when expressed through a creative act.

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Loss places one outside the ordinary crowd. It makes one temporarily tragic and different, and somehow special in the sense that for that time one feels more deeply than other people do. The experience of oneÕs self as unusually sensative can also develop into a tenacious attachment to personal moodiness, particularly if loved ones happen to be attracted to intense displays of feeling, or if genuinely creative expressins well up during periods of emotionally charged sensitivity.

The dilemma of a creativity that is stirred by pain is exemplified by the life of poet Rilke, who suffered deep psychological distress yet reained unwilling to enter analysis. He was certain that if his devils were driven out, his angels too would receive a shock.

Four is the EnneagramÕ place of the artist, which taken literally means that many working artists are Fours, but which also refers to a tempermental preference for evocative feeling states. Bouts of longing and despair are bound toproduce an intesification of ordinary emotional climates. This intensity, and the sense of special purpose it generates, can make the shifting moods of melancholia far more attractive than the rang of ordinary feeling.


Mood Swings

Romantics live at the extreme poles of emotional life. There is a tendency to swing between depression at one extreme and hyperactivity at the other. Fours describe themselves as gravitating toward one or the other of the emotional poles, or ...

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