To All Self-Typed 4s:

[Pallas]

"Type 4Naranjo's links type 4 with Masochistic and Depressive personality. People who score as type 4 are slightly more likely to self-report as having had periods of depression, but in general all types can be depressed. Depression is about poor mental/physical health not the type 4 personality. Unhealthy type fours do self-rate slightly higher than other types on being masochistic (but that is not true of average or healthy type 4s). I find a lot of conflation and convolution between type 3 and type 4 descriptions such that aspects of many Enneagram authors type 4 descriptions contain type 3 behaviors. The need to be special correlates with the type 3 core fixation, not the type 4 core fixation. Envy is also an issue for unhealthy type 3s, not type 4s as most Enneagram authors claim. Envy is antithetical to a type that overvalues authenticity (being true to self). To be envious of others is to betray oneself, and the flaw of Type 4s is being overly loyal to their unique nature. Fours romanticize their different-ness and/or their flaws rather than feel shame as a someone who scores high on Type 3 would. Being dramatic, another common type four errant description is type 3 attention seeking behavior. Thus, a lot of self typed fours are actually threes. There is no reason a person can't be high in both types, but on average, there is no correlation between type 3 and type 4.
Michael Jackson who is frequently typed as a 4w3 is more type 3 than type 4. His plastic surgery addiction alone is indicative more of an unhealthy three than a type 4. He fired producers based solely on record sales (popularity) not artistic quality. As a highly creative artist, he certainly had four-ish aspects, but his personality was more reflected by type three motivations. The fixation of type four is on authenticity, unconventionality, an over preference for being different, Jackson was more interested in fame/attention/external-validation (type 3 focus). Fours at their unhealthiest can lose touch with reality not unlike schizophrenics. All fours operate more on imagination/fantasizing than other types, it's only unhealthy fours where their fantasizing takes on a melancholic tone which predominates most author's type four descriptions. Healthy fours use their imaginations productively/constructively, to create art, new ideas, theories."


http://research.similarminds.com/tag/enneagram

A lot of you are actual type 4s but if you make a ton of noise about it everywhere you go...

[Skepsis]

Enneagram is really just a pseudoscientific personality theory based on archaic beliefs in original sin. At its most useful level, type 4 is simply the artist type, more concerned with creative, artistic pursuits than anything else. Beauty, perfection, and mastery of artistic expression are core. Identity arises from this pursuit as one has to be immersed in one's subconscious to better understand creative insights. The type four descriptions is how people tend to view and misunderstand people like this. The three is the extroverted showperson and lacks artistic depth. The four is the artist with depth.

[strrrng]

E3s only care about being special to the extent that it aligns with the collective values that anchor their image; there is no 'internality' to it. however, the term in general is a misnomer that generates more confusion than understanding.

envy is only antithetical to the valuing of authenticity in the pure sense; in the E4 sense it isn't, as the authenticity they prize so highly comes at the price of envy. pretty obvious. additionally, they romanticize their differentness because they feel shame.

as for attention seeking, it applies to E4 just as well as E3; only, with the former, it's more distorted and existential, meaning that instead of consistently 'putting on a show' the way an E3 would, they selectively 'come out' of themselves to draw people in.

[Chae]

And 3w4/ 4w3 is the paradox created from all of this

[Aylen]

Excerpts from Character & Neurosis: An Integrative View by Claudio Naranjo

Core Theory, Nomenclature, and Place in the Enneagram

The emotional state of envy involves a painful sense of lack and a craving toward that which is felt lacking; the situation involves a sense of goodness as something outside oneself which needs to be incorporated.

Though an understandable reaction to early frustration and deprivation, envy constitutes a self-frustrating factor in the psyche, for the excessive craving for love that it entails never answers the chronic sense of inner scarcity and badness, but on the contrary, stimulates further frustration and pain.

Frustration is a natural consequence of envy. In addition, over-desiring can lead to painful situations as portrayed by Quevedo in his dream of hell, when he tells us that when the envious arrive there and see the different souls subjected to the various tortures of the hell realms, they are frustrated and suffer by seeing that there is no place reserved for them.1

The position of envy in the enneagram is that of a satellite to vanity and a neighbor to point 5, avarice, which entails a comparable sense of deprivation to envy, though it involves a different attitude in face of the experience of scarcity. While point 4 represents a forceful reaching out, an intense demand for that which is missed, point 5 is characterized by a psychic attitude of giving up the expectation of anything receiving from the outside and, rather, a concern about holding in one’s energy, caring, and attention.

The connection with vanity is even more important than the one with avarice, since point 4 constitutes a member of the triad in the right corner of the enneagram, which, as a whole, gravitates around an excessive concern with the image of the self. While an ennea-type III person identifies with that part of the self that coincides with the idealized image, the ennea-type IV individual identifies with that part of the psyche that fails to fit the idealized image, and is always striving to achieve the unattainable. Here is a person animated by a vanity that fails to reach its goal because of the admixture of the sense of scarcity and worthlessness (of point 5).

Even though the ennea-types mapped at the positions 4 and 5 (envy and avarice) have in common the sense of worthlessness, guilt, and lack, and both may be described as depressed, they are in marked contrast in various regards. While guilt in envy is conscious torture, in avarice it is partially veiled over by a seeming moral indifference (that it shares with ennea-type VIII and constitutes a rebellion against its own excessive demands and accusations); while depression in envy manifests as overt grief, the avaricious often have trouble in crying or contacting their pain, so that their depression manifests, rather, as apathy and a sense of emptiness. It may be said that ennea-type V is a “dry” depression contrary to the “wet” depression of ennea-type IV: just as avarice is resigned, envy is passionate. In this is reflected a sharply differentiated feature: dry avarice is apathetic, wet envy, most intense; if the one is a desert, the other is a marsh. (The French use of envie to mean “desire” underscores the implicit observation that envy is the most passionate of passions.) While ennea-type V involves an internal atmosphere of quietness, ennea-type IV involves an atmosphere of turmoil and turbulence. The most characteristic aspect of ennea-type IV character besides envious motivation may be seen in the tendency to self-victimization and frustration.

Kernberg and others have rightly criticized DSM III for not taking account of the depressive, self-defeating, masochistic personality style. I am pleased to see that it has been brought in, at least tentatively, to the DSM III revision, for it surely constitutes one of the most common sources of interpersonal problems. Grumbling, lamenting, and the tendency to discontent on the other hand, have been observed since antiquity, while the masochistic pattern which was already described by Kurt Schneider, was rediscovered by Abraham in his observation of the oral-aggressive character and has been elaborated upon at length by Horney.

Vanity is a passionate concern for one’s image, or a passion of living for the eyes of others. Living for appearances implies that the focus of concern is not in one’s own experience, but in the anticipation or fantasy of the experience of another, and thus the insubstantiality of the vain pursuit. Nothing could be more appropriately called “vanity of vanities,” of which the preacher in Ecclesiastes speaks, than living for an ephemeral and insubstantial image (rather than out of oneself).

To speak of vanity as a living for a self-image is not different than speaking of narcissism, and indeed we may regard narcissism as a universal aspect of egoic structure, mapped on the right corner of the enneagram. Yet, since the word “narcissism” has been used in reference to more than one personality syndrome, and mostly since the publication of DSM III in reference to our ennea-type VII, I have not included it in this chapter heading.

Vanity is present especially in the “hysteroid” region of the enneagram (comprising ennea-types II, III, and IV), yet in the case of pride, as we have seen, it is satisfied through a combination of imaginative self-inflation and the support of selected individuals, while in ennea-type III, instead, the person mobilizes herself to “prove” objectively her value through an active implementation of the self-image in the face of a generalized other. This leads to an energetic pursuit of achievement and good form as defined by quantitative or generally accepted standards.

The difference between ennea-types III and IV lies mostly in the fact that the former identifies with the image that it “sells,” while the latter is more in touch with the denigrated self-image and is thus characterized by the experience of a vanity never fulfilled. As a result, ennea-type III is cheerful, ennea-type IV depressive.

As mentioned in the introduction, Ichazo spoke of “deceit” rather than vanity as the passion of ennea-type III, relegating vanity to the sphere of the fixations. Throughout most of my teaching experience I have chosen, rather, to consider vanity as a passion akin to pride, while seeing in deception the cognitive core or fixation in ennea-type III character. The word “deceit” is not the best to evoke the particular manner of deception that goes with vanity, however—different from the lying of ennea-type II or the conning of VIII, for instance; rather than a lack of truthfulness in regard to facts (ennea-type III may be a faithful, factual reporter) there is in vanity a lack of truthfulness in regard to feelings and pretense.

In contrast to the comic vein of ennea-type II and the tragic vein of ennea-type IV, the characteristic mood of ennea-type III is one of neutrality or feeling control—where only “correct feelings” are acknowledged and expressed.

Though pride (superbia) and not vanity is included among the traditional capital sins of Christianity, it seems that both ideas are commonly juxtaposed—as is suggested by the common iconography that depicts pride through a woman looking at a mirror (as in Hieronymus Bosch’s “Seven Deadly Sins”).

It is interesting to observe that the characterological disposition involved in ennea-type III is the only one not included in DSM-III—which raises the question as to whether this may be related to the fact of its constituting the modal personality in American society since the twenties.

I have no problem with Michael being typed 4w3. Read some biographies.

[Skepsis]

I have no problem with Michael being typed 4w3. Read some biographies.

To the type 4 trapped in their inner hell, no one else is as 4 as they except that other soul they connect with. The quest for self leads to an individuality that becomes a group identity which no one else can possibly possess because individuals are as unique as their own fingerprints.

Healthy 4s realize their faulty thinking.

[Aylen]

To the type 4 trapped in their inner hell, no one else is as 4 as they except that other soul they connect with. The quest for self leads to an individuality that becomes a group identity which no one else can possibly possess because individuals are as unique as their own fingerprints.

Healthy 4s realize their faulty thinking.

That was so poetic.

Edit: I considered not responding to this thread because I got a sense of the motivation behind it that I wasn't vibing with but since I have the book, I decided to at least post the excerpts and let others see what Naranjo actually said.

[Skepsis]

That was so poetic.

I do try

[Aylen]

I do try

I consider you to be a pretty healthy type whatever you are typing or not typing these days.

If you remember what I said in the past, your TIM made me kind of happy. lol

[maniac]

I have no problem with Michael being typed 4w3. Read some biographies.

Yes, I cant see him being another type. He's sensitive, self-revealing, empathetic..It's really easy to see when you think of 4s line to 2. He's probably 479, makes sense with Neverland and all

[Pallas]

So... everyone just completely ignores my points. 3 and 4 are just healthy and unhealthy versions of the same type after all.

[Aylen]

Did you even read the responses?

You didn't really make a point either. You quoted someone else's opinion.