Stackemup Typology's Review Of Ocean Moonshine's Description For Type Four (4)

[Kill4Me]

The description can be found here: https://oceanmoonshine9.wordpress.com/fours/

In general, there's a big chunk of type four that's missing from the description and its not entirely accurate.

People of Enneatype Four construct their identities around their perception of themselves as being somehow unique and fundamentally different from others. This deep felt sense of being “different from” or “other than” pervades the Four’s sense of self, and functions as the basis for the Four’s attempt to create a persona that properly reflects who they feel they really are. Fours are not content (or even able) to live out the role assigned them by their societies or their families; they self-consciously search for an expression they feel will be truly authentic. Of all the types, Fours are the most acutely aware that the persona is a construct – something which has been created and can thus be re-created. This is indeed the fundamental respect in which Fours are artists; they may or may not be artists in the conventional sense of the term, but all Fours have a sense that their identities are, in some respect, their own creation.

Fours generally construct a persona and project an image which has flair or “style.” This style may be, for instance, one of casual elegance (“shabby chic” perhaps), or it may be more flagrantly counter culture, but whichever image is chosen, it will tend to bear the Four’s own original stamp and will be an expression of the Four’s current sense of self.

The four's persona is constructed out of confounding expectations and unsettling those who wish to limit them in some way.

Furthermore, construction of persona is not the "fundamental respect in which fours are artists." What makes fours artists is 1) their ability to grasp originality/true art from small details and generate a storm of intuition from even the most 'mundane' aspects of reality, and 2) the capacity for true art to put them back together again.

There is a paradoxical quality to this whole endeavor. Fours strive for authenticity, for an expression of themselves which is “true,” but the image they portray is, by its nature, delusory, and inevitably fails to convey the true depths and complexity of the self. It also necessarily falls short of the Four’s own personal ideal. This sense of perpetually “falling short” contributes to the Four’s sense of inadequacy, as Fours feel that they are not only unable to live up to society’s ideal but to their own individual ideals as well. This dynamic of striving and falling short is at the core of the Four’s sense of shame, frustration and heightened feelings of self-consciousness.

Fours don't strive to be authentic....they already view themselves as authentic and one of a kind, as somebody who marches to their own beat.

To be sure, Fours compensate for their feelings of inferiority with an equally strong sense of superiority. Fours tend to feel a sense of disdain for whatever is ordinary and for the “common” sorts of lives with which most people seem to content themselves. They tend to feel that their outsider status, their sense of style and their heightened sense of self-consciousness, confer on them a stamp of genuineness and “class.” Thus a feeling of being a member of the “true aristocracy” alternates with deep feelings of shame, and fears of being somehow deeply flawed or defective.

Fours don't feel a sense of disdain for what's ordinary so much as they feel a sense of disdain for what's crude. Nothing is ever just ordinary to a four. Show a four something that's ordinary and they'll show you the dimension you're missing which makes it not so ordinary.

The four's deeper feelings of shame aren't triggered by their outsider status....the four's shame is triggered by having to justify themselves.

The Four’s inner landscape is thus complex, and their issues surrounding identity fraught with frustrations. There is even an enervating quality to the whole psychic drama, which, along with the Four’s emotional sensitivity, contributes to the Four’s characteristic need to withdraw. When Fours withdraw, they immerse themselves in their own mental landscapes where they are free to cultivate and analyze their feelings. In the realm of fantasy, Fours are not constrained by the mundane considerations which are the plague of everyday life; the inner life can thus become more real than the outer.

This is not accurate. Withdrawal in fours manifests kinesthetically through an aura of self-possession which is intended as a buffer between others and the four's underlying fragility. The need to withdraw does not mean the four is avoidant of contact....so much as the four keeps themselves in a readiness to walk away, not letting themselves show too much overt interest in the life of others, overinvesting themselves in their own story, keeping their heart hard to conquer. Due to the four's fragile nature, the four instinctively wants to make sure that if they give the person their heart the person will do well by it. Once the four gives their heart to somebody, then they become extremely fragile to whatever that person says...a minor dig can instantly trigger shame...any type of humiliation can drive the four to the point of wanting to puke and simultaneously fight to justify themselves.... to the extent they can't or the person is an abusive prick, shame turns into giving up on life and entertaining death as a welcome escape, even closing one's eyes and wishing for it.

Fours are primarily emotional by nature, and of all the types, probably have the most complex palette of emotional states. While Fours are not blind to the “facts” and the supposed “objective” state of affairs, they tend to interpret reality at least as much in terms of its symbolic content and emotional resonance. John Keats, a Four, expressed this well when he stated: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.” Fours are thus emotionally attuned to meaning, and this attention to meaning sometimes gives Fours access to a dimension of reality that others miss. Such insight might find expression in art, literature or music, but is often enough simply manifested in an idiosyncratic lifestyle which expresses the Four’s own personal vision. When Fours are unbalanced however, their emotional sensitivity, which is generally accompanied by an introspective nature, can result in states of self-absorption or descents into melancholia or despair.

Its quite true Fours are very fragile and a ferris wheel of intense emotional states, but they are strong-willed when it comes to not compromising on their inner reality...it's part of the overinvestment they make in their own personal story as a means of maintaining their aura of self-possession. There is a quality of melodrama and romantically tragic independence that the description completely misses....

When unbalanced, the Four’s envy can take a nasty turn as unhealthy Fours tend to project their self-loathing outward. At such times, the previously sensitive Four can become spiteful and vindictive, feeling justified in being so because they have been misunderstood, and because they have suffered so terribly. As Fours have a well developed emotional intelligence, they know how to wound with words, and, when they are unbalanced, feel incapable of restraining themselves. They tend to lash out at the very ones who have been most supportive and who might be trying to help them. If this causes the Four’s intimates to withdraw, the Four’s abandonment issues are likely to be triggered, resulting in a frantic attempt to re-ignite the relationship. This can become a recurring pattern in the life of an unhealthy Four.

That's part of it, but moreso, unhealthy fours are at such a low in self-esteem they punish themselves by taking their constructed persona to a riskier extreme. They're no longer just playing with a persona.

In the traditional Enneagram, Fours are said to suffer from “envy.” Fours often idealize qualities they find in others and then come to envy those same qualities. By a process known as introjection, they sometimes try to incorporate those very same qualities into themselves. This, in turn, once again, triggers the Four’s struggle for authenticity, as the idealized quality is seen as basically belonging to “the other.” The envy that Fours experience is a fundamental manifestation of the Four’s feeling of defectiveness and tends to be a recurring problem for type Four individuals until such time as they have learned self-acceptance. Often enough, the envy that Fours experience actually manifests as a longing…a sort of wistful desire that they too be capable of the simpler sorts of happiness that others seem so readily able to achieve.

Not quite. The four stays addicted to bleeding wounds that others have inflicted upon them in the past as a means of keeping themselves emotionally stirred up. Envy does not trigger a four's struggle for authenticity so much as it is a misguided attempt to put their broken pieces back together again by giving them something to strive for...a way to remake their life whole again and "rise like the phoenix."

Healthier Fours, on the other hand, are grounded in an identity much deeper than their currently chosen persona or their shifting emotional states. Healthy Fours retain their emotional sensitivity and receptivity without experiencing either as a source of pain and wounding. Having learned self-acceptance, they are capable of experiencing a sort of happiness that embraces both the light and dark sides of life. Their happiness is thus devoid of the grasping after pleasure that characterizes so much that goes by that name. It has a fullness and depth to it that is the deepest and truest source of creativity.

healthier fours find their center/strength by enduring through harsh situations...

[Breather]