Enneagram Type Four and Enneagram Type Six share some similarities in spite of focusing on entirely different things. Fours are a Heart type, whose deep desire for authentic connection is only equaled by their feeling unable to find someone who will truly see them in their uniquely flawed nature. Sixes are a Head type, and their need to be reassured is equaled only by their inability to trust anything they or anyone else say.
Both types can have a generally negative view of the world. Fours believe themselves to be flawed and disadvantaged and feel that they don’t belong because they lack something other people have. Sixes are negative because they are used to questioning everything that is apparently good until they have managed to squeeze something that can be considered iffy or untrustworthy out of it, and see the world as a dangerous, or at least precarious place.
However, Fours are unapologetic in their pessimism, whereas Sixes may often try to tone it down or even suppress it in order to ingratiate themselves to others (they can even come off as upbeat) to build up friendships and alliances. In general, Sixes don’t like putting others off because they subconsciously don’t want to make enemies, whereas Fours generally don’t like behaving in a way that is not authentic to how they truly feel.
Indeed, the theme of authenticity is a leitmotif for both Fours and Sixes. Sixes want someone or something to explain reality to them in a way that leaves no place for doubt and fear, even if that means identifying threats or enemies (in fact, average Sixes love to be told who or what their enemy or threat is). One of their great fears is of being lied to, or of coming into contact with people who keep their real agenda secret to them. They also fear that people won’t tell them the truth to avoid hurting them, but because they have a very good nose, Sixes often can smell something is off.
Uncertainty
Average Fours do not so much fear lack of authenticity as they feel disdain for it, and are often unable to bring themselves to play socially accetaple roles if that means not being true to themselves.
Another similarity lies in the fact that both Fours and Sixes often feel a great deal of confusion within themselves. In spite of being a Head type, Sixes often come off as emotional and stormy. This is due to their lack of trust in their own judging ability, which sometimes leads them to drowning in a glass of water. Sixes would love to be told the clearcut truth, but as soon as they are presented with (one version of) it, they begin picking the black and white apart until a chaotic mess of shades of gray is left.
Fours also feel a great deal of confusion, but this is due more to their inability to pin their own personal identity down to a specific set of characteristics, because they always end up discovering a part of themselves that doesn’t fit any definition.
An important difference between the two types comes from the fact that Sixes tend to be sturdy, gregarious and friendly, whereas Fours are generally individualistic and delicate and experience great difficulties fitting in. Secretly, Fours may envy people who do fit in, but outwardly they often show contempt. On the other hand, Sixes may admire people who manage to stand out, but they generally deem it safer to fall back in line.
Enneagram Type Four, sometimes called the Individualist, belongs to the Heart triad. Those of this Enneatype generally feel a strong sense of deficiency compared to other people, and tend to recast this sensation of lack by perceiving themselves as special or unique. They have a complicated relationship with others, as they both feel a powerful need to belong, be seen and find deep and meaningful connections, while also feeling that they can never truly form such relationships. Because of their focus on their own deficiencies, they tend to be well-acquainted with the negative side of life.
Enneagram Type Four
Enneatype Four Grows: Move to One
Average Fours have a very diffuse sense of agency. Sometimes Fours feel like a cruel destiny has doomed them to a life of suffering, and the best they can do is bear this burden with artistic grace by exploring their inner landscapes. This is, of course, nonsense, just like all other Enneagram mechanisms. Still, it is not uncommon for average Fours to be incredibily mopey and defeated even in conditions that others would consider relatively normal, if not optimal.
The path out of this mechanism lies in giving up their habit of navel-gazing and actually planning their way to self-actualization. It happens often that aging Fours often pine over lost opportunities (If I just hadn’t quit those piano lessons) because all paths to success usually involve the kind of drudgery that Fours feel they are too sensitive or special to persevere in. This can lead to Fours feeling that they have wasted their life, which only reinforces their sense of being doomed.
If they give themselves a roadmap, though, Fours can become more principled and disciplined, like healthy Ones. Ennatype One is known for their ability to stick to plans and principles for dear life. Furthermore, Ones tend to put their own feelings on the backburner to take a hard look at how things truly areand how they can be concretely improved, and this attitude certainly benefits self-absorbed, feeling-oriented Fours.
In integrating One into their life, Fours learn to balance themselves and to see and perceive the whole spectrum of feelings, not just the negative ones, and learn that the positive side of life is just as authentic as the negative one.
Equanimity, the Virtue of Enneagram Type Four
Enneatype Four Under Stress: Move to Two
Fours are one of the most self-centered Enneatypes, not necessarily because they are egotistic, but because they relate everything to themselves and measure themselves against others and others against themselves. This is where their passion of Envy comes from. For a Four, life is like being on one dish of a pair of scales, with others on the other dish, and one dish cannot go up without the other going down.
This complicated relationship with other people results in a typical push-and-pull behavior which expresses the unresolved tension within the Four’s mechanism: others are both the object of desire and of spite. Furthermore, Fours usually see themselves as more authentic than others because of their acquaintance with their inner darkness and their sense of loss and grief, and this often causes them to want to show their own authenticity in front of others, without regard for proper time and place. Unhealthy Fours may even rub salt in people’s emotional wounds (which Fours are very good at sensing) both to make them feel what “real life” feels like and to make themselves feel a bit better by comparison.
When this inevitably leads to people becoming stressed out about their behavior, Fours are suddenly reminded that, ultimately, their own sense of self is highly dependent on others (as for all Heart types). In an effort to patch things up, the stressed Four abandons all emotional honesty and becomes clingy, unctuous and pleasing, like average to unhealthy Twos. Like Twos, they feel that they can only find meaning in the eyes of someone else and become accomodating to a fault.
Often Known As: Individualist, Romantic, Melancholic, Artist (note that names are as limiting as they are revealing.) Sin/Passion: Envy Focus: on what’s missing and what they are missing Fear: that they’ll never be someone because they lack what it takes Energy Center: Heart (energy is transformed) Social Stance: Withdrawing Key Positive Traits (Embodied at their best): Quiet, Reflective, Sensitive, Intimate, Poetic, Compassionate, Authentic, Original, Bittersweet, A lover of beauty, Expressive, Elegant, Imaginative, A connoisseur of emotions and states of being, Individualistic, True to self, Complex, Deep, Empathetic Key Negative Traits (Embodied at their worst): Envious, Spiteful, Ill-wishing, Moody, Exaggerating, Egotistical, Unstable, Negative, Mopey, Pining, Despairing, Finding solace in others’ suffering, Given to Schadenfreude and to pouring salt in others’ wounds, Melodramatic, Fastidious, The only one who knows what suffering means Growth and Stress Directions: to One and Two respectively
Enneagram chart with Type Four highlighted
Introduction
It is hard to introduce Enneagram Type Four by presenting general traits, as Fours are a varied lot. Perhaps the most common thing you’ll see in a Four is their look of deep suffering, as though they have just come out of the shock of receiving some terrible news, or as if they are longing for the breath of fresh air that is going to anchor them to life. They often give off the image of someone who has lost something or someone important and is waiting for rescue.
Melancholy is a word that gets thrown around a lot with Fours, and for good reason. Fours are the most willing to delve into negative feelings. If a situation is not at least bittersweet, then it is shallow and unreal. For Fours, discovering themselves and their own complexity and seeing the tragic and poetic aspect of life is the same thing. They are often capable of great empathy with others’ suffering exactly for this reason.
Often attracted by beauty and by ideas of balance, equipoise and elegance, Fours tend to have an aesthetic approach to life, being disdainful of anything that they perceive as ordinary. In personal relationships they prefer deep, special bonds where they feel profoundly seen and understood, but they also tend to feel incredibly hurt when someone misunderstands them, which with Fours is a very easy thing to do, as they themselves often can’t put into words what they are about, peferring individual instances of self-expression to general definitions.
The melancholic cat, a good symbol for Enneagram Type Four
Core Mechanism
Fours are deeply focused on their sense of being defective in one way or another. “Something’s missing…” is their inner catchphrase. They feel that they alone have been singled out by life, fate or the universe to be a catalyst of misfortune.
The main area where they feel their deficiency is their inner self. Everyone else, life at large in fact, seems to “have it together” while Fours often struggle with their identity and their own path. Often, Fours scour their past in search of the incidents that have left them scarred or wounded as a way of tracing their current situation back to a mythical source, from which they can finally find their true path.
Initially this may be done in an attempt to heal, but it quickly turns into an exaggeration of the wound’s importance, to the point where Fours become identified with whatever negative experiences they have gone through–or, sometimes, even with whatever positive experience they manage to interpret negatively.
Because they are so unsure about themselves and their place, Fours tend to see the world as a negative place from which they wish to be rescued. They tend to hold out for a deep, meaningful connection with someone special who will see their specialness. In fact, even in their everyday life, Fours tend to romanticize the relationships they have, which of course creates the potential for disappointment.
Another way Fours cope with their condition, in addition to needing deep relationships, is to fantasize about better futures, alternative presents and lost pasts. This does not help them get out of their predicament, but in fact feeds their mechanism of feeling lost, which in turn makes them long more.
Passion
Four’s passion is Envy. Even etymologically, the word “envy” is connected with the sense of sight, as the latin word invidia means “the act of staring in an ill-wishing manner.” Envy is structually connected with what we see in others that we feel we lack or have been unfairly deprived of. It’s a gnawing sensation that the good things that happen to others are more undeserved than one’s current unhappiness.
Fours are deeply envious of others, but sometimes they don’t even know what it is that they are envying (often they don’t even realize they are envious). There may be obvious targets, but usually, behind it all, what Fours envy in others is a certain quality of “being-there-just-so”, the sense that others perfectly fit within the great scheme of things, while Fours have been deprived of this and have been somehow doomed to unhappiness.
Shakespeare’s Jago is the perfect embodiment of this idea, as he feels himself lost, uses this feeling to fuel his envy of Othello, which in turn reinforces his feeling of being doomed. Jago sees the ease, authenticity and naturalness of Othello’s behavior and overinterprets it, seeing all kinds of meaning behind it. In the same way, a Four sees the ease, authenticity and naturalness displayed by other people and comes to the conclusion that the cosmic mechanism is stacked against them and they can never achieve this ease.
Ultimately, a Four’s envy is broadly directed at what makes other people “normal”, and this may seem weird at first, as Fours tend to take pride in what makes them abnormal. But keep in mind that this emphasis on being unique is really a coping mechanism for the sense of desolation that Fours experience from not finding their identity and therefore a place for such identity (you can’t find a place for something if you don’t know what it is).
Envy, the passion of Enneagram Type Four
Misconceptions
A typical misconception is that Fours are all artists and that all artists are Fours. This is patently untrue. While it is true that Fours have a certain aesthetic approach to life, this can manifest in so many ways that reducing it to becoming artists would be silly. Just like being depressed doesn’t make you a Four, neither does being an artist.
In reality, a Four’s interests will depend on their background, education and personal outlook, among other factors. Furthermore, any type can yield great artists, though the art they produce can and often is influenced by their type.
Another misconception has surfaced in recent years, mostly due to the popularization of the Enneagram over the internet, and that’s the idea that Fours tend to suck the air out of a room as soon as they come in. This stereotype did not exist in the older literature, and has only come about due to the romanticization of this type in certain corners of the internet.
As a matter of fact, Four is among the types that are least likely to do something like this. It is much more likely that a Four will sulk in a corner looking mysterious and hoping to attract the attention of someone, so that they’ll finally be approached and asked if anything is wrong. While Fours can throw hissy fits, it is usually when they feel that they are being misunderstood or not seen for who they feel they are, or when they believe their feelings are being slighted.
Being somewhat like Baudelaire’s albatross, Fours may even resent the ease with which more outgoing and carefree people win over others and create meaningful connections.
Wings
4w3: Fours with a Three wing are usually somewhat more upbeat and image-conscious. They are the Dorian Gray’s of the Enneagram, with an intuitively aesthetic understanding of life, relationships and most other fields. Usually more outgoing than the other wing, their sense of uniqueness is a bit more conventional and dictated in part by considerations about social worth. Often impeccable in presentation and a tad more sensual.
4w5: usually, Fours who have a Five wing tend to have an intellectual, cerebral streak. They also tend to withdraw with greater determination from others and are usually interested in exploring themselves, their experience and their feelings from a more systematic angle. They are often philosophical and love thinking of themselves as deep. They dislike following as much as leading. However, they still retain the need for deep, meaningful and authentic relationships, although they can become despairing of ever finding any.
(note that wings can have some minor descriptive power in terms of superficial behavior, but they are irrelevant in terms of what motivates the person. Many people have no noticeable wing, while few show signs of both.)
