Mistyping Part 3: Contrasting Type Four and Type Six

One’s Enneagram journey only really begins when they’re accurately typed, but many people spend many years, even decades, mistyped. A great deal of the most prominent Enneagram teachers are themselves partially or entirely mistyped, which leads to bad information being passed on and canonized. This is complicated because not only do people typically overestimate their mastery of new systems (Dunning-Kruger Effect), they also are prone to adapting their own inner view of themselves to better fit into generic descriptions of personality types based on few points of resonance (known as the Barnum Effect. I’ve also written about a specifically Enneagrammatic-flavor of the Barnum Effect in Attachment Bias, wherein Attachment Types are structurally prone to adapting themselves, and their own self-view, to external sources of meaning as well as to downplaying the sharper distinctions between different types).

The issue of accurate typing is crucial to making use of the Enneagram, and yet, landing on one’s type is fraught with all kinds of issues, stemming from the most basic premise of the Enneagram: that we don’t see ourselves. The Enneagram is useful because human beings are largely unaware of themselves and lacking direct consciousness of what motivates them. We are “asleep” to ourselves. This is just a fact, and one we shouldn’t take personally. But it ought to motivate us to stay curious, vigilant, and to never take what we think we know about ourselves or the Enneagram for granted.

Despite the best intentions and most sincere efforts, much of the available material on the Enneagram is fragmentary, inaccurate, or just a work in progress. This invites us to embody the outlook of Type Six by continuing to search, to seek to understand, and to never buy into anyone else’s interpretations or descriptions too fully unless one has clearly seen it in themselves.

This essay is meant to compare and contrast, so while it does go into the inner structures of the types, it’s not a straight up description. If you’re not sure if you’re a Six or not, I suggest starting with this article.

I’ve written at length about mistyping in my articles contrasting Nine and Five and Nine and Four. The Nine and Four article will have more detailed information about Four if you have more need for clarity about what Four is.

Triads - Centers and Object Relations

When there’s confusion between any two types, it’s useful to get underneath surface level trait descriptions and the assumptions people bring to what a person of any type “looks like” by exploring triads. The Enneagram is divided into triads, with the most basic being the division of centers of intelligence: body (Types 8, 9, and 1), heart (Types 2, 3, and 4), and mind (Types 5, 6, and 7).

Each of these centers has three Object Relational affects running through it: Attachment (9-6-3), Frustration (7-1-4), and Rejection (5-8-2), so that there’s a body-rejection type (Type 8), a body-attachment type (type 9), and a body-frustration type (type 1). These two triads can be put together in a three by three grid, and while there are other meaningful triads, Object Relations and the Centers are the ones that illustrate what’s happening within the core structure of the types. These are the most important triads of the Enneagram, and they can be used to make sense of the type structures.

On the Enneagram symbol, the Attachment Types occupy the central triangle. Nine is the body Attachment Type, Three is the heart Attachment Type, and Six is the mental Attachment Type. These types tend to adapt themselves to their environment. By contrast, Frustration Types and Rejection Types are connected on the Enneagram by the hexad (the shape that connects points 1-4-2-8-5-7) and define themselves against their environment.

Attachment Types have the most variety and widest range of expression whereas hexad types (Rejection and Frustration) are much more narrow, rigid, and have greater trait consistency among different people of the same type. Therefore, while individual attachment types can be highly specialized, specific, and unique, it is much harder to make behavioral generalizations about each of the Attachment Types unless you’re able to grasp these types on a structural level. In other words, most people tend to think of “personality types” in terms of traits and behaviors, and, indeed, most of the available material on the Enneagram does try to represent the types in terms of traits and behaviors. Despite this, it’s not a useful lens to approach the Enneagram and has led a lot of unqualified, but credentialed, people to throw their hat into the ring of articulating the Enneagram in ways that have only led themselves and their audiences astray.

The emphasis on traits and behaviors in Enneagram descriptions has produced an intellectual dynamic where the surface traits and behaviors assigned to Attachment Types won’t feel intrinsic to their personality, but rather context-specific expressions while their “real self” feels elusive or better represented by a different type than their own.

Attachment Types’ “Two Sides”

Type Six is one of the more common types on the Enneagram, but despite this, most Enneagram resources haven’t done justice to the complexity of any of the Attachment Triad, Types Three, Six, or Nine. Attachment refers to the emotional conviction within these types that they must adapt themselves to meet people in their environment “halfway” so as to form a connection. Connection means acceptance, safety, and orientation for these types, so there’s a major difference in how an Attachment Type comes across when a connection is insecure versus when a mutual attachment has been made.

When an Attachment Type is insecure, people will typically see adaptive traits and behaviors while the Attachment Type’s genuine “inner location” is hidden. It’s not that they are intentionally hiding anything, nor do they experience themselves as hiding, but their attention becomes so wrapped up with the “object” that their own inner location comes out of focus for themselves.

Initially, others may see the adaptability, calm, and gentleness in Type Nine, the image-focus, competency, and upholding an image in Three. For Sixes, it’s a bit different, because they’re looking for orientation, not positive regard or for their environment to be smooth, yet as Attachment Types connection is still sought for. Nine and Three do a bit more to please in order to create an attachment, whereas Six puts more energy into evaluation and feeling out where others are coming from, but it's nonetheless typically accompanied by friendliness, charm, and a desire to win people over.

When a Nine feels secure, they will feel more freedom to act out their anger, moodiness, humor, attention-grabbing, and drama. A secure Three may feel more comfortable being emotional, goofy, disdainful, and unselfconscious. A secure Six may be more confident, self-assured, centered, bold, and original, but what a secure connection means for a Six is not so much about any particular behaviors and more to do with how their attention is oriented.

From the point of view of personality, the Mental Center is about finding meaningful and reliable ways to orient oneself to reality. We need a mental map to navigate living in this world. Part of being human is that we are able to imagine, conceptualize, and explore things via one or multiple perspectives, which changes the way we see things and make meaning. The Mental Center seeks to have an accurate and constantly-improving mental representation of reality as we learn, see, and experience more. Mental Types want to find a solid, trustworthy, and reliable mental map, but the problem is that the map is merely a representation, thus imperfect, incomplete, and subject to error, resulting in an inherent insecurity.

The Mental Types employ their dominant object relation strategy in an attempt to resolve this inherent tension. As an Attachment Type in the Mental Center, Six is looking for orientation by continuously drawing on input from trusted external sources, so their mind stays awake, vigilant, and mindful, seeking out new and better sources and means of knowing. Sixes recognize the fallibility and incompleteness of their own perspective, so they can orient themselves by way of understanding how others see the world as an anchor point from which they can make their own decisions. For a Six, a “collective map” is more reliable than any individual’s construction of reality.

On one hand, this makes Sixes curious, highly versatile, and capable of adopting a wide variety of skills, especially when the expectations and perimeters are clear. On the other, it creates a tendency wherein Sixes unconsciously believe confident inner knowing will eventually come by staying overly attentive to the outside. This searching and openness leads to a situation where Sixes give too much weight to these sources of guidance without developing confidence in their own discernment, intuition, and inner directedness.

Unconsciously, Sixes are seeking to align their perspective with those they’re forging an attachment with, and to additionally reinforce that sense of being on the same page. They may abandon their own inner guidance or overlook or explain away disagreements and divergent points with their attachment objects. Sixes can also unconsciously become hooked into dynamics where they’re trying to win someone's support or validation who will not give it to them in what we refer to as “attachment to disconnect”.

When an attachment is forged, they want to keep the attachment going, so Sixes want ongoing co-creation and participation with trusted others in updating that map. This makes for the engaging, often playful aspect of Six. Sixes are working out their orientation in a way that invites others active participation and engagement, and they will actively check in and make contact with those trusted connections in a way that Type Four, as a Withdrawn Type, simply does not.

When a Six is secure, they typically still reach for engagement, but the need for alignment lessens and they can express themselves behaviorally more freely. Their relaxed mind feels comfortable and safe to explore its own perspectives and conclusions without fear of losing support. Their thinking, knowing, and interests come more from themselves, based on their own values and inner guidance, and the need to check themselves against the outside decreases. When they feel at ease, you often see a very intellectual, creative, and original thinking style in Sixes.

This is typically missed in the majority of descriptions of Six, which emphasize loyalty, anxiety, fearfulness, and maybe some of Six’s contrarian tendencies, but almost always overlook much of Six’s inner life and gifts. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find remarks that Six is a kind of “catch-all” type for people who don’t fit into any of the others, a kind of “blank” type. This is due both to the failure of Enneagram “experts” to deeply understand Attachment Types, but also because Six, like all the Attachment Types, can have difficulty narrowing in on what is “the real me” because of this adaptive feature of their personality which we’ll further cover in the Identity section below.

Therefore, Three, Six, and Nine’s emphasis on meeting others halfway can make it seem like there are two sides to these types, and most descriptions only account for one facet. The vast majority of type descriptions fail to account for this distinction, and most Attachment Types will identify more strongly with the side of themselves they know and experience when they are secure instead of the behaviors and strategies they employ to secure a connection. This is especially true for Six, whose tendency to overthink and adopt many perspectives at once can lead to the Six seeing some of the commonly-written-about tendencies in themselves like anxiety, loyalty, and humor as not reflective of their core self.

This is not to say that only Attachment Types show differences when secure or insecure, but types on the hexad generally fix themselves against the environment and double down on less adaptability under pressure.

Take note that when referring to a secure attachment, I’m not talking about secure style within Attachment Theory, nor does “secure attachment” mean that things feel good. Instead, it means that the individual Attachment Type will feel there is enough of a bond that they can show themselves more fully, warts and all, and the other person won’t abandon them.

So, in this context, a secure Attachment may result in both an easeful relaxation of type patterns as well as all kinds of acting out that would have been viewed as threatening to a new connection. An insecure Six that has a “secure” bond may act out by provoking, high emotional reactivity, and testing if a partner will abandon them or not.

Why would a Six mistype as a Four?

Type Six and Four are very different from the outside and inside alike, so even though mistaking one type for the other is common, it’s kind of confusing why this would happen. The psychological dynamics of Type Six outlined above stand in sharp contrast with Type Four, but due to Attachment bias and other issues, the language and distinctions used to describe Four by many popular teachers and resources better fits with the inner experiences of Types Nine and Six.

One of the first mix ups between these types is that Fours get the reputation of being the “emotional” type, and Sixes that lean more emotional will often identify with Four. Other big reasons are that Fours are typically described as feeling like they don’t belong, feeling misunderstood but desperately wanting to be, and having issues with identity. These qualities either describe both types, or just describe Attachment Types and not Four at all.

Sixes are Mental Types and Fours are Heart Types, which superficially would suggest that Fours are more emotional and Sixes are more intellectual. This is a misunderstanding. Sixes and Fours, along with Eight, are both Reactive Types which means they tend to honor and express their reactions and, conversely, want to know the genuine reactions of other people (instead of the persona they may put forward). This gives both types an emphasis on “realness” and authenticity, but something that it sometimes takes Sixes a while to see in themselves is that their emotions are usually in reaction to their thoughts, meaning that the Mental perceptions come first.

So Sixes can be highly emotional, and they are often more overtly emotional than Fours because Fours are Withdrawn Types, meaning they separate themselves from others and tend not to expose their inner states. Fours emotional reactions come from a feeling that begins in the heart, typically related to identity and image.

The reactivity held in common by Six and Four is why both types can have a whiny and self-victimizing quality. Both can feel unfairly targeted, but with Six, there’s often a sense that they have been doing things “the right way” and yet are being unpunished or met with unfairness. They often feel they don’t “deserve” their misfortunes, which can be combined with a paranoid sense that others are unfairly targeting them or out to get them in some way. With Four, their self-involvement and over fixation on their own states can make any pain or frustration “newsworthy” in the Four’s mind to those in their vicinity. The image a Four projects, which we’ll cover in the next section, is also typically rooted in the way they feel frustrated and “missed”, and they can make this woundedness a central part of their self-presentation.

Additionally, we tend to associate the heart with love, care, and connection. Mental Type and highly relational are typically not associated with one another, so relational Sixes often believe they must be a Heart Type and can get identified with any of the three types of the Heart Center.

Identity and Image

Attachment Types often relate to the way Four is said to have issues with identity. Type Four, along with One and Seven, is a Frustration Type, which means that they have a deep emotional conviction that whatever is in their environment or experience that could potentially offer whatever it is they need is somehow lacking, off, or just “not right”. Again, any type can chronically feel frustration, but these types are organized around frustration.

Fours are Heart Types, and the Heart Center is about how we know and express our identity. Type Four seeks identity through individuation and introspection. This Type represents the wholly personal and interior facet of identity, of who or what one intrinsically “is” apart from the environment, apart from early life experience, and even apart from such determinations as the physical body. Four represents the part of us that wants to see and know ourselves as our core, intrinsic, fundamental character - our innermost kernel of something that is “our own” - distinct from anything else.

Being the Frustration Type of the Heart Center means that Fours feel over-certain about their identity on a feeling level, and anything coming from outside themselves is seen as inadequate, frustrating, not good enough, and has no resonance with their identity in any meaningful way. Frustration in the realm of identity is “expelling” nearly everything as irrelevant to their sense of self, reinforced by Four’s over-emphasis on their distinct individuality that others can’t understand. This is comparable to Type One sensing some impurity in their body’s holding environment, rejecting it, and trying to fix the issue, but in the arena of the Heart Center, it will be some kind of over-assertion of their unique individuality. This is why Riso and Hudson call Four “The Individualist”.

Fours are image types, which is another way of classifying someone as a Heart Type. The term “Image Type” speaks to one of the central struggles faced by all egos, but is at the fore for types Two, Three, and Four, namely that our heart is the source of our experience of identity, but when we lose presence, we lose that contact with our essential identity. When this happens, each of these types becomes fixated on ways of trying to fashion an identity out of psychological activity and accompanying behaviors instead of making deeper contact with their hearts. They lose their sense of what and “where” within oneself one can draw identity from.

Instead of simply being themselves, they become preoccupied with “producing” a sense of identity – externally, through behaviors that correspond to a way they wish to be seen, and internally, by clinging to certain reactions, feeling states, and self-representations that correspond with how they see themselves. This fixation on “how they see themselves” is why they’re called Image Types – they begin to relate to a self-image when they feel they’re unable to touch directly into the authentic heart.

Being attuned to and mirrored by our parents is a major part of how all human beings come to recognize and validate their own identity. We begin to see ourselves first through our caregivers' eyes, which gives us the foundation to see ourselves directly as we mature. Fours were frustrated by the quality of reflection and mirroring they received in early life and essentially gave up on the hope of being adequately seen by their caregivers and all potential future (psychological) objects.

They turn their attention inward in order to “see themselves”, but because the wounding happened at such a young age, the capacity the Four has to provide this psychological function for themselves is developmentally immature. Therefore, Fours are not truly providing themselves the quality of mirroring they desire, so their identity feels brittle and deficient. This brittleness and deficiency is part of why they must constantly use frustration to “push out” and separate from any external influences - something coming in from the outside could contaminate or overwhelm their identity. To compensate, Fours get caught up in the ego-project of over-defining themselves against the outer world, which is seen as shallow and artificial, and against external demands on their attention that would take away from attending to their inner life.

Thus, Fours have a kind of emotional over-certainty about their identity, rooted in a very specific feeling sense and a deep frustration that nothing external seems to fit. Because of those early wounds around not having truly been mirrored, it’s as if Fours are stuck on continuously reinforcing and asserting their unique identity instead of simply “being” themselves as they go about life.

What Fours expose of themselves to the outer world is an image that conveys their separateness, “different-ness”, unknowability, and uniqueness in their clothing, aesthetic, attitude, and affect. They are trying to show you that you cannot actually see them.

The image they project is meant to communicate a sense that their inner self is inaccessible and that it doesn’t belong to the mundane world while incorporating aspects of themselves they think their object might reject, like that they’re too broken or complicated for their object to value. It’s a kind of challenge to the outside that also reinforces the frustration affect.

Fours get caught up in trying to make their external image more intimately reflect their inner experience of themselves in such a way that can make the image they project somewhat caricaturish, one-dimensional, and excessively specific. At the same time, their image also acts as a kind of proxy for their real self, a hedge against letting in the wrong kind of attunement that would re-trigger their original wound of not having been seen by not risking the truly vulnerable self-revealing.

In fact, when someone presumes to see or “get” a Four, outside of special circumstances, such assumptions are likely to repel the Four. Feeling that one is too easily accepted or understood is taken by the Four as a sign either of confirmation that they aren’t being seen or that their identity is too banal and not unique.

Sixes also struggle with identity, but not on a developmental level. Instead, it’s their Mental Center view of themselves that creates difficulty. They can talk themselves in and out of various narratives about themselves. This is compounded both by their adaptability and because Sixes can find themselves pulled into widely different relationships, subcultures, and vocations throughout their lives, they can have difficulty knowing “where they belong”. It’s not as Heart-Centered as it is for Fours. For Sixes, their conflicts with identity are less about how they represent themselves to themselves and more about how their identity markers locate them within a larger map of people.

In seeking belonging with their attachment objects, Sixes can abandon parts of themselves, losing touch with their own inner guidance and personal will, leading to uncertainty about what is their own versus what they’ve adopted. Thus, they can feel like they don’t know who they are because they can’t locate how this collective point of view would classify them.

To deal with this uncertainty, some Sixes are prone to identifying with roles, social identifiers, causes, or subcultures. They may pit themselves against this “collective perspective”, which can lend to a rebellious and contrarian way of being for some Sixes. This stance can be mistaken for Fours’ emphasis on being separate from others, but generally, it is often in reaction to an established norm and Sixes will look for like-minded friends who are similarly “on the outside” whereas Fours emphasize their singularity without adapting.

Sixes very much want to reveal themselves, to feel a part of something, to be “met” by others. Individual traumas aside, typologically speaking, Sixes’s main difficulty in feeling a lack of belonging is how they may have self-abandoned in order to be available to the outside, but in losing connection with that part of themselves. Sixes will inhibit parts of themselves for the sake of creating and maintaining psychologically safe connection with sources of regulation and orientation, but they can project the reason for that self-abandonment onto others instead of seeing it as part of how their personality is unconsciously bargaining for support. This can then be construed as not being validated, and thus, not feeling understood by others.

The wounding around being misunderstood is frequently erroneously attributed to Type Four as its chief obstacle, but in light of the above, the language around the wounds of Type Six and Type Four are not sufficiently clear and precise in most Enneagram resources.

Misinformed Descriptions

One of the principle reasons for the confusion of Six and Four comes from the man who came up with the Enneagram of Personality, Oscar Ichazo. Ichazo was brilliant, and despite the limited public access to his teachings and writings, from the available material it is clear that Ichazo was refining and working things out over time.

In The Enneagram of Fixations, The Original Teachings by Oscar Ichazo, Ichazo referred to Four as the “Over-Reasoner”. Perhaps he was referring to the Four’s tendency to excessively dwell on their feeling states, or maybe his characterization of Four was simply entirely wrong. What tends to happen in the Enneagram is that a trusted authority or early authoritative author makes a claim about a facet of the Enneagram, and even if it doesn’t make sense, people will perform elaborate mental gymnastics to make certain associations “work”.

Ichazo explained the Four fixation as, "Reasoners are profoundly aware of others’ motives, and with a higher perspective they can become insightful readers of character motivation and behavior. Because they constantly exercise their analytical prowess, Reasoners develop their minds and their inquisitiveness which, along with their analytical perspective, become recognizable parts of their personality."

Fours tend to be intuitive and their introspection often makes them good at reading what’s below the surface for people, but the second sentence above seems pretty bullseye for Six. Ichazo continues, "Reasoners have a tendency to overthink and to fall into a detailed analysis of circumstances with extended internal dialogues where they face imaginary interlocutors." Separately and taken together, this is dead-on for Six.

Alternatively, he calls Six “The Adventurer”, which he describes as, “Adventures are preoccupied with the possibility, or rather impossibility, of making things better by improving their doing. This excessive preoccupation and subsequent fear lead them to become over involved in adventure and risk-taking. These experiences can be life-threatening, making them reticent and cautious, so they withdrawn from doing and feel overcome by their uselessness”

This picture hardly makes sense. Adventurers are preoccupied with the inability to improve things, so they have risky experiences, which then makes them cautious and useless? It’s incoherent in one short paragraph.

Let’s take some examples of Four descriptions from a popular source and break down why a Six might resonate with them and how they fail to describe Four. One of the major Enneagram schools with the Four descriptions that are most divorced from how Fours actually are is The Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition (It’s from this influence that Ian Cron developed his Enneagram “understanding”). On their website, it starts with bullet points:

“I long for what’s missing, distant or unattainable – the ordinary pales in comparison.

My deep sense of abandonment translates into a belief that I will never be fulfilled.

I envy and idealize what others have that I don’t.

Authenticity and meaningful experiences are essential to me.

My suffering sets me apart from others.”

A problem one runs into when describing any personality type is that most traits and behaviors are shared by many different types, so sometimes critiquing any specific point made about a type out of context is a little unfair because one has to approach depicting type behaviors are expressed like probabilities or clusters of likelihood that a type typically defaults to more than other behaviors. It’s the context from which these behaviors arise that makes the difference.

So, for example, “I long for what’s missing, distant or unattainable – the ordinary pales in comparison.” This is certainly true for Four, but it's sort of true for most everyone.

The frustration affect of Four makes everything “not quite it”, and can fixate them in longing for some unattainable ideal. From the Attachment perspective, Sixes can also feel like something really essential is missing. It could be the kind of support and guidance they seek, or it can be those things projected into a certain person, like a loved one who is absent. In addition, Sixes can adapt themselves to create a bond, but in adapting, they can feel like a part of them has to remain hidden away or otherwise unmet in the relationship which can turn into a feeling that something is missing. Depending on an individual’s history, this sense of something missing can be minor or all-consuming, regardless of type.

This simple point highlights how specific and precise Enneagram descriptions ought to be to avoid confusion. “Longing for what’s missing” is too general to be the first highlight of only five that classifies a type. The website has additional content, but, for example, looking at the selection of videos on the Four page, it is obvious that none of the people in the videos meant to exemplify and speak to the Four experience are actual Fours. All except one of them seem to be Type Nines.

The Six section of the website features these bullet points:

“I am preoccupied with safety and security concerns.

I greet everything with a doubting mind and contrary thinking.

My vigilance, active imagination and intuition help me anticipate and avoid problems.

I question authority and people until they gain my trust.

I procrastinate because I fear making the wrong decision.”

Some Sixes will relate to these, but most Sixes probably won’t due to the excessive emphasis on security. Going off of these bullet points, they ignore the multifacetedness of Six and provide no acknowledgement to the fact of Six using the Mental Center for anything but avoiding practical problems nor is the relational aspect of Six acknowledged.

What would this type be if the individual didn’t have an anxiety disorder? What makes for a Six when they feel safe? Does their personality just go away? Obviously no, but much of the available Enneagram material couches Six in this deeply unflattering and one-dimensional way. It’s no wonder Sixes frequently mistype.

Sixes do have insecurities, and safety concerns can be just one of many ways those insecurities show up. Plenty of Sixes, even Self-Preservation Sixes, don’t give physical security all that much attention because the insecurity of Six is about the reliability of their mental map and how well it reflects truth and reality. Therefore, it’s not just a case of bad descriptions versus good ones. These poor descriptions speak to a failure to understand the psychological dynamics that give rise to behaviors, and the only way to make a description that every person of every type can find useful is if those descriptions display a working understanding of the psychological forces beneath surface appearances.

Superego Versus Withdrawn

Withdrawn, Superego, and Assertive are the three Hornevian Triads, named after distinctions inspired by the work of Karen Horney and describe each type’s basic approach to meeting egoic needs as applied to the types by Don Riso.

Fours are Withdrawn Types. They feel burdened when having to put their attention on matters that seem irrelevant for their ego-project of reinforcing their identity and self-image, so they separate themselves from others and cut off others' access to themselves. Sixes are not withdrawn, though they can have periods of seclusion or introversion (especially with a Five wing). They, along with One and Two, are Superego Types, which means that they feel compelled to do what’s right or expected in accordance with internalized ideals.

This makes for a very different quality between Six and Four, wherein Fours are withdrawn, inward focused, and often are too unavailable to even allow themselves to be around something they don’t like, Sixes are engaging, contentious, and have a strong sense of duty or obligation. Fours are highly self-absorbed and self-focused, meaning they will neglect obligations and brush off expectations if the whims of their inner states.

Sixes are vigilant, attentive, and second guess themselves against what they “should” be doing. It’s typical for a Six to overestimate how withdrawn and introverted they are, especially in contrast to Type Four, who finds it necessary to have extended periods of being unreachable, to come across to others as unapproachable, and to stay away from relationships and professions that demand a lot from them.

A vital distinction that highlights the Superego orientation of Six against Four is that Fours typically feel superior to others, while at the same time deeply hating themselves. This paradox is often confused for Six’s own fluctuating self-esteem. However, Four's narcissism is just “there”. “I’m special and unique” is the message they’re upholding to themselves. This can collapse, but just as Twos have pride in being the most loving and Threes are convinced they have value that just needs to find the right outlet of expression, Fours have their own superiority.

Sixes are far less comfortable with superiority and narcissism and abhor arrogance. Sixes, it is said, have an anti-narcissism bias and can become fixated on calling out the narcissism of others. Sixes feel they have to “earn” their positive self esteem and any additional superiority, which can add additional strife for a Six who feels they “worked hard” and “earned it” but others don’t appreciate or care for what they went through.

A Six in this position may not recognize they were applying metrics to themselves that no one explicitly asked them to, which may have made them struggle excessively. They may develop a chip on their shoulder because of how far ahead some people got by coasting in various ways whereas the Six may feel the hurdles they faced, and may have imposed on themselves, hurt their potential. In extreme cases, some Sixes can become entirely fixated on the person who has either wronged them or simply wasn’t subject to the negative set backs the Six was, and they can develop a “negative attachment” (an attachment to disconnect) to this person - needing to call them out, fixating on whatever they display to others, and seemingly unable to divert their attention back to themselves.

Despite their aversion to self-centeredness, narcissism can unconsciously “leak” and be expressed through their self-focused sense of victimhood. Sixes with especially strong reactions against narcissistic tendencies in themselves and others can unconsciously use being misunderstood as a way to make themselves the center of attention and “the perfect victim”. It’s a way self-centeredness can have permission from their own superego to be expressed because it is “earned” by their superegos metrics. This can lead to some unhealthy Sixes gravitating toward people, situations, and dynamics that allow them to fly the banner of victim or recipient of wrong-doing, using self-sabotage or repeated disasters as a way to hold others attention and be at the center of their own drama. It’s a way of demanding attention without being “guilty” of asking for it or openly wanting it.

Attachment to Disconnect

So circling back to how “longing for what’s missing” can apply to Six, Type Six has an emotional conviction to adapt to the external object. They may recognize the inadequacy of the object of attachment or even the disparity between their own alignment and the objects, but they will try to psychologically close the gap by adapting.

Attachment Types have longing for that which is missing or distant because they are seeking connection and prioritizing connection more than Frustration and Rejection Types do. However, part of the “trap” of being an Attachment Type is that they over-adapt, and in the process, they lose touch with parts of themselves. In losing touch with aspects of themselves, they may unconsciously modify their desires and “settle” or otherwise feel that the person they’re attaching to cannot really reach their “true self”, which has been covered over by the very adaptations that were meant to facilitate connection. Many Attachment Types can find themselves in relationships with individuals or communities that they feel ambivalent about - they appreciate them and the connection, but in the back of their minds they know it's not quite right.

A Nine, Six, or Three may then long for someone or something that would bring out their “true self”, that they could connect deeply with while fully honoring their authentic boundaries, emotional location, and self-expression, leading to idealizations of a more complete connection. Unconsciously, Attachment Types can seek out relationships in which they will be deeply unseen or otherwise unmet, which serves to psychologically motivate the Attachment Type to get into adapting behaviors in hopes of winning over the connection or validation they want but will never get from this particular relationship. Thus, it reinforces the ego-project of adapting to connect but not actually “connecting”.

The ego-activity of Attachment is adapting, but if there’s nothing to adapt to, then the ego doesn’t know what to do or how to be. Getting what one really wants would put an end to so much of the suffering, fretting, and activity of the personality, so it seeks out external situations that will maintain the same internal dynamics that were forged in childhood and have been reinforced ever since. This dynamic is especially true in cases where the individual was really missed by their family in childhood.

This pattern of seeking connection with attachment-objects that can never actually connect we refer to as “Attachment to Disconnect”, a term coined by Czander Tan. It’s like going back to a dry well hoping to find water over and over again. Attachment to disconnect is another way of describing that feature of Attachment Types having two aspects, their adaptive persona and “true self”.

Obviously, no one wants to be rejected or without connections, but, as Withdrawn Types, Fours are very reticent to allow connections and are prone to be put off by most gestures of friendship or commonality. Too many demands, an expectation of conformity, or any attempt to tamp down a Four’s individuality will cause a Four to bow out immediately.

Abandonment

This brings us to the second phrase from the Narrative School: “My deep sense of abandonment translates into a belief that I will never be fulfilled.” As we’ve detailed, both Four and Six (every type, really) have a sense of unfulfillment, but it’s more acute and ever-present for Four and becomes a much greater part of Four’s self-image. Attachment Types, in contrast to Four, can feel extremely unfulfilled but have a much greater hopefulness that fulfillment is possible, which feeds into the seeking of an attachment-object and adapting.

Further, though, is that “abandonment” and the feeling of either having been abandoned or fearing abandonment is often attributed to Four, but in actuality just really isn’t a central concern for Fours. This line of thinking usually goes that Fours felt abandoned because something was wrong with them or that they were deeply flawed, and this sense of early childhood rejection was internalized, leading to a type that is essentially an issue of poor self-esteem and feeling estrangement from all these external things they wish accepted them or they belonged to.

In actuality, the frustrated dynamic is that whether an early life experience that was brutal or one that was quite good, in neither case was the Four adequately “met”, and instead of feeling abandoned, the Four is frustrated. In the infant Four’s psyche, the parents weren’t capable of doing their job of mirroring and “meeting” the Four’s essential identity correctly, whether there’s any truth to this conviction or not. In a sense, the Four child has “abandoned” the parent as inadequate. Perhaps it could be argued that this actually is a form of feeling abandoned, but in their often-abrasive expressions of individuality, most Fours do not live their lives as if they are hedging against being abandoned.

If fear of being abandoned or preventing a re-activation of such a primitive wounding was what was driving Four, you’d see a lot of behaviors and strategies to keep people in relationship with them when Fours are notoriously individualistic, self-referencing, and moody to the point of alienating others.

Sixes, however, put enormous energy into making sure that they have the support of loved ones and that there is connection and alliance between themselves and valued others. A lot of the energy goes into checking in on the status of those they care about. They actively work against losing others' support, and many Sixes will approach a relationship with a sense that there are emotional stakes of whether this new connection will be a source of support or abandonment, rather than neutrality. Some Sixes can even become so preoccupied with abandonment that they can be consumed with feelings of perceived rejection from people or groups that, if their wounds weren’t being activated, the Six probably wouldn’t care for in the first place.

Abandonment may be too strong a word for some Sixes, but there’s going to be an emotional charge around support, enrolling the support or connection of others, and active working against support being lost in Six that just isn’t a concern for Fours, who easily feel burdened by too much connection.

Fear versus Envy

Envy is the name of Type Four’s passion, their core suffering. Colloquially, envy means desiring what another person has or wanting to have qualities another person embodies. However, as with all the names of the Passions, that’s not what it means in the context of Four just as Lust doesn’t mean sexual desire for Eight nor does Gluttony mean overeating in Seven nor does Fear for Six meaning just being afraid all the time.

Envy is an attempt to describe the dynamic frustration outlined above, the chronic disappointment and frustration that everything is somehow discordant with one’s inner sense of unique identity in a way that one feels compelled to reject it all. Further, envy is a frustration that the personality itself is an inadequate source of identity. Despite how much the Four tries to uphold an image of being meaningful, special, and unique to themselves, the personality never quite feels real enough, which leads to further introspection and self-analysis in order to uncover that “real self” within.

The Narrative School’s website uses the statement “I envy and idealize what others have that I don’t” as an indicator that someone might be a Four, but idealizing what others have suggests some kind of affinity with someone outside oneself or some lack of originality. If there’s something someone else has that I could have, that means it’s not unique. Sixes longing for orientation, support, or belonging are likely to relate to the usual sense of envy rather than the specialized Enneagrammatic meaning of it.

Certainly, Fours can experience envy in this colloquial sense on occasion, but that’s a far cry from the kind of persistent core emotional suffering that is represented by the Passions. The Passions are the engine of suffering that fuels the types. From another point of view, they’re attempts to describe the subjective experience of the object relational affect. Thus, Envy is a form of frustration as it expresses itself in the Heart Center. Fear is a form of Attachment as it expresses itself in the Mental Center.

Fear is not the state of being afraid. Instead, it’s a dread-inducing existential angst of feeling that one is without any fundamental support. From another angle, Fear represents the recognition on behalf of the Six that no matter how accurate and reliable their inner map of reality is, it’s still a map, still incomplete, and fundamentally a representation, not a reality. This perpetual sense of incompleteness and inadequacy produces a deep anxiety, especially when a Six becomes directly aware of their orientation coming from a mental construct. The result is disorienting, distressing, and produces a feeling that some larger force, like the universe or “god”, has abandoned them.

Authenticity

The Narrative School’s website further has the statement “Authenticity and meaningful experiences are essential to me” attributed to Four, but probably every type would claim authenticity as a core value. Authenticity gets widely associated with Fourness in a way that generally means disliking phoniness, wanting truth, an interest in people’s “realness” versus their presentation, and representing oneself as who one really is. Not only will Type Six relate to all of this, but these features better represent Six than Four. Sixes are major bullshit detectors and are interested in the truth of who people are beneath their presentation. They want to ascertain a person’s character.

The Essential Quality for Type Six is Truth. Sixes want to discern what is real and true. They pay a great deal of attention to other people and their environment to see into whatever is real and authentic in the moment. Because of this orientation toward things true and real, consistency is a big value for Sixes. Sixes like it when someone is reliable and dependable and try to exemplify that quality themselves.

Sixes, like Fours and Eights, are Reactive Types, and both Sixes and Fours honor their reactions, sometimes too much to the point of being disruptive and alienating others. Sixes can sometimes allow their emotional reactions too much freedom of expression in the name of authenticity.

Type Four wants to be true to their identity, and this desire to be true to themselves is what authenticity means to Four. They will be rigidly true to themselves and their every emotional impulse at the expense of their well-being, relationships, and practicality. But because it can come from a reaction to their or from their own self-image, it can read to others as very inauthentic, dramatically show-y, or like they’re artificially amping themselves up.

Further still, Fours place a special emphasis on aesthetics and creativity because, for Fours, they are non-conceptual ways of giving expression to aspects of one's identity. Because of this, Fours can sometimes have a way they knowingly “play a character” in a theatrical sense because they often feel like there’s an insurmountable gap between their inner self and their outward persona. This can seem quite inauthentic to others, and Fours can play looser with inauthenticity than Sixes.

That’s not to say Sixes can’t be inauthentic. Under stress, Six can move to unhealthy Three, where they start to worry they are losing support and try to compensate by demonstrating their value. Overworking is the most common form this takes, but Sixes can also start to put up various fronts and displays that are meant to be tough, impressive, or showy, even though the insecurity behind it is fairly obvious to those around them. It’s a performance that doesn’t come from confidence and belief in oneself. For the most part, however, Sixes really dislike this kind of behavior in others, despising arrogance, phoniness, and undue pride. Sixes would much rather be an important part of a collective effort than try to be a stand-out “special” attention grabber.

This point touches on another valuable contrast between Six and Four. Fours are potentially the least functional type on the Enneagram, only with Five giving them a run for their money. Individual Sixes and Nines may have periods of difficulty functioning or taking care of themselves, but generally speaking, these types, being adaptable, can get the hang of practical life without too much trouble, especially if no one is enabling some kind of self-neglect.

Fours, on the other hand, have a very limited bandwidth for normal, practical functioning and therefore keep practical requirements demanded of them to an absolute minimum. Fours can hold jobs, but as Fours are out of touch with their Body Center, picking up and sustaining practicality comes at a high energy cost for them. Typically, Fours have to carve out their own niche in terms of finding jobs that allow them the space and downtime they require.

A Six might absolutely hate their work, but when it comes down to it, they are very good at doing what they feel is required and putting aside personal feelings. Sixes are typically hard workers, with a strong “get it done” attitude. They are loyal and conscientious, so it’s not uncommon for Sixes to bust themselves working hard for a job or employer they don’t like for far too long than they should.

Self-Involvement

We’ve compared Six and Four narcissism and arrogance above. Some Sixes can under-value their own and others' subjectivity as overly biased whereas Fours are overly-involved in their own inner life. This goes beyond just being emotional. Their attention is focused inward as if they are studying some kind of precious endangered species within themselves, greedy to take in every new impression that arises within. While Sixes are similarly attentive to the outside, this kind of self-absorption is often off-putting to Sixes. Additionally, Sixes have a natural sense of collaboration, duty, and responsibility that makes self-involvement or excessive subjectivity distasteful in their eyes.

This inner-attentiveness and the need to express their individual identity leads Fours to hyper-personalize everything. When it comes to their job, their standing in romantic relationships, their living space, Fours need to put their personal spin on everything, often to the point of excess. This can be very annoying for some Sixes, who, as Superego Types, are typically dutiful and usually uphold a sense of purpose that goes beyond their personal agenda. So while Fours can over-personalize and be self-indulgent, Sixes can be somewhat procedural, looking to guidelines, expectations, and goals. Fours make themselves exceptions, Sixes usually try to be models of whatever milieu they feel connected to, whether it’s their work or whether it’s something like a music scene.

The last bullet point is, “My suffering sets me apart from others”, and we’ve covered where this can stem from in the paragraphs on reactivity as well as in the sections on frustration and attachment. Both Types can hold this perspective, but Fours build up their self-image around being set apart, whereas Sixes yearn for a lack of separation.

Engagement

Woven throughout this article are things Sixes and Fours share as well as where they diverge, but one stand out quality of Six that is in marked contrast to Four is that Sixes are typically relational and engaging and this is paired with an active mind. This means they’re consistently alert, attentive, and working things out. They seek out and enjoy connection and reinforcing those connections.

Celia, a Type 6 describes, “If we focus on the premise that head center is narrative construction, Six is, I guess, wanting objects [people they’re attached to] to co-write the story with them. Even when it's not fixated/driven by insecurity it's still the default.” In other words, in seeking a reliable orientation and good inner “maps”, Sixes recognize that this project is never complete, and they thereby seek and enjoy those they trust in and feel connected to to be active collaborators in “working on the map”. Thus, Sixes actively seek those out who could “play” with them on this level. Their thinking style is collaborative and systematic, accompanied by a human, often playful, charm.

Often, this engaging quality shows up in Sixes as being quite talkative and social, but even if they have long periods of solitude, in American culture, Sixes can overestimate their introversion and withdrawnness, partially because they can see themselves as not fulfilling social expectations of extroversion. Sixes enjoy feeling people out, getting to understand others, and reaching shared perspectives.

In contrast to Fours, Sixes are often thinking about externals like other people or systems, while Fours are usually preoccupied with themselves. Fours are withdrawn types, which lends to disengagement from others, of having little attention and energy for other people. Combine that with being a Frustration Type, and the quality of withdrawal isn’t like Type Nine’s drift into fantasy but a rather sharp pulling away, like slamming a door.

Fours are also not truly collaborative. Even when working on a team, they’re highly self-referential and will automatically, but unconsciously, single themselves out or distinguish themselves. Sixes have a natural collaborative quality and typically thrive in such dynamics.

Sixes and Fours are very different types that are confused far more frequently than would seem possible if you’d just met a handful of Sixes and compared them to a handful of Fours. Written descriptions are what we have to work with, but they’re prone to all kinds of miscommunications, so parsing out these distinctions is important if the Enneagram is to be a tool that is actually useful for its purpose in helping us deepen awareness of ourselves and one another.