Responding to "The Heart of Type 4 - Demystifying Four Lore"
This article is my response to The Heart of Type 4 - Demystifying Four Lore
Published by Monique Lacoste on Empathy Architects July 31 2024
Someone brought this article to my attention, and I think it’s worth commenting on because it gives me an excuse to nit pick from a specific argument instead of responding to a generalization of “what people think a Four is”. I’m not a paid subscriber to substack, so I cannot comment on the post directly. Further, in the article, she calls out “#nota4”, which stems from my friends and I.
In my view, this article is a clear demonstration of my claim that Type Four is typically defined and understood in ways that don’t reflect the actual structure, qualities, and traits of Type Four thanks to Attachment Bias.
Presenting a counterpoint to this article provides an entry into getting into detail about how Type 4 works that an overall “type description” would likely miss and that few mainstream Enneagram sources capture, largely because nearly all Enneagram descriptions are re-statements of Ichazo and Naranjo’s work. This means that most Enneagram content is not updating to accommodate new insights and deeper understanding, but rather, it is typically passed on without a sense of how the surface traits are connected to a deeper psychological structure.
The article is also a very well-written and clear articulation of a common and compelling view of Type 4, what I call the “Attachment Four” as opposed to the “Frustration/Hexad Four”, but in missing the core elements of what Four as a personality structure is “doing” and reacting to, it takes traits and features that are connected to Four but runs away with them influenced by Attachment bias. Therefore, the “Attachment Four” depicted in this article would be a very compelling one if not for some of the newer, more accurate distinctions that the author paints as characterizations of the fixated expression of the Four personality, specifically in light of the Frustration Affect. Presenting and arguing counterpoints is also a useful way to learn.
I don’t know the author nor have anything against her personally. In this response, I’ll be drawing on vocabulary used by Josh Lavine and his developmental view of the Centers of Intelligence in this article, because I think it’s the best and most objective depiction of the inner workings of the types. By responding to this article, I’m not intended to denigrate the author, but to, point by point, show what’s typically dropped from accounts of Fours based on the terms and distinctions typically used by most authors to characterize Four.
ATTACHMENT VERSUS THE HEART CENTER
The author acknowledges that some interpretations of Type Four have “softened” (I would say “blurred”) what it means to be a Type Four to the point that have led to a great deal of mistyping (in particular, the “Self-Preservation Four” of The Narrative Tradition). She asserts that in reaction to this mischaracterization, an overcorrection has been made that has likewise misrepresented Type 4. So she seems to be correcting the overcorrection by basically returning to the original mischaracterization of Four (albeit hers is more considered than most) that led to so many problems in the first place.
The author makes reference to #nota4 specifically, but she mischaracterizes our arguments and definitions throughout. The author states, “Some attempts to clarify the 4 ego structure have reframed the type in ways that align only with average to lower-level type expressions.”
By “levels”, she is likely referring to the Riso-Hudson Levels of Development, which I’ll address along with what a “healthy Four” is like in the last section of this article. Examples she provides of these “lower level expressions” are notions that Type Four is “uninterested in connecting or relating to others”, “cold-hearted and unempathetic”, “inherently selfish and happy to be seen as such”, and “have a concrete, eternal sense of self”. If these are meant to characterize my ideas on the topic, she’s missed the point. I’ll address each one.
One of the first distinctions she makes for entering into Type Four:
"The Heart Center is also known as the Image Center. The heart is concerned with value, worth, identity, and who we believe we need to be in order to be loved."
This second sentence is Attachment in a nutshell, and in characterizing the heart in this way, as almost entirely relational, it leaves no space for what Type Four actually represents.
In my view, the primary error in this article represents, one which is typically at the center of the crossroads between good Four descriptions and inaccurate ones is confusing the heart center with attachment. This is an incredibly common mistake for a number of reasons.
Attachment Bias is a bias of understanding that I’ve written about here. It refers to assumptions of greater sameness and universality of human psychology and motivation than is actually true. In the Enneagram, Attachment refers to the triad of Types Nine, Three, and Six. Each of these types has a reflexive openness to other people in their environment that is accompanied by an inner pressure to adapt themselves, to revise and mediate their sense of their own needs and wants based on what seems possible within the social milieu.
Attachment is a kind of harmonization with others and one’s environment in a way that specifically entails adapting one’s own location. These types are prone to adapt their boundaries, their sense of their self-image, or their mental orientation in relation to the expectations and zeitgeist of their interpersonal environment, and, likewise, they both seek and expect others to receive and adapt to them. These expectations and assumptions are all largely unconscious.
Attachment is just one of the three Object Relational Affects that characterize the core relational response an infant has towards its holding environment with Rejection and Frustration being the remaining two Affects. Attachment, like Frustration and Rejection, has its roots in early-life merging with our mothers, the universal human template for love. In all three object relations do, representing coping with some way that merging was disrupted or wounded. Attachment felt the wound and, in a sense, said, "this isn't what I wanted/needed, but I'll make due with what I can get". By contrast, the Frustration response is along the lines of "this isn't what I wanted/needed, let me try to fix this".
As a result, types on the hexad of the Enneagram, the lines connecting points One to Four, Two, Eight, Five, and Seven, are often interpreted from the perspective that doesn’t account for how the priority of these types is not to harmonize with the environment nor adapt themselves, but to actually solidify their sense of self against the environment before it feels safe to adapt. Thus, as a Frustration Type, the core need for a Four to differentiate and individuate themselves, i.e. to distinguish their separate and unique sense of identity, can be difficult for Attachment Types to conceptualize, and most especially, how far Type Four goes in that regard.
Attachment Types do tend to have a certain “energy” around individuality and individuation, as kind of sense that it is important and necessary, but there can be a flavor of self-consciousness around it as well as ambivalence. Fours take separateness and distinction, as well as its importance and value, for granted, but they’re no less prone to.
Don’t assume that Attachment Types are mindless conformers or lack their own defined characteristics. In the United States especially, there’s a culture of labeling everyone else as conformists or “sheep” while anxiously trying to convince oneself of being a true individual (it can be any type throwing this accusation). The temptation to recognize adaptability and jump to some kind of conformity or lack of individuality is a projection of one’s own anxiety about how "individual” one is or not.
The primary reason that the heart gets confused with Attachment is that there are an abundance of Attachment Types in the general population, so naturally, they bring their lens to bear on interpreting the Enneagram. Secondly, there seem to generally be fewer Heart Types compared to Body or Mental Types. Thirdly, by far the most common “Heart Fix”, from the point of view of Trifixation (Trifix), is Three, which itself represents a difficulty with “being in the heart”. Finally, according to Trifix, each “fix” or fixation has a sequence of priority, meaning an order through which we are typically aware of or in contact with the psychological “layers” of body, heart, and mind. Most people are not only not heart types and have a three fix, most people’s Heart Center is the last in their Trifix order. This contributes to a widespread “heart-blindness” in the population, and this is reflected in how much language of the heart is in terms of either emotional reactions or connection.
This is a nitpick, but the author states that the Heart Center is also known as the Image Center. It’s true that people sometimes do refer to the Heart Center in this way, but image is not a Center, nor is the function of the Heart primarily about Image. It would be equivalent of calling the Body Center the boundary center or the Mental Center the concept center.
"The Heart Center also focuses on how we give and receive attention, which is one of the truest expressions of love. Heart types are intimately aware that humans live in and through their connections."
This emphasis on the heart center as connection and love is attachment, not the Heart Center. The heart isn’t found through connections, but it is the part of us that can genuinely connect. When paired with conscious presence, Attachment is a doorway for connecting, whereas Frustration can become a style of the heart connecting to itself, and Rejection can be a way the heart gives.
Attachment and the Heart are not completely unrelated (neither is Frustration nor Rejection), but Four specifically represents the aspect of the heart that is not rooted in connection, just like Five represents the part of the mind that is specifically not referencing outside sources of orientation and trying to create its own map/own orientation.
In contrast to Attachment, the Heart Center is about personal identity, the “feeling of self”. Identity, or more specifically our capacity to directly know and perceive our own identity, does develop through relationships and connections, but identity, and the heart that holds our identity, is ultimately about self. It consists of the “substance of who we are” that we locate through the medium of feeling. The heart is often associated solely with feelings and emotions that are thought of as in reactions or relations rather than their own stratum of consciousness. Feelings can be expressions of self, but they are not self, while emotions are typically responses to bodily states and instinctual reactions.
So what is the relationship of Four with the heart as distinct from Attachment?
Every single type represents an overemphasis of a universal dimension of the psyche because each type itself represents one of the three fundamental expressions of the three fundamental psychological stratum through which we experience consciousness, the body, the heart, and the mind.
In the Types of the Heart Center: Type Three represents the aspect of the identity that is known and expressed through actualizing one’s potential, and Type Two represents the aspect of identity we know and experience through relationship and connection. Four represents “who I am” independent of connections or outside influences - what is the part of the heart that only I can know and experience, and how do I embody and express it? How do I stay true to it in a world that constantly seeks to draw me away from myself? Alexandra Arroyo-Acevedo characterizes Four as representing “allegiance to self, whether or not it is viewed positively.” This aspect of identity is the need for loyalty to inner selfhood regardless of anyone’s feelings about it.
The aspect of the heart that Four represents is very often entirely neglected and overlooked in most conceptualizations of the heart. In other words, what Four represents, and what the Four ego distorts, is an over-emphasize on Individuation, the need to find, live into, and express the aspect of identity that is “one’s own”, apart from outside influences and conditioning. Individuation is often understood and expressed as “becoming whole”, which is an equally valid interpretation, but that is also often interpreted through an Attachment bias as having no specific psychological “location”, connected to everything and anything. Individuation has many facets, but a principle aspect involves having, developing, and holding an internal feeling of oneself. Thus, part of individuating is holding onto a separate and unique identity.
Individuation is one way to describe “becoming what you are” psychologically, and this is the facet of consciousness that Fours over-emphasize. This does not make it unhealthy or fixated, in and of itself. Separate individuality is the wholly personal aspect of identity that is “for oneself”, its an indispensable sense of one’s intactness and self-completion in the “expression of consciousness” that one is. It is the achievement of individuation, and a necessary step in the realization of what A.H. Almaas terms the Personal Essence. Therefore, just as “our essence is unified with the whole of creation” is a central aspect of spiritual development, so is the articulation of our independent selfhood.
As a result of Attachment bias, that which 4 represents becomes erased or the Four personality’s need for separateness is judged as “unhealthy”. It's akin to singling out Nine’s need for harmony as unhealthy or One’s need for goodness or Five’s need to forge their own uninfluenced orientation or Eight’s need to be powerful as unhealthy. All ego structures are inherently protective and in response to wounding, so in that sense they are all "unhealthy", but the need for connection or sameness is simply a neutral need, it’s not “good” or “healthier” than Fours need for separate individuality. One may say Four’s separate identity is false, but from that perspective, isn’t a Nine’s harmony? Two’s love? These types distort these facets of human experience, but none are themselves negative. If this aspect of Four is overlooked, then what the author describes is not Four. To have a “complete Enneagram” within oneself, one needs separate identity and harmonious universal connection.
IMAGE
"Because the heart is the seat of the image, all Heart types are attuned to how they are seen. “Image” can’t exist without the mirror of another set of eyes, without the echoing reaction in another heart. This core truth about the Heart types has been derided in many online discussions about 4, where the idea proliferates that 4s “don’t care how they are perceived.” But this argument ignores both that 4 is a Heart type and a fundamental truth about human identity formation, which is that our sense of connection with an “other” is what allows us to develop a sense of self in the first place.
…As Heart types, 4s are just as dependent on seeing their own value reflected back to them as 2s and 3s."
“Self-image” is primarily the image one upholds within oneself to oneself. It's an internal, necessary psychological fiction, an indispensable part of the personality. The self image is about how one sees oneself, which is just as true for Types Two, Three, and Four, as well as the “Heart Fix” in Tri-fixation.
Types Two, Three, and Four have different relationships with how this image is perceived and maintained, inwardly and externally, and how much as well as what kind of validation is needed. The terminology can get confusing, but most of us use the term “image” to describe the outward expression of the self-image, or how we want to appear to others, both literally in our “look” as well as in the qualities we want to project for others to see in us. The outward image is used to gain validation to “sell” ourselves on the reality of our internal self-image. The self-image, however, is not identity, but a psychologically-useful approximate expression of identity.
The internal self-image can be more or less in sync with one’s identity. It’s more than likely that everyone has experienced someone whose self-image is greatly out of sync with their inner identity, which increases their insecurity and need for external validation of the outward image. When we haven’t had adequate mirroring, our capacities to know and experience our identity are very weak, so the self-image and its outward representation are given more weight. Thus, someone who is narcissistic, for example, has little sense of their own identity, and therefore relies disproportionately on outside validation as well as an inflated internal self-image due to the tenuous connection to their inner identity.
Threes assertively seek outside attunement to an idealized self image. They recognize their identity as potential, and they attach to outside positive gaze as a way to try to confirm for themselves that potential and bring it into manifestation. It’s as if Threes throw out aspects of identity that they are hoping are recognized by another set of eyes, which helps the Three land on or believe in the valuable aspects of their own identity. When a Three is more connected to themselves, the aspects of identity they express and present are more authentically in alignment with their authentic core (and are more vulnerable), whereas a fixated Three will assert and present things that they wish were connected to their authentic self.
This line in particular, ““Image” can’t exist without the mirror of another set of eyes, without the echoing reaction in another heart.“, speaks heavily to not only an Attachment bias, but even a Three Fix bias, for it is representative of how Three navigates locating their sense of identity. There’s a great deal of framing the heart and identity as situated in the “activity of relating”.
Twos uphold a self image to themselves as one who gives love and attunement, but they entirely reject outside gaze out of a shame-based fear that outside attempts at attunement will either miss their sense of identity or will reveal aspects of their identity that conflict with their self-image of being loving and nurturing. In other words, they become the “gaze givers”, as if to override any outside gaze that could reach them in order to avoid the pain of a “miss”. Their “giving of gaze” functions as a kind of self-confirmation of their self-image, and thus, if a Two is not inwardly secure, then to be a position of receiving gaze can deeply threaten this “role”, subverting the “self-confirmating gaze-giving”.
So yes, how we all see ourselves has its roots in the mirroring we received in early life, which was a template for developing the “inner eyes” to eventually give ourselves self-seeing, but a self-image is primarily for oneself.
It's not that Fours don't need or want validation, nor that they don't care how they are perceived, but it's an inaccurate leap to situate the self image primarily in relationship and validation without addressing the “self-seeing” aspect. A Four will value validation, but if they aren’t validated or mocked, the Four’s strategy is to dismiss the others’ gaze, to deem them shallow or stupid as a protection from inner shame.
SHAME
Shame is not directly referenced in the article, but it’s worth covering anyway. Shame is the affect that underlies the Heart Types, akin to the Rage of the Body Types and Anxiety of the Mental Types. Rage, Shame, and Anxiety arise in response to a lack of presence with the Body, Heart, and Mind. They are like painful compensations that are not just negative reactions, but they also perform specific functions, like helping us to protect ourselves, to maintain a persona, and to stay alert, in the absence of each Center being awake and performing its role.
Like most terms used to make distinctions within the Enneagram, the word shame is not being employed in the colloquial sense. The usual use of shame is interpersonal shame or social shame of the feelings of regret and inadequacy we experience when we step out of line from the expectations of others. The shame underlying the Heart Types is primarily intrapersonal shame. It’s much deeper and existential than interpersonal shame. It’s a sense that one’s identity is fundamentally deficient and unreal, but it's primarily felt to be so in one's own eyes. Invalidation of the self-image threatens to upend the faith one has in one’s own self-image, or, in other words, interpersonal shame can induce intrapersonal shame. As described above, the relationship to self-image speaks to how each Type manages and staves off this kind of shame.
Shame is yet another facet of Four and the Heart Center in general that is subject to Attachment Bias. Many Nines, for example, experience a great deal of shame due to their efforts to be connected to their environment while also sensoring aspects of themselves that might elicit negative reactions from others. This would amount to a great deal of interpersonal shame, stemming from Nine’s reflexive introjection of the expectations and comfort levels of others. Contrast this, however, with Type Four, who is prone to presenting themselves and acting in ways that are at odds with others or are intentionally provocative in order to emphasize their separateness and signal their disinterest in abiding by the interpersonal expectations and pressures other types might be prone to putting value in. If you know a Four, you’re likely well acquainted with how others are often embarrassed for them, while the Four barely registers the issue. Fours often act in ways that most other types would find shame-inducing.
ENVY
"For 4, the mental fixation of melancholy and the passion of envy create an ego structure that internalizes the Heart center qualities, underplaying emotional expression and overplaying a need to differentiate and create distinction. 4s have incorporated the gaze of others as an internal “watcher,” objectifying themselves in a never-ending quest to match their outer image with their idealized self-image."
To me, this is incredibly indicative of an Attachment bias. The heart is itself internal, the ego doesn't need to internalize Heart Center qualities (I’m not even sure what that means). The need to incorporate the gaze of others is describing the ego structure of type Three. There is a strong Three influence in how this person experiences one’s relationship to the heart. Even still, neither Four nor Three are reflective of this picture of an internal “watcher” surveilling how their self-image accords with other people’s expectations. I don’t know where to place this characterization except that it may be confusing the Mental Center with the Heart Center, or Six with Four.
"...For a fixated 4, the love affair with pain can feel like the only truth of life, the only “reality” the heart can accept."
This is a note I see replayed a lot by people who can’t seem to conceptualize how Four works, which is that Four sees only painful feelings as meaningful and that's why Fours are negative. Why would only painful feelings be meaningful? Why wouldn't all feelings, if genuine, be equally valid? It seems like there's an assumption here that the characteristic negativity is artificial or purely performative and just unmerited.
Fours want to be in touch with themselves, but being functional and staying in touch with oneself are very difficult as exemplified by the struggles of type Three. Threes lean into being functional, Fours lean toward trying to stay in touch with themselves. The negativity of Four is frustration at how difficult and humiliating this is, and so Fours both dismiss the outside demands (devaluing them) and feel hostile toward a world whose demands force Fours to "leave themselves". Hence, Fours see the outside world as artificial and shallow and worthy of disdain. The pain associated with Four is the pain of feeling like one must leave oneself to live in the world, so negativity has the psychological function of keeping the outside world “out” of oneself, of expunging outside influences and outside gaze, so the Four can stay in tune with themselves. However, to stay true to oneself means to suffer an incompleteness of being unable to fully live as one desires - ie staying true to oneself compromises one's instinctual desires:
A Self-Preservation Four feels envy that their lifestyle both can’t fully reflect their inner sense of identity but also typically means going without wealth, security, even health.
A Sexual Four feels envy that their search for intensely unique sexual chemistry results in an inability to feel generally desirable or to have all parts of themselves be as desired as they crave to be desired.
A Social Four feels envy that their adherence to their identity means that finding love, connection, belonging, and care from others is extremely difficult and rare, thus to be oneself is to be painfully lonely.
Envy, the passion of Four, is both frustration over the conflict between inner loyalty and outward functioning, as well as a lament for what they lack as a result of staying loyal to their inner self.
The Passions of the Enneagram are terms for the core emotional sufferings of each type that are both expressions of their dominant Object Relations Affects (Attachment, Rejection, Frustration) as they experienced in their dominant center (Body, Heart, Mind). They are named from the Seven Deadly Sins because the Passions stem from the same tradition of tracking what emotional patterns distract us from maintaining our attention on our inner life that the Seven Deadly Sins come from. Passion, in this case, refers to Pathos, suffering.
People hear the Passion of “envy” attributed to Four by Ichazo and tend to see it in the colloquial sense of the term, as coveting what other people or qualities they embody. This is in line with how Ichazo himself understood Envy. But why would Type Four, which is so preoccupied with their own unique individual identity and eschewing outside influences, want to be like others or desire what they have? Envy, rather, is as described above, as a response to the gap between loyalty to inner self and having to function in the world as well as suffering the perceived cost of staying true to oneself.
PREFERENCES
"A 4 in this state has wholly identified with their particular, highly cultivated and considered tastes, insights, and aesthetic preferences and expressions, using them as tokens to assure themselves and others of their originality and distinction. "
Fours tastes can devolve into self-assurances of superiority in stress, as self-validation of their self-image, but for Fours, the primary value of their preferences are that these preferences are seen as “signals” coming from the roots of their inner self, and thus, are valuable and precious “threads” for the Four to stay connected to their inner self. They are less self-assurances and are more like lifelines to maintain a line of connection between their outside and their innermost core. As Fours become more fixated, these preferences are clung to and exaggerated, even ones that are quite silly or insignificant, as bridges to the authentic inner self.
HOLY ORIGIN
"For 4, that idea is Holy Origin. Holy Origin implies that this entity we call “self” is a mere mask, a facade designed to help us function in the world by obscuring the truth that we all come from the same source, from an essence we might call Being. Holy Origin shows that our natural state is one of wholeness and connection, where nothing of importance is missing because our essence is unified with the whole of creation. "
For Holy Origin, referring back to A.H. Almaas in Facets of Unity, "...with the perception of Holy Origin, we see that what appears in that unfoldment is never disconnected from being, since it is being... so Holy Work (Holy Idea of 7) emphasizes that there is always an unfoldment taking place, and holy origin emphasizes that this unfoldment is always an unfoldment of Being... you never leave Being." I read this to mean that one's individual and particularized identity is an “unfolding” in and of itself, yet nevertheless it is intrinsically connected with and an expression of Being itself. In other words, one's unique identity isn't something one has to give up to be connected to Being. It's an expression of the unfolding of Being.
This article’s author's emphasis on wholeness and connection while dismissing the separate identity as a mask is yet another red flag for Attachment Bias.
"The experience of separation from Being gives 4s a sense of loss and lack, the feeling that something is “missing” in their core and that they have been abandoned by the Universe. As a result, 4s tend to reject their inner self as insufficient, inadequate, unlovable."
Once again, I read Attachment Bias in this - the idea that the inner self is insufficient, and if it was sufficient, then they wouldn't have been abandoned by that source "out there". Attachment Types seek to connect with their environment, sometimes abstracted as “the universe”, and feel abandoned in their feeling of disconnect from that source. Attachment Types strategy is to reject their inner self as inadequate, hence their adaptability. They are unconsciously willing to leave their inner location to meet the environment “halfway”.
Type Nine’s Passion of Sloth is exactly this sense that they are inadequate at their core. It is, at its root, a giving-up of will. Sloth a sad give-up of self (emphasis on sadness, acedia being one of the original words for the capital sin of sloth, meaning sad listlessness. Sadness suggests acceptance, which is a flag for Nine, whereas frustration is lack of acceptance), so they adapt themselves to be acceptable and connect/harmonize with their environment. Likewise, Type Six’s Passion of Fear is the fear that one is fundamentally unsupported, which is actually a valid insight into the ego-structure, yet it lends itself to a lack of confidence, an incapacity to make sound decisions and move forward in life independently. At its root, like Sloth, the Passion of Fear is a kind of incapacity, a sense that one’s selfhood is not able to exercise will. Vanity, the Passion of Three, is likewise a giving-up of one’s will to value by leaving “the one who determines value” in the eyes of those who Three wants positive attention.
By contrast, Fours fears that if they connect to the source "out there", their unique selfhood will be engulfed/dissolved/lost (you can see the closeness of the experience of avarice with Five next door). It’s a “false-will” rooted in a Frustration Affect of rejecting the outside. The Holy Origin says, no, that unique selfhood originates from being. your selfhood is preserved and connected.
"The perspective offered by Holy Origin is out of touch for the fixated 4 because they are attached to the need to be made out of finer things than the rest of humanity in order to feel valuable. "
No, Fours need 'to be made out of the finer things...' is the Fours egoic attempt to purge itself of outside influences, so as to then more clearly hone in on "true self".
EQUANIMITY
" Equanimity is a state of emotional equilibrium. In this state, one could feel or experience any emotion without being thrown off-balance – emotions of all types move through you while the core self remains calm and centered. "
Equanimity is not actually having emotional equilibrium, it’s having a deeper place that is free inside that can be with the emotions and reactions without being identified. it's not a lack (of emotions) or calming of emotions necessarily, though calming can happen as a result of practicing equanimity. Thus, it goes against the authors framing of this Virtue.
"As the 4’s sense of self is built on shifting emotional states, preferences become a way of maintaining and heightening those emotional states."
Fours self is not built on shifting emotional states. They are actually quite fixed in how they grip onto "self", and their experience of self is not as malleable as Attachment Types’ can be. Fours emotional states "kick up" the more threatened Four feels by the outside influencing or "washing out" their inner connection to themselves. It's like a way of pushing against the influence of the outside in order to maintain a deeper connection to self. “The world is horrible and ugly!”, for example, is a way of saying “no” to the world/the outside, in opposition to the connection Four wants to maintain with their inner self. Having to do laundry and take shits and pay taxes and have regular jobs are events that Fours typically feel both take away time/energy spent connecting with self, are humiliating to and are out of sync with the values of one’s inner self. This is why living “normally” is painful to Fours. It’s a constant pressure to compromise against being themselves.
HEALTHY FOURS
“What does a healthy Four look like?” is a common challenge to the view of Four presented here. I think this question primarily comes from the assumption that the Four structure is, by default, unhealthy as well as the relative rarity of Type Four compared to other types. This assertion is often met with the accusation that I am only trying to assert how rare and special and unique I am, as if referencing an impersonal personality structure is how I derive my unique identity. The rarity of Type Four simply fits my experience, and it’s exemplified by how difficult it is for many people to understand what Four is about.
This question is not asked nearly so much in regards to other types. Take Type Eight, for example, a type that can likewise have a strong independent and overtly negative expression of itself, I think, because one can naturally guess how assertiveness, taking up space, and having a strong will can be on a spectrum of domineering to powerful. It’s not so with Four, because, as addressed above, separation’s role in individuation is commonly not understood at large.
To understand how a healthy Four presents, we have to do a little unpacking about what “health” means in context of the Enneagram.
As Don Riso was working to understand the Enneagram as he wrote Personality Types, he became aware types were not static, but that each type was a psychological structure that relaxed or contracted under stress and pressures. The degree of contraction is the level of fixation, and what gets fixated is our consciousness. This means that our attention becomes contracted into limited psychological patterns and, as a consequence, our sense of identity becomes narrowed to these patterns. As a personality structure relaxes, a person becomes less neurotic and their behaviors less compulsive. Their identity becomes more distinct and yet more fluid and adaptable as it is associated less with the structure it can find itself bound to.
Over time, Riso noticed that there was a universal pattern of this constriction and liberation of consciousness across types, and with help from Russ Hudson, he noticed there were nine distinct levels within each type that charted shifts in consciousness and identification at each level.
The first three levels he deemed “healthy”. Levels 4 through 6 were “Average”, and levels 7,8, and 9 are “unhealthy”. The numbers assigned to these levels is merely numerical and not
associated with the numbers of the types. The distinctions of healthy, average, and unhealthy represent existential shifts in identification.
Whether Riso was aware of it or not, the top three levels of health represent ego-transparency, a living felt sense that the personality is not the source of one’s identity. Reading Riso’s work, I personally don’t believe he fully grasped what he discovered because his interpretation of health seems to abide too closely with descriptions of good mental or psychological health or having a healthy personality. It’s not that there is no relationship between good mental health and the Levels of Development, but the Levels are measuring something different altogether. Health, from the point of view of the Enneagram, is often confused with happiness and having a functional personality. Happiness and contentment are attitudes, and one can have a happy attitude at a low level of health thanks to the way that their ego is validated and achieving its aims. Likewise one can be extremely miserable but profoundly free inside, and thus, at a very high level of health. Modern attitudes toward mental health, a functional and content ego, along with the terms healthy, average, and unhealthy themselves, have confused what the Levels of Development are actually depicting.
The evidence for this claim lies in Riso’s own terminology for the levels, beginning with Level 4 and down. “Level 4: The Level of Imbalance/ Social Role” A person at this level tends to be great, well-liked, functional, but the imbalance here is the complete identification with the personality. It can be a healthy personality, but nonetheless, one is not identified with Essence in any real way here. The “Social Role” refers to how, at this level, each person is “doing their type”, they live in the world of their type. The role they play with others consists of the gifts, outlooks, and sometimes annoying parts of their type, and that’s all their identity consists of.
“Level 5: The Level of Interpersonal Control” At level 5, a person is manipulating themselves and their environment to defend and reinforce the reality of the Social Role of level 4. In other words, level 5 reflects a lack of faith in the identity one’s personality is supposed to provide, so narcissistic inflation or enforcement and defensiveness come online here. “Level 6: The Level of Overcompensation” is just above full on mental illness, and a person here is going to be very privately controlling, defensive, even cruel in supporting their ego-agenda, with no sense of self apart from their ego structure. Even though it’s still within the Average levels, it’s nonetheless both pathological and common.
Level 4 is functional, even happy, but there’s no living contact with Essence. Levels 4 through 6 are called average because the majority of the population exists on these levels. Levels 7 through 9 represent a collapse of the personality structure into mental illness and perosnality disorders. Recovery from these levels is nearly impossible without the intervention of professional help.
However, in the healthy levels, one has a personality, but not all of what one experiences themselves to be is captured by the personality structure. There’s something free inside. At Level 1, at least how it is described by Riso, one has achieved freedom from the personality. Identity is rooted in Essence, not personality. Levels 2 and 3 likewise represent a living recognition that one’s identity at least partially has one foot in Essence.
So in light of this, we can have a more nuanced sense of what a healthy Four is than a Four with a good attitude. A healthy Four is, like any type, still their type, while also being inwardly free. Their inherent and reflexive self-separation is still in operation, but they know that is just how their personality orients and functions without taking the whole of themselves to be these patterns. Fours can be soft, compassionate, humorous, dynamic, adaptable, spontaneous, happy, and joyful like any type, but Fours will retain a certain distance from others. There’s an inherent otherness or separateness in the Four’s point of view, but it’s not clung to or needlessly elaborated on. Their image will still somehow be presenting their “not on the same page” aesthetic. They will not readily embrace things coming from the outside, and they will be self-referencing.
Returning to the authors mischaracterizations of the “‘#nota4” arguments,
Examples she provides of these “lower level expressions” are notions that Type Four is “uninterested in connecting or relating to others”,
Healthy Fours are interested in connecting with others, but interest doesn’t mean open or leading with this interest. They don’t have a superego about needing to be interested or display that interest. Fours are also specific and fussy, even in health. They typically aren’t sending out invitational signals. A person putting out such energy isn’t necessarily healthy, either.
“cold-hearted and unempathetic”,
As in the prior remark, Fours can be very emphatic, warm hearted, kind, and even effusive (they have a line to Two afterall), but it’s selective and not part of their self-image. Thus, it’s not something they are intentionally signaling or advertising. They do tend to come across as unapproachable, een offputting, even when healthy.
“inherently selfish and happy to be seen as such”
In light of all that’s been covered, Fours have little complusion to play along with others, to make others comfortable, or to regulate or sooth others. Thus, their natural sticking to their own preferences and location often comes across as rude, selfish, or unhealthy. A healthy Four isn’t selfish, but they’re still rooted in their own subjective experience above that of others. Its akin to Eights awareness and identiy being rooted in their power and high energy. It’s simply what they are and manifests different from Levels 9 to 1.
“have a concrete, eternal sense of self”.
Fours sense of self is not necessarily concrete, but it is specific and feels, if not fixed, consistent, though elusive. Their core sense of identity is like something that can’t be gazed at directly, but something that can be seen only through the periphery of one’s inner vision. There’s an element to a Four’s sense of identity that if one sees it too clearly or characterizes it or attempts to label it, it changes or withdraws, almost like the attempt to observe it makes the identity pull back deeper into an inner mystery so it has to once again be discovered circuitously. This is a different quality of change than the adaptation of Attachment, in that Fours are trying to tune in to an inner sense of self that can never fully be brought to light. In that same vein, its consistency, depth, and its connection to Holy Origin does give it a sense of being “eternal” or existing in a place apart from the functional “dayworld”. This is the grief and Melancholy of Type Four, the sense that what they are is forever incompatible with the outer life they’re forced to lead.
DEPTH AND THE RESOLUTION OF INSECURITY In HEXAD FOUR
The final point to end with is that the “Attachment Four” represents a lack of faith in their own unique identity, needing validation and to internalize others validation to feel secure. By contrast, the “Frustration/Hexad Four” has faith in their own unique identity, and they remain loyal to this interior sense of identity in self-defeating and embarrassing ways. What we see in actual Fours across the spectrums of health is this fidelity to their inner sense of self, with the difference being that in low health, there’s a great retreat away from the outer world to preserve the connection to their inner self, in line with their withdrawn stance.
Therefore, it’s clear that what I’ve been referring to as the “Frustration Four”, or the view of Four informed by the consideration of them being both Frustration Types and Heart Types, explains the aspects of (correctly typed) Fours we can all observe while providing a clearer insight into the inner workings of both the type itself but also its place in the Heart Center. In other words, Four represents inner loyalty to and perseverance of one’s personal, separate, and unique identity against the demands of the outside world, and the struggle of Four is how to be their authentic selves while being a functional, instinctual human being.
The most common challenge I get to the Hexad view of Four is the one expressed in the “Demystifying Four Lore” article, something along the lines of “well what’s a healthy Four look like, then?”. I addressed that above, but it’s a question I would turn back against the “Attachment Four” view. The “Attachment Four” is fundamentally insecure about their own uniqueness, and, in a sense, ready to take on the validation (or lack of) of others as statements on this identity.
What is a healthy Attachment Four when it’s not insecure anymore? Typically the answer is that the negativity goes away and they feel content to embrace their unique identity. Easeful, grounded confidence in their unique identity that grants themselves permission to freely express their full sensitivity and full range of self, warts and all, regardless of how others may feel about it? Isn’t that exactly a healthy Nine? From this perspective, the healthy Four loses any distinct flavor from Nineness. How would this be any fundamentally different than an Attachment Type’s struggle of being too open to their environment? How would this reflect the Frustration Affect, and further, how does that struggle represent something that all personalities contend with?
We can see in Seven and One, the other Frustration Types, that both of these types have a strong sense of what they want and both types dismiss others/the environment when they don’t get what they want and try to “get it” themselves. Ones try to fix the environment to be up to their standards whereas Sevens venture out to obtain and experience what they crave, the obstacles or disapproval of others be damned. We can see how the “Hexad Four”, whatever their level of health, says “I’m going to be me at all costs” and separates from the outside world. They can do this in a fussy, frustrated childish way or from a place of inner peace. This petulant confidence characteristic of Frustration Types lacking in the validation-seeking “Attachment Four”.
Our type is a how we’re fixated, but the highest levels of health, we’re still expressing our type, but from Essence. The Essence of Four is Depth, presence’s quality of inexhaustible dimensionality, that the source of our central identity continuously emerges from a ubiquitous mystery, and to be with that mystery is to be ever more saturated by it. This quality of indeterminacy and unknowing is not the result of an inadequacy of consciousness but is itself a property of consciousness and our authentic identity. This is what Four knows and feels connected to on some level, whether in health or deeply unhealthy, just as Threes always know they have some kind of potential to fulfill, whether they’re on the right track or not, and Twos always know they have love to give, whether they’re giving that love from for its own sake or to validate and protect their own self-image. Thus, a proper account of Four has to be in recognition of this aspect of identity that Four is always connected to, because this is what Point Four represents on the Enneagram.