Mistyping Part 1: The Confusion of Type Nine & Type Four (or “#Nota4”) [updated]
As the popularity and reach of the Enneagram continues to grow, there are some crucial “course-corrections” that must be made to the body of mainstream Enneagram knowledge so that the system can live up to its full potential as an effective tool for self-observation. Several common misunderstandings in the Enneagram run the risk of diminishing many of its most valuable applications to the potency of a newspaper horoscope. This problem is most exemplified by a longstanding confusion between Type Nine and Type Four in teachings, books, descriptions, and in people’s self-typing.
If someone interested in the Enneagram falls into confusing characteristics and features of Type Nine with Type Four, it means they have not yet crossed a pivotal threshold of understanding the Enneagram; namely, to discern the differences between the centers of intelligence: the body, heart, and mind, and to have some fluency with the object relational affects of the Enneagram Types.
In other words, the “Nine and Four problem” in the Enneagram highlights a true “dividing of the waters” between someone able to truly have the “inner eyes” to see the types in action within themselves and others, versus someone who merely intuits the value of the Enneagram, and may even convince themselves of their own expertise, but cannot make effective use of it.
Studying the Enneagram brings the problems of language to the fore. A single word, for example, can apply to radically different personality dynamics while nonetheless still serving as valid descriptions for all those phenomena. Most Enneagram material is limited to descriptions of traits, behaviors, and characteristics, and the errors of understanding that run rampant throughout the “field” stem primarily from the problem of language and the automatic associations certain words evoke in different individuals. Nine versus Four is one point of entry for addressing these issues of how we understand the Enneagram.
For example, as we’ll dive into further into this article, the word “sensitive” can describe a huge range of dynamics with many different causes, and in addition, many people have a narcissistic investment in seeing themselves, via a type description, as sensitive. While this essay will make comparisons based on terms used to define traits, the emphasis will focus on highlighting key structural differences in types. The Enneagram really only comes alive when we’re able to understand the types from the point of view of structure.
Conceptual Drift
The issue at hand leads to conceptual drift. What this means is that the confusion of Nine and Four among teachers and resources leads to more and more Nines identifying themselves as Fours. These Nines then go on panels meant to represent Type Four and show people what being a Four is like and “looks like”, which starts to shift people’s impression and understanding of Four more and more toward a flavor of Nineishness. Nines will seek coaching and guidance under the impression of being a Four, and teachers, coaches, and other resources will seek to capture the experience of these “Fours”, thus “bending” how Type Four is understood, expressed, and identified. People who are Nines (or another type mistyping as Four) will go on to teach about being a Four and make content about Fours, all from a Nine point of view. Eventually, not only does Four “get lost” in this shuffle, so does Nine.
Nines very often resist the idea of being a Nine because, thanks to this conceptual drift, the depth, passion, intensity, and real struggle of Nine gets erased. The caricature of Nine becomes that of someone who just wants peace, comfort, indecisive, who can’t assert themselves, and avoids conflict at all cost. For anyone who has a working knowledge of the Enneagram and has been in any kind of genuine relationship with a Nine knows that some of these adjectives can apply in certain contexts, but they are far from describing and conveying the complexity and depth of Type Nine.
Therefore, this issue erases both Four and Nine.
Who Cares?
Tackling this problem matters because it highlights a significant threshold in comprehending and using the Enneagram, and by extension one’s own inner life, that is difficult to directly name but is nonetheless pervasive. In other words, the default factors that contribute to the confusion of Nine and Four veil our awareness in an overall sense. The distinction of Nine versus Four is just a particularly poignant example of the Enneagram being used against itself - as a way to prevent us from seeing ourselves more deeply.
This issue also brings to light that there’s something going on in how the Enneagram is being taught, understood, and used that isn’t hammering home the most important feature of the Enneagram: that it is a tool for non-identification. It gives us the map to see our patterns with impartiality, so we can learn to be less identified with them. Therefore, what’s being lost is the sense of the Enneagram as a tool that requires we put into practice the insights it offers. If we aren’t ongoingly finding fresh, new revelations of the patterns of our own consciousness, we're not really using the Enneagram. We may be using it to hide from ourselves and render the sacred Enneagram into a cute magazine-style personality quiz.
If you’ve attended any in-person Enneagram events or found online Enneagram communities, it’s quickly apparent that there are proportionally way too many people typing as Type Four that aren’t. If you witness type panels, generally speaking, most of those who sit on the panels meant to represent Type Four are mistyped. And if you follow any online enneagram-meme accounts or discussions, their characterizations of Fours are usually have little to do with their characteristic “disdainful melancholy”, individualism, or their need to differentiate themselves from others.
These common, online characterizations are also typically oddly positive - both in the sense of warm-hearted and sweet, but also in the sense that somehow being a Type Four is validating. The subtext is often that identifying as a Four makes someone more sensitive than others, complex than others, or makes their more darker feelings acceptable. The point being that we might try to find another account or book to clarify this mess, but most resources on the Enneagram have also run into this trap!
Before I’m accused of trying to say I’m the only one who knows the “real Enneagram”, that’s not the case nor my interest. I don’t believe that’s true. But, more importantly, I’ve written this article in the hopes that it will provide the reader with the conceptual tools to make this discernment for themselves. I’m not making a pitch to buy my online course for the exclusive “real Enneagram”, and there’s hundreds of hours of free audio of my podcast where Nine vs Four is a reoccurring topic.
Despite numerous complaints that the efforts to clarify Four and Nine are just to make “membership to the Four club” more exclusive - if such a club existed, the membership would fall apart quite quickly from all the Fours wanting to distance themselves from other Fours. These clarifications are as much an effort to try to discern the real qualities of both types as they are to demystify Type Four in order to give the overlooked Type Nine its due.
The misunderstandings in question whitewash much of the negative manifestations of Type Four in a way that makes identification with Four more flattering; more sensitive, deep, selfless, and “special” while at the same time cutting away so much of what makes Nine interesting and multifaceted that it leaves most Nine descriptions with little defining features except conflict avoidance and laziness. There are many Nines who are not conflict avoidant nor physically lazy, so the contrast of Nine with Four is not one of just getting things correctly organized. It’s a necessary clarification if we’re going to put our attention toward the guts of the Enneagram and the subtle but important distinctions that unlock the real potential for seeing what is otherwise unconscious that the Enneagram has.
Also, are we really to believe that there is such a high portion of people who value depth, aesthetics, and idiosynchronicity in a culture like North America, which prioritizes efficiency, broad appeal, and functionality? If anything, North America is a culture that has a distinct lack of cultural archetypes we might recognize as “Fourish”, which presents difficulties in providing a commonly-accessible literacy in the energy of the type. This problem has escalated with the most recent evangelical Christian interest in the Enneagram, which we’ll return to at length.
Another major criticism leveled at “Nota4” (as the online hashtag goes) critiques are that they are bullying Fours. The “demystification” of Four means that Type Fours actual issues, narcissism, and ego-defenses are unearthed rather than the typical, more flattering, picture of what makes Fours suffer: they’re just so deep and sensitive and misunderstood. It is a view that takes the onus of personal transformation off those who identify with Type Four. The message is “you’re just really sensitive in a precious way that the world just doesn’t appreciate”. Such a message is not only supportive of the egoic status quo of Type Four, but it works in favor of Type Nine as well, who oftentimes also see themselves as sensitive in a “special” but unseen way. This is not to say there’s no validity at all in the harshness of the external world, but it doesn’t bring any meaningful insight or fresh revelations to one’s own consciousness. To thoroughly unpack this problem, we have to get pretty abstract, so we’ll start out with basic Enneagram theory to make distinctions between Nine and Four.
Attachment Types
Type Nine 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 Types, unlike Frustration or Rejection, look to externals to anchor their identity. 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.
Types Nine, Six, and Three can struggle with landing on a solid sense of self because they unconsciously incorporate outside “voices” and perspectives into the way they go about trying to see themselves (see the section on Introjection below). This doesn’t mean these types are not profound, creative, or introspective - often quite the contrary - but it does mean that they may be unconsciously over-eager to locate themselves in something outside themselves, like a type description.
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 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 “putting on charm” in Three, and, in Six, one may see either side of two extremes depending on context: talkative and eager to connect or suspicious standoffish. This 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.
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.
A secure Nine, for example, will feel more freedom to act out their anger, moodiness, humor, attention-grabbing, and drama, which most Enneagram resources attribute solely to Type Four. Type Four has all these things, but it expresses them in a very different style and under very different circumstances. Type Four, for example, puts their negativity, moodiness, and more upfront and make an image out of it, as we’ll explore further.
Finally, another difficulty arises due to Attachment Bias: Attachment Types will unconsciously adapt themselves and their own self-image to create and maintain connections, and therefore, once a Type Nine, for example, has attached to these “Type-Four-Which-is-Really-Type-Nine” descriptions, they may continue to “adapt to” an accurate Type Four description even if the updated Four description is very contradictory to how they are. So something to watch out for is an eagerness within oneself to say “that’s me!” or otherwise use a description as a mirror or stabilizing anchor.
Traits Versus Structure
Type Nine is probably the most common Enneagram Type, and yet, the most overlooked type on the Enneagram. This may be due to Nine’s complexity as well as the diversity among people who are Type Nine. There’s also irony in the way that the commonly-held attitudes about certain types are reflections of the psychological violence each type enacts on itself: Type Eights are often receive a projection of being without standard human frailties or insecurities. Either they’re seen as intimidating tyrants or as heroes, but in each case lacking a nuanced sense of their vulnerable human-ness. Type Nines overlook thier own value, so the ‘Enneagram world at large’ often overlooks them. Ones can base their worth on very narrow parameters, so when people teach about Type Ones, they often limit their understanding of One to a very narrow stereotype, and so it goes. Fours idealize their own inner life, and so there’s a tendency for Fours to be idealized. Some of these projections are more flattering than others, but all do a disservice to the heart of each type.
Type Nine and Four are quite different from one another, and in some sense, total opposites. Nines seek union with a larger reality while Fours seek to differentiate and hyper-individuate. Their placement on the Enneagram symbol speaks to how “worlds apart” they are.
Unfortunately, in most Enneagram literature, the Four is generally characterized by terms that lose a distinct sense of what Four is and could easily be applied to or interpreted as referring to Type Nine (especially as Nine experiences themselves internally, versus how others might see a Nine): sensitive, moody, introspective, withdrawn, and empathetic. These descriptions fail to capture the underlying psychological dynamic of Four as well as the narcissism, separation, and disdainful attitude of Four. On the other hand, Nines are often described as peace-seeking, conflict avoidant, easy going, and kind, and their interior world is often flattened or overlooked. These aren’t totally missing the mark for Nine, but they aren’t ways in which Nine’s generally see themselves.
Boundaries, “Peace”/Harmony, and Fear of Separation
Nine is a Body Type along with One and Eight. The types of the Body Center represent three strategies for maintaining ego-boundaries, the personal boundaries that help us feel a coherent, organized, independent sense of self. Ego-boundaries can be experienced as “life force”, our sense of vitality, and our sense of personal sovereignty and autonomy. When healthy, we feel this in excitement, in strength and personal power, and as a kind of integrity and aliveness. Aggression is another form of life force, as mobilized or directed life force against something. Anger is lifeforce as the push-back to an impingement on our boundaries and values. These different textures of sensation speak to how ego-boundaries are experienced.
When healthy and connected to the mind and heart, the body’s ego-boundaries mobilize against what seems threatening or foreign to the self and they open to what seems desirable or nourishing. We are conscious of these boundaries when we are present, and how they are maintained and reinforced is healthy, coherent with our sense of identity, and strong yet relaxed. When we’re not present, ego-boundaries are maintained through different expressions of dissociation, tension, and resistance.
Type Nine most overtly represents this problem. When Nines are present, there’s a discernment of who one is in relation to a larger world that arises from a felt sense connection to one’s own body, as an individual connected to a greater whole. One’s individual self is experienced in relationship to the universe or reality. When not present, the Nine ego views harmony as ease or a lack of friction, and it tries to achieve this through fragmenting and disengaging from the seemingly discordant parts of oneself.
Nines naturally have a holistic, universalist outlook. They intuitively see and seek connections between disparate elements, and it's from this point of view that lends Nines to be natural harmony-seekers. While Nines are commonly described as striving for peace, many Nines are comfortable with certain kinds of conflict. I think Harmony more precisely captures the Essential Quality of Nine.
“Harmony” can be properly understood as an intuitive recognition of how the individual elements of our experience cooperate in giving rise to a whole. Each part sounds its unique and distinct “note”, externally and internally. Thus, the sensitivity to “harmony” leads Nines to give a great deal of psychological weight and consideration to what might be thought of “the universe” or “the greater whole” or “Being” - the perception that there is a vast, greater world that they are a small part of.
When ungrounded, this perception makes Nines susceptible to having difficulties in making distinctions between what ought to be included and what ought to be excluded within their personal boundaries. Further, in order to preserve a sense of harmony, Nines may feel their own physical and emotional energies will be disruptive, so they begin to exclude or blur aspects of themselves. This is the heart of what the Nine’s Passion, Sloth, is about - self-fragmentation and being unable to have all parts of oneself “on the same page”.
Peace and Conflict
The clarification of what is usually interpreted as “peace” to be better captured by “harmony” can help us to see why many Nines aren’t conflict-avoidant or, at least, are open to certain kinds of conflict. Depending on upbringing and other personality dynamics, many Nines are comfortable with aggression and conflict that fit within their individual bounds of appropriate expressions of anger and discord, especially when their attachments are strong enough such that aggression, anger, and conflict won’t severe them. Many athletes are Nines, for example, who find the playing field or competition to be “acceptable” areas to express aggression and self-assertion.
Adapting and Connection (Attachment Type)
Nines want to avoid separation and disharmony, but their template for what connection and separation actually means is rooted to very early life experiences. This means that a Nine may have had healthy early life relationships where they were encouraged to be in touch with themselves, their own “emotional location”, and that expressing their boundaries, emotions, and other expressions of their authentic selves were supported by their caregivers and not taken as strains on those early attachments.
However, most people’s upbringing was fraught with inadequacies and conflicts, and thus, for most Nines, bringing themselves forward in a full, uncensored way was often perceived as threatening the connection with their parental figures. Thus, as adults, Nines will unconsciously adapt and adjust themselves to not only feel more connected to valued others, but will even “settle” for less-than-quality personal connections at the expense of fully showing up for themselves as themselves within their relationships.
On some level, Nines resist being fully present because being present means fully allowing the disagreeable, overwhelming, and de-stabilizing aspects of themselves space to find expression. Nines unconsciously fear that fully experiencing their own powerful instinctual energies will overwhelm them and will create division between themselves and the people they love or even, more abstractly, the universe as a whole.
Another “Nine-ism” that’s attributed to Fours is the fear of loss, separation, or abandonment that we can understand to be more central to Type Nine, from this point of view. By contrast, Fours feel abandonment and separation have already happened. Separation, for Nine, feels like a kind of death. Therefore the destabilizing energies within them are suppressed or dissociated from. When onset by great anger or strong emotional energies, Nines often experience the force of these powerful feelings dissipate or they may be unable to translate those feelings into a sustained and grounded self-expression. This isn’t a choice, but a reflex.
Further, to maintain this semblance of connection, Nines often mentally and emotionally “abstract” themselves. They may relate more to themselves as a somewhat vague self-representation as a kind of bypass of disruptive and aggressive facets of themselves. This can contribute to a kind of “philosophical/intellectual” or dreamy sense of self and the state of one’s own life that at first seems sweet, but it’s predicated on a great deal of self-denial.
Unconsciously, Nines feel that getting too distinct and specific means shutting down their connection to a wider world and especially meaningful relationships, so they allow their boundaries to be a little open and vague, which makes it difficult to feel where they end and significant others begins. Here we find one of the more insidious tricks the Nine’s ego plays on their essential longing for connection: in order to achieve the connection they seek, they’ll unconsciously let go of their own "emotional location”: they’ll adapt. They won’t give full expression to or adequate valuation of their own inner states, reactions, feelings, and boundaries. This is often so subtle and unconscious, Nines won’t even know they’re doing this, but it sends their own psyche a message of self-abandonment. It’s too easily giving up on themselves: Sloth, the Passion of Nine. They’ll move “off center” from themselves to pre-emptively “meet the other person halfway” - or what they imagine is “halfway” - without the other person having any need for such adaptation. Thus, the Nine themselves and the person they’re in relationship with both lose sight of “where the Nine is”, and, over time, both builds frustration in the Nine for not being seen, it also means they’re not really “in" the relationship they seek to participate in. In other words, in trying put in work to cultivate a relationship, they undermine the possibility of being in authentic relating. The result is that the Nine feels unseen and automatically assumes that they ought to adapt themselves even more to get the relational quality they seek. For the Nine, adapting feelings like putting in relational effort, and the hope is that if they put in enough of this effort, their partner will see how much they’re doing and will seek out the Nine’s authentic self out, to “wake them up” or give them permission to come forward. It’s almost like the fairy tale figure of Sleeping Beauty who awaits the prince’s kiss to wake her up, with the “sleep” in this case being the Nines adaptations, foggy self-obscurations and lack of clearly articulated self-focus. Except that in Type Nine, even the need to be sought and awoken is not articulated or expressed. Some Nines do not recognize this sense of waiting to be “found” while others are aware of this facet of their personality, but feel that having to express it cheapens it. If the partner really loves me, the thinking goes, they’ll see me and put in the effort to find me under my adaptations. This can be especially dangerous as it can create enormous disconnect and wasted time in even the most well-meaning dynamics, but most people are not well-meaning and will take advantage of the Nine, using them as a props for their own narcissistic tendencies.
As with any defining feature of a type, the gift is the curse and visa versa. This can lead to a natural, profound empathy, but it can also represent a lack of personal individuation.
Nines may have a difficult time separating themselves from their circumstances or others out of an inability to create enough distinction between themselves and others. Internally, there’s a way in which their universalizing outlook leads them to give others thoughts and feelings as much “psychological weight” as themselves, but it also means they unconsciously lose a distinct feeling of themselves and, in place, introject others feelings and responses into themselves.
Introjection, Sensitivity, and Empathy
In trying to make correspondences between Oscar Ichazo’s more mystical Enneagram and modern psychology, Claudio Naranjo attributed characteristic defense mechanisms to each Type, assigning Introjection to Type Four. Introjection is "the unconscious adoption of the ideas or attitudes of others”, which is very much in opposition to the basic ego-strategy of Type Four: to individuate. Since Naranjo made this attribution, mental gymnastics have been made to try to make Naranjo’s classification fit by suggesting that Fours merely introjected parents' negative attitudes towards them as infants, which would then make the central struggle of Type Four about self-esteem. At the same time, adult Fours are supposedly preoccupied with separating themselves from others and yet still introjecting just some perceptions rather than an ongoing defense mechanism? It doesn’t make sense nor does this point of view recognize that type is rooted in psychological dynamics far deeper and more complex than issues of self esteem.
Introjection functionally "muddies the waters" of one's self-concept and confuses one’s own “voice" with that of others voices. It makes the self-concept vague, out of focus, subject to being blown around without landing anywhere. While attributing core defense mechanisms to each type is somewhat artificial in the first place, introjection actually defends against individuating too much - the hallmark of the Passion of Sloth which seeks to maintain an inner "status quo" without too much disruption or inner upheaval.
This reflex to introject leads to 9s deep natural empathy because they "easily take others in". Empathy is one of the key traits that more properly belongs under the headline of Type Nine but is most often erroneously assigned to Type Four. That’s not to say that Type Fours can’t be empathetic, but it is a growth edge for them, accessed by their line to Type Two. It’s not a type-defining trait. Fours are innately self-focused, and learning to be open and considerate of others is a key facet of their growth.
Nines can’t help but empathize. The self-forgetting of Type Nine lends itself to too-easily putting themselves in the place of another, which means losing their own emotional location. When unhealthy, this leads Nines to both allowing themselves to get lost in other people’s agendas and needs or, conversely, having to actively resist and numb their empathy to preserve a stable sense of autonomy. Thus Nine more rightfully earns the title of the most truly empathetic type, in the running with Type Two, or it can lead Nines to shutting themselves down due to too much sensitivity. We can also see how deeply sensitive Nines are in a way that’s generally overlooked by most type descriptions, with Type Four often deemed the “sensitive type”.
Nines who identify with Type Four are quite right in seeing themselves as sensitive because their openness is a highly sensitive condition, but we have to make some distinctions. When most people hear the word sensitive, it usually refers to being easily touched and affected by emotion, which is definitely not the sole domain of Four. Type Nine is one of the most sensitive types by virtue of their psychological structure having this aforementioned “absorbing” quality brought on by introjection. It is this absorbent quality that is referred to when it is said Nines seek to “merge” with others.
Something to note here is that often when a Type Nine identifies is confronted with the possibility of being mistyped as a Four, there are a few predictable responses. One of the key investments a Nine might have in seeing themselves as a Four is a pride in their attention to emotional subtly and nuance. This is often attributed to Fours in descriptions and not to Nines, which is a massive failure on the part of Enneagram teachers to teach what they don’t yet understand. The idea of being a Nine instead of a Four threatens to “take this away” from the Nine. Type Fours, however, can be incredible unaware and unattuned to others. Their hyper-attunement to themselves does not translate to other people unless they’re able to make a move along the connective line between Four to Two (and it’s easy for Nines to emphasize Four’s connection to Two to account for their self-abandoning behaviors). Nines, especially with a One wing, are naturally attuned to others and highly sensitive to others shifts in mood or body states that are undetectable to others. Again, however, this can be at the expense of full attunement to themselves, but to combine their other-attunement with self-attunement lends itself to a very powerful capacity for Nines to be healers, guides, and teachers. When there’s something identifying with Four that you suspect is a Nine, look for subtle pride in their ability to be discerning of emotion, attunement, and nuance. Fours, by contrast, do not share this pride. At least by Type, they have little-to-no ego-investment in their capacity to be attuned to others because this has very little baring on the Four’s ego-project of over-individuating.
Emotionality and Overwhelm
Many Nines and Nines-who-type-as-Fours report being highly emotional people, but usually with a wide range of highs and lows. This would contradict the popular portrait of Type Nine as steady-at-all costs, but even though Nines may appear even-keeled to others, below the surface, many Nines feel a great deal of inner strife. It is precisely for this reason that Nines put in so much effort to find stability within themselves. Therefore, others might see them as “peacemakers”, but many Nines often feel on the verge of inner turmoil and may sense that they barely avoid drowning in their own interior world. If you are figuring out if you’re a Four or a Nine, it’s important to consider if others experience you as tumultuous, disdainful, and contemptuous or not.
Much of the “peace seeking” of Nine arises from how overwhelmed Nines are by their own states as well as by the states of others that they’ve unconsciously internalized.
This experience of “small things as big” accounts for why some Nines experience themselves as inwardly turbulent or dramatic or even a little emotionally out of control while others around them feel that they are fairly stable and/or serene, steady, or grounded. There is a fear in Type Nine of being “too much” because they themselves are afraid of experiencing “too much” inside that would throw them off and “drown” them in a sea of inner confusion. Further, at their most unhealthy, typically Nines are still able to function, albeit in a route, habitual, barely-present way. This infusion of external forces overriding a clear sense of self or ability to distinguish their own independent will brings us to the hallmark of the deeply unhealthy Nine: a lack of self-agency. By contrast, the unhealthy Four never loses sight of their own wants, needs, desires, or preferences, but long before they reach their unhealthiest levels, Fours have significant problems with very basic practical functioning due to being able to shift their focus away from their interior experience.
Many Nines identify with feeling that their moods and emotions were too intense. Early in life, Nines often got the message that they were “too much”, so they learned how to suppress their emotional expression and in some cases even deny their own powerful emotions to themselves. Whether by nature or nurture, young Type Nines were bound to internalize this message from their environment almost regardless of their parents actual attitude or level of attunement. In this sense, we can also understand “peace” or “harmony” to mean equilibrium, to be anchored within themselves enough to remain stable and steady while open to the ups and downs of their emotional life and their outer life.
Being strongly affected by people and their environment makes Nines highly sensitive and sometimes very emotional people, depending on how they cope with their sensitivity, but it also means that there’s something of their inner experience of themselves that remains vague and out of focus as it is so subject to external influences. Sloth represents the way in which parts of the Nine are shut down or neglected in order to maintain inner stability, being at the mercy of their sensitivity instead of able to rise to use it consciously, but it has the effect of keeping Nines from truly individuating - from developing their capacities and specific identities apart from the relationships and structures they find themselves embedded in. To truly individuate would be to find the autonomy and independence that they as Body Types seek, but the path to individuation means upending their entire inner status quo and subjecting themselves to overwhelm and inner confusion/destabilization.
This unconscious internalization of others’ states as well as the overwhelm Nines experience by their own feelings and aggression speaks to a key, but highly nuanced distinction: most Nines are deeply sensitive, emotional, and empathetic, but for Nine, these qualities stems from a body-centered problem of with ego boundaries stemming from an identification with the body center, rather than from an identification with the heart center, as in Type Four.
Image Types
Fours, too, are sensitive, but in an entirely different, almost opposite, way. Fours are primarily sensitive to themselves and their own states. Whereas introjection leads Nines to have a fuzzy self-concept and their holistic intuition lends them to being able to themselves in a little bit of everything and everyone, Fours have an incredibly sharp “inner eye” directed at the granular nuances, complexities, and contradictions of their inner life, perceptions, and feelings. The object of perception is the self, with a kind of pulse on what each impression and personal reaction says about the self, which naturally leads to a reflexive self-absorption. In contrast to Nines, the inner life of Fours is under hyper focus and scrutiny whereas, for Nine, one’s identity and inner world is often out of focus.
Type Four, along with Two and Three, is based in the heart center. The heart center is the place in us that directly recognizes our authentic identity, or it becomes occupied with self-images, resulting in needing to see oneself a certain way and have that mirrored back to them by others. How Four does this might best be understood in contrast to Two and Three.
Two seeks identity through relationship and being of service. The Two personality style is, in effect, trying to be itself by being connected and represents the facet of identity that we find through relatedness. Three seeks identity through self-actualization. The Three personality style is “doing to become”, to take potential and turn it into self-expression.
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. In other words, Type 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. The result is that, in contrast to Type Nine, Type Fours are over-certain about their identity. Their introspective attention leads to an overly-fixed and narrow experience of identity that they constantly reinforce through narrow emotional reactions and a cultivated, specific personal aesthetic.
To this end, the Type Four personality seeks differentiation from the environment and turns toward a highly-developed capacity for introspection combined with artistic creativity, as a means to self-express what is wholly personal and cannot be limited to language or other easily-codified means of communication. They make strong, often too-strong, distinctions between what is “self” and what is “not self”. Fours assume a state of deep separateness from everything is their baseline state, something their personality deems as a desirable, if frustrating, state, whereas Nines unconsciously avoid separateness.
Over-Individuation and Psychological Narrowness
Whereas Type Nine resists a certain kind of individuation, Fours over-do individuation, but from a highly limited lens. Nines typically experience a broad range of emotions, whereas Fours limit their emotions to a particular, yet strong, range of emotions. Unlike Nine, who seeks stability due to how overwhelmed by emotions they can become, Fours unconsciously amplify and exaggerate emotional states, which provides motivation and a sense of being distinct and gives their interior life a heightened reality. Along these same lines, Nines may feel deep sadness or grief, but generally seek to feel positive emotions or, at least, they quickly shift into self-assurance or that “things aren’t so bad”. They may judge themselves for being too negative or judgmental, whereas Fours have little to no self-censorship about their negativity or “bad” feelings.
The core struggle of Four is rooted in overly-limiting, overly-specifying, and attempting to perpetually mentally and emotionally “pin down” this innermost self through a fixation on being different from others, on what makes them unique. They effectively “paint themselves into a corner” and become attached to a very limited palette of emotional patterns that are internally amplified by thought in order to give this limited range more “gravity” and specificity. This facet of Four can easily be mistaken for Nine’s “drifting” sense of self, where, especially with a One wing, Nines can have a difficult time landing on a solid sense of self. Four, as stated above, are overly-certain and overly-specific about their identities, and from that point of view, there’s a frustration that nothing fits.
By contrast, Nines can have a fuzzy sense of self that won’t land on anything or find specificity out of a Body Center need for autonomy. Nines will use vagueness around a sense of self to not shut themselves out of the possibility of connection and to avoid their emotional location being revealed, both to themselves and to others. It can be like “hovering” or caught between many different ways to view oneself without narrowing down on anything too specific. In this way, Nines can have this “onion layer” style of preserving autonomy, where on the outside they may be going along with or attaching to something externally while internally keeping their core layers protected through ambiguity and a sense of “you never touch the real me”.
Fours are going to be specific and clear about their emotional location to a fault, even being disruptive to others for the sake of enhancing their distinction from others. It’s an arrogance about their own sense of self that involves an over-confidence in what they want and need, backed by intense feelings of frustration, that may very well be out of synch with their authentic emotional needs. The reason for this is that often their authentic emotional needs may be too “common”, mundane, or humiliatingly lacking in complexity for the Four’s own egoic need to feel distinct and individual.
Once again, we can use the example of finding one’s Type as an illustration of this. Fours might, for example, recognize that they are a Four, but say “this author/resource is wrong, here’s how it actually is, and here’s how it actually is for me, personally.” It’s an insistence that something coming from the outside is wrong, not personal and specific and individual enough for them, and that even if they can concede that the Type does capture their personality dynamics, they’ll still emphasize who they are apart from and more distinct from the impersonality of a structure. It’s like shifting the lens to something more narrow, more specific, more distinct, and more “away” from what the reader/listener can grasp or understand. It can feel like they’re going deeper into a narrow tunnel you can’t follow.
Type Nine, for example, who sees themselves in Four might say, “I’m definitely a Four”, but then will go on to make exceptions to facets of the Four structure, as if they’re trying to loosen and broaden what it means to be a Type. To show how they’re an exception to the narrowness of Type Four, they may make appeals to their trifix (“I have a strong Nine fix”), their wing (“a three wing makes Fours more worried about what other people think!”), their instinctual stacking, the Enneagram lines of connection to other Types (especially making the claim that Four moving to Two represents Fours becoming “people pleasers”), or they may argue that trauma or societal gender expectations have produced a Nine-like veneer while they hold onto the identification with the sensitive, creative, and emotional aspects of Four. In contrast to Four’s “narrow tunnel”, Nine will feel like shifting into a cloudiness, a sense of “I’m that but I’m also not that” at the same time in contrast to Four’s “I’m not that, I’m THIS.”
This gets to yet another central reason Nines will identify with Four, which is that many Enneagram resources do rightly recognize that Fours struggles stem from issues around identity, but Nines will often mistakenly and automatically assume that this “problem with identity” is a problem with having one’s own unique identity. In other words, Nines often present themselves in a universalist way, minimizing their specific needs and flavor, while wanting someone to “come find them” beneath their outward persona.
Nines can often experience the fact that they actually do have a unique identity, unique preferences, and a desire to be personally known as an issue, as something they wish they didn’t have to deal with. Their own individualism can be a point of shame, because it feels at odds with their attachment strategy of remaining open, general, and without distinct preferences. Said another way, Nines can feel that their own specific identity, needs, and preferences are what get in the way of making attachments and connections, which leads to the hiding of self that the Passion of Sloth represents.
For Four, the “problem with identity” is that the practical demands of life and relationships take them away from giving attention on their identity or force them into situations that feel out of sync with their identity. Identity is not the problem for Four, it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem. It’s too boring, ugly, Kafka-esque, and sullied for the Four, and despite all that, for the sake of survival and simply getting along in the world, the Four is forced to interact with it, albeit as minimally and narrowly as possible.
Narcissism, Self-Absorption, and Frustration
Type Four treats each nuance, impression, and personal reaction almost like a precious insight into the self, leading to an overwhelm brought about by hyper focus on self. In a sense, Fours can’t escape from themselves, whereas the Nine personality does as much as possible to be available to ‘the universe’. Thus, Fours struggle more overtly with narcissism and have little self-judgment about this. Nines, on the other hand, have a hidden narcissistic side and long for recognition, but have difficulty in expressing this part of themselves overtly or often feel prideful about their lack of apparent narcissism.
The “unique kernel of identity” highlights a key component of Type Four typically overlooked or misunderstood: much of Four’s alien, melancholy attitude and their persistent drive to differentiate themselves stems from feeling a deep incongruence between authentic identity and reality. It is a feeling that one’s identity exists on another plane of reality, and the mundane aspects of life, personal changes, and even one’s own body are deeply out of sync with this identity. Envy, the Passion of Four, can then be understood as the emotional reactivity and strife produced by this experience of incongruence. Envy is rarely longing for something represented in material reality, but it is instead a frustration and self-hatred of being unable to actualize or sufficiently represent their interior sense of identity.
Frustration Affect, Melancholy, and Sadness
A common reason why Nines identify with Fours is because they relate to the depiction of Four as being sad and melancholic. There’s some genuine overlap between the two types here, but even long time, well-credentialed Enneagram teachers will still lump “sadness” or a downer affect into Four and assume all Nines are spaced out and pleasant. Sloth is really a sense that “I don’t matter”. It isn’t laziness, it’s a kind of “give up” on oneself, which leads to an inner fragmentation and difficulty to for a Nine to be all on “the same page” internally. This, naturally, leads to a sad, melancholic affect. Depending on a variety of factors, some Nines are quite conscious of this and their sadness shows. Others cover it. And others are not even aware of the sadness at the core of Sloth. Further, as body or anger types, depression is often characterized as anger turned against oneself.
By contrast, Fours can certainly be depressed and do carry a kind of thick, sad atmosphere with them, but it’s marked by frustration, the object relational affect of Four, One, and Seven. “Envy” is just a way of talking about how frustration shows up in the Heart Center, versus how it is expressed in the Body Center in Type One or Mental Center in Type Seven. Fours sadness is “spikey”, frustrated, and reactive. “Sadness”, as a term, might better characterize Nine because it implies a kind of acceptance, whereas “suffering” might better characterize the flavor of Four, in that it’s a frustrated struggle and lack of acceptance.
Oscar Ichazo used the term “Indolence” to describe the Fixation, the mental patterning of the types, and assigned “Melancholy” to Four. This has further compounded the problem, because when people thing melancholy, they think of a depressed person, and thus, Four. Riso and Hudson changed Indolence to “Rumination” and Melancholy to “Fantasy”. I think this does more justice to Nine, but I don’t think it characterizes Four all that well, nor does it help express what is specifically Four’s mental conditioning. Whatever terms we use, Nines fixation consists of being mentally occupied by almost anything but the present, anything to keep one in a state of mental distraction. This can be positive or negative fantasies, nostalgia, philosophical speculation (a pet name for Nine on our podcast is “Philosopher of the Universe”), “chewing” on memories, or mentally talking themselves out of their own positions for the sake of adaption. What Type Fours think about isn’t probably all that different from what Nines think about, but the thinking style has a different ego-function, which is to promote separation and frustration, to reinforce a specific, and narrow identity. Thus, I don’t find the fixations all that useful or clarifying in present form, and they require more work in order for them to be useful.
Being “At Odds”
Four’s inner sense of identity that is at odds with the world creates a profound feeling of frustration as well as a disdain directed towards things that are considered normal or common by most people. Thus, Fours shun things that are common and seek to push away from the surface of things, feeling that it is all grotesquely artificial, and that they themselves, too, are something broken and estranged from this life they had no choice to participate in. Four seek to bridge this incongruence through aesthetics and artistic creativity (It's often asserted that not all Fours are artistic, but I’ve yet to know a Four who isn’t. However, there are endless examples of artistic Nines).
In contrast to Nines, who don’t want to be too alienating, signaling and displaying their status as different and “at odds” with the world is at the fore of how Fours present themselves. As Image Types (like Two and Three), Frustration Types (like One and Seven), Reactive Types (like Eight and Six), and Withdrawn Types (Like Nine and Five), Fours want their frustrated reactions and separations (withdrawal) against the world and others to be seen (in their image) by others.
The body is a problem for Fours in a way it isn’t for Nines. Even if Nines are suffering or in a great deal of self-hatred, there’s still some sense that the body is home or that the body would be the home to reconnect with. For Fours, their frustration affect and out-of-touchness with the Body Center means they feel fundamentally at odds with their own bodies, and it takes considerable inner work for them to recognize the need to inhabit their physicality more, represented by their line to Type One. It’s a self-reinforcing loop - frustration puts them at odds with their body, putting them out of touch with reality, and their out-of-touchness with the body puts them at odds with reality, reinforcing frustration. This lack of embodiment compounds how hyper-subjective and uninterested in “objective reality” Fours can be. There’s an automatic filter on reality through their subjective, personal impressions, not just in terms of emotional “likes and dislikes”, but through a frame of aesthetic resonance.
Taking this sense of alienation further, Fours reflexively resist being “on the same page” as others, while Nines reflexively seek affinity, likeness, or points of agreement. Thus, from the point of view of Nine, it is almost impossible to imagine how there can be Types like Four and Five that are not committed to the well-being of the collective or at are fundamentally disagreeable with people or even reality as a whole. The need to “Nine-ify” Four can, on some level, be viewed as a way to erase disagreement and create artificial cohesion characteristic of the Nine fixation, which we’ll return to later.
The “able to see the beauty in everything” is often attributed to Type Four. What you may be deducing from this essay, “everything”, as a gesture toward the all, the whole, should ping one’s Nine-alert. Fours sense of taste and beauty is highly specific, and as their attention moves away from the outer world, they typically see little in the way of beauty around them. Even when Fours are healthy, it’s not so much that they’re appreciating unseen beauty, but able to ‘extract’ some meaning or significance to find beauty where others often fail to behold it. Four’s sense of beauty, too, is typically atypical, obscure, and often has elements of the grotesque or melancholic.
Shame
The Heart Types struggle with shame as an underlying emotion akin to the rage underlying the Body Types. Shame is the emotion we experience when our self-image is exposed as false or deficient, so it is naturally an issue that is at the forefront for Types most focused on their identity. In Four, shame is typically not a sense of feeling defective or inadequate in the eyes of others, as it might be for Type Nine (as the inadequacy would threaten attachment). Instead, Four’s shame is usually a self-attack stemming from believing their actions, needs, and self-expression deviate from their rigidly-held sense of individuality and identity. Its a psychological mechanism that keeps Fours locked into an excessively narrow and frustrated sense of self.
It’s common for people new to the Enneagram to assume that Type Fours to compensate for shame by seeking to be acceptable, to feel belonging, or to be deeply understood. Everyone wants to be understood on some level, but characteristic of Four is feeling shame and disgust when they are too well understood or understood by too many people. In other words, similar to others or having too much in common produces shame for Fours because it would seem to detract from the Four’s unique and specific identity. Fours often reveal in the qualities that produce shame in Nines, such as being antagonistic or unacceptable to others, while Nines often reveal in the qualities that produce shame in Fours, such as their capacity to be adaptable, to see numerous points of view, and to be accepting. Nines are often ashamed to learn of how ego-centric they can be, whereas Fours are often ashamed of how normal, unremarkable, and universal they themselves or their experiences can be.
Health
When presented with clarifying material, it’s common for those who are mistyped to claim that the reason one is identifying only with certain facets of a particular type while rejecting others is due to being “healthly”. In the context of the Enneagram, the concept of “health” is often misunderstood and confused with attitude. Health, as defined by Don Riso’s Levels of Development, is not a measure of attitude, in the sense that it has nothing to do with outlook, optimism, feeling good, likability, hopefulness, functionality, and other “positive” attributes. It is a measure of presence in body, heart, and mind leading to ego-transparency, which is independent of attitude. One can be deeply miserable and very healthy, and likewise, one can be deeply unhealthy and very optimistic, functional, and well-liked. Types like Three, Seven, and Eight may be more effective in average to low health, and Types Seven, Nine, and Two may be more naively optimistic in average to low health.
Taking this a step further, a point of distinction between Four and Nine is that Type Nines have a “superego” around being healthy or framing things in a positive, constructive light. Riso and Hudson identify Types Nine, Seven, and Two as “positive outlook” types. It doesn’t mean these types always feel good or a hopeful sense, but there is a sense that problems, obstacles, and difficulties are ultimately temporary and manageable. This makes Nines especially prone to “spiritual bypassing”, the idea that one has simply transcended or overcome certain limitations or problems. Many Nines, therefore, have an emotional need for things to be “okay” or “good”, and viewing oneself as healthy is a way of “making oneself okay” without doing much in the way of inner work. Four has no such superego around needing to have good feelings, and even relatively healthy Fours may still have what most people would consider a negative outlook.
Health, in short, is not really an excuse for why one doesn’t see fundamental parts of the type in oneself. Health is not the transcendence of issues, but a greater ability to impartially see the personality structure operating within body, heart, and mind. It is not an achievement or growth past something, but rather an increase of consciousness. The instance upon being healthy, and thus except from or having overcome the negative aspects of Four is a key way that Nines often try to “broaden” the structure of Four, as mentioned above.
Christianity and the Solar Enneagram
While the confusion of Four and Nine has been long standing within Enneagram studies, it’s been given an even greater boost thanks to the newfound Evangelical movement’s interest in the Enneagram. Evangelical Christianity holds something along the lines that the only way to God is through Jesus and the Word of God as represented by the Bible, so that introspection and inner work are a kind of mysticism that provoke conflicts of Faith that go against God. But Introspection and Inner work are the necessary disciplines to extract insight and meaning from the Enneagram.
This may seem like a tangential point, but the archetypal “lenses” we adopt, consciously or unconsciously, provide frameworks for what we can “see” or not. Thus, because Christianity is the religion that has had the greatest impact on the North American and European milieu, even non-Christians must be aware of the effects it has had in shaping notions of spirituality, inner work, growth, psychological health versus unhealth, and other metrics we apply to inner growth.
Another, more subtle, aspect of the Christian view is that all frameworks, even those that seem the most objective, impartial, and cut-and-dry, are informed by psychological “fantasy” or archetypal images. A framework is a fantasy or ideology which extends outward from its base assumptions creates conceptual “ripples” far from it’s source. In other words, a seemingly small or simple point of view or conviction can shift one’s entire way of experiencing self and reality without us even knowing it.
Christianity has its roots in pre-Christian “solar” religions, which typically took the entire celestial path of the sun through the heavens, from dawn to dusk, and through the underworld, dusk to dawn, into consideration. Jesus is the Christian version of the solar resurrection god found across cultures. Certain branches of Christianity have kept the motif of the sun’s time in darkness with the Stations of the Cross and the Harrowing of Hell after Christ’s death as mythologically significant events. By contrast, much of Evangelical Christianity today seeks to arrest the sun into its “high-noon” position without relent, and situated in this archetypal space, keeps the psychological shadow firmly hidden underfoot and out of sight. In other words, Evangelical Christianity deems whole aspects of the psyche as moral and religious failings, which suppresses a full acknowledgment of the psychological shadow. It presents an incomplete view of the psyche.
The Enneagram, however, is a symbol of complete processes. To draw from David Gray’s often-used comparison of the Enneagram to the solar cycle, with the line between Type Three and Six representing dawn and dusk, and the Nine position representative of the sun’s full radiance at Noon. The Solar Enneagram incorporates the sun’s full symbolic circuit through the dark night underworld realms, which is represented in the gap between 4 and 5, what Gurdjieff termed “Harneloot”. It is the place of greatest instability of a process where one is unable to go back to safety and one cannot yet see their way out of their predicament. By looking at the symbol of the Enneagram itself to understand the Types, one can see how Nine is opposed to the "empty space” at the bottom of the Enneagram, while sharing some overlapping qualities as all true opposites do. Archetypally, Nine, from this "above all” position, can be seen as representing Being, unity, the “all”, and the Harneloot as the void, emptiness, non-being. Four and Five straddle Harneloot, expressing its qualities from the point of view of different Centers of Intelligence. Five is “pushing away” from the “all” in the Mental Center, which gives Five it’s characteristic schizoid separation and orientation to “seeing through” things. Four is “pushing away” in the Heart Center, in the realm of identity and feelings, giving Four it’s frustrated, “against”, idiosyncratic quality. Thus, from this imaginal lens, we can understand how Nine and Four are both “solarized”, absent of the symbolic night hours, in a way that flattens their nuance and obfuscates the perspectives needed to adopt to appreciate the Enneagram from this deeper lever.
The “solarization” problem might seem to only impact Type Four, from the point of view of those who have an accurate view of Type Four as the type that pushes away from the surface of things and goes inward to introspection, separation, and into psychologically dark or negative spaces. If the Enneagram of Personality represent the nine fundamental expressions of human consciousness, this “noon” lens does indeed essentially delete what Four represents, but with enough instruction and enough overcoming of personal resistance to change one’s impression, it’s not difficult to get a feel for what Four is or at least what is not Fourish.
Type Nine is negatively impacted by “fixing the sun at the noontime position”, in the sense that Nine is flattened to the simple, lazy, easy-going caricature and thus Nines, whether they recognize themselves as Nines or whether they identify with Four or another type, aren’t given the space for the negative feelings and aggression that may be an impetus for healthy individuation and waking up to their felt sense of “hereness”.
Introspection, one of the key instruments for interpreting the Enneagram, requires “eyes to see in the dark”. The emphasis on health and self-improvement represented by the positive, up-building arch of the sun’s ascent leaves little room in the imaginal space for tolerating the ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes of inner life. The night hours represent the psychological act of “making room” for elements of the psyche that are already-present within us that contradict, even subvert, the “daytime” ego-project of self-improvement, overcoming, and positive progression. The murky space below the ego’s horizon invites aspects of ourselves to be given time and representation that expand the notion of what it means to be a human being and the aim of life. This is a requirement for our inner work to go beyond improving the personality toward the authentic development of Being.
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Why put in all this effort to articulate the differences between Nine and Four? Accurate Typing is nice because it lends to a common language from which to explore our interest in the Enneagram and helps people to genuinely see themselves, but more importantly, when we go deep into the dynamics that lead to these distinctions, we start to see some of the fundamental tricks the Ego uses in these types to maintain its own trance. We can see more clearly the struggles of these types, and in seeing them, learning what changes and practices will be authentically transformative versus what will be a temporary respite from suffering.
We can see how Nines ‘absorb’ from their environment and the strengths and weaknesses of that - how, on one hand, you can have incredible empathy, sensitivity, and imagination, and on the other, how they outsource valuing themselves and struggle to invest a basic interest in their own experience. We can see how Fours reveal an incredible tapestry of our inner world, but almost look “too closely” at their subjectivity and end up drowning themselves.
Moreover, what is especially useful in making these distinctions is to show how even the most basic aspects of the Enneagram are still up for fresh exploration and discovery. It’s been my impression that folks interested in the Enneagram feel there’s a scarcity of originality, of new facets to mine from the Enneagram. The reality is not that the Enneagram is limited, only our personal curiosity that wears down.