07-25-2010, 10:52 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2010, 10:53 AM by Questioner.)
I agree, ffg. On to type 5.
Type 5: The Thinker or Investigator
Type 5's primary inner drive is to feel that they understand the world.
An effective strategy is to observe the world, create ideas about the world that are tested against reality, and thereby better understand the world. All of this happens calmly, and never taken in by anyone else's shenanigans. This is the positive side of type 5. At best, the ideas are breathtakingly original. Yet they also are obvious breakthrough in concisely powerful understanding. Even if there's no breakthrough, the positive type 5 loves to be the master of at least one particular niche.
An ineffective strategy is to be terrified that the world can't be understood, then withdraw from reality and invent imaginary scenarios. Then terror about these scenarios, as though they are real, inspires further fear in a downward spiral. Fearful of making a mistake, additional abstract study substitutes for learning from experience.
The negative spiral is broken when the fearful ideas are tested against reality and found lacking. The self-scaring scenario is replaced by realistic understanding based on accurate observation. There actually is at least a small good thing that can be understood and done.
A healthy type 5 can be observant, pragmatic, factual, and specific. Positive feelings may be present, but not need to be said, because loving actions express them. If given their own space, they may well respond by choosing to get closer. At work, they can be a great analyst if they have their own time and space to think, rather than being put on the spot.
An unhealthy type 5 can be private, detached from even their healthy and appropriate feelings. They can feel overwhelmed by even positive human contact. They can go beyond mastery of a technical situation, to also manipulates politics. They do this by hoarding the vital secrets that make them indispensable yet aloof. Requests for documentation (which would let anyone else be able to fix the system) are turned aside based on claims that nobody else could understand it anyway.
Fundamentally ambivalent to both parents, if their unconscious drives never come to the surface therapeutically, they can be afraid of getting suffocated by other people's demands, yet also want a connection they don't know how to ask for. Safer to just master the facts and let other people - "the mundanes" - go away with their incomprehensible feelings, their strange body awareness and delight in the physical world. Why, some of that might be downright ambiguous, impossible to capture in a spreadsheet!
In healthy life, these ambivalent feelings are resolved by healthy, mutually respectful give and take interactions with other people as true peers and equals. The type 5 person is the acknowledged expert of their part of the process. They know they doesn't have to hide their techniques to be respected. At the same time, they respect the expertise of other people, including those who reach valid results through an intuitive, holistic, fluid emotional process.
If social memory complexes have their own enneagram type, this would be the stereotype of a science fiction convention. Individually, an ideal home as defined by type 5 would include moat and drawbridge, library, high def TV with subwoofer, and the latest Internet technology. If funds are available, the castle may well be stocked with enough ramen noodles, gold coins, and ammo to last through the Second Coming. There might be a poster chart in the laundry room, with a grid indicating when it will be time to buy new underwear.
With the goal of privacy, it's safe to talk about the weather and the equations that can predict it; and to discuss psychological theories as an alternative to expressing a simple, heartfelt feeling other than aloof superiority and isolation.
I dealt with an abundance of type 5's in my computer engineering career. An ideal birthday gift would be a larger wall-mounted whiteboard. This will let them add more factors into their master flowchart, and they'll be delighted at how much you understand and care about their needs. For stocking stuffers, anything with a USB port is a great choice. (Say you get then a USB-powered stapler with colorful blinking lights. It doesn't matter that adding flashing LED's to a stapler makes no sense. The fact that you can plug it into your computer and download your own color timing sequence is frickin' awesome!)
Type 5 analysts of nature: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking.
Type 5 analysts of technology and business: Bill Gates, J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, Reginald Barclay in Star Trek. The curious aliens expanded his mind so he could make the engines modify the nature of space/time, rather than traveling through it. "I perceive the universe as a single equation, and it is so simple. I understand everything." Sure, that was awareness from the Cytherian probe, but they had to have something to work with.
Type 5 masters of analytical art and music: Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Laurie Anderson, Glenn Gould, Trent Reznor, Vincent Van Gogh, David Byrne.
Type 5 tellers of well-considered stories: Ursala LeGuinn, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King.
Type 5 appreciators of the humorously absurd: Gary Larson, Lily Tomlin.
Type 5 explorers of what's just beyond analysis: Fox Mulder, The Buddha, Ken Wilber.
Type 8 introduction is ready to post after the next comment or question. The posts on spiritual evolution for types 2, 5, and 8 will follow later today, or in a day or two.
Type 5: The Thinker or Investigator
Type 5's primary inner drive is to feel that they understand the world.
An effective strategy is to observe the world, create ideas about the world that are tested against reality, and thereby better understand the world. All of this happens calmly, and never taken in by anyone else's shenanigans. This is the positive side of type 5. At best, the ideas are breathtakingly original. Yet they also are obvious breakthrough in concisely powerful understanding. Even if there's no breakthrough, the positive type 5 loves to be the master of at least one particular niche.
An ineffective strategy is to be terrified that the world can't be understood, then withdraw from reality and invent imaginary scenarios. Then terror about these scenarios, as though they are real, inspires further fear in a downward spiral. Fearful of making a mistake, additional abstract study substitutes for learning from experience.
The negative spiral is broken when the fearful ideas are tested against reality and found lacking. The self-scaring scenario is replaced by realistic understanding based on accurate observation. There actually is at least a small good thing that can be understood and done.
A healthy type 5 can be observant, pragmatic, factual, and specific. Positive feelings may be present, but not need to be said, because loving actions express them. If given their own space, they may well respond by choosing to get closer. At work, they can be a great analyst if they have their own time and space to think, rather than being put on the spot.
An unhealthy type 5 can be private, detached from even their healthy and appropriate feelings. They can feel overwhelmed by even positive human contact. They can go beyond mastery of a technical situation, to also manipulates politics. They do this by hoarding the vital secrets that make them indispensable yet aloof. Requests for documentation (which would let anyone else be able to fix the system) are turned aside based on claims that nobody else could understand it anyway.
Fundamentally ambivalent to both parents, if their unconscious drives never come to the surface therapeutically, they can be afraid of getting suffocated by other people's demands, yet also want a connection they don't know how to ask for. Safer to just master the facts and let other people - "the mundanes" - go away with their incomprehensible feelings, their strange body awareness and delight in the physical world. Why, some of that might be downright ambiguous, impossible to capture in a spreadsheet!
In healthy life, these ambivalent feelings are resolved by healthy, mutually respectful give and take interactions with other people as true peers and equals. The type 5 person is the acknowledged expert of their part of the process. They know they doesn't have to hide their techniques to be respected. At the same time, they respect the expertise of other people, including those who reach valid results through an intuitive, holistic, fluid emotional process.
If social memory complexes have their own enneagram type, this would be the stereotype of a science fiction convention. Individually, an ideal home as defined by type 5 would include moat and drawbridge, library, high def TV with subwoofer, and the latest Internet technology. If funds are available, the castle may well be stocked with enough ramen noodles, gold coins, and ammo to last through the Second Coming. There might be a poster chart in the laundry room, with a grid indicating when it will be time to buy new underwear.
With the goal of privacy, it's safe to talk about the weather and the equations that can predict it; and to discuss psychological theories as an alternative to expressing a simple, heartfelt feeling other than aloof superiority and isolation.
I dealt with an abundance of type 5's in my computer engineering career. An ideal birthday gift would be a larger wall-mounted whiteboard. This will let them add more factors into their master flowchart, and they'll be delighted at how much you understand and care about their needs. For stocking stuffers, anything with a USB port is a great choice. (Say you get then a USB-powered stapler with colorful blinking lights. It doesn't matter that adding flashing LED's to a stapler makes no sense. The fact that you can plug it into your computer and download your own color timing sequence is frickin' awesome!)
Type 5 analysts of nature: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking.
Type 5 analysts of technology and business: Bill Gates, J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes, Reginald Barclay in Star Trek. The curious aliens expanded his mind so he could make the engines modify the nature of space/time, rather than traveling through it. "I perceive the universe as a single equation, and it is so simple. I understand everything." Sure, that was awareness from the Cytherian probe, but they had to have something to work with.
Type 5 masters of analytical art and music: Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Laurie Anderson, Glenn Gould, Trent Reznor, Vincent Van Gogh, David Byrne.
Type 5 tellers of well-considered stories: Ursala LeGuinn, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King.
Type 5 appreciators of the humorously absurd: Gary Larson, Lily Tomlin.
Type 5 explorers of what's just beyond analysis: Fox Mulder, The Buddha, Ken Wilber.
Type 8 introduction is ready to post after the next comment or question. The posts on spiritual evolution for types 2, 5, and 8 will follow later today, or in a day or two.