Fives (Enneagram of Personality)

Personality type Five of the Enneagram. Synonymous with the Investigator. According to Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson.

Basic Description

Fives are motivated by the need to know and understand everything, to be self-sufficient, and to avoid looking foolish.

Believing they are only worth what they contribute, Fives have learned to withdraw, to watch with keen eyes and speak only when they can shake the world with their observations. Sometimes they do just that. Other times they withdraw from the world, becoming reclusive hermits and fending off social contact with abrasive cynicism.

Focus of Attention

Passion/Fixation: Avarice/Detachment

Avarice manifests as the accumulation and conservation of resources - often knowledge, information, understanding, time, energy, or a sense of rationality. Taking direct action, putting oneself out there in the world on purpose, is often avoided or done sparingly because it may deplete the resources. (Direct application of knowledge or ideas in a realm that might render them useless or invalid might be an example of this.) Imagine a canoeist who, deeply frightened of being up the creek without a paddle, collects paddles, or perhaps makes some paddles from collected parts, stores them, but does not want to use them indiscriminately in case they break or get lost in the rushing stream.

Basic Fear: 'Of being incompetent or useless'

In the canoe metaphor above, this would correspond to the dreaded proverbial situation of "being up the creek without a paddle." The Five fears the possibility of being utterly broken and destroyed by the world, of not being able to cope, and believes that the hoarded, protected resources can prevent this and provide the capacity to cope.

Basic Desire: 'To be capable'

Or, in the spirit of the canoe metaphor, "to always have a paddle" (and/or other ways of coping with the "up the creek" situation). The Five attempts to achieve the sense of being able to face whatever life brings him or her through the avarice/hoarding fixation of accumulating and conserving resources ("paddles").

Levels of Development

Healthy
Level 1	Investigators let go of their fear of being incompetent, allowing them to participate fully in the world rather than withholding from it; they become visionary, perceiving reality wholly and in its proper context, and paradoxically fulfill their basic desire of being capable.
Level 2	Investigators start to identify with feelings of being detached, observant and perceptive, and begin to reject aspects of themselves that go against this self-image.
Level 3	Investigators reinforce their self-image by taking on the role of "the expert", seeking to master a body of knowledge or a set of skills that no-one else has mastered. In this way, they feel they will have something to contribute to others and thus reinforce their competency.
Average
Level 4	Investigators start to doubt themselves, feeling less and less prepared to present their work before they have "truly" mastered it. Feeling unsure of their competence, they become increasingly preoccupied with collecting more skills, facts or resources.
Level 5	Investigators intensify their investment in their mental activities, withdrawing from their environment and detaching emotionally from others in order to shut out intrusions on their time and space. They also tend to create their own imaginary worlds, where they would spend much of their time.
Level 6	Investigators fear that their niche will be threatened by others. To push people away, Investigators overcompensate, attacking the beliefs and ideas of others in order to make others feel incompetent themselves.
Unhealthy
Level 7	Investigators are increasingly distraught, fearing that they will never be competent enough to take their place in the world. They retreat from reality, cutting all but the most basic connections with the world and inhabit an empty, nihilistic world in their minds.
Level 8	Investigators feel acutely incapable, small and at the mercy of a world that has taken on an ominous and nightmarish quality due to their own fearful projections. Their thoughts are in turmoil, minds stuck in high-gear, and they become mentally unstable, becoming schizoid and wracked by nightmares and insomnia.
Level 9	Investigators seek a final, absolute escape from their pain and terror by seeking to remove themselves entirely from reality. Schizoid breaks or suicide are likely.

Childhood

Investigators often have histories of grossly inadequate, cold, or neglectful early parenting. These traumatic experiences may have created an expectation that relationships would not be gratifying, precipitating a subsequent defensive withdrawal from others (Gunderson & Philips, pg. 1445).

Riso and Hudson classify Investigators as being "ambivalent towards both the nurturing figure and the protective figure", meaning that they did not identify with either role strongly. This leads to their perception of themselves as being without a role in life, and their compensatory action of finding and defending a niche; it is as if the roles of their parents filled up all the conceptual "space" in which they could contribute, leading to a fear of being overwhelmed and a desire to have something (an area of mastery) to "bring to the table".

Wings

Five With A Four Wing: The Iconoclast

Average

The four wing produces an emotional "charge" that complements the five's mental intensity. They are emotionally sensitive and easily overwhelmed, yet at the same time driven to explore their emotional landscapes, often by deliberately entering dark, esoteric, or disturbing arenas of thoughts. Compared to 5w6's, 5w4's have a more intuitive, non-rational approach to knowledge, which can lead to both aesthetic awareness and open defiance of established ideas. They can be compulsively individualistic in their thoughts at the expense of their usefulness or social implications, and then look distantly down at those whom they "left behind" as they bask in more fantastical and otherworldly speculations. Their emotions, at the same time, agitate, stoke, and unsettle their ideas, imbuing them with a dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish quality.

Unhealthy

When unhealthy, this subtype can be one of the most alienated of all personality types, almost completely isolated from others, and full of self-hate (Riso, 1987, pg. 159). There is usually some degree of schizotypal neurosis exhibited. Neurotics of this subtype suffer excessive social anxiety, e.g., extreme discomfort in social situations involving unfamiliar people. They experience ideas of reference, entertain odd beliefs and engage in magical thinking. They often have unusual perceptual experiences, e.g., illusions, sensing the presence of a force or person not actually present. And frequently they exhibit odd or eccentric behavior or appearance, e.g., odd speech, an unkempt appearance, unusual mannerisms, and talking to self. Usually they have no close friends or confidants (or only one) other than first-degree relatives. Their affect is often inappropriate or constricted, e.g., they are silly, aloof, rarely reciprocating gestures or facial expressions, such as smiles or nods. They are disposed to suspiciousness and paranoid ideation.

Examples of 5w4s

Hannah Arendt, Tim Burton, Kurt Cobain, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, David Lynch, Friedrich Nietszche, Vincent Van Gogh

Five With A Six Wing: The Problem Solver

Unhealthy

When persons of this subtype become unhealthy, they usually exhibit some degree of schizoid neurosis. They seem not to desire or enjoy close relationships, including being part of a family. They almost always choose solitary activities. They rarely, if ever, claim or appear to experience strong emotions, such as anger and joy. They indicate little if any desire to have sexual experiences with another person. They seem indifferent to the pains and criticism of others. They usually have no close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives. And they usually display a constricted affect; for example, they are aloof, cold, and rarely reciprocate gestures or facial expressions such as smiles or nods.

As Fives with a Six wing become more unhealthy, their theories tend to become more abstract and theoretical, and less connected with physical and tangible reality to the extent that they may dismiss empirical evidence which does not support their ideas on the basis that they are meaningless or arbitrary. In fact, many unhealthy Fives with a Six wing tend to become fairly nihilistic, seeing reality and existence as meaningless and arbitrary. It must be said though that these theories may be perfectly logical and reasonable, as many theories of the Investigator are. However, as they get unhealthier, they tend to place less and less faith in the tangible, external world and so lose perspective. In other words, their ideas may be extremely logical, but also extremely obscure, eccentric or bizarre. Many unhealthy Fives also tend to suffer from bouts of existential depression.

Examples of 5w6s

Isaac Asimov, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Alfred Hitchcock, Theodore Kaczynski, Karl Marx, Ezra Pound

Instinctual Variants of Type Five

Self-Preservational Instinctual Variant

The fives of this variant might be the most reclusive type/variant combination there is in the enneagram. They feel with acuteness scarcity of energy, time, and resources, and they defend against this fear by withdrawal. Self-preservational fives can hoard property, time, and space, or produce a fortress of theoretical construct, to ward off intrusions from the outside world. Some self-preservational fives also have strong technical focus and abilities, again because they prefer their time to be used as efficiently as possible, which technology promises to fulfill. They can be warm and friendly to those they're personally close to, but most others would likely find a standoffish person who prefers to be left alone than to suffer company.

Social Instinctual Variant

The social variant of five is focused in particular in finding a specialized and indispensable role in their community. They appear to be more "open" and friendlier than the other variants, willing to discuss and debate ideas in diverse fields. They frequently find themselves in the role of advisor or behind-the-scenes expert, whether they consciously strive for it or not. They can also be active commentators and critics of the outside world. However, it nowhere means that social fives are less "hoarding" than the other variants, for they can express and withhold ideas selectively as means of wielding power. Less healthy social fives, in particular, can have a very grim view on humans and societies in general, and they will develop long treatises to support the outlook.

Sexual Instinctual Variant

The clash of the sexual variant and the five fixation causes significant intrapsychic conflicts, which gives them a somewhat brittle and delicate outward appearance. These fives yearn for human relationships, but with the fixation holding them back, they can alternate between pursuit of a love interest and defensive withdrawal. However, it is through relationship and works of art that they find channels for self-expression. They long to share their internal world, which they guard with care until they feel there's someone who can understand them. They can become emotionally obsessed, holding the love interest as the only source of their connection with the external world, yet also fear their autonomy be compromised by it.

Antidotes for personal growth

Virtue/Holy Idea: Nonattachment/Divine Providence

Nonattachment and detachment may sound similar, and are sometimes even described with the same word, but they are radically different. The pathological detachment of the fixated 5 is akin to only touching things with a 10 foot pole (and being strongly attached to that pole all the while), or prematurely throwing something away lest it cause pain or otherwise threaten the tokens of empowerment to which the 5 is strongly attached. Nonattachment, on the other hand, occurs when the 5 lets go of its ten-foot poles and the compulsion to protect resources (i.e. Avarice), and directly touches things so as to get the full experience of interaction, but is then able to gently let it go and move on.

Understanding and living the idea of Divine Providence can occur when the 5 releases the passion of Avarice. Time, energy, information, understanding, and other key resources of life are often available along the journey. Conservation and accumulation in moderation are still wise, but in excess are not necessary.

Release: "I am willing to acknowledge my tendency to withdraw."

References

John G. Gunderson and Katherine A. Philips, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/VI. Vol. 2. Eds. Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Sadock. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1995. ISBN 0-683-04532-6.
Don Richard Riso, Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. ISBN 0-395-40575-0.
Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Types. New York: Bantam Books, 1999. ISBN 0-553-37820-1.