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The Intense, Cerebral Type:
Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated
* En Español: Tipo de Personalidad Cinco, El Investigador
* In het Nederlands: Persoonlijkheidstype Vijf, de Onderzoeker
For more about the meaning of the arrows, see below.
Type Five in Brief
Fives are alert, insightful, and curious. They are able to concentrate and focus on developing complex ideas and skills. Independent, innovative, and inventive, they can also become preoccupied with their thoughts and imaginary constructs. They become detached, yet high-strung and intense. They typically have problems with eccentricity, nihilism, and isolation. At their Best: visionary pioneers, often ahead of their time, and able to see the world in an entirely new way.
* Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable
* Basic Desire: To be capable and competent
* Enneagram Five with a Four-Wing: "The Iconoclast"
* Enneagram Five with a Six-Wing: "The Problem Solver"
Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.
The Meaning of the Arrows (in brief)
When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), detached Fives suddenly become hyperactive and scattered at Seven. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), avaricious, detached Fives become more self-confident and decisive, like healthy Eights. For more information, click here.
Examples: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Georgia O'Keefe, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Lily Tomlin, Gary Larson, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, James Joyce, Björk, Susan Sontag, Emily Dickinson, Agatha Christie, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jane Goodall, Glenn Gould, John Cage, Bobby Fischer, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Trent Reznor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Jodie Foster, and "Fox Mulder" (X Files).
Type Five Overview
We have named personality type Five The Investigator because, more than any other type, Fives want to find out why things are the way they are. They want to understand how the world works, whether it is the cosmos, the microscopic world, the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms-or the inner world of their imaginations. They are always searching, asking questions, and delving into things in depth. They do not accept received opinions and doctrines, feeling a strong need to test the truth of most assumptions for themselves.
John, a graphic artist, describes this approach to life.
“Being a Five means always needing to learn, to take in information about the world. A day without learning is like a day without ‘sunshine.’ As a Five, I want to have an understanding of life. I like having a theoretical explanation about why things happen as they do. This understanding makes me feel in charge and in control. I most often learn from a distance as an observer and not a participant. Sometimes, it seems that understanding life is as good as living it. It is a difficult journey to learn that life must be lived and not just studied.”
Behind Fives’ relentless pursuit of knowledge are deep insecurities about their ability to function successfully in the world. Fives feel that they do not have an ability to do things as well as others. But rather than engage directly with activities that might bolster their confidence, Fives “take a step back” into their minds where they feel more capable. Their belief is that from the safety of their minds they will eventually figure out how to do things-and one day rejoin the world.
Fives spend a lot of time observing and contemplating-listening to the sounds of wind or of a synthesizer, or taking notes on the activities in an anthill in their back yard. As they immerse themselves in their observations, they begin to internalize their knowledge and gain a feeling of self-confidence. They can then go out and play a piece on the synthesizer or tell people what they know about ants. They may also stumble across exciting new information or make new creative combinations (playing a piece of music based on recordings of wind and water). When they get verification of their observations and hypotheses, or see that others understand their work, it is a confirmation of their competency, and this fulfills their Basic Desire. (“You know what you are talking about.”)
Knowledge, understanding, and insight are thus highly valued by Fives, because their identity is built around “having ideas” and being someone who has something unusual and insightful to say. For this reason, Fives are not interested in exploring what is already familiar and well-established; rather, their attention is drawn to the unusual, the overlooked, the secret, the occult, the bizarre, the fantastic, the “unthinkable.” Investigating "unknown territory"-knowing something that others do not know, or creating something that no one has ever experienced-allows Fives to have a niche for themselves that no one else occupies. They believe that developing this niche is the best way that they can attain independence and confidence.
Thus, for their own security and self-esteem, Fives need to have at least one area in which they have a degree of expertise that will allow them to feel capable and connected with the world. Fives think, “I am going to find something that I can do really well, and then I will be able to meet the challenges of life. But I can’t have other things distracting me or getting in the way.” They therefore develop an intense focus on whatever they can master and feel secure about. It may be the world of mathematics, or the world of rock and roll, or classical music, or car mechanics, or horror and science fiction, or a world entirely created in their imagination. Not all Fives are scholars or Ph.Ds. But, depending on their intelligence and the resources available to them, they focus intensely on mastering something that has captured their interest.
For better or worse, the areas that Fives explore do not depend on social validation; indeed, if others agree with their ideas too readily, Fives tend to fear that their ideas might be too conventional. History is full of famous Fives who overturned accepted ways of understanding or doing things (Darwin, Einstein, Nietzshce). Many more Fives, however, have become lost in the Byzantine complexities of their own thought processes, becoming merely eccentric and socially isolated.
The intense focus of Fives can thus lead to remarkable discoveries and innovations, but when the personality is more fixated, it can also create self-defeating problems. This is because their focus of attention unwittingly serves to distract them from their most pressing practical problems. Whatever the sources of their anxieties may be-relationships, lack of physical strength, inability to gain employment, and so forth-average Fives tend not to deal with these issues. Rather, they find something else to do that will make them feel more competent. The irony is that no matter what degree of mastery they develop in their area of expertise, this cannot solve their more basic insecurities about functioning in the world. For example, as a marine biologist, a Five could learn everything there is to know about a type of shellfish, but if her fear is that she is never going to be able to run her own household adequately, she will not have solved her underlying anxiety.
Dealing directly with physical matters can feel extremely daunting for Fives. Henry is a life scientist working in a major medical research lab:
“Since I was a child, I have shied away from sports and strenuous physical activity whenever possible. I was never able to climb the ropes in gym class, stopped participating in sports as soon as it was feasible, and the smell of a gymnasium still makes me uncomfortable. At the same time, I have always had a very active mental life. I learned to read at the age of three, and in school I was always one of the smartest kids in academic subjects.”
Thus, much of their time gets spent "collecting" and developing ideas and skills they believe will make them feel confident and prepared. They want to retain everything that they have learned and “carry it around in their heads.” The problem is that while they are engrossed in this process, they are not interacting with others or even increasing many other practical and social skills. They devote more and more time to collecting and attending to their collections, less to anything related to their real needs.
Thus, the challenge to Fives is to understand that they can pursue whatever questions or problems spark their imaginations and maintain relationships, take proper care of themselves, and do all of the things that are the hallmarks of a healthy life.
five with six wing
general description
Suspicion combines with analytical detachment in average 5/6. The fiveish desire to know the reasons for everything combines with sixish skepticism to create a dry, sometimes intolerant personality. Because the six-wing wants to be liked, they want to be sociable and have friends. But the interaction of the sixish mistrust and the fiveish analysis makes it difficult for them to get close to very many people. They may have more trouble approaching others than the more sociable 6/5. Unlike 5/4, 5/6 may be more interested in politics than nature, more interested in conspiracy theories than physics theories.
balanced and transcendent states
Balanced 5/6 gains social ease. Deep perception and serene faith combine for a kind of knowing that focuses on the truth of human interactions. Healthy 5/6 overcomes the fear of intimacy and finds satisfaction in genuine relationships. A balance is struck between the urge to withdraw to sort things out and the desire to feel safe among trusted friends. The need diminishes to protect against deceit by constantly analyzing people, leading to greater comfort and depth in friendships.
The best of 5/6 brings together the powerful insight of five, the stamina and leadership of eight, the deep faith and genuineness of six, and the inner peace of nine. Extremely advanced 5/6 is a leader, using a magical level of perception to help others see themselves more clearly. Inspiring trust and respect, they explain human interactions in a way that teaches people to see the wholeness in the parts, demonstrating through their actions that society is one body.
unbalanced and unhealthy states
Unbalanced 5/6 becomes afraid of people. Mistrust interacts with reductionistic analysis, and the world begins to seem more and more threatening. Threeish competitive urges might emerge, combining with sevenish mania to create a kind of intense, argumentative combativeness that hides a deep sense of inadequacy. This unbalanced state turns people away, leading to a greater sense of isolation. Unhealthy 5/6 tends to rationalize that most people are not honest anyway, and since other people fail to recognize the value of their brilliant ideas, they are not worth knowing at all.
In the worst cases, paranoia and anxiety lead 5/6 into a terrifying spiral in which increasingly bizarre fabrications may be used to explain hallucinated meanings into even the most mundane events. Numbers, names, and shapes can take on enormous significance. Vast, intricate, imaginary conspiracies are clearly seen as Truth. The whole world is warped into a shape that supports an increasingly baroque inner model. There is a time during which violent acts are possible, just before the inner system collapses. In the end, the house of cards can fall suddenly, leaving 5/6 in a trembling fugue of total withdrawal.
physical appearance
5/6 is interested in fitting in, but not standing out, unless there is extreme identification with ideas, in which case there can be a tortured kind of threeish social aggression. Clothing is usually conservative and often quite understated. Sometimes there is a coarse, gritty sort of appearance. Hair might be a bit messy, glasses askew. The six wing (and its threeish stress) sometimes brings in a desire to look sharp and professional, but it is not usually accomplished as smoothly as a real three would do it. Healthy 5/6 often likes to dress well, although there usually must be a conscious effort.
callings
Some 5/6es find work that combines non-threatening social interaction with rigorous intellectual exercise. Technical test engineers, chess players, historians, museum curators. Others use their social perceptions more directly, becoming psychologists, social commentators, novelists, social theoreticians, science popularizers. Many become scientists of different kinds, from embryologists to materials specialists. There are 5/6 magicians, psychic debunkers, computer engineers, interpreters, and math teachers. Of course, 5/6es can also be found doing many other kinds of work.
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