Personality Types

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Highlights

  • Healthy: Self-aware, introspective, engaged in a “search for self,” aware of feelings and inner impulses. Sensitive and intuitive both to self and others: gentle, tactful, compassionate. / Highly personal, individualistic, true to their feelings. Self-revealing, emotionally honest, humane. Ironic view of self and life: can be serious and funny, vulnerable and emotionally strong. At Their Best: Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing, and regenerating—able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: redemptive and self-creative.
  • Key Motivations: Want to be themselves, to express themselves in something beautiful, to find the ideal partner, to withdraw to protect their feelings, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else.
  • Part of the satisfaction which a creative person obtains from his achievement may be the feeling that, at last, some part of his inner life is being accepted which has never been accorded recognition before.
  • creative work is generally recognized as being especially apt for expressing the personal style of an individual (which is of course closely related to his inner world).
  • Fours, however, are in search of their identities, and by taking an artistic or at least aesthetic orientation to life they hope to find out who they are and what about themselves is significant.
  • The Four is the personality type which emphasizes the subjective world of feelings, in creativity and individualism, in introversion and self-absorption, and in self-torment and self-hatred. In this personality type we see creative artists, romantic aesthetes, and withdrawn dreamers, people with powerful feelings who feel different from others because self-consciousness blocks them from getting outside themselves.
  • The constant conflict we see in Fours is between their need to be aware of themselves, so they can find themselves, and, at the same time, their need to move beyond self-awareness, so they will not be trapped in self-consciousness. The tension between self-awareness and self-transcendence can be resolved in creativity. In the creative moment, healthy Fours harness their emotions without getting lost in them, not only producing something beautiful but discovering who they are. In the moment of inspiration they are, paradoxically, both most themselves and most liberated from themselves. This is why all forms of creativity are so valued by Fours, and why, in its inspired state, creativity is so hard to sustain. Fours can be inspired only if they have first transcended themselves, something which is extremely threatening to their self-image. In a sense, then, only by learning not to look for themselves will they find themselves and renew themselves in the process
  • The problem with average Fours, however, is that they try to understand themselves by introspecting on their feelings. As they move inward in a search for self, they become so acutely self-conscious that their subjective emotional states become the dominant reality for them. And, because even average Fours are so involved with their emotions, they do not usually express their feelings directly. Instead, they communicate their feelings indirectly and symbolically.
  • The overall direction of their personalities therefore is inward, toward increasing self-absorption, because Fours feel that they are different from other people and they want to know why they feel this way. Ironically, however, they try to find their place in life by withdrawing from it so they can trace the labyrinth of their emotions. But the result of their withdrawal is that even average Fours have noticeable difficulties coping with life, while unhealthy Fours have some of the most severe emotional difficulties of all the personality types.
  • Fours tend to compound their emotional difficulties in some striking ways. Because Fours have identified themselves with their feelings, they begin to look for intensity of feeling in all of their activities. The more intensely they feel something, the more real they feel. Thus, average Fours begin to employ their imaginations to “stir up” their emotional life. They can take even the most transitory encounter with a person and dwell on it for hours to extract all of its “emotional juice.” The problem is that it becomes difficult for Fours to sustain their moods and fantasies if they are still interacting with others or taking care of practical needs. Their feeling states and self-image become rarefied to a degree that reality will not support. Increasingly, they begin to withdraw from life and real relationships and experiences, both to prevent others from interfering with their strong reveries and moods, and to avoid potential embarrassment and humiliation. Eventually they will only interact with those few people who support their identities and emotional needs. As they draw the curtains and turn away from life, however, they cut themselves off from the wellspring of their feelings and their creativity—participation in the world.
  • This is why, at their best, healthy Fours create something which can move others deeply, because they have been able to get in touch with the hidden depths of human nature by delving deeply into their own. By doing so, they transcend themselves and are able to discover something universal about human nature, fusing personal conflicts and divergent feelings into art.
  • In response to anxiety, they turn inward, becoming self-conscious, particularly about the negativity they discover in themselves. To offset their negative feelings, they use their imaginations to make their lives more bearable. As a result, average Fours begin to withdraw from ordinary life. They become self-absorbed and do not learn how to relate to people or how to manage in the practical world. They feel like outsiders, somehow flawed and different from others, unable to break through the barrier of self-consciousness that separates them from easy commerce with the world.
  • And if they are unhealthy, their negative feelings feed upon themselves because Fours have closed themselves off from any other influences. Unhealthy Fours are so completely alienated from others, and ironically, even from themselves, that they despair of ever finding a way out of their excruciating self-consciousness. They realize that their search for self has led them into a world of useless fantasies and illusions. Understanding only too clearly what they have done to themselves, and fearing that it is too late to do anything about it, unhealthy Fours hate and torment themselves, turning against themselves to destroy what they have become.
  • Fours find it difficult to transcend self-consciousness because just the reverse is what they want: to become more conscious of their states and feelings so that they can find themselves and arrive at a firm sense of identity. But as they become more self-conscious, Fours become increasingly drawn into unresolved, contradictory, and irrational feelings which they want to sort out before they dare express them.
  • The difficulty is that average Fours may not know what their feelings are until after they have expressed them personally or artistically. But if they express all that they feel, they fear that they may reveal too much, exposing themselves to shame or punishment. On the other hand, by not expressing their feelings, average Fours undermine the possibility of discovering themselves by getting caught in endless self-absorption. They become aware of being aware of themselves—their consciousness is filled with little more than fantasies and memories, ultimately leading to illusions, regrets, and a wasted life.
  • Fours may not know who they are, but they certainly believe they know who they are not. While these idiosyncrasies can be fairly harmless in and of themselves, as Fours increasingly depend on them to figure out who they are, they begin to paint themselves into a corner. In the interest of maintaining a narrowly defined self-image, Fours may refuse to engage in many basic activities necessary to live their lives. (“I’m a poet. I can’t work in an office.“)
  • Fours maintain their sense of identity through a continuous inner dialogue and referencing of their emotional reactions. Of course, Fours want someone to validate their self-images, too, but they are less dependent on the affirmation of others than Twos or Threes. In fact, much of their identity is tied to their feelings about not having the affirmation of others. Feeling different and misunderstood is as central to the Four’s self-image as being only good and loving is to the Two’s or being a totally competent “winner” is to the Three’s.
  • Fours are disconnected from both parents. As children, they did not identify with either their mothers or their fathers. (“I am not like my mother; I am not like my father.“) They may have had either unhappy or solitary childhoods as a result of their parents’ marital problems, divorce, illness, or simply because of personality conflicts within the family.
  • From childhood, Fours felt essentially alone in life. It seemed to them that, for reasons they could not understand, their parents had rejected them, or at least that their parents did not take much interest in them. Fours therefore felt that there must be something deeply wrong with them, that they were somehow defective because their parents did not give them the kind of nurturing attention which, as children, they needed. As a result, they turned to themselves to discover who they are.
  • Self-knowledge became their most important goal, the means by which they hoped to find some self-esteem. Fours felt that if they could discover who they are, they would not feel so different from others in the deep, essential way that they do. However, instead of creating themselves through introspection, Fours ironically become trapped in self-consciousness. Their self-consciousness alienates them, making them feel vulnerable, and arouses their aggressions at themselves and others, particularly their parents. But because they also feel powerless to express their aggressions or to do anything about their condition, they withdraw from their parents and from others, turning their aggressions mostly against themselves.
  • Because the formative relationship with their parents was primarily one of disconnection, Fours also begin to develop a sense of ego identity based on their difference from others. There were few qualities in their parents that they identified with, so Fours began to inventory all of the ways in which they were unlike the people around them. Eventually, this sense of difference becomes a strongly developed and defended part of their self-image, and many Fours have difficulty seeing the many ways in which they are like everyone else. To be “ordinary” becomes a frightening prospect, since a sense of “being unique” feels like one of the only stable building blocks of their identity. Ironically, although Fours cling to their “differentness,” they also envy and resent people who seem to enjoy a more normal existence.
  • Their disconnection from their parents also produces a longing for the “good parent”—the person who will see them as they truly are and validate the self they are trying to construct. Fours usually experience this as a longing for an ideal mate or partner. They will often project this role onto new acquaintances, idealizing them and fantasizing about the wonderful life they will have together. Unfortunately, as Fours get to know the person better, they become disenchanted, realizing that the other is not the perfect parent who will rescue them from all their problems.
  • They direct their hostility at themselves because, like Twos and Threes, Fours have rejected their real self in favor of an idealized self-image. However, because of their self-awareness, Fours are always becoming conscious of all of the ways in which they are not like their idealized self. They come to disdain many of their real qualities, which they see as barriers to becoming the self of the imagination. Angry with themselves for being defective, Fours inhibit and punish themselves in the many ways which we will see.
  • On a deep, unconscious level, Fours are hostile toward their parents because they feel that their parents did not nurture them properly. Fours feel that they were not welcomed into the world; they feel out of place, unwanted—and they are deeply enraged at their parents for doing this to them. However, their rage at their parents is so deep that Fours cannot allow themselves to express it. They fear their own anger, and so withhold it, trying to come to terms with it themselves. While some of the types may well feel the same degree of rage at their parents, Fours tend to have more difficulty getting on with their lives because they dwell on these old hurts. On a subtle level, Fours do not want to let go of their pain, lest others, especially their parents, not realize how much they have been hurt.
  • As awareness of their hostility and negative feelings gradually wears them out, however, average to unhealthy Fours sink ever more deeply into self-doubt, depression, and despair. They spend most of their time searching for the courage to go on living despite the overwhelming sense that the essential flaw in themselves is so deep that it cannot be healed. Indeed, the feeling of hopelessness is the current against which they must constantly swim. And if the undertow of hopelessness is too strong, unhealthy Fours either succumb to an emotional breakdown or commit suicide, because they despair of ever breaking free of it.
  • As soon as Fours devote themselves to a search for self by withdrawing from life, they are going in the wrong direction. No matter how necessary this search may seem to them, they must become convinced that the direct search for self is a temptation which eventually leads to despair.
  • On the other hand, what makes healthy Fours healthy is not that they have freed themselves once and for all from the turbulence of their emotions, but that they have found a way to ride that current to some further destination. Healthy Fours have learned to sustain their identities without exclusive reference to their feelings. By overcoming the temptation to withdraw from life to search for themselves, they will not only save themselves from their own destructiveness, they will be able to bring something beautiful and good into existence. If they learn to live this way, Fours can be among the most life-enhancing of the personality types, bringing good out of evil, hope from hopelessness, meaning from absurdity, and saving what appeared to be lost.
  • Of all the personality types, very healthy Fours are most in touch with impulses from their unconscious. They have learned to listen to their inner voices while remaining open to impressions from the environment. Most important, they are able to act without self-consciousness, and if they have the talent and training, are able to give their unconscious impulses an objective form in a work of art worthy of the name.
  • Having transcended self-consciousness, very healthy Fours are free to become creative in the root sense of being able to bring something new into the world. Of course, profoundly creative moments come and go, because creativity is difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, at their best Fours are able to sustain creativity because they have transcended their self-consciousness, opening up the way to inspiration. They draw inspiration from the widest variety of sources, filtering the raw material of experience through the unconscious. In doing so, inspired Fours are like oysters, transforming all their experiences, even painful ones, into something beautiful. In their inspired creative work, healthy Fours become wellsprings of revelation for others, as if they were conduits through which the sublime passes into the world.
  • By opening themselves to their hidden depths, Fours are able to express something true about themselves. Yet it is difficult for them to explain where their creativity has come from. Much of their knowledge about themselves and others has the quality of being an inspiration, something which comes to them spontaneously, completely, mysteriously, and beyond their conscious control.
  • Being creative is not limited to artists, but is an important quality which everyone should try to awaken within themselves. The most important form of creativity is self-creation—renewing and redeeming the self by transcending the ego. It is the process of turning all your experiences, good and bad, into something more for your growth as a person. (“Be the kind of person on whom nothing is lost.”—William James)
  • By acting in the moment of inspiration, which is not primarily a moment of feeling, Fours paradoxically create and discover themselves in what they bring into the world. The problem with their identities begins to be solved. Fours are “told” who they are not by their parents, but by what they discover in their creativity, and in the richness of the lives they live from day to day, from moment to moment. This is why Fours at their healthiest are not merely artists, as Rank indicates, but creative, life-enhancing individuals, who may also be artists.
  • Fours at this Level embrace life profoundly: they are truly connected with their authentic selves and with the world. They stop restricting the kinds of experiences that they will allow themselves and learn to say “yes” to life. As they open to more of life’s possibilities, they begin to experience themselves freshly in each moment—and their true identity is gradually but endlessly revealed. To be able to renew the self constantly is the highest form of creativity, a kind of “soul making,” which requires a higher state of integration than making a painting or a book or a dance. This is the state the other personality types can learn from healthy Fours, and the state to which Fours constantly aspire.
  • Awareness of their feelings also creates the problem of automatically distancing even healthy Fours from their environment. Life becomes a kind of theater in which, for better or worse, they are both spectators and actors. While this awareness allows healthy Fours to use the distance they sense between themselves and everything else as a framing device to understand themselves more clearly, it also makes it difficult for them to be self-assertive or sustain practical activities. Moreover, they realize that there is nowhere for them to hide. Fours are forced to acknowledge disquieting realities (about themselves, others, and life) because their awareness makes them sensitive both to the feelings of others and to their own subconscious impulses. Nevertheless, healthy Fours are not afraid of what their feelings are telling them, even though those feelings may be painful and disturbing.
  • Fours are not only sensitive to themselves, they are sensitive to others because they are intuitive. Intuition gives Fours the ability to understand how others think and feel and see the world. Intuition is not some sort of useless sideshow telepathy but a means of perceiving reality by way of the unconscious. It is like receiving a message in a bottle which has washed up on the shore of consciousness.
  • Self-awareness is the psychological basis of intuition. Fours are conscious of themselves, the world, and other people by way of the unconscious. And it is by seeing how their experiences affect them that Fours hope to discover their own dimensions. (Or more poetically, “I note the echo that each thing produces as it strikes my soul.”—Stendhal)
  • Intuitions are also difficult for Fours to express rationally—precisely because intuitions are irrational and have unconscious roots. For better or worse, their intuitions make them conscious of an endless stream of positive and negative feelings about themselves and the world. It therefore takes Fours time to identify and understand their intuitions, and courage for them to accept what their intuitions are telling them.
  • Healthy Fours need to express what they feel so they can know what their intuitions are telling them about themselves. They are the most personal of the personality types, revealing themselves to others with directness and authenticity. They do not put on masks, hiding their doubts and weaknesses, nor do they deceive themselves about their feelings and impulses no matter how unseemly or unflattering these are. Healthy Fours willingly reveal their flaws and irrationalities to others, since they feel that these things are not merely incidental to who they are, but reflect their personal truth.
  • Healthy Fours are concerned with being true to themselves as individuals, even at the risk of being censured by those who value tradition or convention over self-actualization. The emotional honesty we find in healthy Fours may well antagonize, or sometimes embarrass, others, who may wish that Fours were not so candid about themselves. But what healthy Fours bring to society is the example of their humanity, the message that everyone is valuable because they are individuals.
  • The inner landscape of the Nine resembles someone riding a bicycle on a beautiful day, enjoying everything about the flow of the experience. The whole picture, the entire situation, is what is pleasant and identified with rather than any particular part. The inner world of Nines is this experience of effortless oneness: their sense of self comes from being at one with their experience. Naturally, they would like to preserve the quality of oneness with the environment as much as possible.
  • Their receptive orientation to life gives Nines so much deep satisfaction that they see no reason to question it or to want to change anything essential about it. Because Nines develop psychologically this way, we should not fault them if their view of life is open and optimistic. But we may fault Nines when they refuse to see that life, while being sweet, also has difficulties which must be dealt with. Their refusal to fix the tire when it goes flat, so to speak, is symbolic of their problem. They would rather ignore whatever is wrong so that the tranquillity of their ride will not be disturbed.
  • The Nine is the primary personality type in the Instinctive Triad—the type most out of touch with their instinctual drives and their ability to relate to the environment. This occurs because Nines do not want to be affected by the environment. They have established within themselves a kind of equilibrium, a feeling of peace and contentment, and they do not want their interactions with the world or with others to disturb them. Similarly, they do not want to become unsettled by powerful feelings that their instincts would stir in them. Nines have sufficiently dissociated from the intensity of their passions, their drives, and their anger to allow them to remain tranquil and even-tempered.
  • when they are healthy, they work to create a peaceful, harmonious environment around themselves. They may do this directly by soothing others and healing conflicts and hurts, or indirectly through creativity and communication which appeals to the idealistic side of human nature, to innocence and gentleness. In this way, Nines contribute to their world, but also influence it so that it will support their inner peacefulness.
  • When Nines are less healthy, they maintain peace for themselves by ignoring those aspects of the environment which they find disturbing or upsetting. Eventually, this can lead to a highly dissociated approach to life in which Nines do not relate to others or the environment as they really are, but instead relate to an inner, idealized image of others which is more pleasant and less threatening. At the same time, while they are “tuning out” many aspects of the world around them, they are also tuning out many aspects of themselves. As a result, unless they are very healthy, Nines do not develop an awareness of themselves as individuals or even a well-defined awareness of the world around them.