EJ Einnegram entries 4/7/05

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3088Re: wisdom/Einnegram

 

 

Apr. 7, 2005

 

 

Strategy 5 - Just an Observer
The Lonely Five

John Donne said that "No man is an island," but fives have the best
shot at it of all the enneagram types. They are most explicitly
antisocial of all the types. They are that way because they are so
sensitive.

Fives are polarized about boundary issues in the following way: They
are extremely emotionally sensitive, often hypersensitive. So to
protect this sensitivity, they develop unusually strong boundaries.

These boundaries include detachment. Noninvolvement, being just an
observer, is one way of insuring that one is not invaded. Fives fear
invasion. Fives, sixes and sevens are all fear-based as we start this
second center, but the specific fear of the five is of being invaded,
of being overwhelmed. Their island is protected by distance, not by
hostility or placation.

Fives are also the most intellectual. They are frequently highly
intelligent (any number can be intelligent), but their intelligence
is both a gift and a means of handling the world. Fives love to
replay and rehearse. If the baseball game is on Sunday, they mentally
rehearse it on Friday and Saturday, play on Sunday and replay it in
their minds on Monday and Tuesday. I have it on dubious authority
that a Five invented instant replay. Only when they get it into their
mind does it become real . There they can exercise their gifts of
analysis and synthesis and make sense of their experiences.

Many fives are excellent writers because they are keen observers,
they can make minute analyses and relate what they saw to all the
rest of the information they have. And they have a lot. And while
they are distant, they are also objective. They don't allow emotion
to cloud their judgment --easy for them, they're not involved!

A current movie, A Heart in Winter (Un coeur en hiver) depicts a Five
(the main character, Stephan) in clinical detail. Subtitles bother
some, but this is a must see. As a movie, it is exquisitely done. The
story line is simple: Stephan, a violin repairman is in partnership
with a man who divorces and begins to live with a beautiful
violinist. But she learns to love Stephan and the story is his
inability to love her.

As you watch Stephan, notice his attention to detail as a repairman
(he's a genius), his hyper-intellectualization in conversations, his
inability to experience feelings (he has them so strong he almost
passes out when he sees his partner preparing a home for the woman he
loves but he can't allow them into consciousness; they will flood
him). Notice his keen skills of observation. Feel that he is a "nice"
guy and then says really harsh things.

His life is contrasted with the older couple with whom he lives or
goes to see. They actually care for one another but they fight all
the time. You can tell this noisy, invasively interactive, messy
example is what he does not want in his own life.

The girl, Camille, is sort of twoish, and the partner is vaguely
threeish, but we identify with Stephan so the director deliberately
makes their personalities vague to make it clear that this entranced
Five really only sees himself.

Camille thinks he is good friends with her lover, his business
associate, but Stephan says he is only a partner. When you think you
are friends with an entranced five, you better check it out. They are
not as involved with you as you are with them. The same is true with
Stephan and Camille. She is the aggressor, because even though he
loves her, he keeps his distance. This is a special five loop that
causes them much pain. People are attracted to them because of their
sensitivity and intelligence. But they can be in love with their own
constructs (Camille says that music arouses Stephan's love, but he
coolly replies, "Music is a dream."). Like fours who are in love with
their own emotions, fives are in love with their own understandings.
This is the reality behind the metaphor of the Ivory Tower.

Fives have a long time-line. When Robert McNamarra confessed after 25
years that he knew full well the folly of Vietnam, that our
government had lied systematically and we had no chance of winning
etc., people asked "Why didn't you tell us this back then? Part of
the answer is understandable - passions were so high he would have
been prosecuted, and unhealthy Fives have a notion that people are
going to prosecute them anyway if they get a chance. But part of the
reason he waited is that fives often require a long time to process
material. Fives hate surprises when entranced and they love privacy.

All numbers have a specific mode of impoverishment. Fives practice
the sin of avarice in enneagram tradition. But they don't just hoard
money. The problem is much more like a hoarding of emotions, time and
personal giving of time and energy.

Fives are antisocial, not in their manners or even behavior. They see
people as draining them. People are not an asset as much as a
liability. The self-talk is that "I only have so many inner resources
and as often as I interact with people, I am depleted. Not that
people are bad, it's just that they are draining. I've had fives
describe themselves to me as a battery. They are drained by social
interaction and recharged by solitude. A popular (and theologically
awful) book of piety in the early part of this century was the
Catholic classic, Thomas a Kempis', The Imitation of Christ. He
said "As often as I go among men, I come back less a man." This was
put forth as a call to contemplation, but it was just his preference
as an entranced five.

To see how a Five and Seven can be connected in a person, go watch
Awakenings, starring Robin Williams. Yes, Robin Williams, that
flaming Seven in real life, plays a Five well as a research doctor.
Remember the movie when we get to Nines. The whole movie is a
metaphor for nineishness.

Resources: (Besides the Library of Congress)
1) Physical exercise is good for Fives. It gets them out of their
heads.

2) Small group support is helpful. The group has to be small, it
should keep the same members. The discussion of something like the
enneagram is fruitful, but be careful; it could be entirely head talk
and never include any sharing. Fives must learn to trust, then share.
One of the ground rules must be that everything said in the group is
under the rubric of confidentiality. Nothing said may be repeated
outside the group without permission.

3) One more fine movie to discuss: sex, lies and videotape.

4) The parable of Jesus' feeding the multitudes is in all four
gospels. It is a metaphor for how sharing, not hoarding is the way to
overcome impoverishment. (See Matthew 14:13).

5) Sartre's play No Exit. proclaims that "Hell is other people." It
is brilliant.

Famous Fives: Albert Einstein, Rene Descartes, Sartre T. S. Eliot,
the Buddha, Scrooge, Hildegard von Bingen, Johnny Carson, Jacqueline
Kennedy, billionaires Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty , Bill Gates and
Fred Lemon (leading contributor to Republican party).

Discussion questions:
1) When you watch The Heart in Winter, are you surprised when Stephan
tells Camille of his lack of feelings for her? What does this tell
you about entranced Fivishness?

2) Discuss some of the ways that Stephan is into control. How do you
or your Five friends do it?

3) How old is Stephan's Five strategy? How old is yours? Elaborate.

4) What does Stephan's strategy cost him? What's in it for him?

 

3089 Re: wisdom/Einnegram

 

 

Apr. 7, 2005

 

 

http://www.enneagramcentral.com/een_1a.htm

Strategy 1 - The Perfectionists
The Critical One

Let's look at type One. They seem to know better than reality. By
that I mean they have a habit of looking at reality in the light of
something better. They look at reality and see what is wrong. They
sort for fault, for flaws, for what ought to be there and isn't. They
walk around asking themselves, "What's wrong with this picture?" They
have high standards to which reality must, but cannot, conform.

They turn the scolding light of faultfinding on themselves first.
Often ones grew up in an atmosphere in which they were criticized,
perhaps severely and were told that criticism was done in the name of
love. "If I didn't love you, I wouldn't correct you. I tell you what
is wrong because I love you." Children turn all attention into love
anyway, so they interpret criticism as an act of love.

So to be good to themselves, they criticize themselves. This is also
a preemptive strike. "You can criticize me, but I've already
criticized myself for that very thing so you don't really add much to
the conversation." Like all enneagram strategies, it is also a way of
controlling their world. If One is hyper critical, One is aware that
this is a way of making sure the world is the way it ought to be.
Implicit in this approach is a smoldering anger that things are not
right.

This anger is part of the 8-9-1 Instinctive or Gut or Anger center.
The One's anger is a moral one. They can be pictured as waving their
index finger in a scolding manner.

This search for rightness and the energy of the anger makes them
perfectionists. Ones will work endlessly on a project, making sure
everything is perfect. They frequently have trouble with deadlines
because almost any project can be improved .

With their intense moral concern and their interpretation of
criticism as love, Ones do not want to be loved for their charm or
beauty. They want to be appreciated and loved for the good work they
do and their moral fiber. Love comes after evaluation, it is not be
given for charm without effort.

Some prominent real life ones: Ross Perot (who, while quite effective
when he criticizes things, is much less effective in saying what we
ought to do). Miss Manners tells us all just how to behave. Like her,
many Ones are literary and musical critics. Hilary Clinton campaigned
for her health care reform with the central theme, "It's the right
thing to do." (Listen to her talk, she frequently searches out the
moral high ground). Ralph Nadar, the political reformer is an ascetic
one, willing to take on General Motors if they are wrong. And Pope
John Paul II is a One. I read one page of his book in which he
refuted a dozen heresies and then said what the truth was. Ones have
a tendency to think there is only one right way to think or behave.
John Paul is no exception.

Oneness can show up in lighthearted situations, too. Remember (or
watch again) My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison is a one. He happens to play
a sexual subtype with the usual lifework of reforming those they
love. The whole movie is about his making Liza Doolittle into a fine
lady. Surprise! She resents it. (His picky grammar, his finicky
habits, his repression of his own sensuality). He declares love by
singing that he's become accustomed to her face etc. That's not
exactly unbridled passion.

One's are polarized against their own sensuality because sensuality
can easily lead to moral deviance. Passion, impulse, bliss -- these
threaten the moral order. So One's have a specific neurotic defense
called a reaction formation. A One walks down the street and sees a
delicious dessert being served at a sidewalk cafe. They then begin to
lecture on how terrible it is that people let themselves get fat!
They do this without acknowledging how much they want that dessert.

Resources:
Read St. Paul's letter to the Romans. The whole thing is about how we
can be righteous. Paul is a one and you'll see how angry he is, and
how angry he is at the Law. He is angry at the law because all the
law does is show us where we are wrong and doesn't enable us to do
what is right. This really bothers a One.

Martin Luther and John Calvin are Ones, too and Lutherans often talk
about Paul's letters to Romans and Galatians as the "Canon (Standard
by which things are measured) within the Canon of scriptures."

American Puritanism is quite oneish. Just read Jonathan Edwards as he
scolds and scalds his audiences with his sermons.

Listen to Richard Rohr's tapes, Enneagram: Naming Our Illusions.
Richard is a One and he is eloquent and insightful on his own
fixation.

Ones get healthy when they get funny. Treat yourself to some humor.

Questions:
1) Whom do you most disapprove of? What might that tell you? (My pet
peeve is...)

2) Ones get healthy when they incorporate the Sevens ability to
create options. As an exercise, create three alternatives to do
something you think you do well.

3) What do you like about your favorite poet? Tell your group. (You
do read poetry, don't you?)

4) Do you have a little voice talking to you, telling you what you're
doing wrong? Talk about this voice and what it says. (If this is
really severe, you might want to listen to Tom Condon's series, Easy
In Your Harness. He has a wonderful exercise for Ones on there.
).

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