Type Five - The Investigator
Profile by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson - The Enneagram Institute
The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Original, Provocative, and Eccentric
Basic Fear: Being useless,
helpless, or incapable
Basic Desire: To be capable and competent
The Five with a Four-Wing: "The Iconoclast"
The Five with a Six-Wing: "The Problem Solver"
Potential Neuroses: Schizoid, Schizotypal, and Paranoid
Personality Disorders
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.
Healthy
Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight.
Most mentally alert, curious, searching intelligence: nothing
escapes their notice. Foresight and prediction. Able to
concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention.
Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by
knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and
inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly
independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical. At Their Best: Become
visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it
profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true
context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways
of doing and perceiving things.
Average
Begin conceptualizing everything before acting—working
things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing,
and gathering more resources. Studious, acquiring technique.
Become specialized, and often "intellectual," into
research, scholarship, and building theories. Increasingly
detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or
imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and
interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by off-beat,
esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing
elements. Detached from the practical world, a "disembodied
mind," although high-strung and intense. Begin to take an
antagonistic stance toward anything which would interfere with
their inner world and personal vision. Become provocative and
abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical
and argumentative.
Unhealthy
Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and
nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they
reject and repulse others and all social attachments. / Get
obsessed yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming
horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias.
Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic
break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with
schizophrenic overtones.
Wings by Thomas Condon - The Changeworks
Five With a 4 Wing
The difference between the 4 wing and the 6 wing in Fives is like
the difference between Art and Science. 4 wing brings an
abstract, intuitive cast of thought, as though the Five were
thinking in geometric shapes instead of words or realistic
images. May be talented artistically and inhabit moods like Fours
do. Combine intellectual and emotional imagination. Enjoy the
realm of philosophy and beautiful constructs of thought. The
marriage of mental perspective and aesthetics is the best of life
for them. When more defensive may seem a little ghostly, have a
whisper in their voice. Fluctuate between impersonal withdrawal
and bursts of friendly caring. Can get floaty and abstract. Act
like they're inside a bubble, sometimes with an air of implicit
superiority. Cliché of the "absentminded professor"
applies especially to Fives with this wing. Environmentally
sensitive and subject at times to total overwhelm. Touchy about
criticism. Can be slow to recover from traumatic events.
Melancholy isolation and bleak existential depression are
possible pitfalls.
Five With a 6 Wing
The 6 wing brings an orientation to detail and technical
knowledge, along with the tendency to think in logical sequence.
Especially intellectual, far more analytical than Fives with a 4
wing. Can be loyal friends, offering strong behind-the-scenes
support. Kind, patient teachers, skillful experts. May have a
sense of mission and work hard. Sometimes project an aura of
sensitive nerdiness and have clumsy social skills. When
defensive, they can be unnerved by the expectations of others.
May like people more but avoid them more. Especially sensitive to
social indebtedness. Could have trouble saying "thank
you." Fear of taking action, develop "information
addiction" instead. Ask lots of questions but don't get
around to the decision at hand. When more entranced, they develop
a suspicious scrutiny of other people's motives but can also be
blind followers. Misanthropic and Scrooge-like when defensive.
More able to keep their feelings cut off in a constant way. Can
be cold, skeptical, ironic, and disassociated. A Five's 6 wing
can be phobic or counterphobic. Counterphobic 6 wing brings
courage and antiauthoritarian attitudes. When defensive they may
mock authority, or angrily tell others off. Tend to "push
the envelope," experiment, find what the limits are.
Instinctual Variants by Thomas Condon - The Changeworks
Self-Preservation
Chief defensive tendency is to withdraw. Sensitive to feeling
saturated by the world, Fives with this subtype lose their sense
of privacy easily. Can feel knocked over by people's
expectations. In isolation they refind their lost sense of
balance and build up to the next round of social stresses. More
alienated than the other subtypes. May hide in books, live alone
or need their own room where they can close themselves off. Take
little from others. Sometimes thin. Likely to hoard time and
space. Have solitary hobbies and interests, seek comfort and
solace alone.
Intimate
Intimate Fives trust only a few people but then do so totally.
Friendship is based on the sharing of confidences. Intimacy is
equivalent to exchanging secrets. Can go from enigmatic,
deliberate distance to intense, unguarded openness. Seductive
invitation to sharing secrets; seek a total merging. When
entranced can be a little kinky.
Social
Social Fives connect with groups of like-minded people. Enjoy
living in the flow of a group interest, sharing knowledge and
affiliations. May prefer specialized or esoteric areas of
knowledge that exclude all but the initiated. Could live in high
society, know the "right" people, belong to the best
clubs. Might enjoy speaking a professional language that few
people understand. Can be quite friendly but, at times, terrific
snobs. Romanticize secret elitist group membership; concerned
with titles, degrees, credentials, etc. Realm of academia.