This is still not finished so grammar is probably fucked at its places.
S U M M A R Y o f T Y P E 5:
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- I understand the world -
Type 5 is a head type and thus located within the head triad. The emotion that primarily concerns type 5 is is fear/anxiety, which is caused by the core motivation of being separated from the Holy Idea Holy Omniscience. As a concept, Holy Omniscience defines the essential truth and knowledge of things. It is about knowing all and understanding all as is implied by its Latin meaning: “omni” means “all” and “sciens” means “knowledge”. Achieving the essence of the Holy Idea means becoming god-like because only god is all-knowing and god is the essence of all.
Holy Omniscience is also referred to as Holy Transparence, which suggests that the 5 seeks the ability to make all that which lays hidden transparent and visible to see. Every detail and every connection between the details reveal a greater truth of the universe. Being separated from Holy Omniscience/Transparence, the 5 finds the world dangerous since this place is something they do not longer know and understand. They are separated from the higher truth that explains why we are here.
It is therefore possible to categorize the existential nature of type 5 into several stages:
- Holy Omniscience/Transparence
[*]Loss of Holy Omniscience
[*]Fear of Engulfment
[*]Avarice
Loss of Holy Omniscience
The loss of the Holy Idea means losing the essence of who we are. The more spiritual aspect of enneagram theory would define this essence as "god", but the liberal interpretation of the enneagram system would probably define "essence" as more akin to the very essence of being. Another way of defining this essence of being would be to define it as "ego". In modern psychology, the concept of "ego" is usually understood as the definition of the total awareness of who we are, the very essence of "I" as a subject.
The basic tenets of enneagram theory suggest that we have lost this sense of essence in some way, shape or form: we no longer know who we are. Knowing who we are means knowing the essence of being, and when we know this essence of being we can also be at peace with ourselves and the world. Essence of being is therefore simply not just understanding “I” as a concept, but also seeing the unity of all things, to realize that this “I” is not separate from all other “Is” in the world. We are all one and the same. Alternatively, essence of being can be interpreted as realizing the essence of one’s true potential, similar to Jung’s concept of the Self, by becoming aware of one’s will and be capable of directing one’s life.
For type 5, the essence of the type is therefore the realization of Holy Omniscience, that we can know all and understand all. When we know all and understand all, we also realize our sense of self and ego. We lose the essence of being in childhood because it is during childhood that the child is exposed to the world. It is this exposure that makes us realize that we are now separate beings; I am no longer a part of the essence. It is possible to consider the parents as the gateway to the essence (but they are not the essence themselves!) since our parents are the ones that give birth to us and nurture us once we are born. Separation between parent and child thus leads to a sense of separation from the essence of being.
For the type 5, the loss of essence is the most acute through emotional estrangement by the parent either never being present physically and/or emotionally, or simply failing to recognize the genuine needs of their child. Naranjo for example notes that many 5s lost their parent/primary caregiver as children. This could be literal meaning the parent died or left the childhood home or that the parent/primary caregiver is physically present but emotionally absent. It is also possible for the opposite to occur where the parent is overly smothering, controlling and does not allow the child to develop its independence. This makes the type 5 child develop a need towards attaining this independence on their own.
For type 5, the way to cope with this sense of separation is seeking understanding of the world. The soul child of type 5 is 8, and it is also possible to see the development of type 5 as a reaction against the loss of connection with the essence of 8 which is Holy Truth represented through the parent/primary caregiver. This ties into the concept of how type 8 is focused on personal strength and power. There is an inherent idea within type 8 that one is invulnerable. When type 8 becomes the soul child, this idea is transformed into a more idealistic state of seeking power, control and invulnerability within the mind space.
In the original works of the enneagram, Holy Omniscience is similar to that of Holy Truth in that both Holy Ideas focus on seeing how the essential nature of the universe is that of conceptual unity. By conceptual unity one should not mistake it for the other Holy Ideas. While the definition of essence is that of unity itself, either in a spiritual or psychological sense, conceptual unity is the ability to see how the aspects that make up the world. Holy Truth is about seeing
what things are but Holy Omniscience could be defined as
understanding why things are the way they are. Losing touch with this essence creates a need within the type 5 to understand the world because understanding the world means to reunite with the essence of being.
Fear of Engulfment
If the essence of type 5 is the existential sense of knowing and understanding all, the opposite nature of this is the fear of engulfment. Fear of engulfment is the fear of the world's ultimate irrationality, that the world cannot be understood. As an ontological perspective, the fear of engulfment sees the world as possessing an inherently chaotic nature. The further away we get from the essence, the more chaotic and irrational the world becomes. This chaotic irrationality should not be confused with the sense of instability associated with type 6. Instead, chaotic irrationality is simply an inability to find logical explanations and causes as to why the world is the way it is. The existential anxiety that resides within type 5 and gives rise to fear is therefore associated with the fear of engulfment; that the world cannot be explained or understood. If one cannot understand, then one cannot maintain control, and if one cannot maintain control, then one cannot survive but is simply consumed by the world itself.
It is for this reason that type 5 is a power-seeking type and that type 5 is considered a reaction against Lust/Vengeance. Instead of focusing all that need for power by directly controlling the world with physical force and action through the gut, type 5 transforms this need for power by controlling the mind. This is because if we look at the classical image of the enneagram, we see that the head or mind center is the furthest away from the gut or the belly, and the gut is the most closely associated with and being in touch with the world:
By focusing one's entire ego perspective on the head center, type 5 achieves as false sense of control, because if one cannot control the world, then one can at least control the mind. Once control of the mind is established, it is possible to re-connect with the world by controlling the world
through the mind. This control is the power-seeking aspect of the 5 which is to understand all and know all there is about the world. This also explains why the type 5 is more of an observer than that of an actor. Not only is it difficult to gain some sense of understanding if one is caught up in the middle of what is going on, but it is difficult to make that understanding objective.
The need for objectivity ties in with both Holy Truth and Holy Omniscience seeing things for what they are but also understanding why they are the way they are. If one can create distance between subject and object, the sense of control is never broken, because one never leaves the boundaries of the mind. It is when we act or when we feel that we get involved and immersed in the world around us that we feel exposed, because engaging with the world means exposing oneself to its ultimate irrational and chaotic nature.
The fear of helplessness or being helpless comes from this sense of lack of control for type 5, because when one is exposed to the random whims of the world, one cannot be anything but helpless to it. It is therefore easier to retreat into the mind, which explains why the type 5 is also a withdrawn type. Here withdrawn does not mean the same as being introverted but simply how type 5 deals with conflict which it does by withdrawing. Conflicts are in fact perfect examples of how irrational the world can be. Not only is the world itself irrational but so are the people who reside within it, and so are the emotions we feel and experience and the actions we perform. By removing oneself from the source of conflict it is easier to create a distance to the world and thus also regain a sense of control by attempting to understand the conflict itself and why conflict occurs.
In this clip we hear the recorded version of Dexter's phone call to the police when he found Rita dead in the bathtub. What is significant about this clip is how it exemplifies the objective detachment of type 5. Instead of being swept away by emotion, emotion is controlled through detached analysis by reducing Rita into another murder victim. She becomes an object rather than a subject. Another good example of this is Temperance Brennan in the TV series Bones, who is often accused of being too emotionally detached and scientific as a way to cope with emotional pain. Type 5 seeks to understand that which cannot be understood, and emotions can definitely fall into this aspect.
Avarice
In Gurdjieff's original works, type 5 is spiritually linked with type 8 because of the Law of Seven, which Naranjo later interpreted that the passion of type 5, Avarice, is the defense mechanism against the passion of type 8, being Lust/Vengeance. Ichazo originally labeled Avarice Stinginess and this is because of the ontological perspective Avarice offers by seeing the world through a sense of lack. Type 5 is stingy by holding on to what they have and refusing to let go.
This need to hold on and not letting go is the combined perspective of both Lust of type 8 and Gluttony of type 7 where Lust focuses on the intensity of experience and Gluttony on the need for excess. When transformed into Avarice, it is possible to see Avarice as the need for more of that which really matters. Very little matters to the type 5 because type 5 seeks to retain the intensity of experience like type 8 does, but due the nature of Gluttony, nothing seems to compare to what already exists or could be. The result is that type 5 is going to strongly latch onto that which is seen to matter to them while letting go of of the rest. This is why type 5 is considered a detachment type in that type 5 does not like to attach itself to the world or worldly experiences. Again, this stands in contrast to type 7 that seeks more experiences and type 8 that seeks intensity within one or several experiences.
Avarice is therefore not just a sense of deficit or lack, but is also a sense of needing more of that which does not exist, and because that does not exist, one needs to hold back and hold onto what already exists. In this sense one can see how type 5 is withdrawn and why many descriptions tend to describe type 5 as preparing for something, may it be withholding energy, emotions or something else entirely. There is simply not enough to get by so it is better to not spend at all, because that way one creates the illusion of at least having
something compared to nothing. The reason why 5s withhold is therefore not because they are unwilling to share. Rather, there is a fear that if one shares too much or spends too much, there is nothing left.
Avarice is therefore the logical reaction of how to deal with the fear of engulfment. By holding back one does not need to engage with the world. Instead all energy and effort is focused on the head center and transformed into thinking. To think is to survive. By thinking one should not mistake it as the act of thinking itself. Rather, 5s think to think, because if one does not think there is always a risk of losing control and if one loses control then one also loses one's sense of being. In the 5 mind, one's subsistence relies solely on the act of thinking; I think, therefore I am.
Avarice simply covers another dimension of this aspect of the type 5 by making the type 5 hold onto knowledge, understanding and all that else which they find important in life in order to simply live. Knowledge and understanding defines the existence of type 5, and by holding onto that which the type 5 finds relevant in terms of knowledge and understanding, a sense of power is retained which helps the type 5 to stave off the existential angst and the ultimate sense of fear/anxiety that results when being separated from Holy Omniscience.
Special thanks to: @Silveresque for giving me inspiration for this formatting and to everyone else who has bothered discussing type 5 with me.
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Reading List
Almaas, A. H. (1998), Facets of Unity.
Riso, Don & Russ Hudson on The Traditional Enneagram.
Naranjo, Claudio (1994), Character & Neurosis.
]Maitri, Sandra (2000), The Spiritual Dimensions of the Enneagram.
Dying Acedia explains the historical overview of the Enneagram.
Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way.