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[Type 4] The dillema of type 4 (by Helen Palmer)

Speed Gavroche

Whisky Old & Women Young
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Oct 20, 2008
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The dillema

Because Fours remember have been abandoned during their childhood, they suffer from a feeling of privation and abandon. Their internal state is illustrated by the literary character of the tragico-romantic who, even after have gained recognition and material succcess, stay obstinately focused on the lost love, the unattainable love, the love to come and on an image of happyness that love only can bring. To understand that vision of the world, you must project yourself in a state of mind where decisions are as much founded on the chemical alterations associated with the mood than on the objective perception of the facts, and when we remember more the past conversations for their tonality and what is emotionaly implined than for the actually spoken words.

Moments of depression are frequents and can transform life in a long stop consisting in entires days spent without force, the spirit turned with regret to some irreversible past fault. « If only, if only… » attention freezes, like a needle recording in a deep cerebral furrow. « If only I had acted in an other way, if only I had another chance. »

Romantics are quite heterogenous in their way of apprehendin theses moments of depression. Some accept it with fatalism and can resign to prolonged periods of isolation. Some others fight it by hyperactivity, staying constantly on the go. Others canalize their emotions in an exploration of the dark side of the human nature. The 4s quoted in this book have known depression, but they also describe a mood named melancholy, which attracts them like an unwholesome emotional refuge rising from abandon and suffering.

Melancholy creates an atmosphere of sweet regret. Like depression, it comes from a feeling of abandon, but the sadness here become similar to the twilight floating along bleak shores. Fours feel intensely alived in the wandering fog of emotions: nothing is continuous, because their mood can change from a moment to another.

The central problem is abandon and, therefore, a reduced self-esteem. « Would I have been abandonned if I had been better? » They are convinced that a primal source of love has been taken away. « I have been loved at one moment, but where did that love go? » In their story, we often find a real abandon, and the need to weep an precocious loss. But, as adults, they can sorrowly recreate this feeling of abandon by a compulsive attirance for what is not available and by the habit (usually inconcous) to reject everything is easy to obtain.

Romantics inconciously focuse their attention on the most little details of what is missing, so that, by comparaison, what is available has lost all attractiveness. Especially, they aspire to a passionate relationship which fulfills them. Their situation is that of a lover wishing ardently the loved one. One of the sweetest nuance of their melancholy is the association of the sorrow of a lost love with the romantic anticipation of a future mate. They got the impression that the present is just a repeat of the future, the moment where « the real me will be awaken by love ».

When, after years of efforts, the material success begin to take shape, their attention has every chance to turn towards what still miss in their life. If they have the work, they want the loved one. If they have a loved one, they want to be alone. If they are alone, they again want the work and the loved one. Their attention turn around what is the best in what they miss and, comparatively, everything they have seems boring and worthless.

Romantics are able to sabote their concrete gain. When they are forced to focuse their attention on the daily life of a romantic relationship, they are disapointed and irritated that they have to pick up the sock of their partner and tolerate their foibles. The picture of the splendid future who had to be made possible thanks to love is threatened by reality: there’s necessarly some moments of boredom in a real relationship. They find extremely irritating little quircks of behavior of their mate. « She dœsn’t know anything about politic .» « He dœsn’t have any ear for music .» « How indelicate it is to leave the toothbrush in the glass! » The Romantic is furious to have to endure the lack of taste of the other one.

When they realize that intimacy can require the sacrifice of their elitist criterias, Fours seek to drive out their partner, forcing him to leave before the picture of an authentic and precious relationship be wasted by a negative influence. Obviously, everything will be the fault of their mate. Bittely disapointed, they will say to him the most horrible things in order to show the extent of their disapointment.

Once the relationship is reduced to a safe distance, he will miss it again. It is built on a sheme of up-and-down: they reject what is available and are attracted by what is difficult to obtain. From a distance, the grass is always greener, just as the attention turn to the very great quality of an absent partner.

Fours maintain life at a reassuring distance. Not to far, afraid that the familiar side of the desire transform itself into a dark despair, but certainly not to close. Despite they have a great desire of intimacy, this one can provoke in them the fear to be judged inadequate and then humiliated again. If their partner is bored to be maintained at distance and threatens to leave, they risk to suddendly become ill or to engage in intense recriminations, because they will hung up again to the relationship. They leave all their brakes when they feel at the point to be abandoned again. They recreate the initial abandon in an extremely dramatic way, with theatrical scenes and wild charges, animated with gestures coming from their deep despair.

The Romantic says that the up-and-downs of his emotional life allows him to know a level of existence more intense, beyond the ordinary happiness and far more substential that this one where others peoples seem to prefer to settle down. He feels stranger to the normal reality, unique and curiously differeent, like an actor who would play the scenes of his own life. Giving up suffering of an exacerbated emotional life would mean the sacrifice of or that feeling to be special, that the drama tend to generate. For a 4, the perspective of happiness risk also to close the door to an intense emotional world. The worst is the danger to settle down in a down-to-earth vision and an ordinary life.

Among the Type 4 concerns:
-The feeling that something miss in their life « other people have something that i don’t have »
-An attraction for what is distant and unnatainable. An idealisation of the absent lover.
-Moods, good maneers, luxury and fine taste are the outer pillars or his self-esteem.
-An attachment to melancholy. The goal is more the depth of feelings than the simple happyness.
-The impatience with the « Flatness of the ordinary feelings ». The need to increase the intensity of feelings by the abandon, an exacerbated imagination, and dramatics actions.
-The search for authenticity. The impression that the present is not real, that the actual self will be reavealed in the futur, thanks to the feeling to deeply be loved.
-An affinity for what is authentic and intense in life.
-Birth, sexuality, abandon, death, drama and cataclysm.
-A tendency for the back and forth of attention. This one being alternatively focused on the negative side of what we have and the positive side of what is far and hard to obtain.
-This form of attention reinforce the feelings of abandon and loss, but also prepared a sensitivity to emotion and the suffering of other. A capacity to sustain people





note: it's not from the original version of the book, I translated from the french version.

Any comments folks? Did someone read this book for the past?
 

OrangeAppled

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Mar 20, 2009
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It's very similar to what I read about 4s in the Everything Enneagram book, which confirmed to me I was a 4.
For other people: You can read the 4 section on google books in English.
 

animenagai

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Aug 22, 2008
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Yeah this is accurate. The problem however is that it only talks about the more unhealthy 4's. I stopped thinking in those lines about the time I went to uni. Don't get me wrong, the 4 related problems are still there, but I try to deal with them in a more positive way.
 
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