Edit: andddd I copied the post back, because though it does become a blog and also is in my blog, it may still assist other 4s and concerns this thread.
One thing I get from his material is that types on the lower half of the enneagram are more ego-dystonic (painfully over-aware of their pattern), while he describes 1 as ego-syntonic. I wonder if that could make it difficult, like it was for your friend, for some 1's to hit on their true type.
I'm imagining someone reading about the moral discipline of the 1 in books and thinking they must be anything but that type because due to their extreme standards for themselves that they can only fall far short of, they feel inside like they are just barely in control. Maybe they'd choose themselves a type known for being more impulsive or more emotionally driven, unaware that their definition of "impulsive" differs wildly in scope from what the authors and healthy people in general tend to mean by that. Meanwhile everyone else around them does see a disciplined and a very self-constrained person. That person just can't see it in themselves. "I'm not critical...if anything, I'm too easy!"
[MENTION=1206]cascadeco[/MENTION]
It’s interesting that you quote this post. If it rings true for the types in general, and other members of the types, that’s great. It is the one old post of mine in the thread that bothered me the most personally, and I now think it was wrong about my own case.
When I wrote it, I was very transparently hoping to have been a 1 all along. This notion died quickly and rightly. While the second paragraph above may ring sincerely for real 1s, I was investigating the concept as an escape hatch from responsibility. There is some innocence in it, though, of being based on two actual pieces of feedback I’ve received a lot in my time from other people - first, that my standards are extreme, and second, that I am disciplined and self-contained.
As for disciplined, yes, I am about quite a few things. Those tend to be the most visible things, the things most likely to be noticed and inspire feedback. And more importantly, when it comes to less disciplined areas, the more sincerely important to me something is, the more inconsistent my relationship is with it. This plays out almost exclusively in private, and so it is startling and very upsetting for me to have executive errors or inattentiveness pointed out, because that is an exposure of what is a very intimate problem for me and a blow to a well-maintained image of the opposite that I deep down know isn’t the full story. To get that story more gently, ask me not how I’m doing at my work, but at my dreams and my relationships.
As for extreme standards, that may well have been true when I wrote this post. The possibilities I’m juggling at this point either are that I have changed my standards, or that they weren’t ever that huge in the first place and “you have extreme standards†is just a standard thing that gets said to people who are bothered by regret. I’ve been rethinking and questioning it. At present, however old the standards are that I’m applying today, I look at the things I regret and honestly don’t see how doing differently would have been such an extreme move. In a lot of cases, the “different†thing to do was a thing that many regular people do and have done, things like just expressing appreciation to a family member, controlling my temper, or speaking up for a friend. You know, not letting emotion get the better of me when I really knew better and really did care. At this point, where I’m at with my definition of a good person, who I want to be, and how I want to treat others, “extreme standards†is not a useful phrase anymore and stoppers loving if painful emotions that I would do good to feel at full strength again.
And if this is too off-topic, it's totally cool with me if it is broken into its own thread. 
