ENNEA-TYPE FOUR: EGO-MELANCHOLY
Fours are dramatic, emotive, romantic, and seem to suffer more than the other types. There is often a
tragic quality about Fours, arising from an inner hopelessness about ever being truly content. It is as
though they are eternally pining for a lost connection that has been missing as long as they have been
alive, and the inner grief seems inconsolable and forever unchangeable. In some Fours, this
melancholy is obvious, while other Fours appear very upbeat and exuberant. The zeal behind such a
Four’s efforts to present herself as buoyant and optimistic, however, belies the despair underneath this
façade.
Fours want to be seen as unique, original, aesthetic, and creative; and being one of the image types
—those on either side of and including Ennea-type Three—present themselves in this way. They value
their refined taste and sensitivity, which they usually feel is deeper and more profound than that of
others. While they often seem superior and standoffish, inwardly they feel socially insecure, afraid of
not being loved and included. They tend to feel alone and abandoned, estranged and not really
reachable by others. Their primary focus is usually on relationship, which more often than not is
fraught with problems and frustrations. They long for connection with others, but satisfying
relationships always seem to elude them. Others appear to have more fulfilling lives and relationships
than they do, and so they experience a great deal of envy. How they are and how others are is never
quite right, and they yearn for things to be different.
The lost vantage point on reality—the Holy Idea—underlying this ennea-type is Holy Origin.
Depending upon our degree of consciousness, we can understand this Holy Idea in different ways. If
we take who we are to be our bodies and so are primarily identified with physical reality, Holy Origin
tells us that all of life originates from a common source and obeys shared natural laws. In terms of a
common source on the physical level, the big bang theory postulates that the entire universe was
generated in one giant cosmic explosion, and so all that exists has its roots in this moment of creation.
Universal principles that govern all of life are recognized in astro- and subatomic physics, in biology,
as well as in the sciences that specifically deal with human beings: sociology, anthropology,
psychology, and so on. Celestial phenomena in distant galaxies obey the same laws of physics as
phenomena in our own solar system and on our own planet. Life on earth is currently understood as
originating from a common spark igniting in the primordial soup, so on a physical level, all of nature
appears to have a collective source. All human beings are born and develop physically in the same
way regardless of ethnicity or culture, and all are subject to the same genetic and biological laws.
While each of our faces and bodies is slightly different and therefore unique, the overarching physical
blueprint is nonetheless the same. So from the most universal physical phenomena right down to our
own bodies, all of matter is united by collective principles.
At another level of consciousness, when we know ourselves to be more than our physical form and
recognize that it is our soul that inhabits and animates our body, we understand Holy Origin as saying
that all human beings share this characteristic. To know ourselves to be something beyond the
physical is to recognize the realm of Spirit as part of our existence. The recognition of soul as our
nature, then, leads us to the Spirit of which each soul is a part. We see here, then, on this level of
understanding Holy Origin, that Being is the Source out of which all individual souls arise. So while
each of us is a unique soul, we all have as our fundamental ground the realm of True Nature. On this
level, not only is Being or True Nature seen as the wellspring of the human soul but it is also seen as
the source of all of manifestation. Everything, then, is seen here to originate out of Being, and to
return to it when that manifestation ends. Our orientation at this level is with ourselves as separate
entities whose inner nature arises from a Source common to all that exists.
Beyond this comprehension of Holy Origin is another level grounded in the realization that all of
manifestation not only arises out of Being but is in fact inseparable from It. At this stage of perception
and understanding, everything that exists is experienced as differentiations of Being Itself, and so the
form and the Source are indistinguishable. Another way of saying this is that all manifestation is seen
as ripples arising on the surface of one thing, and we know ourselves to be inseparable from it. Here
we do not experience ourselves as rooted in Being and arising out of It, but rather as Being Itself. Here
we are not connected to Being—we are Being. We are the Origin. At this level then, our identification
is with Being Itself, rather than with our separate embodiment or manifestation of It.
Just as our understanding of Holy Origin reaches more and more inclusive levels, so our
understanding of Being also becomes progressively deeper. Our experience of Being begins with
experiencing it as Essence, the inner nature of ourselves, and culminates with experiencing it as the
Absolute, a state beyond conceptualization and even consciousness. When we experience everything
as Being at the level of the Absolute, we are experiencing a huge paradox unsolvable by the mind:
arising and nonarising are indistinguishable. It becomes impossible to talk about an Origin out of
which forms arise, since manifestation and nonmanifestation are the same thing at this level. To
perceive things from this depth is to be in touch with a profound mystery.
As we have discussed, the Holy Ideas are not states of consciousness or specific experiences but
rather different angles or dimensions of understanding derived from direct experience. Specific types
of experiences, however, give rise to these nine different ways of understanding reality. These types of
experiences are those of the idealized Aspect. This may sound complicated, but if we understand this
in relation to Point Four, it will become clear. Experientially, contact with the perception of reality
that is signified by Holy Origin arises from being centered within oneself. When we feel centered in
ourselves, we feel connected to and in contact with what we consider to be our source. Just as our
understanding of Holy Origin reaches increasing levels of depth, our sense of what that source is will
vary as our sense of who we take this “I†to be deepens.
Initially we may feel united with ourselves when we are strongly in touch with our bodies, feeling
ourselves to be fully “in†our bodies—deeply in touch with our physical sensations and immersed in
them. This sense of contact with ourselves, which is grounded in the body, is for many people the
impetus for physical activity ranging from participating in vigorous sports to working out at a gym,
and many people do not “feel like themselves†without it. In addition to physiological reasons such as
the release of endorphins, exercise also gets us out of our thoughts and more in contact with our
immediate experience, and so we feel more in touch with ourselves. However, this level of access to
ourselves is time restricted and health determined: illness or physical disability and the inevitability
of aging will severely limit this physically dependent way of coming into contact with ourselves.
Others feel in touch with themselves when they are fully feeling their emotions. Emotional
catharsis can lead to a sense of inner connection, especially for those who have difficulty accessing
and/or expressing their emotions. Such emotional release is very useful and necessary at the particular
stage of inner work when we are dealing with our emotional repression and inhibition, but once we
have access to our feelings and ease in expressing them, continual catharsis can be unproductive.
Many people become addicted to venting emotionally because it provides a quick high and makes
them feel connected with themselves. Since emotions are the feelings of the personality—when in
Being we do not experience emotional states as we normally think of them—in time this dependency
on emotional expression and discharge only serves to support our identification with the personality.
Because emotions appear to be the key to making contact with ourselves at this level, we also take
them as definitive and do not question our reactions, and so stay attached to them. On the other hand,
moving into and through our emotions without holding on to them can lead us beyond the personality
and into the realm of Being, and this is part of the reason that emotional access is necessary for our
spiritual unfoldment. It is also necessary if we are to do the hard work of fully digesting and
transforming the personality rather than merely rising above it.
As our development progresses, to feel truly in contact with ourselves means to be in touch with
Being. At this stage in our unfoldment, when we feel engulfed in physical sensation because of pain or
illness and cannot get beyond it, we do not feel in contact with ourselves. When we are in the midst of
an emotional upheaval, we also do not feel in contact with ourselves. Only when we are profoundly in
the moment and our consciousness is anchored in its depths do we feel that we have arrived at our
center. At this stage, we know ourselves to be Being.
This experience of ourselves as Being is called the Point or the Essential Self in the language of the
Diamond Approach, and it is the idealized Aspect of Point Four. It is the level of contacting ourselves
described above, in which we know ourselves to be Being. Rather than identifying ourselves with our
body or our personality and its emotions and reactions, we know that who we really are is True Nature.
This experience is that which is referred to in spiritual literature as self-realization, awakening, or
enlightenment—which are all different ways of describing the experience of coming to consciousness
about who we really are.1 The personality style of Ennea-type Four is an attempt to replicate the point;
it is the personality’s facsimile of it. We shall return to this after exploring the psychodynamics of
this type.
For an Ennea-type Four, loss of contact with Being in early childhood is synonymous with the
loss of perceiving and experiencing herself as inseparable from and arising out of Being. What results
is a profound inner sense of disconnection from the Divine, which is the underlying all-pervasive
belief or fixation of this type, described as melancholy on Diagram 2. In order to experience ourselves
as disconnected from anything, we must take ourselves to be a separate something that has lost its
connection to a separate something else. The apparently inevitable identification with the body, which
is the deepest identification a human being rooted in the personality has, leads to the conviction of our
fundamental separateness for those of all ennea-types. In other words, because each of our bodies is
distinct from everything else, we come to believe that we are all ultimately discrete entities. While
fundamental to all personality types, this belief is the foundation upon which all of the resulting
assumptions and characteristics rest for Ennea-type Fours due to their particular sensitivity to Holy
Origin.
Like a boat loosed from its moorings, the inner experience of a Four is of being a separate someone
who is cut off from Being and set adrift. There is a poignant inner sense of disconnection and
estrangement from others but, more important, from the depths within. This loss of contact with Being
is experienced by a Four as having been abandoned, as though Being has withdrawn or withheld Itself.
Initially this is experienced as though her mother or family has pulled away from her, but at root is
loss of contact with Being. What is left is a sense of lack and of lostness, which feels as though the
very substance of herself were missing. There is a great longing to reconnect, to become anchored
again in the connection that has been lost.
This sense of abandonment and of longing to reestablish the link with Being, however unconscious,
is central to the psychology of a Four. It is so central that a Four’s whole sense of self is constructed
around it, to the point that longing becomes more important than getting, and people or situations that
offer constancy and relatedness are often unconsciously undermined and rejected by Fours. Fours
unconsciously cling to the experience of themselves as forsaken, perpetuating this deep inner sense.
Since one of the propensities of human psychology is to experience the mothering person of infancy
as the embodiment of Being, the inevitable disruptions of contact with her become synonymous to a
Four with disconnection from that source, Being. Filtered through the Four’s sensitivity to Holy
Origin, mother, who is the source of nourishment and survival to an infant, is experienced as detached,
disengaged, or absent altogether. There may indeed have been actual abandonment, neglect, desertion,
not having been properly cared for, and subtle or overt rejection by mother. Such experiences are not
limited to Fours, of course, but because of their sensitivity to being cut off from the Source, such
experiences become focal and lead to their predisposition to view others as inevitably abandoning.
The main inner mood of Fours is a sad and heavy sense of lack, a feeling of being cast away, and an
inconsolable and insatiable longing, as though they are in perpetual mourning for the connection that
has been lost. Hence Ichazo gave this type the name Ego-Melancholy. This sense of lack may be
experienced as a feeling of scarcity, a sense of deprivation, of meagerness, of an inner poverty or
destitution, of a crying inner neediness. A Four may not know or be able to put her finger on exactly
what it is that she lacks, but she is convinced that something is definitely missing. At the core is a
profound despair that she will ever be reconnected or included in God’s love. She will always be on
the outside and will never know how to get in. Everyone else has the secret, but it has been denied to
her. Her grief about this lostness is dangerous to feel: it might throw her into the despair or make her
feel ordinary. We will return to the latter momentarily. So, on the Enneagram of Avoidances, Diagram
10, despair (lost)/simple sadness appears at Point Four.
Compounding this feeling of privation is the assumption, conscious or unconscious, that it is her
fault that the connection to the lost paradise—however that is conceived—was severed. She may feel
that her very needs and longing for connection were the problem, or the sense of deficiency may take
on an assumption of badness, of insufficiency, of inadequacy, and of being fatally flawed, which for
some Fours reaches the point of feeling that there is something inherently evil or poisonous about
them. There is a tragic and absolute quality of finality about this sense, as though it were irreparable
and in the end nothing can be said or done to take this badness away.
The sense of lostness may feel like a disorientation, a sense of not really knowing where she is or
how she got there, the sense of not really being connected to anyone or anything, but especially a
sense of being disconnected from herself. There is a sense of living on the periphery of life compared
to others, with no sense of orientation or direction. Some Fours seem perpetually spaced out, a bit
dazed, glazed, and not fully in the present moment. Some Fours have no physical sense of direction
and get lost even if they have been somewhere repeatedly. Some Fours constantly bump into things or
people, lacking a physical perception of space that includes all of the objects within it.
Reconnection, the longed-for resolution to the inner scarcity, is sought externally. To a Four, it is as
though all that is positive resides outside of herself. This longing to be filled by others and by what the
external world offers is not a passive and quiet desire—it is a demand, no matter how unexpressed. It
is as though the Four were saying, “I feel that I must have it and so I should have it.†While this sense
of entitlement is not restricted to this ennea-type, all Fours have it relative to some aspect of their
lives. It appears that they believe that unless they insist upon what they want, they will not receive.
Also conveyed in the entitlement is the sense that since they have been so deprived and have suffered
so much, the world owes it to them to meet their desires. Deeper still, the entitlement is a way of not
experiencing the intolerable inner sense of lack.
Once her desires have been fulfilled, however, the sought-after object begins to lose its appeal and
her longing shifts elsewhere. Looking outside of herself for satisfaction inherently offers only limited
gratification, since only reconnection with her depths will resolve the Four’s sense of lack. Nothing
and no one can ever fill the inner deficit completely, and so the Four is left in a perpetual state of
discontent. However to a Four the fault often appears to lie in the sought-after object. It is not that
“This longing cannot be filled externally so no wonder I am not satisfied†but rather “There is
something wrong with the person or the thing I desire, or maybe he or it wasn’t what I really wanted
anyway.â€
The Four blames the object of her desire, finding flaws and imperfections that justify the lack of
fulfillment, and the object is pushed away. Or once a desired object has been obtained, the Four’s
focus moves on to what else is not right in her life or what else needs to be acquired. Unsatisfied,
ungratified, and displeased, nothing is ever quite right to a Four. What she has or procures always
loses its shine, and the longing shifts to what is just out of reach. Things could always be a little
different, a little better, more of this or of that, and then perhaps, just perhaps, she could be happy at
last. But happiness for a Four is ephemeral, something inevitably spoils it, and the longing for
fulfillment begins again. This pattern belies the professed desire for happiness, and we see that
beneath the surface what the Four really wants is to maintain her identity as someone who longs and
does not get.
The perpetual faultfinding and longing of Fours keeps their gaze focused externally and so protects
them from their inner sense of deficiency. If nothing fulfills, they must keep searching for the perfect
thing that will bring them contentment, and then they never have to face the truth that anything
external cannot provide the satisfaction they desire. If this truth were faced, the inner attitude of
longing and desiring would have to be given up, and some pretty painful inner feelings would have to
be felt.
Longing connects them with the lost Beloved of childhood—Being filtered through mother. In the
deep recesses of the soul, to let go of longing would mean letting go of this Beloved, and this would
mean being truly lost, adrift, and without hope of redemption. So the addiction to desiring and
yearning for what is just beyond her grasp keeps the Four in contact with this Beloved. It also makes
Fours incurable romantics, raising them above ordinary life through the idealism and nobility of their
quest—at least in their own psyches. They thus remain loyal to the lost Beloved and in this convoluted
way attempt to stay connected with Being.
Just as Fours experience themselves as abandoned by others, so they in turn abandon themselves
through this frustrating yet relentless external longing for fulfillment. With the inner conviction of
their own inherent badness or, at best, paucity, they long for intimacy and closeness with others and
yet it is difficult to allow. To really open up and be vulnerable would mean revealing the inner sense
of lack and of badness, and then they believe they would surely be abandoned, repeating the initial
intolerable wounding. So although Fours profess to long for closeness, they tend to keep themselves
and others at arm’s length. It is far safer to long from a distance and to feel the sweet sadness of
unrequited love than actually to risk exposure. Relationships consequently are difficult for a Four; a
source of bruised feelings and the inescapable feeling that love is being withheld. Nonetheless, or
perhaps therefore, relationship is a central focus for Fours, and the stormier the relationship, the more
appealing. The typical pattern of a Four’s relationships is attraction to someone unavailable
emotionally or otherwise, intense encounters, sudden breaks, longing, reconciliations, only to repeat
the cycle again and again.
What they don’t have looks better to Fours than what they do have. What others have looks better to
them than what they have. What others are seems better to them then how they are. Others appear to
have what they do not—whether actual possessions or personal attributes. The grass, as the saying
goes, is always greener on the other side of the fence. The passion, then, is envy, as we see on the
Enneagram of Passions in Diagram 2. The passion of envy runs the gamut from simply wanting
something that someone else has to a malicious hatred toward the object of desire. “If I see another
blonde, I’m going to kill her,†is the way a Four friend of mine, a dark-haired beauty, once
characterized the hatred in her envy. On the subtlest level, the envy manifests as a wish to be
experiencing something different internally, something that seems better and more desirable than
what is happening at the moment.
Through her theoretical formulations, the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, probably herself a Four,
gave envy a position of central importance in understanding psychopathology and in working with the
most intractable psychoanalytic patients—those who seemed not to benefit from the experience. In
typical Four fashion, her work created a schism in the British Psychoanalytic Society, which to date
has not been resolved; in the words of Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell, “Amid the swirl of
controversies and antipathies surrounding Klein’s contributions, there is understandably little
consensus either as to the precise nature of her views or to her place within the history of
psychoanalytic ideas.â€2 It is difficult to tell whether her phantasmagoric descriptions of the
destructive and vindictive inner world of the infant are accurate, or whether they are the overlays of an
adult consciousness with a distinctly Four-ish skew. Regardless of how accurate her perceptions are in
a generic sense in the realm of developmental psychology, her understanding gives us great insight
into the psychology of this ennea-type.
Again, to quote Greenberg and Mitchell, Klein “suggests that early, primitive envy represents a
particularly malignant and disastrous form of innate aggression. All other forms of hatred in the child
are directed - toward the bad objects.... Envy, by contrast, is hatred directed toward good objects. The
child experiences the goodness and nurturance which the mother provides but feels it to be insufficient
and resents the mother’s control over it. The breast releases the milk in limited amounts and then goes
away. In the child’s phantasy, Klein suggests, the breast is felt to be hoarding the milk for its own
purposes.... As a consequence of envy the infant destroys the good objects, splitting is undone, and
there is a subsequent increase in persecutory anxiety and terror. Envy destroys the possibility for
hope.â€3 We will return to the subject of hope and hopelessness later, as it is particularly relevant to
understanding the psychology of Fours. Missing in Klein’s understanding of infant envy is the
interpersonal element—that the child, whose identity is still merged with her mother, is responding as
the Four experiences her mother—as hateful and vindictive. A Four’s experience of her childhood is
often that her mother would not let her shine or occupy a place of central importance, and was
competitive and envious of her.
