FOUR
INTENSE CREATIVE
The Need to Be Special
Brief Overview: FOURs are feeling-based types who often experience a sense of longing and melancholy. Something is missing for them, which can lead to a quest for wholeness through romantic idealism, healing, or aesthetics. When they compare themselves to others, FOURs experience feelings of envy. They seek meaning and depth in their relationships, their work, or in a quest for personal creativity. Many FOURs are artists who excel at expressing universal human emotions in dance, music, and poetry. While they seek to have a good image, it’s most important for them to be authentic. Often passionate, sometimes overly emotional, their attention moves back and forth from empathizing with others to their own inner experience. They need time alone. The key to healing and growth for FOURs is to balance sadness with the capacity for happiness and satisfaction, even if the relationship or the experience seems flawed or incomplete.
Directional Descriptor: Withdrawn ideal-seeker
Strengths: Compassionate, idealistic, emotional depth
Problems: Moody, withdrawn, uncooperative
Speaking Style: Sometimes warm and emotive, sometimes flat and dry; they tend to be subjective, and they try to be aesthetically correct; often a tone of sadness or dissatisfaction
Disintegration: Envy or melancholy arising from the experience of disappointment or deficiency
Integration: Equanimity, which means keeping the heart open, welcoming all feelings yet staying in balance (contentment)
Psychological Defenses: FOURs use the defense mechanism of introjection to avoid being ordinary and to maintain a self image of being “authentic†(introjection is the attempt to overcome deficiency by bringing in value from outside oneself as well as the habit of internalizing blame for what goes wrong)
Somatic Patterns: FOURs tend to swing from contact to withdrawal, from having lots of feelings that spill out into the environment to becoming resigned and depressed. Their energy often collects in the middle of the body and can be withdrawn from the periphery (eyes, hands, and feet). Self-expression through music, dance, writing, creative work or parenting helps create an emotional flow and a balanced state.
