Type 4: The Individualist (or Romantic)
Result Image
Enneagram personality typing helps us to reveal the actual nature of the personality by dividing it into nine different archetypes. These archetypes were formed as defense mechanisms early on in our childhoods. Each personality type possesses a variety of different facets: a facet known as the "point of fixation" (the driving force behind our actions), a facet known as "Holy Ideas" (what we value), and a facet known as "Virtue" (the lesson our personality learns after experiencing a transformation). Facets help us to identify what is creating imbalance in our unconscious minds, aiding our soulful development.
It is common to find a little bit of yourself in all nine Enneagram types. However, one or two of them should stand out for you as revealed by this test. These are your dominant personality types.
To create inner harmony we must learn the lessons that each Enneagram type is trying to teach us (the "Virtue"), as we mature in our self-realization.
Type 4: The Individualist (or Romantic)
Ego Fixation: Melancholy
Holy Idea: Origin
Basic Fear: They have no identity or personal significance
Motivations: To find themselves and their significance
Virtue To Learn: Equanimity (Emotional Balance)
The Holy Idea of "Origin" is to do with the understanding that everything derives from our Soul, or source of consciousness. The distortion here occurs when our personality or ego is searching outside of itself for an "Origin" and in doing so, romanticizes a quest for the "holy grail" that never quite seems to be attainable.
The Individualist is usually a self-aware, sensitive, and reserved person. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. The Individualist has a tendency to withdraw from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, and often feels disdain for ordinary ways of living. This type of person typically has problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity.
The main obstacle for The Individualist is that they believe themselves to be "special" as a result of their longing for the origin of everything, or their perpetual search for that which will finally complete them (think of the stereotypical poet).
This defense mechanism of feeling "more special than others" can often be rooted in feelings of abandonment in early years (either physical or emotional) resulting in doubts of self-worth. In later years this results in the desire to compensate for these feelings of inadequacy by becoming important in some way.
Examples: Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Rice, Virginia Woolf, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Pyotr I Tchaikovsky, Johnny Depp.