The Atmosphere of the Five: Melancholy, Suspicion, Fascination, Sadism, and Strictness in the Enneagram

Description:

Before we proceed to Naranjo’s traits of the 5, we work through the diagram that opens the chapter.

* Why know the whole system: your number isn’t much use without the others. Plus, a case against wings and for subtypes.

* 4 vs. 6: the 5 as a polarization between a melancholic aching to be known and a bright terror of being seen. R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self calls it a life torn between revealing and concealing.

* The 8 line: under the bank-teller-behind-glass coolness, a punitive streak.

* The 7 line: escaping isolation by falling in love with a model of the world (John Nash, formulas on the wall).

* The 1: strictness, along the anal axis.

* Five words: melancholy, suspicion, fascination, sadism, strictness. Less traits than an atmosphere the 5 is porous to, and often on the receiving end of.

* The takeaway: everyone can touch 5 energy. The 5 just made it into an art form.

Referenced: Claudio Naranjo, 27 Personalities in Search of Being; R.D. Laing, The Divided Self; Richard Rohr.

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