Enneagram Type Four
The Depth Seeker
We call 4s The Depth Seeker because their primary motivations are to know and express the depths of their personhood untouched by external influence, to be "true to themselves," and to be saturated in personal meaning.
When 4s are connected to Essential Depth, they experience a profound intimacy with the mystery of their existence, and they get that all beings are not static entities that can be framed and labeled, but processes that unfold moment-to-moment, including themselves. In this grounded place, Healthy 4s are expressive, individualistic, self-referencing, emotionally honest, humane, and equanimous.
Fundamentally 4s want to be truly themselves. Healthy 4s get that their identity is a dynamic process that cannot be captured in words, concepts, or images, and that "being oneself" is not the result of upholding a rigid identity and protecting it from unwanted influences, but of simply showing up with moment-to-moment self-congruence. As a result, Healthy 4s model the kind of mature self-attunement that leads to evolution and renewal. Rather than constraining their reactions and behaviors within a narrow, predetermined self-image, they allow whatever arises in their experience — new tastes, fascinations, and reactions to unfolding events — to inform who they are becoming.
No other type is as fascinated by their own subjectivity as 4s, and 4s are intimately familiar with their own preferences and sense of what is meaningful. They are not shy about expressing their distaste about what they do not like, and even Healthy 4s can sometimes be abrasive and offputting, since they do not attempt to make themselves widely palatable or appealing to others, nor do they adapt to others' preferences for the sake of connection. But while all 4s are “themselves," Healthy 4s do not reflexively push away from others or exaggerate their distinctness to maintain their individuality, but rather bring themselves into relationship with what- and whomever they feel genuine compatibility.
Healthy 4s love to explore the full range of human foibles, weirdnesses, and imperfections that make people unique, and they have a sixth sense for when others aren't "being themselves." In fixation, 4s react to this with judgment and disgust, but Healthy 4s can sustain a nonreactive curiosity about others, inviting them to discover their own preferences and pointing to aspects of their identity that they haven't yet explored. 4s also tend to be attuned to the shadow dimensions of the psyche that most people avoid, and because Healthy 4s are aware of, but not subsumed in, their own shadow, they can explore others’ with an unflinching freedom that is unique among Enneagram types. This is a profound superpower, much needed in our modern world, which tends to distract us from exploring difficult or culturally unsanctioned feelings, the very thing we need to heal and grow.
When 4s lose touch with Essential Depth, it can feel as if they are living in a desolate landscape of superficial meaninglessness. Pain, suffering, and above all bad taste are all around, yet everyone just seems to be carrying on about their business, unconsciously contributing to a world in which beauty and meaning that are trashed and neglected. As with all Enneagram types, the loss of contact with Essence is a heartbreaking, existential catastrophe. But no type leans as directly into their disappointment as does Type 4. This requires some explanation because the type 4 structure, and 4s themselves, are often misunderstood.
In the Enneagram, the Heart Center (which holds types 2, 3, and 4) is about how we know and express our identity. Type 2 represents the aspects of identity that we know through relationships; Type 3 represents the aspects of our identity that we know through manifesting our potential; and Type 4 represents how we know what is uniquely ours — what of our identity is sourced directly from within, without reference to relationships, potential, or external context. In order to know themselves, Type 4s look within, and in fixation, they feel certain that others cannot see beyond their own biases to understand them or what they value. This egosyntonically reinforces the 4s sense that they are unique and special, but it also creates the conditions in which 4s feel chronically alienated and misunderstood.
Fixated 4s' skepticism of others' capacity to attune to them expands into a broader skepticism of others' ability to attune well to anything. To Fixated 4s, it's plain as day that no one else knows how to value the right things in the right way, and so they often reflexively dismiss what is common and popular as not deep or worthwhile, because it is popular. Consciously or unconsciously, Fixated 4s fear that sharing preferences with others will dilute their distinctness, so in order to maintain their individuality, they adopt a resting attitude of disdain where everything common is boring, dumb, and lacking in depth and meaning, and the people who like it are trash. For example, to a Fixated 4, a Hallmark gift card may seem like a insulting mockery of depth, since it is a mass produced, cookie cutter form of sentimentality and not “real” emotional truth. Fixated 4s feel disgusted with such glossy drivel wherever they find it, and by extension, the soul-dead people that made it.
Judging what they do not like allows Fixated 4s to maintain a separate and uncontaminated sense of self. In this way, Fixated 4s' disdain functions as a kind of emotional guard against identity dilution, and their project of "being themselves" distorts from sensing and expressing the inner fountain of genuine selfhood to constructing an identity out of frustration and disgust. Unfortunately, because Fixated 4s identify so much with their frustration, they tend to focus on the superficial and tasteless things (according to them) that cause it, which reinforces their frustration in a vicious loop. This causes a great deal of trouble, since Fixated 4s back themselves into an identity corner such that in order to "be themselves," they must stay frustrated, eschew activities that "don't feel like me" (e.g. hold a job that requires being inauthentic), and indulge every precious subjective mood and impulse, no matter how toxic or self-defeating this may be. 4s’ inward orientation makes them aware of their storminess, but since Fixated 4s take this storminess to be who they are, this awareness usually stirs up more self-pity and reactivity. From here, Fixated 4s alternate between feelings of haughty superiority and abject inferiority as they judge the world for being shallow and themselves for not being able to function in a world that demands that they "not be themselves" in order to participate and survive.
What 4s really want is to be and express their true selves and to have their hearts touched by beauty and personal meaning. The trouble for 4s is that they artificially narrow the range of what they can “authentically” feel, do, or be touched by, closing themselves off to the depths in themselves and the world that they truly long to experience.
As 4s deepen through inner work, they can cultivate enough stillness to recontact Essential Depth, which allows them to drop the compulsion to individuate and trust that whatever arises in them is part of who they uniquely are. From this place, 4s recover their virtue of Equanimity, which allows them to have preferences instead of be their preferences. While they still aim to know and express themselves authentically, they get that participating in the world does not prevent them from being themselves, but helps them discover more of themselves. Rather than protecting themselves from contaminating influences, they meet life openly and delight in discovering more and more of who they are as they respond freshly to each new experience.
