NICKNAMES: Observer, Investigator, Thinker, Sage or Voyeur

ENERGETICS: Internalization and Absorption - intellectual boundaries are absorbent

HIDDEN ESSENCE: Peace, Divine Stillness, Silent Wisdom

Subjective

People with the Five pattern fixate on being invisible as a means to feel safe. The world feels overwhelming, intrusive, demanding, and emotionally draining so they pull away and live quietly.

They experience the emotions and demands of others as intrusive and they retreat safely into their minds. They experience the universe as huge and overwhelming, and themselves as small, fragile, and insignificant.

They feel cut off from society, believing that people don’t and can’t understand them. They use obscure language, which perpetuates this lack of understanding.

They love to gather and hoard information as a way to feel safe. They don’t care to share the information with others, it is just for their own satisfaction. They feel the only safe place is in their mind, so they tend to live there. They can spend many hours a day researching favorite obscure topics.

Isolation and obsessive mental activity can lead to develop bizarre world views, paranoia, and conspiracy theories. This causes them to be more afraid of the world and to further isolate. They are prone to depression and suicidal thoughts.

Some create other worlds in their minds including fantasy characters with whom they have relationships. Sometimes their mental world is purely intellectual with elaborate maps of how the universe is constructed.

Objective

They are often frail, sensitive, and try not to take up space or need too much. This way they don’t have to participate much in the world. I

They are extremely quiet, soft spoken with little to say. They spend extensive time alone gathering information. They are sensitive to the energies, and emotions, and the demands of others.

Their deepest wish is to be invisible. They appear cool, aloof, detached, and unaffected. They retreat so deeply inside their mind that their expression remains flat.

They often have a unique counterculture appearance - unconventional, not needing to please anyone. They don’t follow rules for common social protocol, which conflicts with their need to be invisible.

They don't understand the effect they have on others, particularly people who are close to them. They can be rude, abrupt, or too honest, and then baffled when people’s feelings get hurt. Their aloof quiet shut down demeanor can be disconcerting, even intimidating.

Childhood

Children with the Five pattern feel unsafe in their families. They experience their families as intrusive and overwhelming. There is no privacy, no where to hide except in their minds.

They experience the emotional needs and expression of their parents as invasive. Some create an inner fantasy world.

Subtypes

SELF-PRESERVATION, THE ISOLATOR

They have a passion for hiding and need to be walled in to keep people out. They are the least expressive of people with this pattern. They reduce their needs and conserve their energy.

SOCIAL, THE EXPERT

They share esoteric theories and have a need for the extraordinary and super idealized. They lack empathy and compassion. They gather people around them and share the information as discourses. Group intellectual sharing gives them the illusion of being close to people.

SEXUAL/ATTRACTION, THE INTIMATE SHARER

They search for the ultimate partner and are passionate about one person. Because they search for absolute love, they are easily disappointed. They have a romantic vibrant inner life and share secret information, especially their dark side as a form of intimacy.

Wings

4 WING, THE CREATIVE LONER

They are independent, introspective, able to feel and express more emotionally, may tend toward depression, more introverted

6 WING, THE ANALYST

They work with others, can be argumentative, more intellectual, lack of compassion, more extroverted

Continuum

LOWER - Suicidal, paranoid delirium, antisocial.

MIDDLE - Bizarre alienating beliefs, detached, absorbed in the mind, desire to be invisible, yet offended when overlooked.

HIGH - Original ideas, perceptive, competent, clear minded, able to be in relationships, share thoughts simply and directly, able to work with others, still ego based.

Essence

PEACE, SILENT WISDOM, DIVINE STILLNESS

The essence of each type is the quality of character - a particular expression - that remains when the fixation softens and releases. While these qualities are human they are not personal and cannot be developed.

The essence is revealed when fixation is recognized and freed through awareness and compassion. We all have the potential to realize the essence of our type - our more subtle authentic nature. This authenticity means living from open, free, wholeness.

The essence of the type Five is peace and divine wisdom. When liberated, people with this type know that peace is intrinsic and independent of the external circumstances.

Each type has a blind spot that creates a unique experience of separation. Each blind spot is directly related to the essential nature of each type. People with the Five pattern have a blind spot for intrinsic peace.

This blind spot prevents them from perceiving and experiencing authentic beauty and love. All nurturing environments are inadequate to some extent. This inadequacy is experienced personally and interpreted through the enneagram pattern. When this is experienced by the child with the type Five, they fixate on a lack of peace.

Type 5, Self Preservation Subtype (Amelia Earhart)

Type 5, Sexual Subtype (Thom Yorke from band, Radiohead)

Enneagram Type 5