MBTI Type: ENFJ

Anna focuses a great deal on “social appropriateness,” and that for a time keeps her from having an affair, because she isn’t sure how others might receive it and is considerate of how it might harm her relationship with her son and/or threaten her ability to see him on a frequent basis. She tried early in her marriage to establish an emotional relationship with her husband only for that to fail—she sees him as cold, disinterested, unfeeling, and uninterested in the things that she is most passionate about. She tries to convince her sister-in-law to take back her husband even after he shames her with the maid, insisting it would be better for all their children. At first, she tells Vronsky to leave her alone, then how much he means to her, and keeping a running commentary of her increasing fears, emotional responses, and worries up as the story unfolds. She cares to have society accept her and not reject her, taking personally the shunning at the opera because of their double standard (they are fine with affairs, just not flouting them in public). She can be forgiving and persuasive, sharing with Kitty her excitement over Kitty’s impending marriage. She feels tremendous guilt at cheating on her husband (at first) and in stealing Kitty’s love, but ultimately her own desire for love overwhelms her sense of duty and obligation. She has a strong focus on the future, both in planning for it with optimism and in fearing the worst. She is forever thinking out loud and planning for her and Vronsky’s life together. She sees a version of the truth of her husband his intentions and believes it, even though she assigns the wrong motives to him (cruel ones, rather than his altruistic sense of certainty that her lover will eventually abandon her, leaving him to pick up the pieces). Anna becomes convinced without proof that Vronsky is either cheating on her, or intends to, with a princess he has met in society. She is obsessed with the distant future – not wanting to abandon her child, but also wanting happiness in the present (Se); excitedly planning her future with Vronsky, then fearing the day he will leave her. She can’t seem to either live in the future or the present, showing a strong fight between her intuition and sensing. Anna deeply needs sexual connections and passion to feed her Se, which soon grows bored with Karenin’s tepid lifestyle. Anna proves unable to analyze herself or her motives, spiraling further and further into paranoia and irrational conclusions that ultimately drive her to her final desperate action (inferior Ti).

Enneagram: 4w3 so/sx

Anna seems determined to thwart her own happiness at every turn. She denies herself Vronsky at first out of a sense of familial obligation, and then when she allows herself to have him and their affair, she assumes she must be damned, and that it will not turn out well. When she goes away with her lover, she cannot allow herself to be happy in the moment, because she is thinking about wanting to be home with her son and afraid of her husband divorcing her and denying her the ability to see her child. But when they return home, she cannot be happy there, either, because her husband won’t give her a divorce. She assigns mean motivations to him, turning him into the villain. Anna deals with intense feelings of shame, which turn to hatred for her husband when she feels she is in the wrong, and indebted to him for his forgiveness. When Anna believes she’s about to die, she disintegrates into 2 – begging her husband for forgiveness, and being emotionally needy on her deathbed; she later does the same with Vronsky, fearing he’ll leave her and becoming clingy, needy, and desperate, trying to be whatever he needs so he will not leave her. She eventually commits suicide, because she cannot live with herself anymore and feels like she has no one. Her 3 wing cares about appearances, wants to be seen as appropriate and fashionable, and doesn’t like being socially isolated for her love affair. She feels flattered by a handsome man’s affections and easily becomes whatever he wants her to be.