Am an I an Enneagram 5? What does it mean to be a Head type? What’s a good contrast between 5w4 and 5w6? How are self-preservation 5s, social 5s, and sexual 5s different from each other? This in-depth analysis answers all of your questions!
INSIDE THIS POST:
THE 5 AS A HEAD TYPE
French philosopher René Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” This is the motto of the Head type, which navigates reality not with their body or through their identity, but the mind, in their attempt to predict reality. Life isn’t happening to them in real time; it’s being processed with their thoughts while it unfolds. Head types ponder what is going on, what may happen next, and what could result from it. It is such an instant process, they’re unaware of the degree which they “think” harder than the other centers, except by comparison (aren’t you going to think about this first? What’s your reason for doing it?). At all times, Head types process life with their intellect. It’s fun to think, and it does not feel optional when decisions need made. They enjoy thinking about everything in an attempt to understand it, and analyze their feelings and experiences.
Have you ever read a detailed, articulate, and well-thought-out paper on an obscure subject that impressed you with the originality of its findings, thinking, or its unique concepts or approach? If so, you may have found a 5 who spent most of their life studying that topic. 5s become “experts” in their primary area of interest, because they devote decades to their research. Nothing pulls them away from this area of specialized knowledge, because 5s have an intense focus for whatever captures their intellect. The inner world they create, full of interesting thoughts, theories, speculations, interests, stories, ideas, etc., is less intimidating and more interesting than the real one.
Head types all analyze things for their own pleasure, but 5s are esoteric, which means “intended for or likely to be understood by a few people with a specialized interest or knowledge.” 5s enjoy their ability to be obscure; they demand much from analysis and expect any audience who finds them to have a brain and use it. 5s assume what comes from their mind is more revealing than any outside theories. It isn’t necessary for people to agree with or understand their findings, if they make sense to the 5. Since their desire is original thinking, 5s are interested in other people’s ideas that offer potential insight, but want to go deeper into them than anyone else. 5s believe they can’t trust anyone’s findings but their own, since they only have access to their own mind. They may want to explore others’ minds, but find them too foreign.
Because they derive so much joy from exploration, 5s see no need to share their discoveries. They analyze and dig into their interests for the pleasure discovery and thinking gives them. They chip away at whatever captures their intellect, to strip bare its raw skeleton and expose it. Others may find its bones, but 5s want to expose its soul. What is already known disinterests them; they want to discover what is undiscovered, or reach a depth of understanding beyond the recognized facts. To form something new out of what already exists.
Any offering from them must be a product of originality, and the qualities of their thoughts can feel self-evident. 5s may devote years to innovating an original concept, slowed by their tendency to prove and disprove it as an intellectual pursuit (to test its validity), and then share it.
5s happily and intentionally live isolated lives that let them devote all their time, resources, and energy to their interests. The rarer, less-known, or difficult to understand a topic is, the better, since they pride themselves on and value their intelligence. If others embrace their findings or theory too soon, it might be too orthodox or not advanced enough to be truly innovative. If too many get it, 5s think if it’s that easy to understand, anyone could come up with it, and it feels “worth less” to them. But they enjoy the initial public response to their offerings, because it means they found something exciting.
In their desire to be impartial thinkers by putting aside feelings to find solutions, 5s don’t accept what others find, reveal, or decide is the truth without analysis or may dismiss it as irrelevant. It doesn’t enter their mind to notice it. “Conscious reality” is not important to them; some 5s may not notice if everyone is against them or agrees with them. It’s less important for them to prove their truthfulness than to be a creative thinker. They’re rational and impartial problem solvers, but dreamers who crave “exciting” thoughts over purely practical ones. 5s take what others take for granted and experiment with it. They tear it apart, go deeper with it, mine it for insights, or disprove it, alone. If they get unsolicited advice or help in finding things out, it’s not them doing it, and it ruins the fun for them. If that happens, they will often abandon what they are working on.
Since the mind offers an endless array of fascinating new thoughts and ideas, and a 5 never gets to the bottom of their special interest (there is always more to learn or find), they never feel like they know enough to use their finding effectively. They seek out intellectually-inclined relationships that trigger new or interesting thoughts. They enjoy thinking far more than doing, so they postpone action for further contemplation.
To avoid their fear of the unknown, Head types try to create a map of reality for guidance to cope with a lack of feeling “grounded” in truth and reality. 5s feel the only true guidance comes from their understanding of how reality works and how to navigate inside it.
If they aren’t reliant on anyone for anything, 5s feel safe and don’t need anyone else to survive. They create a life for themselves that avoids anything unnecessary or that may tax them for any reason. 5s don’t need or want external input, don’t need relationships that don’t offer them the freedom to withdraw, retreat, and hide in their cave, and they aren’t dependent on the things other people take for granted. They may want a relationship, but not the obligations that come with it (it might threaten the solitude that lets them do nothing but think, dream, and explore, or demand they “share” their space, or require “emotions” from them that feel uncomfortable). A 5 may want sex and affection, but won’t want to share their home with five noisy kids and a partner who demands they show up for everything. 5s don’t want to feel expected to be present in a way that drains them.
They are often minimalists, who have a wall full of books and no mattress or go without basic things, to prove they can or because their body feels less important to them than the mind. It’s common for them to care about one thing and neglect the rest (they have 400 books, but only one plate or no chairs for guests, since they want none!). 5s fear “being left behind” by life, and may become obsessed with the idea of “I can live without this, and that,” until their home is barely a home
The 5w4
A 5w4 gets easily caught up in and fascinated by their own thoughts and feelings; there is nothing driving them to actualize their interests or share them with reality (aside from the few people that catch their eye), nor that lets them feel connected to others, since 4 has a sense of being separate. This makes a moody and dramatic 5, who feels grief at the “wrongness” of things, frustrated but also powerless to change anything, and irritated by others’ inability to achieve depth or to understand them. Others will misread their thoughts, so why should they share them? 5w4s feel separate from everyone, set apart by their superior intellect and capacity for depth. Only they can find what truly matters and is worth excavating. They may see attempting to connect as hopeless, so they do it “poorly.”
They discover, create, discuss, and search, then retreat to dive into the feelings that feel raw and real and think about them in-depth. It is often more satisfying in their mind than to dwell in reality. If their frustration about how the world fails to meet their expectations rises to the surface, it’s for them alone to comprehend and mine for clues about their identity. 5w4s see themselves as deeper, more critical, analytical, objective, and artistic or original than others, but also feel tortured by it, because it’s part of what makes it impossible to find their intellectual equals. 5w4s assume they are separate, aliens born in a world not made for them, but see no reason to talk about it. It’s a fact of their existence.
Whatever they love, they see as an extension of self, so they don’t want others to taint it. Others’ praise or acceptance is meaningless compared to their own strident expectations. 5w4s can suffer from intense envy, like a 4, but it defines them less than their need to self-isolate and ponder what captures their mind’s eye. They are an interesting contrast of intense mental activity, fear, and Image, in how they assume no one like them exists. Others are not copies; they don’t think about them at all.
They need to be highly skilled at what they care about the most, and put tireless effort toward building up their mental prowess. Part of their identity relies on how they are the “only one in the world” who can do what they do, analyze in the manner they are capable of, or excavate a known and respected belief and expose its flaws. They can’t believe in something that doesn’t resonate through their logic, then in their heart space. When they do accept a belief, 5w4s take pride in how they don’t see it the way you do. It holds kernels of precious truth derived from the mind that thrill them. 5w4s are more inclined to invent or innovate their interpretation than to accept an external analysis, and find pleasure in “thinking” about or forming their own mental arguments, maybe without sharing them.
It disappoints them that by comparison, others don’t seem to care about maintaining their intellect. Their minds are sloppy, so the 5w4 can’t find many people with which to talk to on a meaningful level. In this way, reality thwarts and disappoints them; they meet people, feel a spark of intellectual excitement, then discover their arguments are poorly-reasoned or carbon copies of someone else’s ideas. They put half-baked theories out into the world, or publish things that are easily torn apart or disproven. That fills them with a deep sadness, a disgust that the world is so easily entertained or “fulfilled” in a way that never satisfies their hunger for intellectual stimulation.
The 5w6
5w6s focus on mapping out reality, thinking about problems that may arise in advance, finding competent solutions to them, and in protecting their autonomy at all times by being pleasant but distant. They understand they are human, so they have things in common with those around them. Certain thoughts, feelings, and reactions are universal, useful to know about and use in getting stuff done.
They want to be invisible not only to focus on what interests them, but to avoid anyone targeting them in a way that threatens their focus or stability. 5w6s are engaged with others on a basic level and adaptable if a need arises and it isn’t a compromise of their intellect (to be otherwise would be irrational). A fear of becoming a target if they draw unnecessary attention to themselves makes them solitary and secretive, since a 5w6 doesn’t know what you might “do” with any information they give you. They ask lots of questions, but rarely volunteer any details or specifics about themselves in return.
5w6s may be secretive about their findings out of a concern you will steal their idea or topic and get to it before they finish their research. They have total faith and trust in their own observations, conclusions, and findings, but also enjoy the validating support of a positive peer review. A 5w6 may look up to other experts in their field, admire their intellect, and want to connect with them to share in a discussion about a shared interest, but can substitute a fantasy about this introduction or spend excessive amounts of time thinking about how to introduce themselves rather than step forward. 5w6s want to plan it right, so they receive the feedback they crave.
While they have no trouble disagreeing with people, arguing with them, or ignoring their input in favor of their own train of thought, 5w6s are aware of their responsibility to others. It puts a sense of duty on them to look after those they care about, which chafes at them when it intrudes on their personal time. These 5s want to get their duties to others over with, so they can dive into their interests without feeling pulled in another direction. If they know a response or absence will negatively affect a relationship, they will soften their departure, but still seek solitude. 5w6s are unsure what others expect from them and try to figure out how to meet those needs, outside of their own need for solitude and time to think.
They are proud of their mental prowess and originality, but dislike snobbery, falsehood, or deceit. They admire genuine intelligence and disdain pretentiousness. It bothers them to see others elevating their skill, talents, or knowledge over their real intellect. Style over substance bugs them. If irritated to where they can no longer ignore a person, 5w6s pick holes in their theories, discredit them, or fiercely question their findings. Being aware of how others may react makes them consider if it’s worth it, but won’t stop them from doing it.
Read the full profile, almost 9,000 words including self-work, about the Enneagram 5 in my book, 9 Kinds of Quirky.
Social Variants:
Since my book does not include social variant types, I recommend you purchase John Lucovich’s excellent and ground-breaking work on the topic. You can read more of his content here.
Social variants determine how we respond to the world around us and where our major priorities in life lie. Attentiveness to bonding, social responsibilities, and how we ‘appear’ to others is in the realm of social (soc). Survival, fulfilling all of one’s needs, and a focus on ensuring one always has enough resources for a comfortable life is self-preservation (sp). Sexual displays, competing for attention, being like a moth to a flame in your pursuit of another person, or competing for a mate falls under the realm of sexual (sx). Read through each to determine which resonates the most with you.
The Self-Preservation 5
Self-Preservation Fives are seeking the Essential Quality of Insight through their lifestyle and interests. They have a deep capacity for concentration and are typically insightful, quirky, and intensely specialized in certain areas of expertise. Self-Preservation Fives are looking to leverage their skills—intellectual, creative, or otherwise—into earning a sustainable living that allows them to pursue their passions and interests without being controlled or too at the behest of other people’s demands and agendas. Many Self-Preservation Fives do this quite literally by living in their studio, or making their living space into an office, laboratory, or library, for example.
Alone, unstructured time is a major priority for this type, as they are easily drained by the demands of others and wish to have uninterrupted focus. They often have careers or jobs that require minimal ongoing interaction with others or have otherwise arranged their life so as to have plenty of time to themselves. Whereas most people seek to keep their work within a boundary, limiting time and energy In order to have freedom in their personal lives, Self-Preservation Fives keep their “personal life” quite narrow so they can be free to focus most of their energy on their interests. Self-Preservation Fives’ interest is their life’s central focus, while they can compartmentalize other demands of living or treat them as secondary.
This type constantly struggles to have the energy and attention for tackling life’s necessities. They can become overwhelmed by the demand of having to attend to their own needs, and as such, retreat into living “around” those needs instead of addressing them, like inadequate care of hygiene or letting their home fall into disrepair. They may also leave the cultivation of interpersonal relationships up to imagination. This can also create unprocessed anxiety, further making self-regulation challenging.
Fear of depletion can turn into a literal fear that outside forces are taking something from them, often leading to obsessive fixations on paranoid ideas. Despite the withdrawn and often disconnected character of the Five, they can be quite aggressive, demanding, and controlling when they feel threatened while simultaneously unwilling to fully take responsibility for their aggression.
The Social 5
Social Fives are looking to experience the Essential quality of Insight in and through their relationships, their interests, and their contributions. They have a kind of Promethean calling, whereby the want to offer wisdom, insight, creativity, and understanding to loved ones and the world at large—to peer “behind the veil” in order to bring illumination. At the same time, they can be fearful of being overwhelmed by the interpersonal burdens that come from participation with others.
Social Fives are drawn to fields, groups, and institutions that hold the promise of engaging with fascinating people who are at the top of their game intellectually, creatively, or otherwise. Contrary to the stereotype that Fives only value knowledge, Social Fives enjoy being stimulated and impacted by all kinds of people, and they respect mastery above all. Through their capacity for insight and new understandings, the Social Five hopes to claim their place or niche and solidify their interpersonal and social value. They’re excited by the feeling of being a part of a tradition or specialized class, but these special groups can also be a way Social Fives seek to sequester themselves away from the messy or practical elements of life they feel unprepared to face.
Avarice can be expressed as a tension of wanting both to deeply belong as well as to separate themselves, usually through social distinction, such as being the expert or even presenting themselves as uniquely gifted or insightful. This sense of superiority is a double-edged sword, as they believe being the key expert will assure them of the social value and belonging they desire while also creating separation and a lack of interpersonal connection. This tension can lead to a great deal of alienation: belonging is not sensed directly, but rather abstracted and conceptualized, leading to loneliness and a sense of isolation as the Social Five doubts their value and the niche they’ve carved out.
Social Five can express Avarice as wanting to contribute their gifts and creativity meaningfully, but not feeling equipped to handle the responsibilities that may come from being in leadership. As Social Fives become more unbalanced, they feel their contributions are underappreciated and their genius under-recognized. They may become both angry and frightened of the masses who can’t appreciate them, making public displays of their superiority that almost always backfire. Deeply imbalanced Social Fives may entertain delusions of their social specialness and significance and may imagine others conspiring against them.
The Sexual 5
Sexual Fives look to experience Essential Insight in their romantic relationships, chemistry, and interests. When Sexual Fives encounter someone they share chemistry with, they have enormous energy for hashing out ideas and probing uncharted conceptual vistas together, as if the energy of the fascination element of attraction will itself give birth to something totally new. While all Fives enjoy diving deeply into subjects that interest them, the Sexual Five uses their interests and knowledge to elicit attraction by advertising what a rich, interesting, and even transgressive inner life they have.
As much as Sexual Fives may crave attraction, chemistry, and sexual relationships, Avarice means that they also have fear that they’re unable to provide enough emotional connection, physical adequacy, and practical support for their partner or desired beloved. Sexual Fives often believe it requires more “juice” than they have to keep the intensity of the chemistry going, so they can withdraw or try to create limits on their partners’ expectations of them. Sexual Fives anticipate the demands of a relationship before such demands are made, and thus, they’re often wrong about what the requirements will be but exhaust themselves by the mere anticipation of them.
In craving intense chemistry, they are also prone to put certain conditions or blinders on the relationship so they can continue to have the chemistry they seek without the burden or distraction of the facets of a relationship that are normal for most people. This is consistent with Five’s contradictory feelings with regard to instinctual resources, both wanting them and trying to minimize or manage the conditions within which these needs are met. This can lead to their partner feeling resentment over being so much of the dynamic having to be on the Sexual Five’s terms.
Avarice lends all Fives to mentally abstract themselves from their experience, and in the case of this type, Sexual Fives can approach the erotic conceptually. Therefore their fascinations are often organized around the symbolic and veiled, and typically, the pursuit of their interests is tied in with a sense of self-revision. Sex itself is a major need for Sexual Five, but it can come with highly specific conditions, rituals, or unconventional expressions of sexuality. These can be both to psychologically prepare them to get out of their heads as well as symbolize a kind of merging of their conceptual world and the practical world, Sexual Fives can be consumed with bizarre ideas not founded in reality, and they may develop erotically-charged obsessions with certain people and concepts.
Influences on MBTI Types:
Editor’s Note: Because of its severe detachment from emotions and compartmentalization of feelings (to remain untouched by sentiment), feeling types are not 5s. Feelers with a strong element of 5 are 6w5s.
ISTJ: stockpiles enormous amounts of information on various subjects, to feel secure in an uncertain world with unpredictable futures (inferior Ne); secretive and often disconnected from their feelings, more than is usual in an ISTJ; resentful when others prove incompetent or ‘needy’; often detached in their romantic relationships, and ‘secretive’ about the past.
ESTJ: confident in utilizing resources and in the workplace, but less social than other ESTJs and more cautious in approaching new projects that involve much risk; deeply analytical and tactical in their approach, with a mentality of “saving” rather than spending; may push aside intense feelings and inferior Fi refuse to deal with them, leading to relationship problems; may put too much pressure on their children to be self-reliant and frustrated if they are not.
INTJ: always looking into the future for potential issues and trying to correct them in the present through stockpiling factual knowledge and useful skills; somewhat fearful of too much engagement with the outside world due to inferior Se issues; sometimes deals with numb emotions and/or delayed emotional reactions; selective in their relationships, and not forthcoming in their personal experiences.
ENTJ: confident in utilizing resources and in the workplace, but less social than other ENTJs and without the ‘expensive’ streak often present in tert-Se users (forgoes symbols of power or influence, possibly fearful it may draw undo negative attention); deeply analytical and tactical in their approach; may push aside intense feelings and inferior Fi refuse to deal with them, leading to relationship problems; may put too much pressure on their children to be self-reliant and frustrated if they are not.
ESTP: stronger access to aux-Ti analytical abilities, without the usual emphasis on ‘living high and loose’; more introverted / easily drained, less inclined to take charge; may loop into Fe, and not know how to handle it, but fail to entirely subdue their emotions and wind up frustrated; more fearful of the ‘potential’ outcome of their decisions (inferior Ni).
ISTP: strong desire for independence and isolation, pushes away from others and may forgo human relationships on a deeper level, out of 5 and inferior Fe discomfort with intense emotions in oneself and others; has less emotional outbursts than other Enneagram ISTPs, and more trouble understanding what motivates their feelings; much less ‘hands on’ in trying new things.
ENTP: a more focused, less distracted ENTP, who knows a hundred facts about a thousand different things, but finds it hard to retain details, which makes them less secure in dealing with the external sensory world; more introverted / easily drained, less inclined to take charge; may loop into Fe, and not know how to handle it, but fail to entirely subdue their emotions and wind up frustrated. May mistype as an INTP.
INTP: strong desire for independence and isolation, pushes away from others and may forgo human relationships on a deeper level, out of 5 and inferior Fe discomfort with intense emotions in oneself and others; often takes an avid interest in and tries to perfect useful knowledge in many different areas, seeks security in routine and prone to severe hording / holding onto things long past their ‘expiration’ date.
