Enneagram Type 5

The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated. The Investigator Of The Golden Source, The Tenacious Explorer Of The Human Mind.

Fives are cerebral, detached and sober. They want to understand the world and protect their privacy and independence so they can live on their own terms. They like to analyze the world, dissect it, go to the bottom of things and feel like they really understood everything there is to understand before they make a move.

Fives are great at looking at things rationally, but they struggle to leave their look-out posts and engage with life. Their instinct to withdraw, detach and keep things to themselves can make it hard for other people to know what’s really going on in the life of a Five.The thinker, the innovator, the observer. Enneagram Type 5 are part of the Head Triad, the ones who want to reveal how the world works and to unveil the mystery of life, but are afraid of the biggest mystery: themselves.

Type 5s have an amazing spectrum of possibilities. From the deepest place within them, they can gaze at the space and wonder about the highest matters and seek the more complicated answers. The Investigator thinks that the better they know the world around them, the safer it will be. But the truth is that they desire to be an expert in the field of their interest. For Enneagram Fives, doing it right is not enough. They need to go beyond, break the wall, and take a leap into the unknown. This fearless (and thrilling) attitude is exclusive to their thoughts; that’s why Type Fives withdraw into their interstellar home and prioritize thinking over doing.

Type Fives are a little detached from their environment, like if they were hanging from a big balloon that keeps them living their adventure up high. It is hard to blame them; it’s a wild world, so withdrawing from it into better and more imaginative places is a great option to preserve the mind. Still, nothing lasts forever, and someday something might pop the Enneagram 5’s balloon, so they had better get their tools to build a home on the ground. Their challenge? To enhance their natural abilities, their genius, and assimilate them into a healthy balance with reality.

Fives like to understand things. Like squirrels stockpiling for the winter, they collect knowledge and information with a boundless curiosity. They use their mind to observe and investigate whatever fascinates them. Fives always try to base their decisions on reason and knowledge. They don’t get easily overwhelmed by their emotions, but instead detach from them and analyze them to understand what’s going on.

Fives profit immensely from their ability to focus without their emotions getting in the way. They stay calm and collected when everyone else has already run up the wall. The other side of this coin is that they often have trouble sharing themselves. Naturally private, they are much better at taking in information than offering up anything intimate about themselves to others, fearing it will only allow others to make too many demands on them.

Fives (unconsciously) believe that they can only fully join the world once they have figured out how to do things from the safety of their minds. They feel they only have limited resources to spend on social interactions and other people’s needs. So they ration their involvement and try to put as much distance between them and the world as possible, as soon as they feel their resources dwindle.

We have named personality type Five The Investigator because, more than any other type, Fives want to find out why things are the way they are. They want to understand how the world works, whether it is the cosmos, the microscopic world, the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms—or the inner world of their imaginations. They are always searching, asking questions, and delving into things in depth. They do not accept received opinions and doctrines, feeling a strong need to test the truth of most assumptions for themselves.

Behind Fives’ relentless pursuit of knowledge are deep insecurities about their ability to function successfully in the world. Fives feel that they do not have an ability to do things as well as others. But rather than engage directly with activities that might bolster their confidence, Fives “take a step back” into their minds where they feel more capable. Their belief is that from the safety of their minds they will eventually figure out how to do things—and one day rejoin the world.

Fives spend a lot of time observing and contemplating—listening to the sounds of wind or of a synthesizer, or taking notes on the activities in an anthill in their back yard. As they immerse themselves in their observations, they begin to internalize their knowledge and gain a feeling of self-confidence. They can then go out and play a piece on the synthesizer or tell people what they know about ants. They may also stumble across exciting new information or make new creative combinations (playing a piece of music based on recordings of wind and water). When they get verification of their observations and hypotheses, or see that others understand their work, it is a confirmation of their competency, and this fulfills their Basic Desire.

Knowledge, understanding, and insight are thus highly valued by Fives, because their identity is built around “having ideas” and being someone who has something unusual and insightful to say. For this reason, Fives are not interested in exploring what is already familiar and well-established; rather, their attention is drawn to the unusual, the overlooked, the secret, the occult, the bizarre, the fantastic, the “unthinkable.” Investigating “unknown territory”—knowing something that others do not know, or creating something that no one has ever experienced—allows Fives to have a niche for themselves that no one else occupies. They believe that developing this niche is the best way that they can attain independence and confidence.

Thus, for their own security and self-esteem, Fives need to have at least one area in which they have a degree of expertise that will allow them to feel capable and connected with the world. Fives think, “I am going to find something that I can do really well, and then I will be able to meet the challenges of life. But I can’t have other things distracting me or getting in the way.” They therefore develop an intense focus on whatever they can master and feel secure about. It may be the world of mathematics, or the world of rock and roll, or classical music, or car mechanics, or horror and science fiction, or a world entirely created in their imagination. Not all Fives are scholars or Ph.Ds. But, depending on their intelligence and the resources available to them, they focus intensely on mastering something that has captured their interest.

For better or worse, the areas that Fives explore do not depend on social validation; indeed, if others agree with their ideas too readily, Fives tend to fear that their ideas might be too conventional. History is full of famous Fives who overturned accepted ways of understanding or doing things (Darwin, Einstein, Nietzsche). Many more Fives, however, have become lost in the byzantine complexities of their own thought processes, becoming merely eccentric and socially isolated.

The intense focus of Fives can thus lead to remarkable discoveries and innovations, but when the personality is more fixated, it can also create self-defeating problems. This is because their focus of attention unwittingly serves to distract them from their most pressing practical problems. Whatever the sources of their anxieties may be—relationships, lack of physical strength, inability to gain employment, and so forth—average Fives tend not to deal with these issues. Rather, they find something else to do that will make them feel more competent. The irony is that no matter what degree of mastery they develop in their area of expertise, this cannot solve their more basic insecurities about functioning in the world. For example, as a marine biologist, a Five could learn everything there is to know about a type of shellfish, but if her fear is that she is never going to be able to run her own household adequately, she will not have solved her underlying anxiety.

Healthy Enneagram Type 5

Healthy Fives lose their fear of engagement and give all the brilliant stuff they’ve collected in their minds back to the world. But not only that, they also become comfortable to share themselves – their feelings, their time and their resources – without fear of being drained. With their hard-working minds and their desire to go beyond the boundaries of established knowledge, Fives at their best often become visionary pioneers in their field of expertise.

When Enneagram Type 5s recall how they felt in their golden times, they withstand and find themselves able to push through anything. Full of new and powerful resources, they develop their Valyrian steel to fight against their fears. In other words, Fives have the power to vanish every scary simulation of pain and misgiving. By banishing their insecurities, they are able to see their potential and become more playful with their capabilities. As a result, The Investigator reinforces their self-image, they relax and become more participative and social. The interaction flows and nurtures them with useful data to self-manage themselves. Suddenly, things aren’t as scary as they seemed to be because Type 5s are strong, they can deal with challenges they are faced with, they can transform them.

Healthy Levels:

Level 1 (At Their Best): Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving things.

Level 2: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Most mentally alert, curious, searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Foresight and prediction. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention.

Level 3: Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical.

Average Enneagram Type 5

On average, Fives are highly productive thinkers who, from time to time, simply need to be reminded that there’s a real world happening outside their brain. They try to learn the dance of life by watching and observing instead of actually stepping on the dance floor. When things get overwhelming, they withdraw into the safe space of their mind. Since knowledge is so highly valued by Fives, they build their identity around knowing things and having insightful and unusual things to say. They often look for a niche they can be competent in, believing competence to be the best way to gain confidence and independence.

Average Levels:

Level 4: Begin conceptualizing and fine-tuning everything before acting—working things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing, and gathering more resources. Studious, acquiring technique. Become specialized, and often “intellectual,” often challenging accepted ways of doing things.

Level 5: Increasingly detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by off-beat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a “disembodied mind,” although high-strung and intense.

Level 6: Begin to take an antagonistic stance toward anything which would interfere with their inner world and personal vision. Become provocative and abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical and argumentative.

Unhealthy Enneagram Type 5

Type 5s, when in an unhealthy state, think the world is an empty place that has nothing to offer them and they have nothing to give back. They find no place to stay, to be, or to feel like they belong. Withdrawing from the world is just so recurrent that Type 5s would often rather never return to reality. They renounce everything that makes them feel safe but at the same time know there are some remaining fears orbiting their mind as they are in a constant state of alarm. Enneagram Fives feel hopeless and powerless because “the night is dark and full of terrors.” Their minds have entered a harmful cycle that slowly and intensively degrades them; it’s a nightmare from which The Investigator can’t wake up. They can’t discern between what is real and what has been created by their fears. Suffering is the only possible reaction for them in facing such a terrible world. Fives willingly withdraw from themselves (black curtains descend).

Unhealthy Fives become isolated inside their head and fixated on their own thoughts. Instead of trying to solve the anxieties that prevent them from engaging in life, they obsessively keep collecting and developing the ideas they believe will make them competent – or get lost in completely trivial rabbit-holes of knowledge. Unhealthy Fives start neglecting real life, their relationships, and sometimes even their health and hygiene.

Unhealthy Levels:

Level 7: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they reject and repulse others and all social attachments.

Level 8: Get obsessed yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias.

Level 9: Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid Avoidant and Schizotypal personality disorders.

Growth opportunities that are typically associated with the Enneagram 5

• Taking time to listen to others share

• Connecting to and working through emotions

• Appreciating and thanking those around them

• Recognizing when they are withdrawing and choosing to engage with others instead

Reconnect to your body: You are more than your mind. You have a body, and it’s a wonderful thing. Try out what it feels to reconnect with it: Yoga, martial arts or any kind of sports that make you feel yourself and give your mind a much deserved break. Pick something you can integrate into your life on a regular basis.

Become comfortable with not knowing: No one has the answers to everything. Try to remember that your survival doesn’t depend on knowing everything, and action can be taken before you have answered every possible question.

Dare to share: When you give someone your little finger and they take your entire hand, that’s not necessarily abuse. Sometimes it’s just a handshake. Try to trust people not to use personal information against you. Your friends will love you even more, the more you’re willing to share with them.

Don’t hoard like a dragon: What good does it do a dragon to sit on a vast pile of treasure if he never uses it? You have a wealth of things to give, and the world needs your knowledge and your skills. The reason giving is better than taking is because giving will ultimately only increase your options, while taking and keeping will eventually impoverish you.

Be generous towards yourself: You are allowed to have nice things. Buy yourself some new clothes. Make some new experiences. Travel. Every step out of your comfort zone will show you that the world is not as scary as you thought it to be.