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Type 4. Romantic

Tip! Click on the books on the left to read different author's descriptions for this type.

The description here was salvaged from Dave's Enneagram Site, when it was about to be deleted in 5/98. Check his new site for updates.
Naranjo
E-Type Structures
Palmer
-E-gram
E  in Love & Work
Pocket E-gram
Riso and Hudson
Understanding E-gram
Discovering Your Type
E-gram Transform.
Baron & Wagele
E-gram Made Easy
Are You My Type?
Keyes
Emotions and E-gram
Hurley & Dobson
What’s My Type?
Callahan
E-gram for Youth
Excerpts from Enneagram Books
   Baron and Wagele - Enneagram Made Easy
 

The Romantic (the Four)

Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

  • Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
  • Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
  • Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
  • Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
  • Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being a Four

  • my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
  • my ability to establish warm connections with people
  • admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
  • my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
  • being unique and being seen as unique by others
  • having aesthetic sensibilities
  • being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being a Four

  • experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
  • feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
  • feeling guilty when I disappoint people
  • feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
  • expecting too much from myself and life
  • fearing being abandoned
  • obsessing over resentments
  • longing for what I don't have

Fours as Children Often

  • have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original game s
  • are very sensitive
  • feel that they don't fit in
  • believe they are missing something that other people have
  • attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
  • become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
  • feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Fours as Parents

  • help their children become who they really are
  • support their children's creativity and originality
  • are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
  • are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
  • are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy
Discover the 9 Types of People
HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages