Re: Fours Connecting Points (Stress and Security

Posted by Hal on September 24, 1999 at 11:16:10:

In Reply to: Fours Connecting Points (Stress and Security posted by Tiggy on September 23, 1999 at 22:16:41:

: CONNECTING POINTS (Stress and Security)
: Four's Connection to 2
: Healthy connection brings interpersonal skills and the ability to voluntarily empathize with others. Can make good psychotherapists, teachers, ministers, parents. Teach others about the realms of subjectivity. Twoish capacity to identify with an audience. Good communicators, fine therapeutic skills. Can listen and accept, especially willing to understand the pain of friends. Less selfish. Will harbor and act upon ideals of service to others.
: Low side brings dependency. Tendency to fixate on a loved one. Whiny demandingness and blame. Codependent melodrama when the real person behaves differently than the Four expects them to. Think they can't live without the other. Twoish capacity to empathize becomes compulsive. Four can't help but identify, especially with others' pain. Takes "beloved" person inside of their subjectivity, making that person their salvation. They may flee themselves by serving others. Prideful sense of specialness is also intensified. Hysterical illness possible.

: Four's Connection to 1
: Healthy connection to 1 brings objectivity, balance and idealism. Helps Fours locate the objective world and connect to a factual reality that is independent of their inner feelings. Like finding dry land in a sea of subjectivity. Discipline of cleaving to the real world diminishes self-indulgence and melodrama. Practical problem-solving skills enhanced. Intense feelings smooth out, a kind of balanced equanimity takes hold. Will also be idealistic and willing to work hard out in the world for what they believe in. Become contributors instead of complainers.
: The low side of this connection is that a Four can become faultfinding and nit-picky. Dissatisfied perfectionism may color their relationships. Get creatively blocked because nothing they produce is up to their own high standards. Induce shame in themselves with inner criticism. May tear down others out of jealousy. Sometimes latch onto a grandiose, obsessive Big Idea. Belief they are attuned to Absolute Truth. Idealistic and artistic pretentiousness possible. Sometimes can be rageful.

Where is this from? I've believed for a while that the arrows can't be taken as one direction good, the other direction bad (e.g. 4's going to 1 is good, but going to 2 is bad.) I've personally experienced both the good and bad sides of 1 and 2 in myself.

I agree with the 2, but the "healthy" connection to 1 here doesn't sound especially healthy to me. There is a bad side to idealism that often leaves one stubborn, critical, and self-righteous. It is in many ways at odds with the equanimity that is mentioned, since the idealist often does not see that things are perfect as they are, but can easily lament that things are not ideal, but should be. Maybe it's just the word I don't like here. But the rest of the description seems to say that a 4 going to 1 in a healty way just becomes a practical doer who solves problems and "makes a difference." Maybe I'm looking for more of the spiritual side of it, but to me the description suggests leaving behind not just our self-absoption, but also our feelings, intensity, and other gifts in the name of utility.

- Hal -

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