The Enneagram Movie & Video Guide-Second Edition
Fives


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Fives

FAMOUS REAL-LIFE FIVES
Performance artist Laurie Anderson, St. Thomas Aquinas, Playright Samuel Beckett, Author Paul Bowles, The Buddha, Director Tim Burton, David Byrne, Actor Richard Chamberlain, Agatha Christie, Van Cliburn, Montgomery Clift, Former CIA Director William Colby, Michael Crichton, Daniel Day-Lewis, René Descartes, Joan Didion, Joe DiMaggio, Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Author Loren Eiseley, T. S. Eliot, the cultural aura of England,

Ralph Fiennes, Chess player Bobby Fischer, E. M. Forster, Greta Garbo, J. Paul Getty, cybertech novelist William Gibson, Jane Goodall, Author Graham Greene, H. R. Haldeman, Hildegarde of Bingen, Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Howard Hughes, Jeremy Irons, Franz Kafka, Director Philip Kaufman, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Author Dean R. Koontz, Arthur (The Amazing) Kreskin, Director Stanley Kubrick, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, Cartoonist Gary Larson, John le Carré, Author Ursula K. LeGuin, Photographer Annie Leibowitz,
George Lucas, David Lynch, Norman MacLean, Robert MacNeil, Movie critic Leonard Maltin, Novelist Ian McEwan, Larry McMurtry, Singer Natalie Merchant, Thelonious Monk, Actor Sam Neill, Joyce Carol Oates, Georgia O'Keefe, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Al Pacino, Italian sculptor Paladino,

Michelle Pfeiffer, Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Oliver Sacks, Author May Sarton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ebenezer Scrooge, Behaviorist B. F. Skinner, Poet Gary Snyder, Susan Sontag, George Stephanopoulos, Actress Madeleine Stowe, Jules Verne, Max Von Sydow, Author Ken Wilber, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

 

INTRODUCTION

Fives, Sixes and Sevens share a general undercurrent of fear and form another "emotional Trio." Unlike Twos, Threes and Fours, people within this group are not confused about who they are or how they feel. Instead they tend to unconsciously anticipate the dangers of life and have a baseline habit of reacting fearfully. Fives, Sixes and Sevens are generally also thinkers - people who live more in their heads than in their bodies. They have specific struggles around taking action and asserting their wills in the world.

A Five's fears are specifically social - they habitually guard against being invaded or engulfed by other people. This is the most explicitly antisocial of the Enneagram styles. When defensive, Fives can be withdrawn and standoffish as a way to manage their hypersensitivity to others. Generally, they fear close relationship as it can lead to feeling overwhelmed, smothered or swarmed.

Fives generally live in their thoughts, in contrast to Fours, who live in their emotional imaginations. People with this style have well-developed abilities to analyze and synthesize knowledge. They may be perceptive, wise and objective, displaying an ability to stay centered and logical when others around them are losing their heads.

Awakened Fives usually strike some balance between interacting with the world and withdrawing from it. This style is frequently associated with knowledgeable competence and, sometimes, genius. When healthy, Fives express themselves in the world and actively offer the fruits of their knowledge. Teaching and writing are frequent occupations but whatever they do, healthy Fives seem to insist that their talent for knowledge count for something beyond itself. There is an idealistic quality to this drive that makes them willing and sometimes courageous contributors.

Healthy Fives can also practice what the Buddhists call "non-attachment." It's like being willing to play the games of life without being overly attached to results. As friends, they may be able to understand your point of view almost as well as their own. They are sympathetic, but able to view events from a distant enough perspective to avoid getting personally upset. This also contributes to a kindheartedness that wishes others well.

More defensively, Fives can slide from nonattachment into disassociation, the inner state of being cut off from feeling. An entranced person with this style is hyperaware of the world's demands, and then passively responds by withdrawing. Most outsiders see a Five's capacity to pull back as a kind of independence. It's a defense as well; the Five is making a strong antisocial boundary to compensate for being overly sensitive in the first place.

Cutting themselves off then becomes a habit. The idea is, "If I can just learn to live with less I'll avoid the influence of others." This leads to the tendency to hoard, to keep and save what little they have in order to need less and stay withdrawn. Fives can hoard time, money, space, land, information, or emotional availability. It doesn't matter what is hoarded, the pattern is the same. The person tries to protect against flooding by stacking up supplies on their dry inner island.

Entranced Fives also stay distant from their own emotions by living in a world of information and ideas. The more they cut themselves off, however, the more they struggle with feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and compulsive need. It's like trying to talk yourself out of being hungry. At this point a Five may be slow to know how they feel because they can only reach their feelings through a lengthy sequence of thought. Entranced Fives worship gods of reason and try to look distantly down on their own emotions. They may also act superior towards other people.

When Fives are deeply entranced, they may become schizoid and unpredictable, as though disassociated parts of them are taking turns talking. They can project an absent, vaguely shocked aura or be pointedly antisocial. A Five could sit through a party at which they said nothing and later claim that they had a good time. Or they might alienate others with nasty, sneering commentary and unpredictable aggression.

The habit of disassociating emotions becomes so developed that they lose basic touch with reality. They may develop weird phobias of invisible objects like germs. Aggressive episodes are possible, followed by bursts of acute paranoia.

The Five defensive tendencies of protection through isolation, observing from afar, and hoarding are all on display in the movies that follow.



FIVES IN THE MOVIES

There have actually been a number of Five performers who have movie star charisma but, like Fours, they are principally character actors and actresses. A limited list includes people like Montgomery Clift, Greta Garbo, Max Von Sydow, Anthony Hopkins, Michelle Pfeiffer, Al Pacino, Madeleine Stowe and Daniel Day-Lewis. Mostly these performers don't play Five roles but they have a basic aura that is pulled-back and enigmatic.

Actors like Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford (none of them Fives) lend their roles a Fiveish cast because holding back a little draws the audience towards a performer. We tend to wonder what they are thinking and feeling. Loner heroes and strong silent types frequently have this aura. Greta Garbo is the only female star I found who based her movie persona strongly on being a Five. It worked for her and there may be others, but I suspect that hard-to-reach females have a limited appeal to filmmakers.

Fives in the movies are generally not that common, probably because reclusive or intellectual characters aren't inherently dramatic. Their range of roles runs as follows: Professors & Scholars - Anthony Hopkins, 84 Charing Cross Road; Peter O'Toole, Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Gena Rowlands, Another Woman; Robin Williams, Awakenings. Writers & Artists - Dirk Bogarde, Darling; José Ferrer, Moulin Rouge; Kerry Fox, An Angel At My Table; Glenda Jackson, Turtle Diary. Voyeurs - Michel Blanc, Monsieur Hire; James Spader, sex, lies and video. Recluses - Daniel Auteuil, Un Cur En Hiver; Rutger Hauer, A Breed Apart; Michael Keaton, Batman Returns; Ben Kingsley, Turtle Diary; Andie MacDowell, Green Card; Ally Sheedy, Only The Lonely; Hugo Weaving, Proof. Robots - "Data," Star Trek - The Next Generation; Peter Weller, Robocop.


MOVIE REVIEWS
An Angel At My Table

"Too shy to mix, my only romance was in poetry and literature." This exquisite biography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame does a fine job of dramatizing the interior life of a socially paralyzed Five. Partly this is done through voice-over - the film is based on Frame's autobiography - but mostly credit goes to lead actress Kerry Fox for the wonderful way she writes shyness and confusion all over Janet's face. The film is episodic and lifelike rather than eventful, even when we are shown incidents like Frame's hospitalization for schizophrenia.

The hospital episode is noteworthy because the diagnosis is totally wrong. Janet isn't schizophrenic - she's defenseless. She's an eccentric, withdrawn loner with poor social skills and overwhelming self-consciousness. During minor social encounters she goes stunned like a doe in headlights. As often as practical, she retreats from the world and hides in her books and writing. She refuses offers of food from others but then eats ravenously when alone (connection to 7). These bursts of secret appetite are related to other odd habits like hoarding and hiding bits of paper and trying not to smile because her teeth have gone bad.

We see a little of how she got that way. She grew up poor in a small, crowded home, straining for space. Frame was overshadowed by an older sister and frightened by her One father's angry outbursts. Life was sometimes rife with nasty surprise, and Janet is shown retreating into her imagination and books. Most Fives develop defenses against social exposure, unpredictability or loss of privacy. As an adult, Frame fears all three.

"I longed to be so full of secrets so that a man could discover them. But for so long I'd blocked all exits and entrances so that I felt as sexless as a block of wood." Nevertheless, Frame travels to Spain, has love affairs and gradually comes out of her shell. You get the impression that she will never marry but, by film's end, she is much more fully in the world and, through her writing, a willing contributor. She's a self-preservation subtype who defends herself by withdrawing.

A lovely, delicate, absorbing movie. The sister Isabel is an Eight.


Another Woman
Woody Allen movie about a stingy Five college professor (Gena Rowlands) who has retreated to a rented apartment to finish writing a book. She finds herself next door to a psychiatrist's office, and sound carries well through the walls. Rowlands gets voyeuristically distracted from her writing by the confessions of the doctor's patients, especially depressed, feelingful Mia Farrow. What Rowlands hears sets her on an internal quest to resolve the pain of her marriage to unfaithful, astringent Ian Holm (also Fiveish) and to examine the many ways she is haunted by regret.

If this sounds depressive and dry, it is. This is a movie about a lack of passion that itself lacks passion. The static, speechy screenplay forces the characters to act mannered and speak in the formal cadences of diplomats. The photography is darkly somber and reinforces a barren mood.

Nevertheless, Another Woman is quite informative about Fives. Most of the film's other characters are on to Rowland's defenses and make comments like, "She's led a cold, cerebral life and has alienated everyone around her," or "She's a little judgmental. She stands above people and observes them." Rowlands is another self-preservation subtype characterized by withdrawal. We see her refusing most social encounters and reading Rilke to disassociate after one upsetting confrontation. She also has a 4 wing, observable in her abstracted, off-center thinking and her somewhat melancholy yearning for a long-lost affair with decent, vital Gene Hackman.

Throughout the film she flashes back to scenes with him and inevitably realizes she was in love. The slowness of this dawning actually mirrors how disassociated Fives only gradually find their way into their feelings, usually through a lot of rumination.

The other realm Rowlands explores in flashback is her childhood family. John Houseman plays her elderly father, a stern, imperious One who makes a touching speech about his failures in a dream Rowlands has. Houseman was a real-life One and always played them. In another dream Rowlands remembers her father as a younger man, this time played by David Ogden Stiers. The character is still a One and Stiers always plays Ones too, most notably on the TV show MASH. Good Enneatype casting.

Betty Buckley and Sandy Dennis both appear as Twos.


Awakenings
Robin Williams stars as a meek Five in a rather good adaptation of a true story by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The year is 1969 and Williams/Sacks is hired at a state hospital to supervise a ward of apparently catatonic patients. They are the victims of a flu-like epidemic and Williams is hired to supervise the ward in which they are housed. The hitch is that Williams has no clinical experience - he's devoted the last ten years to research. In his job interview he cites an attempt to extract a chemical substance from the bodies of tons of earthworms. When the frowning hospital interviewer says, "But that can't be done," Williams beams proudly, "I know. We proved it!"

He's shown as a shy, absentminded professor throughout the film. His apartment is stacked with books, he turns down social invitations to stay at home alone with his piano. When he does venture out, he enjoys going to atriums. The two things that motivate him are the intellectual adventure of research and a basic kindheartedness that Fives sometimes have.

In his work, these qualities prompt him to question whether the catatonics - written off as incurable by the hospital staff - could be somehow helped. He experiments, follows his hunches and eventually finds a drug that works to awaken the patients, at least temporarily. The fallout from this event forms a story that could have been just sugary but instead comes by its sentiment honestly.

The disease, by the way, is a good metaphor for Nineyness. Robert De Niro, a sometimes dull actor, is splendid here as Williams's first test case. His character seems like a Nine but it's hard to tell because he is largely defined by the illness, as are the other inmates. Everyone's asleep. One nurse describes a patient as unable to walk alone: "But he'll walk with me. It's like he borrows my will." A good description of the unhealthy side of Nine.

John Heard plays Williams's administrative nemesis, a One. Julie Kavner is a Nine nurse and De Niro's mother is a Two. Williams is a real-life Seven so he's playing his connecting point.


Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969)
Peter O'Toole is the title character, a shy Five schoolmaster, and the film follows his life over a twenty year period. It's mainly a love story as he meets and marries Petula Clark, but the movie also shows a Five gradually growing into power.

As the story begins O'Toole is alone, lost in his work, disliked by his students, shy, haunted and elsewhere. He's so constricted socially that he can barely talk. At parties he goes stilted, formal and distant. He hides behind knowledge, uses academic terminology and priggishly corrects people's speech ("How you could ever imagine that a word like 'suitability' could prevail over a word like 'love,' I'll never know"). He's rather sweet in a hapless way; painfully earnest, honorable, gentle, flustered by a kiss on the cheek.

As the episodic story progresses nothing really happens. O'Toole marries, fights a few battles, gets promoted and grows. He becomes firm, committed, and socially comfortable. He's still a little stingy and grouses at the extravagance of his wife's anniversary presents to him. At film's end, though, he has stepped into his own social power in a way that is quite consistent with the Five "character arc." He's grown decisive and takes courageous stands in the world.

The movie is certainly worthwhile for learning about how Fives grow. I have two cautions about it: 1) It is sometimes, er, ... a musical ... and the songs are not so good; 2) The sex roles are very dated and figure awkwardly in the story. Otherwise, O'Toole is excellent and the film is warmhearted. It may be a little hard to find on video.

Petula Clark plays either a Nine or a Two, but it's hard to tell. Sian Phillips plays Clark's friend Ursula, a Seven with an 8 wing. O'Toole is a real-life Seven so he's also playing his connecting point.


Green Card
Andie MacDowell's Fiveish character in Green Card is named Brontë, a fact that's meant to tip you off. Not only does she love classical music, but her main interests in life are solitary. "Most women I've known have tried to crowd me, except you," an ex-beau tells her.

That's because Brontë, a botanist, is into plants rather than people. Although she does apply her knowledge socially - towards improving urban environments for children - what motivates her marriage to French stranger, George (Gérard Depardieu), is the desire for a really great garden. She needs to appear married to rent the apartment of her dreams, complete with atrium. He needs to seem married to qualify for a Green Card, a residence permit that allows him to live and work in America. They go through with the marriage but Brontë maintains her detachment: "I have no opinion of you, George. I'm just waiting for this to be over so I can start my life again." "You're like a plant - a cactus!" he replies.

Well, she is, but MacDowell's performance is not exactly assured. This is not as good a portrait of a Five as some of our other films, but it has moments. The comedy itself is not really funny and the romantic story is initially labored.

Depardieu is kind of a Seven with an 8 wing. Part of the film's problem is that it tries to make him lovable when he's actually domineering and demanding. He gets better, though, and the film does too. The last hour is quite tender. Remember that Seven and Five are connecting points for each other.nto the sure-sounding Jenkins.


Monsieur Hire
"People don't like me but then I don't like people either. I like silence. I don't talk much." That's precise, dismissive Monsieur Hire talking. As played by Michel Blanc, he's the perfect embodiment of a Five expressing the low side of 8. He's nasty, punitive, standoffish - like Scrooge without the money. He erupts into yelling when threatened and is openly misogynistic. Part of the skill of the (excellent) film is to make us care for someone so willfully perverse and disagreeable. By film's end, Hire transcends his Fiveishness in quite a credible way and becomes almost heroic.

This seems unlikely at first. Monsieur Hire is fairly disliked by nearly everyone in the town where he has his tailor shop. He's stingy, aloof and displays an air of senseless superiority. He's also fastidious and almost unnaturally clean. Even when bowling, he rolls the ball with an arrogant precision.

He also has a past - a criminal record of indecent exposure that is related to the voyeurism that he still practices. At night, when alone, he dims the lights, plays one piece of music and spies on a beautiful neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire). One day, he passes her on the street, smells her perfume and buys a matching bottle to sniff that evening at his window.

This practice becomes a perfect metaphor for Fiveish hoarding. There is no emotional risk in observing from afar and Hire can have the same experience each night, over and over, alone.

Within the story though, this kink makes him the prime suspect in the murder of a local young woman. A police detective is sure Hire did it and tracks him doggedly. Meanwhile, Bonnaire cottons on to being observed and turns tables on Hire. She seeks him out and wants detailed descriptions of his sexual fantasies about her. She's involved in something criminal and has several motives for courting Hire, but their relationship nonetheless develops a weird intimacy. Hire actually falls in love with her and his hoarding gives way to something like true generosity (connection to 7). Through the perversity comes real feeling and an accurate perception of who she is. In the end he gambles that the strength of Bonnaire's feeling for him will outweigh her other motives. Everyone's actual connection to the murder is also revealed.

Bonnaire seems at first a Three and then a Six with a Three streak. Her Enneagram style was finally unclear, although the motive for her actions is loyalty. The detective after Hire is definitely a Four. He's preoccupied by the youth and beauty of the murdered girl and is haunted by his melancholy fantasies about her.


Only The Lonely
The script for this tame comedy-drama feels like a first draft. The thin story - lonely middle-aged nice-guy leaves home and gets married - is bulked up with a lot of fake ethnic goo. It is a virtual remake of the 1950s movie Marty, which featured identical characters who were Italian; this time they're Irish.

The types are good, though. The late John Candy plays the nice-guy Nine (1 wing). He's the guilty, peacemaking son of Maureen O'Hara, a domineering Two. She's meanhis drives him to eavesdrop on a phone, reflecting both a 1 wing and the low side of 8. Candy initially placates her bullying but into his life comes Five Ally Sheedy, a solitary mortician.

The new relationship starts out unpromisingly as the shy Sheedy speaks just ten words on their first date. The baffled Candy starts to excuse himself when Sheedy blurts:

"I had a wonderful time tonight."

"You did?" asks Candy, amazed.

"I have this thing ... this introverted kind of thing."

"That just means you're shy."

"No, it's worse than shy ... I guess it doesn't help spending eight hours a day with people who don't talk back to you. I'm trying to get past it."

With this assurance, things continue well until the couple's first meeting with Candy's mother. The jealous, hostile O'Hara tries to run over Sheedy while Candy minimizes and sues for peace. Sheedy stands up to O'Hara but then later gets angry at Candy for not protecting her. She promptly breaks off the relationship.

This might seem like a manufactured crisis for the film's undernourished plot, but Sheedy's overreaction is also very Fiveish. She makes too strong a boundary to make up for having been vulnerable. This happens more than once before the film is over.

Nice-guy Candy finally has to take a stand ("Getting married is the only time in my life where I've made a decision without thinking of my family first"). O'Hara grows a little, lets Candy go, has an insight or two ("I'm not a lovable person but I can take care of myself"). It's a somewhat daring performance; O'Hara's character is, among other things, an open racist. She gives the film a little life and Sheedy's Five character is worth a look. Latter plays a similar character in The Breakfast Club.


SCHIZOIDS

Here are two unrelated movies with identical character tensions related to Fives:

The Nutty Professor - Remember those Jerry Lewis movies where he bounced off walls and screeched like a gibbon? This isn't one of them. The Nutty Professor is Lewis's restrained, kind of cute version of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Lewis plays the Dr. Jekyll role as a nerdy, socially hamstrung Five (6 wing). He's a disorganized college professor who invents a potion that brings out what's latent in human nature. What's latent in him is his connecting point; when Professor Lewis drinks the brew he instantly turns from a Five into an Eight.

Latter character is obnoxious, overconfident and socially pushy. He's like a lounge lizard but brazen and loud. Lewis flips back and forth between the two styles, confusing and irritating the movie's other characters. Stella Stevens is good as a Oneish woman who fights with the Eight Lewis. Young kids would like this movie a lot.

Batman Returns is a sequel to the megahit Batman in which Jack Nicholson played a villainous Seven. This time out, Batman (Michael Keaton) is battling two foes, The Penguin and Catwoman, for the control of dank, surreal Gotham City.

Like Robin Williams and Peter O'Toole, Michael Keaton is a real-life Seven playing a Five. His Bruce Wayne is a rich recluse who is shy, absentminded, etc. He has a big mansion and a giant bat cave that is well stocked with computers. When crime strikes he jumps into his bat suit and becomes an avenging Eight. This back and forth dynamic is present throughout this movie as well.

The bizarre Penguin (Danny DeVito) is a Four. He's deformed, was abandoned at birth, and is on a melancholy quest to rejoin the world and find respectability. He's a social subtype, driven by shame. He tells Batman: "When it all comes down to it you're just jealous because I'm a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask."

DeVito's character has strong shades of The Phantom of the Opera. He has a Monster Complex and longs for the world's respect. DeVito overacts and his sequences go on too long, but the style is quite plain.

Michelle Pfeiffer steals the movie as the wild Catwoman. She too is schizoid, but her poles are between phobic and counterphobic Six (5 wing). By day she is fumbling, self-effacing and ambivalent. "How can you be so mean to someone so meaningless?" she asks her boss, Christopher Walken, an evil corporate Three. She's loyal to his abusive authority but turns on him (and men in general) when she becomes the rebellious counterphobic Catwoman.

Pfeiffer brings a lot of energy to the role(s) and she milks the contradictory nature of Sixes for a lot of humor. Catwoman is plainly drawn to Batman, but she can't let herself have him. She's just as self-defeating as her daytime alter ego, but in a more flamboyant way. Both sides of her have big authority problems, but as Catwoman she attacks what she's afraid of even when it means losing what she truly wants.

Michael Gough plays Batman's butler/confidant, and he's a One. The movie's director, Tim Burton, is also a Five (4 wing).


sex, lies and
video
This is a great movie for students of the Enneagram. It is solely about the neurotic skews of a Nine, a Three, an Eight and a Five. Watching this film is a lot like the experience of doing therapy - the focus is close and tight on what's incongruent and accidentally revealing about everyone's behavior.

The Five, played by James Spader, is an aloof voyeur with a probing-yet-distant intensity. He has a hobby of videotaping women whom he has convinced to talk about their sexual histories. Socially, he maintains the withdrawn noncommittal role of interviewer. Alone, he replays the CDs, inhabiting a kind of secret garden of sexual fantasy in the emotional safety of solitude.

As events unfold, it becomes obvious that Spader's videos are a symbolic, abstract Fiveish attempt to understand why his last relationship went wrong years earlier. His defenses start to crumble when one of the other characters turns the video camera on him and says, "You've had an effect on my life, whether you like it or not." Spader confesses that he had spent years constructing his life so that he would have no effect on anyone. At the end, he acknowledges the failure of his defenses and starts to grow. He destroys the videos and commits to a real relationship in the world. The character has a counterphobic 6 wing and goes towards what he is afraid of.

Andie MacDowell plays a sexually repressed housewife whose Three husband (Peter Gallagher) is cheating on her. Much humor develops from her Nine style of minimizing and abstracting while she ignores the obvious emptiness of her life: "It seems so stupid talking about my problems when poor children are starving," or "Everything's just fine in my life but for some reason I keep thinking about garbage." Eventually she wakes up from her sleepy denial and becomes honest, focused and clear.

Laura San Giacoma plays MacDowell's younger sister, a tough Eight. She's having an affair with husband Gallagher behind her sister's back. She and Gallagher have a conflict that is probable for an Eight and a Three who don't like each other.

Writer/director Steven Soderbergh went on to make Kafka, a dull fictional film about the writer. The real-life Kafka was a Five and in the film he's played by real-life Five Jeremy Irons.


Turtle Diary
This low-key charmer must be the definitive Five movie. Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley star in a Harold Pinter story about two shy, lonely Fives who conspire to steal some sea turtles from a city zoo. Aided by an Eightish zookeeper, the plan is to release the turtles at the English coast where the Gulf Stream will take them to freedom. The execution of this caper generates some ironic suspense but the film's real pleasure is in watching the Jackson and Kingsley characters as they change and grow and bloom.

As the story begins, both are shown as quietly eccentric and restless with the sterility of their lives. Jackson is a reclusive writer of children's books and Kingsley manages a bookstore. They actually meet at the turtle aquarium where each spends solitary afternoons watching the animals dreamily swim.

Both characters are Fiveishly constricted but express it differently. Jackson's trouble seems more social; she is tortured, garbled and near-paralyzed when interacting with others. Underneath she has a spiritual anguish she can't articulate, but her night dreams are all of freeing the turtles. "They're imprisoned," she says simply, when asked why she wants to carry out the plan. The anguish is obviously for her own unrisked life and she conspires haltingly with Kingsley to free the turtles and somehow herself.

Kingsley's timidity is around action rather than interaction. Socially, he is secretive but finesseful; he bandies and repels and distances others with irony. But he's also impotent in a futureless job and when his loutish neighbor bullies him, Kingsley meekly tries to bury his anger in obsessive housecleaning. Springing the turtles becomes a metaphor for taking initiative. When he decides to carry out the plan he begins to display a delightful zest for living.

For both, the turtle jailbreak is a way of moving towards the world. Jackson quells her basic anxiety and risks falling in love. Kingsley becomes more self-assertive, going to the high side of 8. He handles his bully neighbor quite differently after the caper. He also gets more cheerful and expansive (high side of 7). At one point while transporting the turtles, Kingsley comments that he hasn't had a thought in several hours. Jackson knows exactly what he means; both of them are so involved in life that they aren't thinking about it.

The film gently sabotages our expectations that its two stars should get together romantically. They're actually wrong for each other. Both have the same dilemma and express two aspects of the Five style. Jackson has a 4 wing and Kingsley a 6 wing. Kingsley's other neighbor is a Two; her fate underscores the need to seize life today.


The Vanishing (Dutch version)
This is one of a thimbleful of films that features a Five villain. In 1965's The Collector, Five Terence Stamp kidnaps and imprisons a woman because he wants to possess her. His motivation is a metaphor for Fiveish hoarding, a desire to have gone mad. By contrast, The Vanishing features a Five serial killer whose actions are driven by a disassociated ideal of precision and a counterphobic desire to master fear.

The story hinges on one quiet event. An arguing young Dutch couple on vacation in France pull off at a truck stop. In bright daylight under utterly ordinary circumstances, the woman vanishes.

There are no clues, no residue and no case that the man, Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets), can make to the police. They believe she simply jilted him. The case is eventually investigated but remains unsolved.

All would be over except that Rex Hofman is a melancholy Four who pines away for his lost love and grows obsessed with finding out what happened to her. He plasters France with missing person posters and goes on television to talk about the case and keep it alive. He's so haunted and preoccupied that his subsequent lady friend leaves him because she can't compete with the memory of the vanished woman. Hofman knows he's far gone but he's so morbidly romantic that he can't stop. An interviewer asks him: "Do you have hope (of finding her)?" "No," he replies. "Then why pursue it?" "It's a homage." (Introjection again.)

In parallel, we see scenes of Mr. Lemorne (Bernard Pierre Donna-dieu), a precise, calm, solitary Five who is leading a double life. He's a family man with a wife and daughters who withdraws to a country house to plan out the specifics of his abductions of women. We see him rehearsing conversations with intended victims and timing steps with a stopwatch. He notes down the results of each practice session as if he were conducting a lab experiment, and indeed, he's a chemistry teacher in ordinary life.

This is a madness of detail and Lemorne speaks about it indirectly to his unsuspecting wife: "It has become a passion. You start with an idea in your head. You take the first step, then the second. Then you realize that you are up to your neck in something mad. But that doesn't matter; you persevere for the pleasure of persevering, for the satisfaction you get from it."

Lemorne is so confident in his ability to disguise that he subtly brags about his connection to the crimes. When he finds out that Rex is still searching for the lost woman, Lemorne sends him postcards and solicits a meeting. He eventually seeks out Hofman in Holland and offers him a ride back to France where he promises to explain everything about the vanishing. Hofman is so obsessed and Fourishly drawn to finding out what happened that he accepts the ride.

Along the way, Lemorne explains himself in matter-of-fact detail. He knows he's a sociopath and speaks of experiments and philosophical questions that have led to his secret habits. It becomes clear that he loves the detailed planning involved in his crimes, though he observes: "The best plan can be wiped out one moment to the next. That saddens me." The love of disassociated planning in Fives is related to the low side of 7.

Lemorne basically describes a history of dealing with fear by going against it. He has a counterphobic 6 wing and is obsessed with risk. He also describes in his calm, perverse way how a philosophical dilemma led to his first abduction. After one day saving a drowning child, Lemorne says, "my daughter was bursting with admiration. I thought that her admiration for me wasn't worth anything, unless I could prove myself absolutely incapable of doing anything bad. And since there is no white without black, I had, therefore, to conceive the worst thing that I could think of at that time."

This kind of logic reigning supreme is part of what's so chilling about The Vanishing. The film's style itself is Fiveish. It's dry, existential, and builds suspense from the accumulation of small details. There's not a wasted scene in the movie and, while it may spook you, there's little overt violence.

Be sure to avoid the dopey American remake of this story with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland. Director George Sluizer redirected his original film, this time in a flat pedestrian fashion. It's as if someone had said, "George, the original was brilliant! Now how about a version that really bored, lazy people could enjoy?" Jeff Bridges plays a Five alright, but as a drooling weirdo, which robs the killer of his frightening ordinariness and completely telegraphs the story. It even has a happy ending.


OTHER MOVIE FIVES
Kevin Anderson, Liebestraum; Daniel Auteuil, Un Cur En Hiver (A Heart In Winter); Alan Bates, Zorba The Greek; Dirk Bogarde, Darling, Death In Venice; Lothaire Bluteau (priest), Black Robe; Marlon Brando, Reflections In A Golden Eye; Richard Burton, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?; Robert De Niro, Mad Dog And Glory; Robert Donat, Goodbye, Mr. Chips ('39); Colm Feore, Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould; José Ferrer, Moulin Rouge; Albert Finney, Scrooge; Laurence Harvey, The Manchurian Candidate; Rutger Hauer, A Breed Apart; Anthony Hopkins, The Efficiency Expert, 84 Charing Cross Road; Tommy Lee Jones, Lonesome Dove; Burt Lancaster, Birdman Of Alcatraz;

Fred MacMurray, The Absent-Minded Professor; John Malkovich, The Sheltering Sky; Steve McQueen, Bullitt, The Getaway; Sam Neill, Hostage; Judd Nelson, The Dark Backward; Al Pacino, The Godfather Part II; William Petersen, Manhunter; Robert Redford, Jeremiah Johnson; Mickey Rourke, Wild Orchid; Alastair Sim, A Christmas Carol; Terence Stamp, The Collector; George Stephanopoulos, The War Room; Dean Stockwell, Tucker - A Man And His Dream; Max Von Sydow, Duet For One, The Passion Of Anna, Three Days Of The Condor; Hugo Weaving ("Martin"), Proof; Peter Weller, Robocop.

 

FINER DISTINCTION NOTES
Five With a 4 Wing
The difference between the 4 wing and the 6 wing in Fives is like the difference between Art and Science. 4 wing brings an abstract, intuitive cast of thought, as though the Five were thinking in geometric shapes instead of words or realistic images. May be talented artistically and inhabit moods like Fours do. Combine intellectual and emotional imagination. Enjoy the realm of philosophy and beautiful constructs of thought. The marriage of mental perspective and aesthetics is the best of life for them.

When more defensive may seem a little ghostly, have a whisper in their voice. Fluctuate between impersonal withdrawal and bursts of friendly caring. Can get floaty and abstract. Act like they're inside a bubble, sometimes with an air of implicit superiority. Cliché of the "absentminded professor" applies especially to Fives with this wing.

Environmentally sensitive and subject at times to total overwhelm. Touchy about criticism. Can be slow to recover from traumatic events. Melancholy isolation and bleak existential depression are possible pitfalls.


Real-Life Fives With a 4 Wing:
Laurie Anderson, Samuel Beckett, Paul Bowles, Tim Burton, David Byrne, Agatha Christie, Daniel Day-Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Albert Einstein, Jeremy Irons, Philip Kaufman, Gary Larson, George Lucas, David Lynch, Peter Matthiessen, Ian McEwan, Thelonious Monk, Georgia O'Keefe,

Movie Fives With a 4 Wing: Jeff Bridges, The Fabulous Baker Boys; Kerry Fox, An Angel At My Table; Glenda Jackson, Turtle Diary; Gena Rowlands, Another Woman; Dean Stockwell, Tucker - A Man And His Dream.

 

Five With a 6 Wing
The 6 wing brings an orientation to detail and technical knowledge, along with the tendency to think in logical sequence. Especially intellectual, far more analytical than Fives with a 4 wing. Can be loyal friends, offering strong behind-the-scenes support. Kind, patient teachers, skillful experts. May have a sense of mission and work hard.

Sometimes project an aura of sensitive nerdiness and have clumsy social skills. When defensive, they can be unnerved by the expectations of others. May like people more but avoid them more. Especially sensitive to social indebtedness. Could have trouble saying "thank you." Fear of taking action, develop "information addiction" instead. Ask lots of questions but don't get around to the decision at hand.

When more entranced, they develop a suspicious scrutiny of other people's motives but can also be blind followers. Misanthropic and Scrooge-like when defensive. More able to keep their feelings cut off in a constant way. Can be cold, skeptical, ironic, and disassociated. ºGMM

A Five's 6 wing can be phobic or counterphobic. Counterphobic 6 wing brings courage and antiauthoritarian attitudes. When defensive they may mock authority, or angrily tell others off. Tend to "push the envelope," experiment, find what the limits are.


Real-Life Fives With a 6 Wing:
Michael Crichton, Bobby Fischer (counterphobic), Jane Goodall, H.R. Haldeman, Arthur (The Amazing) Kreskin, John le Carré, Vladimir Lenin, Leonard Maltin, Sam Neill, Michelle Pfeiffer (counterphobic), Oliver Sacks, Ebenezer Scrooge, B. F. Skinner, George Stephanopoulos, Madeleine Stowe.

Movie Fives With a 6 Wing: Bernard Pierre Donnadieu, The Vanishing; Ben Kingsley, Turtle Diary; Peter O'Toole, Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Ally Sheedy, Only The Lonely; James Spader, sex, lies and video; Hugo Weaving ("Martin"), Proof; Robin Williams, Awakenings.


CONNECTING POINTS (Stress and Security)
Five's Connection to 7
The healthy side of this connection brings enhanced imagination and some social skills to a Five. It may spur them to seek adventure, whether intellectual, physical or social. Can have a positive outlook, be less self-conscious. A curiosity that helps them explore the world. May be quite funny, and display an engaging playful enthusiasm. Cheerful interest in things, stay mentally alive in old age. Capacity to savor the moment, yea-saying. Sometimes have a streak of generosity.

Unhealthy connection related to the way Fives can go abstract and schizoid. Social undependability and increased difficulty with commitment. May elusively jump around in their thoughts, scatter their attention into empty interests. Tendencies toward living in the future, greed and dilettantism. Use humor to disassociate or trivialize. Action taken sporadically and for strange reasons. React from different subpersonalities, lose their center. Play mind games for diversion, trying not to feel. Weird phobias and issues about appetite possible.


Movie Fives who demonstrate this connection: Bernard Pierre Donnadieu, The Vanishing; Kerry Fox, An Angel At My Table; Anthony Hopkins, 84 Charing Cross Road; Tommy Lee Jones, Lonesome Dove; Ben Kingsley, Turtle Diary; Ally Sheedy, Only The Lonely; James Spader, sex, lies and video; Robin Williams, Awakenings.

 

Five's Connection to 8
Healthy connection helps Fives access raw instinctual energy and aggression. They take charge of situations that would otherwise overwhelm them. Lusty, pushy core of Eightishness helpful to withdrawn people. Brings sexuality and physicality, moral and social courage. They state their needs, initiate contact, get things done. Helps Fives translate knowledge into action. They take risks, become initiators instead of observers.

Low side of this connection reinforces antisocial hostility. Fives can get nasty, punitive and severe with others. Unhealthy Eightish tendencies toward sneering and ridicule may come into play and support a standoffish, go-to-hell attitude. Aggression in the service of maintaining distance. Protecting what little they have. Cold, disassociated behind-the-scenes control. Bursts of nastiness. Can also turn Eightness against themselves. Criticize, yell at and persecute themselves. Leads to stricken self-consciousness and paranoia.


Movie Fives who demonstrate this connection: Michel Blanc, Monsieur Hire; Jeff Bridges, The Fabulous Baker Boys; Albert Finney, Scrooge; Michael Keaton, Batman, Batman Returns; Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor; Peter O'Toole, Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Al Pacino, The Godfather Part II; Alastair Sim, A Christmas Carol.

 

SUBTYPE THEMES
Self-Preservation
Chief defensive tendency is to withdraw. Sensitive to feeling saturated by the world, Fives with this subtype lose their sense of privacy easily. Can feel knocked over by people's expectations. In isolation they refind their lost sense of balance and build up to the next round of social stresses. More alienated than the other subtypes. May hide in books, live alone or need their own room where they can close themselves off. Take little from others. Sometimes thin. Likely to hoard time and space. Have solitary hobbies and interests, seek comfort and solace alone. Examples include: Kerry Fox, An Angel At My Table; Gena Rowlands, Another Woman; Robin Williams, Awakenings.


Intimate
Intimate Fives trust only a few people but then do so totally. Friendship is based on the sharing of confidences. Intimacy is equivalent to exchanging secrets. Can go from enigmatic, deliberate distance to intense, unguarded openness. Seductive invitation to sharing secrets; seek a total merging. When entranced can be a little kinky.

A great movie example is James Spader in sex, lies and video. Sharing intimate sexual secrets is what he gets women to do on video. Both Monsieur Hire and Mr. Lemorne in The Vanishing show this theme albeit perversely. Ben Kingsley in Turtle Diary also enjoys secrecy and is a little more normal.


Social
Social Fives connect with groups of like-minded people. Enjoy living in the flow of a group interest, sharing knowledge and affiliations. May prefer specialized or esoteric areas of knowledge that exclude all but the initiated. Could live in high society, know the "right" people, belong to the best clubs. Might enjoy speaking a professional language that few people understand. Can be quite friendly but, at times, terrific snobs. Romanticize secret elitist group membership; concerned with titles, degrees, credentials, etc. Realm of academia.

Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a good movie example. Also, Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road.

 

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