Instinctual subtype
Enneagram so5: belonging at a price you set
The word next to your code, totem, is one most Americans know from a single expression, low man on the totem pole, and that expression is about rank. Here it sits beside a Five, the type people spot by how carefully it spends itself on company. This page gets at why a Five wants a place among others at all, and what they pay for it with, if not with presence. Whether so5 is yours, or one of two codes, is your call.
- leading
- second
- neglected
The code does not say which of the other two is second and which is neglected
01
What this instinct guards
- spI cover my own needs first
- soI read where I stand with people
- sxI go all in on one person
On a forum for people who restore manual typewriters, one member has been posting for fifteen years: nine thousand posts, and when a newcomer asks how to free a stuck carriage, somebody links her thread with the photos. Maybe five members would know her face. A Five of this subtype holds that kind of place among people: a circle that knows her by what she has made, because she needs people to see exactly what she decided to hand over and nothing past it.
Come spring, her step-by-step on replacing a platen turns up in a video with two hundred thousand views, her photos and all, and her name nowhere. She doesn't post a callout and doesn't write to the channel. Over two nights she stamps her handle and the year into the corner of all four hundred of her photos and adds the original posting date under every old thread, so anyone who compares can see for themselves.
Then comes a thin winter: hardly any repair jobs, rent covered with nothing to spare, and the forum's owner writes that he can't keep paying for the server and will shut it down in a month. The money from her very next repair job goes to him for a year of hosting, and in the evenings she copies the archive to a backup drive, thread by thread.
02
How it colors the passion
- The type's passion goes outward through the instinct
- Countertype: the passion turns back against itself
Avarice about presence, which wants no hour to leave uncounted, turns into a trade on social material: the circle gets a contribution in place of the person. When his college roommate gets married, a Five is asked to be best man, a whole day on display, from the rehearsal dinner to the last dance. He says no and writes the toast, another groomsman delivers it, and the room laughs at his jokes in somebody else's voice.
Three hundred names, eight years of county records and ship manifests: the family tree hangs in an aunt's front hall, and at every get-together someone stands at it looking for their kids. When a cousin has a baby, the Five who built it hears before the grandmother does: the name has to go on the tree. That's the totem here, the family's emblem with her as its keeper, and her place in the family runs through it.
For the historical society's fiftieth anniversary, everybody lines up on the courthouse steps for one big photo. The longtime record keeper brings the tripod and a camera with a ten-second timer and arranges forty people by height. Ten seconds is enough to reach the end of the row. He stays behind the camera to check the focus, and the album is missing him again: avarice won't give the circle even ten seconds.
03
How it differs from the other two
- This page
- Countertype
sp5, castle
Asked what they do for a living, both have one sentence ready, built so that the next thing anyone says is about the weather. Between jobs, each of them gets a free month. sp5 takes three remote contracts and banks the money so the next gap can stretch to six months without asking anybody for anything. so5 spends two weeks at a summer institute on old maps, sleeping down the hall from people whose papers they've read for ten years, and comes home with five new correspondents and an invitation to send in an article. Which ending to that month would let you breathe easier: six months banked in which nobody is needed, or five people who now know you exist?
sx5, trust
CountertypePresents from either one are finds, never purchases: a rare recording, a clipping from an old newspaper, the address of a place nobody knows about. When their first book comes out, so5 presents it at the society, signs forty copies, and takes questions for an hour. sx5 doesn't present it anywhere; the first copy goes to one person, and the inscription on the flyleaf runs three pages. When a piece of work is finished, who is it really finished for: the people who know the field, or one person who knows you?
04
Place in the stacking, and the neglected one
- so/sp/sx
- so
- sp
- sx
- so/sx/sp
- so
- sx
- sp
With this leading instinct, two stackings are possible
The astronomy club camps in an Ohio field for the total eclipse, and one Five knows a hill two miles off with nobody on it. She goes to the camp: somebody has to call out the contact times. Through four minutes of totality she watches a stopwatch; the corona she sees later, in other people's photos. The leading social instinct gave the circle the minutes she came for.
Avarice counts its reserves in evenings given to people, and the body isn't in that ledger; in the stacking with self-preservation neglected, it shows at the first frost. On the Christmas Bird Count a Five carries the club's spotting scope and every tally sheet, and no hat. By noon he is shaking, and the team heads back with the shore uncounted.
A Five has spent twenty years on the history of one textile mill, the topic the society handed him. In the archive he finds the mill engineer's letters to a front-office clerk, the kind that would light anyone up. He logs them as "off topic"; a year later they're somebody else's book. Sexual is the neglected instinct here: avarice keeps attention from anything it could burn up in.
05
What the test shows
Everything separated: subtype and the full stacking
Second and neglected close: subtype without the stacking
Leading and second close: two candidates
The test reports four things, and the instinct is the one we're least sure about. We'd rather tell you that than bury it. For about half the people who take it, the three instincts come out too close to call, and when that happens we show you the top two instead of picking one. A so5's answers can sound like self-preservation. Avarice about presence describes itself in the language of economy: saving energy, keeping evenings free, not having people over, and in a self-report that reads as looking after one's own provision. The place among people who know barely makes it into the words at all. Interest in a subject comes across as interest in a subject, even though what it holds is standing in a circle. So self-preservation may come out ahead, with social in second place, or the two may be named as candidates together.
06
Questions
Why does a great conference leave me needing a week to recover?
Interest and cost run on separate accounts. A conference can be the best event of the year and still draw on the same reserve as any evening among people: three days in view, hallway talk, the dinner that's awkward to leave. Enjoying the subject doesn't refill it. The quiet week afterward isn't a verdict on the trip. It's the bill coming due, and easier to pay if it's on the calendar up front.
Why can't I stand it when someone talks carelessly about my old teacher?
When a place among people rests on work, the teacher isn't a private matter. They're where the line starts: the workshop, the school, the person through whom you got written into the circle. A careless word about them touches more than a memory. It shifts the ground under your own standing, like doubt about the signature on your work, which is why the reaction outsizes the remark.
Why does praise to my face make me squirm when a citation makes my day?
Praise to your face wants an answer on the spot: a smile, the right words, a stretch at the center of somebody's attention. That costs presence, and not a little. A citation recognizes the same work and asks nothing back: your name is already on it, and the pleasure can be had alone, at a convenient hour. Recognition that doesn't require showing up costs the least, and that's why it lands best.
Why do I know everyone in my field by name but not my own neighbors?
Attention under the social instinct isn't spread evenly over everyone nearby; it goes where standing gets decided. The neighbors down the hall have no say in that, while the people publishing in your field decide whether you have a place in the circle. Avarice about presence adds its part: remembering someone means spending attention on them, and it gets spent where the place is held.