Social Five — “Totem”

For Social Fives, the passion of avarice is connected to knowledge. These Fives don't need the nourishment relationships provide because their passion for knowledge somehow compensates for what they might get from direct human contact. It's as if they have an intuition that they can find everything they need through the mind. Needs (for people and for emotional sustenance) get displaced into a thirst for knowledge.

The name given to this subtype is “Totem,” which communicates their need for “super-ideals,” or the need to relate to people who share their intellectual values, interests, and ideals. The image of a totem suggest both height and a character that is constructed (like an object) rather than a human being. These Fives do not relate to regular people in everyday life- they relate to easily idealized experts who share their ideals; to people who display what they see as outstanding characteristics based on shared values and knowledge and who they can keep at a certain distance. One Social Five I know says he “collects people” who share his interests and values.

For Social Fives, then, avarice gets acted out through a greedy search for the ultimate ideals that will provide a sense of meaning by connecting them to something special, thereby elevating their life. The social five's passion is the need for the essential, the sublime, or the extraordinary instead of what is here and now. In line with this need for relationships based on shared ideals, social fives have a tendency to look upward, toward higher values. According to Naranjo, they look toward the stars and care little for life down on earth.

In contrast to Sexual Fives, who are iconoclasts, Social fives are admiring people- individuals who admire others that express their ideals in extraordinary ways. In looking for and adhering to super-values, they can be disdainful of ordinary life and ordinary people. The life of the mind feels more compelling, and the people at a distance who represent the extraordinary seem more seductive and interesting to them than the people they meet in everyday life.

Social fives are looking for the ultimate meaning in life, motivated by an underlying (potentially unconscious) sense that things are meaningless unless the ultimate meaning is found. This Five's drive to find the extraordinary underscores a polarity they may perceive between extraordinariness and meaninglessness. They look for meaning to avoid a fearful sense that the world is meaningless, but in their search for meaning they orient themselves so much toward finding the quintessence of life- the extraordinary- that they may become disinterested in everyday life. They see a gap between the ideal and everyday life, and they burn in the longing for the ultimate meaning. For this five, motivated by the social instinct in the service of avarice, the common, ordinary self does not have enough value to satisfy their drive for meaning.

In their search for meaning, these fives can become spiritual or idealistic in a way that is actually counter to real spiritual attainment, because it bypasses compassion and empathy and the practical level of how people connect to each other in ordinary life. This tendency is the prototype of what is sometimes called a “spiritual bypass,” in which a person looks for and devotes himself to a higher ideal or a valued system of knowledge as a way of avoiding doing the emotional and psychological work he would need to do to grow and develop. They may believe they are transcending their ego, but their adherence to their spiritual values or practice is their way of escaping from their everyday emotional reality into a “higher” intellectual system that they have idealized. Any type can spiritually bypass, but the social five is the prototype of someone who employs this as a defense strategy.

Social fives prefer not to feel. They can be mysterious and inaccessible, or fun and intellectually engaging. They may hide out in the pose of an expert, and they tend to have a sense of omnipotence through the exercise of their intellect. These fives may imagine that they are superior to others because of their higher values and ideals. Although they would never (intentionally) show it, they seek recognition and prestige; they want to be someone important, and they often seek to fulfill this desire this by allying themselves with people they admire.

Social five can look like type sevens in that they can be fairly outgoing and display a great deal of excitement about interesting ideas and people. The social five is typically more “out there” than other fives, in the sense of being more social and able to engage. Social fives differ from sevens, however, in that they are more reserved, less self-interested, and less emotional than sevens.

Scott, a social five, speaks:

“When I first encountered the enneagram, I thought I was a Seven. I consider myself very sociable, and I connect easily with people but on deeper reflection, I realized that my connections are specifically with topic “experts” or people who share my interests. I would choose my friends based on their intellect, and the time we spent together would be focused on sharing ideas. I realized I was a five and not a seven because I categorize people and create barriers between myself and others by being invisibly secretive. I ask lots of questions about the other person to avoid being investigated by them. I often wonder, “Who am I? What is this mystery inside myself?”

As a young child I would read encyclopedias, “How it Works” books, and “Eyewitness” books all the time for fun. My inner fantasy world was a bigger focus for me than the mundane world outside of myself. On a long road trip to a holiday destination with my family, I would imagine rebuilding a city with huge statues of animals and architectural themes from Egypt. While everybody went to the beach, I just wanted to read my books.

I've always wanted to change the world on a large scale- to change it into the ideal world that I've imagined, irrespective of whether that is actually practical or realistic.

To make sense of the universe as a whole, I studied metaphysics, astrology, and different mystical, spiritual systems. I hoped that each new subject I studied would offer me a new piece of the puzzle I could use to find the meaning of life. Through a lot of self-development work, I eventually realized that the only real and meaningful experience is this moment, in the present.”

Specific Work For The Social Fives on the Path from Vice to Virtue

Social Fives can travel the path from avarice to nonattachment by broadening their focus of attention from knowledge and information to a greater sense of emotional engagement with real people. If you are a social five, notice when your devotion to high ideals displaces an openness to what's happening in everyday life and actually causes you to close yourself off to others. Recognize when you may be idealizing or overidealizing experts and a narrow set of (potentially distant)) individuals- getting your relational needs met indirectly rather than taking the risk of interacting more directly with the people in your immediate environment. Notice and work against the tendency to connect only through shared ideas by intentionally sharing more of your emotions and gut feelings with others. Examine the ways in which you might be attached to trying to create meaning and avoid a deeper fear of meaninglessness through specific values and ideals; challenge yourself to more fully experience your fears as a first step on the path of letting go of those attachments. Appreciate the joys of everyday and the full range of human expression as a way of expanding your focus to allow for a richer experience of what life has to offer you.

Sourced with permission from The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut.

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