'Scent of a Reversal?' The Four and the Six

At that time I wrote to the EM to confirm that opinion, despite my initial negative reaction to this idea after having watched the first part of the film. Shortly thereafter, John Fudjack sent me a lengthy response effectively arguing against the notion of Slader representing the sexual 4. With a great deal of thought, reflection, informal research into the clientele of my psychotherapy practice, and conversations with John Fudjack, I came to the realization that my initial, intuitive response to the movie was correct, and I am, therefore changing my mind about what I wrote earlier concerning Scent

In this article I will briefly present a miniscule fraction of Fudjack's main insights and observations, and then suggest that the three movies The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison, The Doors, and Carrington, which depict the historical characters Jim Morrison and Dora Carrington, represent much more accurate film portrayals of the male and female sexual 4 than does Scent. Much of the difficulty has revolved around certain superficial resemblences between the sexual 4 and the counterphobic 6, especially at the point of caricatured 'rebelliousness', as Katherine Chernick states in her fine work on the instinctual subtypes ², and the errant description of 'competition/hatred'. Using these movie examples we will dig beyond these superficial resemblences to distinguish the basic difference between the two. I will then make a bold assertion concerning what I believe to be a major source of the confusion in this area - an error in theoretical transmission of the Enneagram from Ichazo to Naranjo.

In Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino plays an embittered, authoritarian and isolated retired military officer, Colonel Slader. The plot develops as Charles, a preppy local college student, answers an ad by Col. Slader'r daughter (with whom the Colonel lives) to make money by accompanying Col. Slader over a holiday weekend while the daughter and husband take a vacation. The crux of the storyline revolves around Col. Slader's blindness, a condition incurred in the military while unsuccessfully attempting to juggle hand grenades. Fudjack ingeniously suggests that this blindness is a symbolic depiction of the crisis of Jungian iNtuition bursting through a heavily Sensate individual. He also suggests, in Jungian dream interpretation fashion, that the main characters of Scentcan be seen as representing different psychodynamic aspects of the author of the story or screenplay. But the main consideration here is the highly Sensate orientation of Slader, Fudjack writes.

Slader distinguishes between this type of cigar and that, between a quality meal and what is merely 'edible'. He is seen as capable of sophisticated sensory discrimination of all sorts (has appreciation for quality tailoring, fine cars, sophisticated women) and is capable of complex sensory task - he is an elegant practitioner of the Tango, and is capable of taking his gun apart and putting it back together efficiently and swiftly and without wasted movements. One might argue that the exaggerated quality of his sensory needs speaks to the fact that sensation is his inferior function - but it looks to me more like the writer's intention was to depict these refined sensory skills as having been learned in the 'pre-explosion' period of Slader's development, in which he relied on sensation as his main function. And his exaggerated eagerness to attain sensory experience during the weekend depicted in the movie seems to indicate a desperate desire to recover lost sensory achievements.

Fudjack describes Slader's depicted Jungian Thinking function, reflected in Slader's analytical and planning capacities:

He is capable of performing penetrating analyses (especially when the context is political [the province of the 'thinking' type]). He knows the 'ways of the real world' - this is actually something that we, as viewers, come to loup up to him for possessing. He can control situations - but this is not because he is intuitive, but because he has intellectual insight into what is happening (who is in control, what they want, and how he can manipulate them via this knowledge). Slader is the type of guy who can make things happen (has skill in 'cause-effect' relationships), the kind of guy you'd want as your lawyer (which is the role he eventually plays, with resounding success, in the last scene) - he knows the 'laws' (the rules, how things work, and is able, as a result, to realize the external opportunity latent in the situation).

Contrasting the highly Sensate character with the typically well-developed iNtuition of the 4, Fudjack writes:

Slader is not, for instance, good at interpreting the psychological meaning of symbols, or dreams, and is not particularly spiritual (as are individuals with inner directed intiution). His intuition is mainly cultivated as a kind of 'instinctive' substitution (represented by 'smell') for his sensory handicap...

This distinction becomes glaringly apparent when studying Jim Morrison, lead singer of the rock band The Doors, who died in the 1970s at the age of 27. Looking at Morrison, as depicted in Oliver Stone's reasonable rendition of The Doors, and in Lawrence Smith's documentary The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison it becomes extremely difficult to image the character of Col. Slader as representative of the 4 experience. At the very least, Slader, as a Jungian ST type, is highly unrepresentative of 4, even though theoretically it is possible. But the question is, why should we suggest that Slader is representative of the sexual 4, when it's a stretch to even suggest that he would be an extremely rare example of a sexual 4? I have found this suggestion to be misleading and very confusing.

I would recommend watching Smith's documentary first and then Stone's movie. If you've already seen The Doors, it is well worth seeing the documentary anyway. Stone has been accused by high-profile conservative politicians and talk-show hosts of skewing historical reality beyond recognition in such films as JFK. But there can be no doubt that Stone used the same first-hand witnesses and documentary footage that went into making Smith's documentary. As such, Stone's version gets across the sexual 4 experience, in clear contrast to Scent.

There is only enough space in this article to contrast one specific area. Col Slader is a highly externally - and materially - oriented individual - he is 'wordly-wise', as Fudjack says. Along with this is a highly regimented, rigid, orderly style typical of the military. The 4 experience, including the sexual 4 experience, couldn't be more opposite, as seen in the lives of both Morrison and Dora Carrington, a WWI-era British artist whom I will discuss in more detail below.

The following are excerpts from the documentary about Morrison. Robby Krieger, guitarist for The Doors, states,

Jim, he would be on the edge of reality all the time... the music was what we were really feeling, [it wasn't] a show.

Ray Manzarek, another member of the group, offers a nearly identical assessment:

Jim was real on stage; when he sang his songs in the studio, he was not a performer, not an entertainer, not a showman - he was a shaman; he was possessed - by a vision, by a madness, by a rage to live, by an all-consuming fire to make art... [he] married poetry and rock...[he] had to live on the edge 24 hours a day.

Jerry Hopkins, Morrison's biographer, states,

I think what Jim wanted to be was a poet - music was the platform to express his poetry.

Paul Rothchild, producer of the early Doors albums, states,

The Doors always tried to be unique, to be different, avant-garde; [there was a] conscious attempt to be new...[they brought a] theatrical aspect to rock and roll - a broader, deeper, more psychologically-oriented theatre; [it was] a deep, dark view of entertainment.

And biographer Danny Sugarman says,

...they were really misunderstood [and] Jim took that personally.

It becomes extremely difficult to imagine Col. Slader's friends, of which there were few, if any, saying similar things about him. Recent assertions by high-profile Enneagram theorists about the sexual 4 can easily lead one to believe or imagine the sexual 4 to be 'essentially' different from other 4s. The sexual 4 is, in fact, not that different from other 4s. The sexual 4 is, first of all, a 4.

The contrast, and it is vast, at the supposed common point of 'rebelliousness' for the sexual 4 and the counterphobic 6, lies at just this place of propensity for and excellence in the inner world of psychospirituality, versus the outer world of shrewdness and material adeptness and security. The counterphobic 6 'rebels' at the point of strict reactionary decisions to a perceived, powerful authority figure, which is often a thoughtless decision. The sexual 4 'rebels' against authority for the opposite reason - because the 4 has used depth of thought, recognition of psychospiritual depths, and its expression is somehow misunderstood and blocked by authority.

It's worth looking at one particular scene from Stone's movie that reveals some of Stone's (possible?) slanting toward counterphobic 6. The Doors had just recorded and released 'Light My Fire', which shot to the top of the charts. Ed Sullivan invited them for a return performance on his show to do this song. There was just one condition, however: the word 'higher' in the song was deemed offensive by the show's producer, and Morrison was asked to substitute a less offensive one. Of course, this (for a 4) is a blockage of spiritual expression, and Morrison would have no part of it. In Stone's movie, Morrison is depicted as consciously moving forward, sticking his face directly into the lens of the camera, and greatly exaggerating 'higher' as he sang it during the performance. The actual footage of the event as it really took place on the Ed Sullivan show reveals not the slightest hint of such over-dramatized, 'rebellious' behavior on Morrison's part. He stands there, calmly singing, not batting an eye, as though nothing unusual had taken place.

In the case of the movie Carrington, it will suffice to quote the back of the video jacket:

Emma Thompson stars as Dora Carrington, the Victorian Era painter whose passionate life created one of England's greatest scandals. Carrington is unable to possess the one man she loves, Lytton Strachey...Rebuffed, she embarks on a long string of loveless sexual encounters. Her heart remains true to him, but she refuses to curtail the sexual pursuits which erupt again and again in angry passion. In Carrington, one fins unmatched sensuality, desire, and tenderness.

There is hardly a better description of the romantic-tragic type 4 cycle to be found anywhere, and the movie accurately portrays this dynamic. Of added interest is the fact that Strachey is also portrayed as a 4, and that his relationships with Carrington is primarily psychospiritual in nature, rather than sexual. Again it is the inner world where meaning and significance find their roost for the 4.

Now for my 'bold assertion'. In a letter to the Editor in last month's [December 96] Enneagram Monthly, I raised the possibility of the 4 and 6 being turned around in Ichazo's theory, based upon his labelilng of these points. In that same issue, in part of the interview with Ichazo, I found ample proof to support this possibility. On page 16, Ichazo state that the 'emotions' and 'feelings' of 'courage, cowardice, love, hate' are in the heart center. He says this center produces 'courage and justice'. On page 17, Ichazo specifically refers to the 'Relation Instinct (2,3,4)' and says,

When their social image harmonizes positively with their social position, they are charming, attentive and easygoing, but when they are in the negative dichotomy, their social image becomes demanding, intolerant, dictatorial, and theatrical.

In the next paragraph in the interview, Ichazo goes on to describe the 'Adaptation Instinct (5,6,7)', and says of these individuals,

When they are in the negative aspect, their social environment has complete command over them, making them do according to the social conventions that overpower them. Thus their standard and measure of social reality is their sense of doing or influencing the social environment.

This statement accurately reflects a very common survival strategy of the 4 from Naranjo's Enneagram. The second statement also accurately reflects the 'mission statement' of a 4 - spiritual expression for the purpose of affecting and transforming the world.

This is my assertion: the Enneagram as we know it was errantly transmitted between Ichazo and Naranjo, and it was done separately from the material we refer to as the Instinctual Subtypes. Naranjo placed Ichazo's type 6 at the 4 position and placed Ichazo's type 4 at the 6 position without bringing the material of the instinctual subtypes along, with the result that the so-called sexual 4 - 'competition/hatred' - is, in reality, a subtype of the type 6, not of the type 4 as we know it. Thus Naranjo errantly ascribed a type 6 instinctual subtype to 4, and when he viewed the movie Scent of a Woman errantly applied the designation, when in fact Scent depicts the 'competition/hatred' subtype of 6. This suggestion bears out reality in the dozens of counterphobic 6 clients I have had in my practice - a perspective taken from the reality of the experience of their own lives, not from some remote theory. I believe it is likely that we have not questioned this area sufficiently, and have 'over-believed' the theorists to the neglect of actual experience.

Footnotes/References