by Jupiter, sp/sx 9w1 4w3 7w6

Type 9 is a slippery type. It is the primary type of the primordial gut center, the type from which all other types flow. To define it is an exercise in futility, as it escapes definition. Grasping a seashore wave in your hand, swallowing photons, stabbing at shadows. Shapes that are blurred when looked at directly but become clear in the periphery of your vision. Many have tried before and failed.

Come, look out of the corner of your eye.

Obligatory moment of lucidity

Type 9 is composed of the following triads: the gut center, positive outlook, attachment object relations, and withdrawn. 9 is a gut type that is separated from its native center and scrambles its heart and head centers; it is a positive outlook type that is withdrawn; it is an attachment autonomy type. All the interlocking components of the type are inextricable from one another and must be seen synergistically.

Gut center: Also called the body center. One of the three centers of intelligence, along with the heart and the head. The gut center of intelligence is concerned with boundaries of selfhood, autonomy, and actions of the self exerted in reality. Everyone has a gut center and expresses their automatic mechanisms of personality at a specific point within that center (this is known as a fix, short for “fixation,” a way that the center is used at a specific point on the symbol to support the personality). The personality of a core gut type crystallizes around their autonomy as a separate being interacting with a wider external reality. Anger is the underlying emotion corresponding with the gut center, just as shame corresponds with the heart or image center and fear corresponds with the mental center.

Positive outlook: One of the three harmonic triads along with reactivity and competency. The harmonic triads are three different attitudes toward problem-solving, inextricably bound to the centers of intelligence. Positive outlook is tied to the gut center, competency to the heart center, and reactivity to the head center. Each harmonic triad is anchored to a center of intelligence by the primary type of that center and flanked by the two types adjacent to that center — so, for positive outlook, it is types 7, 9, and 2 (note also that the other gut types, 8 and 1, can only have positive outlook wings). All positive types subjugate their gut center, using it to move past a problem. 

Attachment: Attachment is an object relational stance along with rejection and frustration. Object relations are the perpetual reenactment of a problem with the nurturing and guidance parental functions (not literal parents, don’t go there). Attachment types adapt toward replacement nurturing and guidance functions: specifically, 3 is attached to the nurturing function, 6 is attached to the guidance function, and 9 is attached to both. Attachment types are on the stable shape of the triangle within the Enneagram symbol and are considered primary types, the types that have the birthright of the greatest potential of their respective center. (9 is at the top because it’s the best.) 

Withdrawn: The withdrawn triad is a member of the Hornevian grouping (named after psychoanalyst Karen Horney) along with the assertive and superego triads. These are mechanisms for how types get their needs met. The Hornevian triads intersect with object relations and also involve the nurturing and guidance functions. Withdrawn types (9, 4, and 5) have an issue with both the nurturing and guidance function — 9 is attached to both, 4 is frustrated with both, and 5 rejects both. Withdrawn types do not believe that their needs can be met in reality so they meet their own needs internally. They are separated from their gut center and prefer to live in their scrambled heart and head centers.

My intention with this article is not to create a 9 description that hits all the usual talking points or is all-encompassing to the point of dilution, but rather to strip the type down to its fundamental components while simultaneously giving a strong voice to a type that is often voiceless in its own descriptions. Witness my gut rage.

Descend.

Soma

The gut center deals with the immediacy of being a corporeal entity that exists in the world.

Its native form of intelligence is somatic, preverbal knowing, intuitive responses to environmental stimuli that are filtered through the body. This takes place in the present moment, prior to the processing of mental frameworks or reflections on one’s image. These responses dictate where one’s boundaries of selfhood lie and the actions taken to defend them.

Anger as the primary associated emotion of the gut center makes sense intuitively, as gut types are concerned with autonomy and anger is the response to the violation of boundaries. It’s easy to assume that the anger of gut types is about other people and that each gut type will have a unique domain of anger expression in interpersonal conflict. However, this is a gross oversimplification.

Existence itself is a violation. No physical form can walk this world unsullied. The sensory world is staging an unending assault from which there is no respite from birth to death — no one gets through this life unscathed. The anger of gut types is an existential anger response to this inherent violation that is inextricable from being alive at all. It is not limited to or even specifically expressed in individual interpersonal exchanges, though it is an ever-present background radiation. Anger is the electrical current that animates our fragile human bodies to exert our life force outward into the inhospitable physical world. In these brief lives, it is what drives us to make our mark upon the earth.

9s are often described as suppressing their anger and, thus, their vitality. It is not so simple as this, so look deeper and think carefully, lest disfigured caricatures of 9 run amok. The fact that 9 is a gut type is the crucial key to its mysteries.

Propulsion

Appropriately for a type that deals in the secrets of ineffable sensation, “positive outlook” is a woefully lacking term to describe what 9 is doing. Do not make the mistake of thinking that all positive outlook types only allow themselves to experience happy emotions or that they are optimistic Pollyannas. The emotions of 9s are a lush garden of sunlight and shade, of healing herbs and deadly poisons, of beasts both magical and monstrous. Their wells run deep and the contaminants of their aquifers depend heavily on their hearts and minds.

Positive types wield their gut center to enact a course of action that will allow them to move past a problem. This can manifest as a broad range of actions, from obvious and cliché to obscured and subtle: using substances to escape unpleasant emotions and boredom; distractions to procrastinate or move forward and onto the next thing; reframing the impact of a situation so it can be endured; romanticizing pain for artistic worth, thereby transforming suffering into something profound and worthwhile. Positive outlook is, therefore, an optimism of one’s chosen course of action, whatever that may be.

9 is often cast as the ugly stepchild of the positive triad, the one that doesn’t actually do anything but dissociate into an intrauterine narcotized state. It’s true that using the gut to dissociate is a manifestation of positive outlook. However, 9s also share the positive type stance that they are capable of absolutely anything. While this may read as delusional (particularly to 6s), I prefer to see it as an advantage. Unfettered by the confines of a consensus of the feasible, 9s can be wildly innovative. 

9 is deeply attracted to potential. A state of potential energy is a drug to the confluence of positive and withdrawn, the intersection of using the body and avoiding the body. It is true that reality cannot meet the needs of withdrawn types, but positive outlook keeps 9s digging their talons into their gut center anyway. Seeing life as something to fuck hard and deep, to bleed dry for every drop is not exclusive to the demanding, aggressive self-nurturing of type 7. While 7s wield their gut and separate their heart to keep them in motion and thus quell the anxieties of the mental center, 9s are instead reacting to the anxieties of the gut center. Due to their withdrawn scramble and their divine right to the gut center’s true potential as a primary type, 9s can feel the maw of the void snapping at their heels and have the means of embodiment to react against it by pushing themselves outward into life — autonomy of the self, from the self. 9s are not always seeking equilibrium, though they do have a need to retreat from the disturbing overwhelm of the world at times (actually, 9s can only hold a solid form for a maximum of 16 hours before reverting to a liquid state). They can seek intense, elevated experiences in order to flesh out the boundaries of the self and make the absurdity of existence feel worthwhile. What 9s do have is something of a non-encroachment policy.

Synapse

Attachment is ultimately a painfully hopeful stance, continuing to hold out hope that the deepest needs of the center can be met: that the primary type can be valued (3), guided (6), or held (9).

Attachment in the body center is movement. It is adjustments to allow for connection and to withhold any further ammunition from the greater environmental assault crashing against the 9’s gates. Despite preferring to live in their head-heart withdrawn scramble, 9s are still taking things in first through the body. It is the factors of being both an autonomy type and an attachment type that give rise to the permeable boundaries of 9.

Without a secondary center to support the core type, attachment types look outside the self to find support for their primary center’s needs. The isolated center is vulnerable on its own and, in 9, takes in sensory information from the environment as numbers to perform its mysterious gut calculations with and determine how much to expand or contract. It is their hope that if they will not encroach, you will respond in kind. They feel into another’s boundaries with sensitively attuned tendrils of gut wisdom, taking in subtle signs of how much of the greater assault of existence you can withstand. They wish not to violate as they themselves wish to not be violated, not until they’re resolute that doing so is of greater importance than maintaining their connection with you.

The attachment of 9 is just this: flexibility on the boundary level. This has no greater prescriptive power about their mental frameworks or their image beyond the fact that they scramble these two centers. With different wings, different fixes, and, hell, different life experiences and simply being different people, the actual characteristics of individual 9s vary widely. Some 9s are dull, some are timid, others are brilliant or fierce. This is why typing 9s (or any type, really) by a series of traits is ultimately pointless. Only in the mechanisms that reveal structure can the answers be found.

It’s important to note that while 9 is always processing environmental information to adjust its boundaries, this does not mean that they always place others above themselves. A 9 may determine that you are worthless and expand as much as they can to crowd you out of a room — likewise, they may shrink to avoid giving you and the greater world fuel to violate them. 9’s boundaries are permeable, but this doesn’t mean that they cannot rise to the occasion in conflict.

Yes, in an ideal scenario, there would be interpersonal harmony between 9s and others (and interpersonal harmony is far from the only kind of harmony that 9s desire; they want external reality to harmonize with their far superior inner world). While some 9s may resort to dubious means to slither out of conflict or tone police their opponents, some are willing or even eager to engage. Some will avoid conflict by eschewing an active adaptation in favor of a stubborn hiddenness, others will determine their boundaries in advance and present them off the bat. Where 9s struggle in conflict is knowing in the moment exactly where their boundary lies and being able to meet others at that exact point. This is a result of the separated gut center lacking the support of a secondary center — 8 is backed up by the mind, 1 is backed up by the heart, and 9 is abandoned in its own waters. Some 9s set up their boundary defense system shy of the actual boundary, others have their artillery locked and loaded with their eyes on the horizon. Something that is characteristic of 9s is that they tend toward a siege mentality.

9 is incomprehensibly more vast than could ever be displayed in any one interaction, so I do reject the notion that 9s are incapable of being anything but hidden or vague (though they are masters of this and make for excellent trolls). They are multifaceted, and this comes from within, not from “attaching to everything” and somehow losing themselves in the process. Attachment manifests as the choice — an exhausting choice, as it is depleting to hold the edges of the self at a specific point — whether conscious or subconscious, of what to display in the moment.

Once again, try to think carefully here. 9s are not necessarily unlocated or self-erasing through their attachment mechanisms. These things are certainly possible within the 9 structure, but they aren’t the defining features, more side effects. Attachment in the gut center means that the boundaries are permeable, not that 9s are predestined to be blown off course in their own life’s journey by other people. Rather, the openness of 9’s boundaries fed by the undying hope to be properly held by their environment leads to contaminants leaking in and causing internal damage. The unmoored core center of a primary type is fragile in its separated state, and the wounds from these contaminants do not heal easily.

Evisceration

To a withdrawn type, reality is painfully lacking. The intoxicants of their hearts and minds are preferable to real life, which always falls short. They are set aflame by the fusion of mental frameworks and heart self-resonance, which lends to the trope of 9s being philosophical and fantastical. (Contraflow 9s in particular tend toward a cynical or Dadaist flavor of humor as a reflection of the inherent absurdity of a world that cannot meet their needs.) This separation of body from the head-heart chimera can lead to highly developed symbolic fluency as a means of closing the gap between the failures of language and 9s’ ineffable somatic gut wisdom. It can also result in a Harlan Ellison-esque body horror: “I have no mouth, and I must scream.”

For 9s, their means of actualization in the separated gut center is by default unsupported by their heart and head centers. 4s and 5s, dysfunctional though they may be in their gutless state, are not separated from their core center, are supported by a secondary center, and do not share the hardware of the gut center’s demands for expansion.

I reject the notion that 9s fear conflict above all else. It is true that 9s greatly desire an outer world that is harmonious with their inner one, but remember that 9 is a gut type. 9s are constantly besieged by a dreadfully lacking hollow outer reality, the vacuum of which threatens to shatter them, and so their mechanism to preserve their autonomy is to retreat into the head-heart scramble as a way to resist this assault. (And please, please remember that this is not only about individual other people — it is also broader structures and systems, the physical environment, the 9’s own literal body. The world is filled with ads and bullshit jobs and ugly buildings and failed crops and pestilence and on and on. As I said, existence itself is a violation.) I believe that what 9s fear most deeply is failing to resolve the tension they experience between the gut center need to cause an impact and the withdrawn resentment toward reality: that they may err too far in one direction or the other and either pass through this world with no trace or leave behind only malformations.

To use a personal example of how this can manifest, because I know some of you are still perched with your traits-based post-it notes: I fear separation from my own powers of heart-head creative generation. If I step outside of the scramble and simply shove my creations out into the world for the sake of results in a state of functional autopilot, they will cease to be me and instead become a pale imitation of my inner garden of beauty and horror. It’s better to live in a state of endlessly initiating new projects and refining the old, milking my perfect vision from the tits of the abyss — that is, until the core terror of the gut center sends up warning alarms about failure to actualize and, picturing “beloved [insert my current shitty job title]” etched into my gravestone, existential anger moves me to act. This is obviously a frustration-heavy example due to my own 147 mirror, but it is a fundamentally withdrawn problem (also note how active the scramble is — conceptualizing, drafting, refining, not taking a little nap). Out there is never as good as in here, and releasing one’s creations puts their sacred idols firmly in the camp of out there. 

The curse of 9 is that the head-heart scramble can be truly visionary. You who are not afflicted cannot possibly understand. Here, we live in perfection; here, nothing can compare. Everything beyond the self is garbage and I have so much treasure to offer and it sets me on fire and I could fix this shit for all you fucking plebs but I have not the resources to carry out a total reality replacement in the physical world. Cutting corners to actualize one’s rich, intricate vision tastes bitter every time. The sacrifices of doing so are devastating. The sacrifices of not actualizing are equally devastating, but it is a smoldering devastation that creeps up over time. This is to say: 9s can and do access their existential anger and wield it to make their mark on the world, but at great cost — the cost of their inner treasures being destroyed by the shortcomings of reality. 

9s can fall into nihilism as a result of the futility of this separation. It is not due to low self-esteem, which is a trait and not type-related, but rather the withdrawn implicit belief that the wider world beyond the self is fallen and teeming with filth. Why bother when everything out there is cursed? They can also mishandle the anxieties of the gut center by entering a state of over-productive hyperactivity that obliquely skirts birthing their precious inner treasures. This is what I mean about erring too far in one direction or the other.

Do not take this and spin some convenient narrative of 9. Little personal anecdotes about your shut-in neighbor who won’t pursue his dreams aren’t broadly applicable to all or even most 9s. 9s can and do share their treasures and make their mark on this world. Most people have heard of David Lynch. It’s also true that there is a Wikipedia article titled “David Lynch’s unrealized projects.” Such is the paradox of 9s.

Sloth, the vice of 9, can be seen through the lens of the centers of intelligence as well. Rather than laziness, sloth is often explained as “self-forgetting,” a rather distasteful term. “Oh, poor 9s who forget they even exist!” Every type, as automatic mechanisms of personality, is a form of self-forgetting. 9s do not forget that they exist. The vice of 9 comes from the preference of the head-heart scramble and the reluctance to use gut-force actualization. This is specifically the vice of 9, as opposed to all withdrawn types that share the heart-head scramble, because unlike 4 and 5, 9 is a primary type, the rightful heir to the gut center, yet separated from it. Action, therefore, is the virtue of 9 — harvesting the gut center’s fullest potential as a primary type. 

Now, come up for air.

Coda

9 is vast and incomprehensible, a primeval Old God from before the world was disenchanted, before the cities were built and the fields were sown, a Hadean precursor to life, a power node of the universe. It straddles the threshold of this world and the Otherworld. 9s do not go with the flow; the flow emanates from 9. It is the primary type of the primordial gut center, the type from which all other types flow. To define it is an exercise in futility.