Type Five
The Remote Investigator

Center of Intelligence: Head center
Motivation: To seek security through knowledge and pursue their intellectual interests
Core Fears: Being overwhelmed, invaded, manipulated, or contaminated by subjectivity

Fives are remote, logical, sensitive, and intelligent. Fives are motivated to seek knowledge, avoid being overwhelmed and depleted, and conserve their time and energy to pursue their intellectual interests. They are sensitive and idiosyncratic and often incredibly perceptive and observant of the world around them. Fives feel they can combat their anxiety and fear by obsessively seeking and hoarding information as a defense against the unknown. Fives feel an inner scarcity and fill this deficiency with data, knowledge, and the pursuit of intellectual mastery. Fives seek mental stimulation and enjoyment through intellectual depth and the specialized quest for expertise that aligns with their interest (astronomy, chemistry, epidemiology, psychology, 3D printing, etc.).

Observation, Competency, and Solitude
Fives feel inept with human interaction and are afraid that they can't emotionally engage with others and thus feel awkward and uncomfortable with initiating and maintaining relationships. Many Fives report the belief that there must be a rule book for human interaction that they didn't receive, which intensifies their avoidance of other people out of the fear of looking incompetent or being rejected. Their avoidance of relationships does not mean that Fives don't want or need connections (although they are more comfortable being alone than most other types).            

Fives require relationships that understand their need for alone time to recharge and pursue their interests and those that don't have prescribed expectations for emotional reactions or responses. Fives need to feel safe to reveal themselves and may take a very long time to expose aspects of their lives to even their closest friends. Their ability to compartmentalize their relationships can be surprising. The Five can be surprisingly adept at only allowing people to know what they want them to know. In many ways, Fives hide in plain sight.

Annihilation and Minimizing Needs
Many Fives are frugal and can live with very little, minimizing their needs (both physically and emotionally). The avarice of Five reveals their immense sensitivity and the fragility they feel internally. They fear annihilation if they give too much of themselves. Rationing themselves (their energy, feelings, ideas, resources) is a way of ensuring their survival. When Fives finally allow themselves to connect with others, they can often hold those relationships admiringly. However, others may not realize the extent of their affection because they feel uncomfortable expressing emotions or letting others know the degree to which they want or even need others in their lives. In fact, because of the tendency to minimize their needs, they may be unaware of the degree to which they want or need relationships in their lives.

Abstraction of Self and Others
When very stressed, Fives typically abstract themselves so much that they no longer feel human and may disidentify with others. At this point, their disdain and misanthropy grow, perpetuating their antagonistic, provocative, and cold detachment from others. They may deem "normal people" unworthy of their concern or attention and develop an inflated and grandiose sense of their intellectual superiority. They become highly isolated, miserly (materially and emotionally), and prone to immature emotional outbursts or intense brooding and dark fantasies. Unhealthy Fives reject and provoke others' fears and insecurities through data or their disturbing interests out of disdain for other people's apparent comfort with a world they find terrifying and alien.

When Healthy and Balanced
Healthy Fives are incredibly penetrating with their wisdom and insight, utilizing their keen ability to research, synthesize and disseminate valuable and potentially life-altering information. They recognize the importance of both emotion and logic in navigating human interactions. While still preferring the realm of the mind, they can be adept at understanding human beings as a complex system complete with predictabilities and mysteries. Many healthy Fives appreciate mystery as much as they value facts and data.

Exemplars: Issac Asimov, Bill Gates, Ebenezer Scrooge, Trent Reznor, Fredrich Chopin, Ralph Fiennes, Bjork, Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, H.R. Geiger, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Elon Musk, Werner Herzog, Natalie Merchant, Jack White, Stanley Kubrick, Jane Goodall, Anthony Hopkins, Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tim Burton, Russ Hudson, Tilda Swinton, Annie Leibowitz, Joan Didion, David Lynch, Georgie O'Keefe, Jonah Hill, Jesse Eisenberg, James Spader, Vincent Van Gogh, Judith Butler, Patti Smith, Emily Dickinson, Shirley Jackson, Ian Curtis, Claudio Naranjo