What's the Point? Enneagram Nine? or Five?

One of my clients was trying to decide between Enneagram styles Nine and Five. He was well aware of his tendency to talk at great length, but was confused between the Five's dissertation talk style and the Nine's epic tale.

As I explained to him, you can tell the difference by paying attention to both the linking together of concepts and the apparent purpose of someone's story. Style Fives tend to be well-organized and logical when they talk, and you can see their attempt to influence the other person's thinking. This reflects the way their minds work. They'll collect a mountain of information and synthesize it, cull it down (they can even be too reductionist in doing so). Listen also for the words and metaphors they use -- many of which will reflect style Five's exactness.

For example, in The Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley writes:

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness--to be aware of it and yet to remain in a condition to survive as an animal, to think and feel as a human being, to resort whenever expedient to systematic reasoning. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.

Huxley may or may not have been Enneagram style Five. Some have suggested he might have been style Four with a Five wing. Nonetheless, the cited section from his book is clearly somewhat professorial.

In contrast, Nines will wander in their epic tales. They can be distracted by one thought, then another, go off on tangents, perhaps even forget what point they were trying to make. I'm style Nine, and over the years I've learned to stay focused, especially in writing, but when I first started my web site in 1999, you could start reading one of hundreds of articles and eventually link to most of the others without finding a trail back to the home page.Every section of the site had different background colors, fonts, and designs.

My computer-whiz daughter pointed out the lack of consistency or identifying information on the linked pages (who is this, how do I contact her, how do I return to the home page?), and the links were full-frame instead of new windows. So, for example, you could go from my home page to "Articles," from there link to an article on "Anger," then to an outside link about anger and thus leave my site completely! My whole web presence was an epic tale.