What's the Point?
I'm trying to decide if I'm a Nine or
a Five. I see in "Quick
Views of Nine Personality Patterns" the talk style of the Five is
"dissertations" and the talk style of the Nine is "epic tales."
How are these different?
A "dissertation"
from the Five is well-organized and logical (and
intended to directly influence one's thinking about a concept). This reflects the way a
Five's mind works: Fives will collect a mountain of information and synthesize it, cull it
down (they can even be too reductionist). This style shows up in their
language and the metaphors they use as well. A good example
is in Yalom's
When Nietzsche Wept.
In contrast, an "epic tale" from a
Nine
wanders. Nines can be distracted by one thought, then another, and go off on tangents and
may even forget what point they were trying to make. Or they may tell a story to
illustrate a point and tell the story from start to finish in sometimes agonizing
detail. This reflects the way a Nine's mind tends to work: somewhat like a Chef's Salad
when you stir it up -- it seems to get bigger and bigger.
As illustration, notice all
the sections of this web site (I'm a Nine). You could start with one article and
eventually link to most of the other articles at the site. When I first opened
the site I
was metaphorically wandering through the woods without leaving a trail of bread crumbs
for the return journey. I asked my computer-whiz
daughter for feedback, and she showed
me how the linked pages didn't have identifying
information, how to contact me, or how to return to the
home page; and the links
were full-frame instead of the "windows" I have now. So, for
example, you could go from my
Home Page
to Articles, from there link to the
article on Anger,
then to an outside link,
and thus have left my site completely! She pointed out
the need to put my site name and link to key categories on every page; otherwise
readers could get completely lost.
(Note:
When I first wrote this response in 2004, every section of
the site had different background colors, fonts, and
designs. With each page I was having fun learning, without
thinking of the lack of clarity and focus for readers. Now
that I have more than 500 pages, even I was getting lost;
hence the change to a consistent format with a trail back to
the beginning. With today's revision, the points of
reference are even easier to access.)
