Artisan

## Life Task

To achieve a sense of the reality of now and to attain the strength of contentment and balance in harmony with all that is. Uncovering the grief and sadness under the creative displacement allows competition.

*"I am unique."* - Artisan Principle

## **Description**

Like all enneaclasses, the name "Artisan" is not referring to any classes from media that utilize the same name. Rather, it was the name selected to better convey specific information about other gamers and to gamify the powerful notions found in the **Enneagram.**Every person has access to all the classes but primarily settles on one which frames the personality. Accessing other classes' potentials and maximizing the capacity of the primary class takes a large degree of work and effort, and this work could be viewed as lessons an entity must overcome to become unified.

Artisans construct their identities around their perception of themselves as being somehow unique and fundamentally different from others. This deep felt sense of being “different from” or “other than” pervades the Artisan’s sense of self, and functions as the basis for the Artisan’s attempt to create a persona that properly reflects who they feel they really are.

Artisans are not content to live out the role assigned them by their societies or their families; they self-consciously search for an expression they feel will be truly authentic. Of all the types, Artisans are the most acutely aware that the persona is a construct – something which has been created and can thus be re-created.

This is indeed the fundamental respect in which Artisans are artists; they may or may not be artists in the conventional sense of the term, but all Artisans have a sense that their identities are, in some respect, their own creation.

Artisans generally construct a persona and project an image which has flair or “style.” This style may be, for instance, one of casual elegance, or it may be more flagrantly counter culture, but whichever image is chosen, it will tend to bear the Artisan’s own original stamp and will be an expression of the Artisan’s current sense of self.

Artisans strive for authenticity, for an expression of themselves which is “true,” but the image they portray is, by its nature, delusory, and inevitably fails to convey the true depths and complexity of the self. It also necessarily falls short of the Artisan’s own personal ideal.

This sense of perpetually “falling short” contributes to the Artisan’s sense of inadequacy, as Artisans feel that they are not only unable to live up to society’s ideal but to their own individual ideals as well. This dynamic of striving and falling short is at the core of the Artisan’s sense of shame, frustration and heightened feelings of self-consciousness.

Artisans compensate for their feelings of inferiority with an equally strong sense of superiority. Artisans tend to feel a sense of disdain for whatever is ordinary and for the “common” sorts of lives with which most people seem to content themselves.

They tend to feel that their outsider status, their sense of style and their heightened sense of self-consciousness, confer on them a stamp of genuineness and “class.” Thus a feeling of being a member of the “true aristocracy” alternates with deep feelings of shame, and fears of being somehow deeply flawed or defective.

The Artisan’s inner landscape is thus complex, and their issues surrounding identity fraught with frustrations. There is even an enervating quality to the whole psychic drama, which, along with the Artisan’s emotional sensitivity, contributes to the Artisan’s characteristic need to withdraw. When Artisans withdraw, they immerse themselves in their own mental landscapes where they are free to cultivate and analyze their feelings.

Artisans are primarily emotional by nature, and of all the classes, probably have the most complex palette of emotional states. While Artisans are not blind to the “facts” and the supposed “objective” state of affairs, they tend to interpret reality at least as much in terms of its symbolic content and emotional resonance.

Artisans are thus emotionally attuned to meaning, and this attention to meaning sometimes gives Artisans access to a dimension of reality that others miss. Such insight might find expression in art, literature or music, but is often enough simply manifested in an idiosyncratic lifestyle which expresses the Artisan’s own personal vision.

## **Class Identification Questions**

Every entity falls primarily within one of the enneaclasses, originally. While it can be difficult to elucidate which correlates with any individual, these nine questions (for each class) were designed to analyze certain aspects of the personality so that one can come to an understanding of their class.

1. Would you say that being with people, nurturing personal relationships, and being intensely loyal to the people you love are the innate gifts that bring the greatest pleasure and meaning to your life?
2. Even in your closest relationships, does fear of loss or abandonment cause you to struggle against feelings of jealousy or possessiveness?
3. Do you tend to avoid or procrastinate over tasks that require focusing on details or paperwork, seeing them as tedious and depressing?
4. When presented with a new plan, idea, or project, do you feel that it's important to recognize flaws first so that the possibilities won't become unrealistic and therefore disappointing?
5. Is your sense of meaning and purpose in life best expressed through the symbols, stories, ad traditions that connect you to people, to your faith, or to life in general?
6. Have you spent a great deal of time and energy on a quest to understand the meaning of your own life and history, hoping to understand your purpose for being on this earth?
7. When experiencing the beauty of nature -- for example, a sunset or a budding flower -- do you connect with something spiritual and even sometimes feel your heart will burst because of the sheer wonder of creation?
8. Do you often feel so many emotions at once that you become confused about which to express first and how to organize your thoughts?
9. Are you attracted to the dramatic or unusual things in life -- in clothes, food, friends, art, decor?

## **Preoccupations**

Preoccupation relates to the matter of being preoccupied or engrossed with something, so what you might find here are areas of examination with which this class might find themselves involved.

* The sense of something missing from life. Others have what I am missing.
* An attraction to the distant and the unavailable. Idealization of the absent lover.
* Mood, manners, luxury, and good taste as external supports to bolster self-esteem.
* An attachment to the mood of melancholy. Depth of feeling as a goal rather than mere happiness.
* Impatience with the "flatness of ordinary feelings." Needing to reintensify one's feelings through loss, heightened imagination, and dramatic acts.
* The search for authenticity. The feeling that the present is not real, that the real self will emerge in the future, through an experience of being deeply loved.
* A push-pull habit of attention. Focus alternates between the negative features of what one has and the positive features of what is distant and hard to get.
* Luxury and artistic good taste as bolsters to self-esteem.

## **Special Abilities**

Each enneaclass has several unique traits which may be cultivated in such a ways as to give advantages when dealing with situations that are characteristic of that class. Those of the Artisan can be roughly summarized to:

* my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
* my ability to establish warm connections with people
* admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life. Having aesthetic sensibilities
* my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
* being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me
* being unique and being seen as unique by others

## **Weaknesses**

Each enneaclass also has several areas of weakness where they generally do not thrive unless work has been done towards alleviating these shortcomings. While the following examples are general statements, it is expected that most Artisans dealt with or are dealing with issues of this nature:

* experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair, and fearing being abandoned
* feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
* feeling guilty when I disappoint people
* feeling hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands me
* expecting too much from myself and life
* longing for what I don't have

## **Class** **Synergy**

Some enneaclasses naturally work better together than others, which leads to many moments of understanding and misunderstanding. Many potential adverse situations can be overcome by understanding those around oneself and learning how to best optimize those others, which quite frequently results in some synergistic outcomes.

* Wants distinctive work. A job that calls for creativity, even genius, an eccentric edge in presentation, a unique approach to business life.
* Must feel respected in the workplace for personal vision and ideas.
* Efficiency is tied to mood. Attention gets displaced from tasks when emotional life takes over. Can sabotage business life over a love affair.
* Wants to be connected to special authority, to those in the field who stand for quality rather then popularity.
* Feels demeaned by plebeian work, the definition of which is different for every Artisan. Gardening can be work for plebs. So can being a CEO.
* Aggressive and cutting toward competitors or peers in the same field. Attracted to successful people outside his or her own sphere of interest.
* Does not flourish in a work environment that requires close cooperation with others who are more skilled, more valued, or better paid.

## **Charm Guide**

Relationships among gamers of various enneaclasses are often tenuous due to a lack of understanding. This may not be of consequence in regards to relationships that are superficial or purely of a business nature, but these relationships only compose a small subset. It can be beneficial to learn what makes each class comfortable and respected in order to forge more meaningful and deeper connections. For the Artisan class, some of the techniques towards achieving this end are as follows:

* Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
* Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
* Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
* Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
* Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

## **Class Specialization**

Human evolution requires three basic survival behaviors, referred to in the Enneagram as the instinctual specializations: the self-preservation specialization, the social or group specialization, and the one-to-one or intimate specialization. Because these are survival behaviors, each Enneaclass includes all three subtypes. Although you manifest all three to some degree, you usually express one of these three subtypes more than the other two. Both environmental circumstances and your Enneaclasses's structure influence their expression, especially the core emotion associated with your adaptive strategy and what you put your energy into.

**Self-Preservation Instinctual Specialization**. Your attention and energy go to issues related to personal survival, such as safety, security, comfort, protection, and adequate basic resources of food, shelter, and warmth.

***Social Instinctual Specialization.***Your attention and energy go to issues related to your community and group membership, such as role, status, social acceptance, belonging, participation, and fellowship.

***One-to-One Instinctual Specialization.*** Your attention and energy go to issues related to connection in vital relationships, such as bonding with special others, sexual intimacy, attractiveness, closeness, union, and merging.

 Augur | Social | Feelings of deficiency can be provoked by social situations, with envy directed toward other people’s status or appearance of belonging. This spec. seeks to establish an acceptable social role, possibly as the emotional truth-teller for the group, and often feels a need to resolve the tension between the quest for individual authenticity and social expectations.