4s take on an inner role of the deeply affected person. The deeply affected person feels emotions intensely and profoundly. The deeply affected person is aware of all the emotional overlays, the nuances in meaning, and what was left unsaid. They choose to see the unknown in a light that is evocative to them, and not to gloss over the ambiguous but to take it personally.
4s have an inner setting of the personal romance. Highly adorned and textured, the personal romance is not only a personal, romantic perspective to life, but also a romance of the self, the self as an art piece. To the art piece the personal romance brings a creative and aesthetic vision to which the deeply affected person must adhere.
4s take on an outer role of the emotional truth-teller (as in the teller of emotional truths). The emotional truth-teller speaks from the swelling of the heart and shines light on the truth that pierces like a dart. The emotional truth-teller expresses their responses with the degree of intensity as they see fit.
4s have an outer setting of the tragedy. The emotional truth-teller is willing to feel the truth, no matter how painful it may be. Life is not a mere extension of our needs so it is often painful. In the tragedy, painful experiences are not merely reviewed but recreated. Not every plot point in a tragedy is negative, but tragedies always complete with the feeling of something missing and something sorrowful having taken place.
4’s externalization pattern is revelation, or the relaying of emotional truths with all the indicators of deeply felt emotional truths: personal statements expressed in rich and resonant yet fleeting and breathy tones, statements which are crafted to cut deep into hearts and souls seemingly uncraftedly, wistful intonation for poetic admiration, angsty intonation for frustrated disdain. Revelations conduit energy from the deeply affected person to the emotional truth-teller in the form of moodsetters (the 4’s communication style). Moodsetters express how a situation is to be understood so as to “guide” the emotional experience. Moodsetters include metaphor, connotative wordage, intrigue, and the expression of this language with pathos (sighs, heavy breathing, etc.).
4’s internalization pattern is omphaloskepsis or navel-gazing. Mostly emotional content is perceived, but it is internalized through self-referential analysis to increase the number of personal connections. Navel-gazing leads to a specific type of metaphorical thinking, where metaphors are woven into the 4’s autobiography to create a sort of… personal fiction.
4s have a past orientation of the victim. The victim has been deeply and profoundly hurt by their experiences and knows who to blame. Sometimes the victim only has themself to blame, in which case they become a victim to an intensely felt character flaw. Other situations were others’ faults, and the victim has self-differentiated to deal with these past hurts.
4s have a present orientation of the weaver. The weaver relates everything to the story they are weaving. The weaver feels they are crafting something powerfully beautiful and significant and is inspired by this notion. Each new strand in the weaver’s web, each new personal expression, contains all the beauty it relates to as well as the newfound beauty it reveals. It’s a powerful association black hole that expands and expands as it eats its muses as material. It’s a complex and sentimental overlaying of feeling and thought strands that attempts to bring about a vision. If it succeeds, the weaver feels redeemed from their character flaws. If it fails, and becomes a complex web of nonsense, the weaver succumbs into a self-hate vortex until they find a meaningful strand again.
4s have a future orientation of the misunderstood person. The misunderstood person knows that their capacity for depth will go unappreciated. The misunderstood person doesn’t know why they bother dabbling in places where no one is going to get them. This entitles the misunderstood person to cling onto their emotional life as their last hope: rich sentiments of love and cravings for resolution, deep feelings of hate and a thirst for revenge blossom forth from pain.
The victim, weaver, and misunderstood person benefit from nurturance (the solution). These characters prefer to have intense, radicalized emotional experiences but benefit from emotional balance in the long-term. Emotional balance comes from a place of self-compassion, from playing the role of the “good nurturing figure” who listens and attends to your pain. Thus, the exemplary character for the 4 is the self-nurturer.
The self-nurturer treats themselves as one would treat a good friend, it does not try to discount their friend’s pain: it listens and receives the friend’s pain, allows time for the friend to process their pain, but institutes an actionable solution before the friend falls into another painful situation. The characters you design should be in the “implementing a solution” phase of this self-nurturing process.