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Point Four - The Romantic
Fours are feeling-based types who often experience a sense of longing or melancholy. Something is missing for them, which can lead at times to feelings of envy. They seek meaning and depth in their relationships, their work, or in a quest for personal creativity. Many Fours are artists who excel at expressing universal human emotions in dance, music, and poetry. While they are good at putting together a good image, it's most important for them to be authentic. Often passionate, sometimes overly emotional, their attention moves back and forth from empathizing with others to their own inner experience. They need time alone. The key to healing and growth for Fours is to balance sadness with the capacity for happiness and satisfaction, even if the relationship or the experience seems flawed or incomplete.
Strengths: Compassionate, idealistic, familiar with emotional depth.
Problems: Moody, withdrawn, uncooperative.
Speaking style: Sometimes warm and feelingful, sometimes flat and dry; they tend to be subjective, and they try to be aesthetically correct. Often a tone of sadness or dissatisfaction.
Lower emotional habit: Envy or melancholy arising from the experience of disappointment or deficiency.
Higher emotion: Equanimity, which means keeping the heart open, welcoming all feelings yet staying in balance.
Psychological defenses: Fours use the defense mechanism of introjection to avoid being ordinary and to maintain a self image of being "authentic." (Introjection is the attempt to overcome deficiency by bringing in value from outside oneself and the habit of internalizing blame for what goes wrong).
Somatic patterns: Fours can swing from having lots of feelings that spill out into their environment to being withdrawn and depressed. Energy tends to collect in the middle of the body and may be withdrawn from the periphery (eyes, hands, feet). Self expression through music, dance, writing, creative work, or parenting helps create emotional and physical balance.
Famous people: Paul Simon, Sting, James Taylor, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Kurt Cobain, Edith Piaf, Michael Jackson, Judy Garland · Jessica Lange, Catherine Deneuve, Marlon Brando, Liv Ullman, John Malkovich, Laurence Olivier, Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan, Ingmar Bergman · Sylvia Plath, Isak Dinesen, D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, Doris Lessing, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, · Alan Watts, Thomas Merton.

Tips for relating to Fours:
To create rapport: Appreciate their emotional sensitivity and their creativity.
Try to avoid: Insisting on being rational, unemotional, or conformist.
Join them in: Valuing style, individualism, and excellence.
To handle conflict: Challenge them to avoid wounded withdrawal on the one hand, and angry outbursts on the other. Stay in the middle ground. When they are upset, don't take everything they say too literally since it may be only the feeling of the moment.
To support their growth: Support Fours in achieving emotional balance and staying on track. Encourage them to express their feelings safely and directly rather than getting caught in chronic negative attitudes or depression. Help them fight their inner critic and resist internalizing blame. Get them to watch what they say and consider their impact on others.