Voyager's Fours:
Searching for identity
"Try to leave a few of my enhancements intact. I don't want to look like every other EMH on the block."
--the Doctor to Seven as she removes his unique "non-essential algorithms" in Life Line
Fours are the least common type in Star Trek (with only one opening-credits representative) and all that there are tend to be rather maladjusted to varying degrees. But Four is your humble author's type, so she takes 'em where she can find 'em!
I've said that it is not possible to change your enneagram type, and this is true for us regular humans. But science fiction trumps the enneagram in the person of Voyager's Doctor. While he didn't precisely change his type, he does in effect grow one from the limited programming he began with.
Of course, the Emergency Medical Hologram's "personality subroutine" was based on the personality of its creator, Dr. Louis Zimmerman. Zimmerman himself, as we see him in the Deep Space Nine episode Dr. Bashir, I Presume, comes off as a caustic, arrogant Five. But you can't necessarily draw the conclusion that Voyager's Doctor was therefore a Five when he was first activated. When you compare the Doctor of the early days of Voyager to the real live Zimmerman we met on DS9, you see how the EMH was merely a pale shadow of a Five - with Zimmerman's mannerisms and vocabulary, but none of the life behind it.
So with Kes' encouragement, the EMH embarked on a quest for self-identity that was quite literal - after much soul-searching and indecision, he still doesn't have a name. A search for identity is in itself a very Four-ish activity, and the Doctor took it in directions that cemented its decidedly Four cast.
He began to form an identity through artistic self-expression. Fours are often called the "artists" of the enneagram. Not all Fours are artists by occupation, but nearly all will try to find some aesthetic outlet, as the Doctor has done through his pursuit of opera and photography. Art and beauty can become a substitute for the self a way of forming an identity and presenting it to the world. The Doctor's desperate need for a public forum for his artistic endeavors makes sense from this perspective: It's a Four's way of trying to communicate his inner self to the people in his life.
Most importantly, the Doctor formed a self-image in a way that is crucially Four - emphasizing his uniqueness. Just as Twos present an image to the world of a helpful person, and Threes of a successful person, the Fours want the world to see them as a unique, unusual person. Fours feel like outsiders, different from the normal world around them. They can view their uniqueness as a defect, and paradoxically they take both pride in that defect and feel envious of the "normal" people who don't share the burden they carry.
The Doctor is of course unique on Voyager - he is a hologram surrounded by organic life forms. His differentness as a defect was hammered home in his early days, as he was treated like an object and ignored by the crew. He still feels the crew treats him that way, as we heard in Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy, when he accuses crew members of "failure to acknowledge sentience." Yet at the same time he flaunts what is different about him, pointing out to others his specialness as a sentient hologram and taking pride in his imperviousness to physical dangers that threaten ordinary organic life forms.
Fours experience a longing for someone to see them as they truly are, and yearn for a deep connection with that person. While most of the reaction the Doctor receives from the crew is often dismissive, irritated or patronizing, he has found something like that connection with two people - Kes, who gently pushed him toward sentience, and Seven of Nine, the only person who can understand, from her own experience, his journey from programmed automaton to individuality.
In Someone to Watch Over Me, the Doctor's bond with Seven developed into a desire for a romantic relationship with her, but in typical Four fashion, this aspect of their relationship has taken place primarily in his imagination. It is what enneagram writer Thomas Condon calls "introjection": "It means carrying someone around inside of you in your imagination and feelings. A Four will introject a loved one, usually someone idealized and out of reach. Their beloved is romanticized from afar but the Four feels the absent person to be present. They then have a kind of relationship with their fantasy of the other person."
The last scene of Someone to Watch Over Me is a classic Four moment: The Doctor acts out telling Seven his feelings, but when she is actually there, he cannot say it to her. Once she leaves, he sits at the piano, her gift to him set on top of the piano in his view, and he sings a melancholy verse of the song they had earlier danced to: "Won't you tell her please to put on some speed/Follow my lead/Oh, how I need/Someone to watch over me."
Ah, Four bliss. You may think that's a sad ending, but that kind of bittersweet romantic moment is something Fours revel in. They thrive on heightened emotional states - whether tragic or ecstatic - and use their imaginations to stir up these feelings. The Doctor gave himself "day-dreaming" programming in Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy and pretty much spent the episode indulging in this kind of Four-ish fantasy life. This is not healthy Four behavior, and in that episode we can see why - it can be to the detriment to the Four's productivity and relations with others in the real world.
Generally speaking, the things that tend to irritate Voyager's crew about the Doctor tend to be traits found in the less healthy side of Four: He can moody, hypersensitive to any slight, pretentious and self-absorbed.
But he has gained aspects of the high side of Four. For all the jokes about his terrible bedside manner, in a medical crisis, the Doctor is compassionate and humane, dedicated to the principles of his profession in a way that reflects the high side of the Four's connection to 1. Constructive work and principled idealism are the Four's best way out of being tossed about by moods and subjective emotional states, and the Doctor can go there when the need arises.
Surprisingly, considering his origins based on Zimmerman, the Doctor's predominant wing is 3. He's much more outgoing than a Four with a 5-wing would be, makes more public use of his talents, and has better social skills because of his 3-wing. Unfortunately, he draws not a little from the low side of his 3-wing, with his sometimes insufferable vanity, ambition and the tendency to cut others down (notably Tom Paris).
I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that Voyager has given us one other noteworthy Four: Captain Rudy Ransom from the two-part Equinox episode. We really don't know enough about him to say for sure, but what we do see of him gives a very Four-ish impression - and needless to say, a very unhealthy one. Ransom projects a Four aura of tragedy. He's sullen, self-pitying and self-absorbed. He withdraws into his own fantasy world, but, like the rest of his life, it is also turning into the deeply entranced Four's harrowing world of self-torment.
Enneagram writer Don Riso's description of an unhealthy Four with a 5-wing aptly describes much of Ransom's state in part 2 of Equinox: "Pondering the nature of their torment leads Fours with a 5-wing around in circles, heightening both their self-contempt and their nihilism."
Unhealthy Fours come to believe themselves exempt from rules and morality that bind ordinary people because of the suffering they have endured. Ransom is an example of a Four who desperately needs to stop making decisions based on emotions, go to his 1 connection and grasp on to the stability of objective principles. He does this at the end ... sort of. He's in part driven, not by morality, but by an apparent romantic attachment to Seven of Nine, who, as an enneagram 8, has little taste for his self-indulgence and makes her contempt for him perfectly clear. His redeeming actions are still greatly motivated by guilt and self-loathing. In effect, he descends to the ultimate fate of depressive, morbid Fours: suicide.
--Teresa Malcolm