emotional intellectual

from Susan Zannos' HUMAN TYPES (Essence and the Enneagram; 1997):


" The emotional part of the intellectual center is emotional about information, ideas, theories, ways of thinking, and ways of thinking about thinking - but not indiscriminately and not all at once. As is true of the emotional parts of all the centers, the queen of diamonds has the attention held by an object. For a while. Then the emotional part of the intellectual center flies from intense interest to total boredom.

The key to recognizing this type centered in the queen of diamonds is by his books. Usually at least one wall of his home, and sometimes several, will be floor to ceiling bookcases overflowing with books. Few of the books will have been read all the way through; the queen of diamonds frequently loses interest before a book has been completed, and the accumulation of details for their own sake holds no attraction. Since most books state their major premises in the opening chapters, the queen is likely to become bored once the basic concepts have been grasped. Also, with the attention held by some object - raising tropical fish, the culture of the Trobrian Islands, Japanese ceramics, existential philosophy, baroque music, differential calculus - the emotional part of the intellectual center may buy four or five books on the current subject of interest and then read the opening chapters of only three of them.

...Having the intellectual function stimulated attracts many people, distracting them from the instinctive and emotional quagmires into which they are prone to wander. ....... Persons who have their center of gravity in the emotional part of the intellectual center are therefore much in demand, not only as friends but as teachers. Since they are excited about ideas, and since this excitement can be communicated to others, this type of person can make a very effective classroom teacher... ...usually too eclectic for the in-depth research required of scholars, but they can be effective generalists and can help young people experience excitement about ideas. These teachers may lack consistency in their courses, and may have difficulty covering the basic areas once those areas are no longer interesting to them.


As in the other centers, the intellectual part of the intellectual center is much more steady than the emotional part. The king of diamonds is the only part of the intellectual center that can legitimately be said to think, and is a part of the human psychological makeup that few people use any more than is strictly necessary. The effort of sustaining attention to intellectual matters is usually experienced as drudgery and boredom... Very seldom do we find people who derive pleasure from such activity. Everyone who has completed any course of academic work has, of necessity, experienced the functioning of the intellectual part of the intellectual center.

.......The king of diamonds is the slowest part of all the functions. ... It is obviously much easier to settle for the quick associative responses of the mechanical part of the center than it is to go to the laborious processes of the intellectual part. While the jack of diamonds specializes in the quick and easy answers, the king of diamonds realizes that there are no answers because it is never possible to know all there is to know about anything. "



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