Four Quadrants of Personality

I’ve been drawn to Dr. Matthew Bennett’s (2024) Four Quadrants of Personality, described in his book Toward an Integrated Analytical Psychology. This system of personality draws from traditional psychoanalytic structures but reframes them in a way that feels less about pathology and more about motion. These structures have many dimensions, but what particularly excites me is the idea that health isn’t about fixing what’s wrong, but rather about moving and circulating between the quadrants, becoming bigger and more expansive in the process.

The first quadrant Bennett calls the Sensitives. I think of something embryonic, egg-like—fragile but alive to every shift in mood, color, atmosphere. Here lives the mad scientist, the introverted poet, the baby staring at patterns of light. Possibility is infinite and imagination the only limit. It echoes the schizoid structure, but reframed as potential rather than fracture.

The second quadrant is the Imperials. This is newfound power moving outward—oppositional and assertive. I think of the toddler saying no for the first time,  the CEO issuing commands, the director pushing forth a vision. It’s about expansion, exploration, conquest. Psychoanalytically, the narcissistic structure shows up here, but Bennett makes it less of a diagnosis and more of an energy.

The Radiants sit in the third quadrant. Here the focus is on reflection, relation, the back-and-forth of emotion. The entertainer, the comedian, the companion who keeps the exchange alive. It’s dependency and intimacy, the pull toward closeness, the rawness of emotion. You can hear the echoes of the histrionic structure, but again, without the judgment.

The last quadrant, the Penitents, turns inward again. Solitary, but not naïve, and aware of loss, ambiguity and grief. This is the self-doubter, the one reckoning with guilt, facing despair. From here can come empathy, courage, morality—or the slide into self-punishment. It mirrors the depressive structure.

So for example, someone sunk deep in a depressive penitence (4th) might find their way back to health by leaning into radiance (3rd) — letting relationship and reflection loosen the weight—or by slipping toward sensitivity, (1st) where imagination starts to spark again. There is also a path directly into Imperial (2nd) assertion, though that shift often feels brittle and precarious, since it skips a quadrant—jumping from four to two.

Another thing I like about this system is how it doubles as a kind of projective map. It’s grounded in analytic theory, but because the geometry is fixed, we can lay our own meanings across it. The structure holds steady while the texture comes from us.

You might find it interesting to consider what quadrant your psyche tends to hang out in, and where you feel pulled to naturally, where the gravity well is for you. Perhaps you can turn toward an adjacent quadrant as a way to deepen your experience and find new inspiration.

Reference

Bennett, M. (2024). Toward an integrated analytical psychology. Routledge.