Enneagram Type Seven, sometimes called the Epicurean or the Enthusiast, belongs to the Head triad. Those of this Enneatype are usually positive, upbeat, energetic and fun-loving. They are mainly driven by the desire to avoid negative sensations and to maximize their options of experiencing the world and its potentials without being held back or restricted. They often make lots of plans and are engaged in many projects, activities, side activities, etc, some of which are bound to be left incomplete. They are usually possessed of quick wits and have an aptitude toward picking up new skills and interests. They rarely focus on the negative side of life, and even when they do, they tend to snap out of it quickly (or more quickly than other people.)
Enneagram Type Seven
Enneatype Seven Grows: Move to Five
One of the common themes in most Sevens’ lives is their fear of being confined to just one option, which will lead them (in their perception) to not experiecing life to the fullest or to not having back-up plans if one option fails. This tendency can cause Sevens to remain perpetually stuck on the surface of life, to the point that some unhealthy Sevens believe the surface is all there is. Sometimes this belief can cause Sevens to make rash decisions out of fear of being chained down in one place or situation.
As they grow and learn to relax their mechanism, though, Sevens start to develop a keener appreciation for the depth and complexity of life and a greater focus in pursuing certain options as more obviously right for them as opposed to others. In this, they start to take on some of the better qualities of Enneagram Type Five. Fives are the intellectuals of the Enneagram. They rarely make rash decisions and are often laser-focused, as though their mind were a blade that they use to cut through the surface of things to reach their core. They also don’t shy away from the negative side of life.
In general, even healthy Fives tend to lead a more sober life than their Seven friends, with a preference for a few well-chosen activities (or a few well-chosen possessions, friends, etc.) as opposed to the epicurean sludgeflow that usually clutters the lives of unhealthy Sevens. This is not to say that Sevens must become minimalistic, but as they grow they do become more stably anchored to their own core.
As they do so, Sevens realize that they are not necessarily foregoing anything essential if they choose to pursue one option to the exclusion of another, and instead they learn to cultivate what they do choose with care and persistence, while bringing their sense of humor, childlike wonder and almost endless adaptability with them.
Sobriety, the Virtue of Enneagram Type Seven
Enneatype Seven Under Stress: Move to One
Perceptive Sevens can sometimes feel that they are being led on a leash by their fear of restriction and pain. While healthy Sevens face their demons directly (like all healthy types) less healthy individuals can become absorbed in an endless whirlwind of meaningless novelty-chasing and hype traps, whereby they drop their toy as soon as the next shiny trinket catches their attention.
Because Sevens are very sharp-witted, they usually notice this trend, but they also feel that they must keep going, because stopping for a second (they feel) would cause more obscure feelings and fears to catch up with them. Unhealthy Sevens generally know that they are caught in a loop, but they feel that it’s too late to stop (Sevens in general have a tendency to excuse away their lack of restraint).
In moving toward their direction of stress, Sevens can pick up some of the less healthy qualities of Enneatype One. Like unhealthy Ones, they become critical and rigid, usually toward those around them who refuse to jump on the next hype train with them. Furthermore, perceiving the futility of their behavior, Sevens may also try to organize themselves to bring more structure to their life and activities (especially if it is spiralling out of control due to poor decision-making), but they tend to organize them to death, until all the wonderful Seven-ish spontaneity is sucked out of them and all that is left is the unhealthy One’s grayish sense of bureaucratic doom.
Enneagram Type One, sometimes called the Perfectionist, belongs to the Body Triad. People of this Enneatype tend to have a strong inner critic that judges everything they (and other people) do based on norms, ideals and right precedures or methods. Ultimately, Ones derive a sense of justification for their existence in the world by adhering to standards and ideas of how things ‘ought to’ go. They often feel that they have a duty to uphold these standards and to put them into practice in the world around them.
Enneagram Type One
Enneatype One Grows: Move to Seven
Ones’ sense of duty is part of their subconscious deal with themselves, which states that they are okay and are allowed to take up space in the world only if they do it the right way, usually by asserting an ideal or implementing or upholding certain standards.
It is always hard for anyone to accept the world as it is, but especially for Ones. They tend to see the world as if it were in a fallen state and needed to be amended. There is nothing wrong with changing what needs to be changed, but doing so in order to obey a harsh inner critic who will latch on to anything to demand improvement is a recipe for unhappiness, both for the One and for those around them. Remember that history is full of visionaries who tried to reform the world and ended up making it worse.
As Ones learn to let go of the resentment they feel toward the world and toward themselves for not being the perfect mirror image of an ideal, Ones move toward point Seven on the Enneagram. Sevens are a mundane type. They love finding always new ways of enjoying the world and the variety it has to offer. Even average Ones can sometimes display this childlike curiosity and sense of adventure in their best moment.
The great gift that Ones can develop by developing this sevenish side is that they learn to improve the world around them by developing its inherent promises from moment to moment rather than by trying to impose foreign ideals onto it. No longer angry at themselves and at the world, Ones learn to accept different opinions and different ways of acting, and their behavior becomes less reactive.
Serenity, the virtue of Enneagram Type One
Enneagram One Under Stress: Move to Four
I said that average Ones see the world as if it were in a fallen state. It makes sense that, under stress, Ones move to Four, the type that more than any other feels like a fallen being.
Ones have considerable faith in their ideals and in the fact that their way of doing things is the right one. They can keep beliving so under the harshest conditions and against all oppositions. Since they usually have a large reservoir of pent up anger inside of them, when challenged beyond a certain or when witnessing something they do not approve of, they may explode.
However, if Ones lose their faith in their ability to change themselves and the world around them to make them match how they ought to be, Ones may move toward their direction of stress at Four. Average to unhealthy Fours are melancholic, dramatic and reserved. They have an air of defeat about them, as though they had lost something of great value that used to make them happy, or if they had been shipwrecked in the wrong world.
Under stress, Ones tend to take on some of these less healthy characteristics of Enneatype Four, becoming pessimistic and despairing. Ones thus begin to witness a world of irredeemable lawlessness and wrongdoing around them. Since they feel that all is lost, they may start indulging unhealthy pastimes, while at the same time feeling bad about it as they alternate between their “OCD streak” and their depressive, defeatist one.
Often Known As: Boss, Warrior, Challenger Sin/Passion: Lust Focus: on the power and strength needed to preserve their independence Fear: of weakness and being submitted Energy Center: Body (energy is asserted) Social Stance: Assertive Key Positive Traits (embodied at their best): Assertive, Strong, Powerful, Willful, Protective, Fatherly, No-nonsense, Decisive, Honest, Truthful, Magnanimous, Big-hearted, Inexhaustible, Fierce, Courageous, Heroic, Able to fight for what’s right, Has a good bullshittometer, Endlessly patient with friends and proteges Key Negative Traits (embodied at their worst): Cruel with enemies, Unforgiving, Aggressive, Overbearing, Vicious, Lustful, Unable to resist own urges, Uncompromising, Intimidating, Impulsive, Foolhardy, Hooked up on intense experiences, An elephant in a china shop, Obtuse, Unwilling to make subtle distinctions even when needed, Unable to unclench Directions of Growth and Stress: to Two and Five respectively
Enneagram chart with Type Eight highlighted
Introduction
An Enneagram Type Eight is usually hard to miss. Not seldom they are physically imposing–not necessarily because they are big or tall (the Enneagram has nothing to do with body type) but because of the kind of energy they emanate.
Eights enter a room and most people in there feel that they need to deal with them, one way or another. They exude power, they know they exude power, and they know you know they exude power. And they like it. Eights are not necessarily arrogant, but they are unwilling to let anyone trample over them, and will often take the opportunity to make it known at the merest slight they receive (sometimes even if no slight was intended).
Being on a Type Eight’s good side not only makes things easier, but it’s also a wonderful experience. They shower the people they like with all kinds of attention. It is like living between a cushion and a very, very soft place. Eights love pampering their friends, family and protégés just as much as they hate anyone that threatens them (either in reality or in the Eight’s imagination).
In fact, they have particularly developed protective instincts toward their loved ones, and average to healthy Eights often take the initiative whenever they feel anyone is being treated unfairly, especially if the Eight believes the person is too weak to defend themselves.
Fairness, truthfulness and honesty are the values that Eights usually cherish the most. They don’t have a cerebral definition of these qualities, but rather an instinctive understanding of it. Eights often feel that they had to toughen up early in life to avoid being treated unfairly or dishonestly, and their sense of justice will often come from their experience rather than from abstract principles.
In a way, they believe that they must still protect the tender side of their personality (figuratively, the small Eight child that still lives inside of them) and this they accomplish by making it known that they are a force to be reckoned with and that they are the one who are in control. This, of course, is where many problems start.
The powerful bear, a good symbol for Enneagram Type Eight
Core Mechanism
Eights belong to the Body triad, and they are the type that most directly and emphatically expresses their bodily energy. Out of all the nine types, Eights are the one with the most willpower, stamina and endurance.
In general, an Eight’s more or less subconscious drive is for independence, like all Body types. Eights achieve independence by either submitting others and being in control of the situation or by preventing others from submitting them. They have a strong sense of who is in charge of any situation, and they often look for ways to make those people know that they (the Eight) are not to be messed with.
An Eight’s greatest fear is of appearing weak, either in front of themselves or, even worse, in front of others. They have a sneaking suspicion that there is a weak point in them that they need to protect, often coming from some childhood event that left a mark. To compensate, they often act overconfident and cocky, and it is not unheard of that they will actively look for a fight, either physical or psychological.
Well-adjusted Eights are capable of using their endless drive in productive and fair ways, and their general sense of justice makes them often heroic. Less well-adjusted Eights can just as easily turn into overbearing villains that force their ways onto others.
Underneath it all, Eights are keenly aware of their vulnerability and deficiencies, and much of their subsequent behavior depends on how they deal with it. If they accept it as a core part of themselves, they can grow and allow others to grow with them, while if they deny it or hide it, it often leads them toward misery for themselves and others.
Passion
Type Eight’s passion is Lust. Lust must not be confined to sexual needs, although Eights may indeed have a strong sex drive. The word “lust” derives from a Proto-Indo-European root which means “to be wanton, unruly“. This is a good description for the Enneagram conception of lust.
Lust is a powerful inclination toward someone or something. The accent here is on “powerful”. Eights have a strong bodily energy, and crave using it to establish themselves and their dominion over anything or anyone outside of themselves. In a way, Eights love the idea of meeting resistance, and they actually respect those that are capable of offering it. By meeting resistance, Eights can overcome it to assert themselves.
When left unbridled, lust can become a source of problems for Eights, as it is a magnet for confrontations, but also because it tends to give them the idea that they simply need to reach for whatever they want and it will be theirs, regardless of what others think and do. This leads to the typical problem of Eights being wanton and having no self-restraint.
The lack of self-restraint of an Eight is different from that of, say, a Seven, as the latter seeks variety and fears confinement, while Eights seek intensity, even if just in one or two fields.
Unfortunately, the lustful attitude of an unhealthy to average Eight can lead to people becoming extremely resentful of them for behaving like the villains of a martial arts movie. As Eights already feel the need to protect themselves by being assertive, when they pick up on people’s less than friendly attitude they can be led to ramping up their aggression, which is obviously a recipe for disaster.
Lust, the passion of Enneagram Type Eight
Misconceptions
It is not uncommon for people to describe Type Eight as the “bad” type. Even when explicit value judgments are absent, Type Eight descriptions tend to be less than flattering. Not that I think the Enneagram should flatter anyone, but we should certainly acknowledge that there is a place for every type.
The reality is that the aggressive mediocrity that rules our spayed and neutered world today is quite allergic to the kind of warrior-like values that Eights tend to embody. Eights are not inoffensive, they are not conciliatory and they don’t give a flying fig about not hurting other people’s emotions. They are, in the best sense of the word, predators, and predators go for the jugular.
This is not to say that Eights must be protected from criticism, either. First of all, they don’t need protection, and second of all, like every type they can become entangled in their own mechanism, with negative consequences for themselves and others.
What is true is that being in front of an average Eight *is* confronting, for two reasons: because Eights’ way of asserting themselves is of confronting others directly, and because people are generally used to exactly the kind of tea-and-cookies social niceties that Eights rarely provide. As with any type, there is plenty of room for others to learn something from Eights.
Wings
8w7: Eights with a Seven wing are generally hard to miss when you come across them. The in-your-face quality of Type Eight is magnified. They tend to be extremely quick-witted, though they are also generally pachydermic in their way of dealing with subtle issues. They rarely complain about anything and are possessed of incredible endurance and willpower.
8w9: Eights with a Nine wing are the archetype of the lioness protecting her cubs. There is a more conciliatory aspect to this subtype, and a tendency to use their power to hold together and protect the important bonds in the Eight’s life (this can be for better or worse). Usually, this subtype is more tranquil and laid back, although it still cultivates its sense of condifence that, in case of need, it can break a bone or two.
(note that wings can have some minor descriptive power in terms of superficial behavior, but they are irrelevant in terms of what motivates the person. Many people have no noticeable wing, while few show signs of both.)
Often Known As: Observer, Thinker, Investigator, Philosopher (note that names are as limiting as they are revealing.) Sin/Passion: Avarice Focus: on competence and knowledge Fear: of being incompetent Energy Center: Head (energy is asserted) Social Stance: Withdrawing Key Positive Traits(embodied at their best): Analytical, Objective, Unsentimental, Penetrating, Philosophical, Deep, Focused, Unswayed by mass opinion, Independent, Offbeat, Whimsical, Original, Humorous in presenting own observations, Good at making distinctions and connecting disparate subjects and details Key Negative Traits (embodied at their worst): Remote, Unavailable, Preoccupied, Sardonic, Socially inept, Self-isolating, Secretive, Unwilling to share, Impractical, Hyperfixated on trivia, Relishing in proving others wrong, Argumentative, Rational but unreasonable, Hair-splitting, Nihilistic, Destructive, Emotionally constipated Growth and Stress Directions:to Eight and Seven respectively
Enneagram chart with Type Five highlighted
Introduction
Fives are the unmistakable intellectuals of the Enneagram. Cool-headed, detached and curious, they rarely speak on what they aren’t sure about, and they usually find it hard to connect with people on an emotional level.
A Five’s expertise is often precious for those that need a pointer, although Fives may not always be willing to share it, as they tend to be very selective with their social contacts. In fact, they almost seem to have a tendency to disappear in interpersonal contexts. If they show up at all at social events, you will likely find them in a corner or outside, absorbed in their own inner discourse.
Fives are often innovative in their way of thinking, not necessarily because they are contrarians (this is often more the case with other types) but because they don’t let conventional prejudices taint their reasoning, which means that they will uphold any view that they find rational, regardless of its popularity or the controversies surrounding it, and even regardless of their personal preference.
Offbeat and eccentric in their interests, Fives would love to live in a world where people put their emotional reaction to things aside and simply use their heads. Fives find it very easy to do, as this is precisely part of their survival strategy: feelings just cloud reality, so better keep them to yourself and take an objective look at things.
They have a tendency to live in their head, with the consequence that they look ill at ease with their physical existence, where they often appear clumsy like fish out of water. They easily feel intruded upon by others and consequently develop very strong boundaries, keeping any but their closest friends at arm’s length.
The hiding tortoise, a good symbol for Enneagram Type Five
Core Mechanism
Fives are a Head type, and they rely on their considerable intellectual power to get by. They process the world in terms of information, facts, logical relations and concepts. They grow their notions organically rather, like unfolding crystals, developing them coherently without regard with their own personal feelings and preferences.
Out of all the types, Fives are the most likely to follow premises to their logical conclusions without batting an eye if they don’t like the conclusions. Sometimes, due to their mental prowess, Fives reach conclusions almost intuitively, embracing large quantities of rational passages in the blink of an eye. Their thinking process is rarely linear. The speed of their rational mind is a counterpart to their awkwardness on the physical plane.
Fives’ reliance on their mind is primarily a defense against the uncertainty of the world. Fives feel small and powerless compared to the vast unpredictable universe around them. They seek to remedy their sense of impotence by accumulating knowledge, often in very specialistic and abstruse fields, which become their anchor in times of turbulence.
As they accumulate knowledge, they retreat from the world, often developing frugal habits. Ideally, they feel that one day they will know enough to be able to join the world as competent individuals who are capable of performing normally. Unfortunately, for many Fives such time never comes.
The world becomes a distraction from their absorption in more and more abstruse layers of thought. Human interaction is often dialed down to a minimum and everything, even well-meaning attempts at socializing, is perceived as an intrusion, a waste of energy and/or time.
While healthy Fives are often capable of surprising and deep insights and manage to integrate themselves, less healthy individuals paint themselves into a corner where the only thing they can do is digging further into the same arcane topics and their distance from their fellow humans widens, incommunicability grows, others are seen as idiots who simply do not understand the subtlety of their vision, the world becomes more unpredictable and dangerous, and this cycle continues.
Passion
Avarice is the passion of Enneagram Type Five. As with many types, this is to be taken figuratively. Fives are rarely attached to money or material possessions, and they tend rather to become minimalists and to learn to do without whatever is not a bare necessity.
This is partly because they feel that having too many needs will put them in danger of being dependent on others or on outside factors they feel unable to control, and it will therefore increase their chances of not meeting those needs, so they learn to go without the unessential.
Avarice, as far as Type Five is concerned, is referred mainly to their tendency to withhold themselves from the world and from others. Fives have a keen awareness of how much energy they feel they can spend on any given day, and they administer it very sparingly. It is as if their fuel gauge were constantly in the red, and contact with other people were extremely draining.
Therefore, they go without the human contact they cannot avoid, and when they do accept contact this is usually an unspoken sign of great appreciation for the person: it means the person is so in tune with the Five that the Five does not consider them a hinderance to their energetic survival.
Fives are elusive to most people: even when they are there with you, you cannot really tell what they are thinking or feeling. This is because the act of opening up is energetically costly for them, as it implies an act of trust, and Fives are usually only capable of trusting themselves, even though ideally they long for people to open up with.
Avarice, the passion of Enneagram Type Five
Misconceptions
There is a tendency on other people’s part to think that Fives don’t have feelings, mostly because Fives don’t show them. Unless they suffer from specific mental illnesses (which any type can suffer from) this is not true.
Fives do have an often rather intense emotional life and are often incredibly sensitive, but because they don’t know how to deal with it, they learn to put these feelings into brackets, sometimes resorting to thinking them rather than feeling them.
They normally see their feelings as something that has no bearing on the world, on how things really are, and on some level feel they must not visit their emotional issues on others (of course, they expect the same in return.) However, unhealthy Fives can become so detached from their concrete life that they fail to locate anything within themselves except arid mental abstractions.
Deep down, Fives would love to find someone with whom they can open up about their emotions, but depending on how entangled they are in their mechanism, this can take quite a while, because they are not used to giving importance to subjective reactions.
Furthermore, Fives tend to feel very easily rejected by others, in part because they expect people will find their personal presence as intolerable and intrusive as Fives usually find the personal presence of others. Therefore, anything except the most ideal response to a Five’s intimate feelings is interpreted by them as proof that they should have kept those feelings to themselves and that they are silly anyway.
Wings
5w4: Fives with a Four wing tend to have a melancholic and poetic streak to them. Their ceaseless intellectual activity is both personal and universal and often has an autobiographical slant (think Nietzsche). More rhapsodic and less systematic than other Fives, they usually dislike canned notions and beaten paths and have a certain aesthetic appreciation of the truth. Deeply individualistic and somewhat aristocratic in their demeanor, they often come into conflict with the prevailing ideas of what is acceptable and become easily disdainful of them.
5w6: Fives with a Six wing are usually more clearly intellectual and somewhat more conventional in their reasoning style and possibly their interests. Nervous and high-strung, they are good at systematically formulating and probing hypotheses. They are more clearly detached from their feelings and their explorations have less to do with their own life and more to do with life in itself (think Darwin). Out of the two variants, Fives with a Six wing tend to fare better in academic and scientific settings, although this is more due to the Six wing than the Five type, as Fives in themselves are not especially academically minded (Fives often don’t give a rat’s behind about academic conventions)
(note that wings can have some minor descriptive power in terms of superficial behavior, but they are irrelevant in terms of what motivates the person. Many people have no noticeable wing, while few show signs of both.)
We’ve seen so far that the Enneagram tracks the development of our personality based on the central issue it revolves around. If we imagine reality to be a solar system with planets naturally revolving around the Sun, personality is the equivalent of a bit of one planet breaking off and revolving around said planet instead of around the Sun, like the Moon with the Earth.
Our personality colors our perception and our priorities and needs, as well as the strategies we develop to meet them. It also colors our stance toward other people. As most things in the Enneagram come in threes, we recognize three stances: assertive, withdrawing and conciliating or compliant. Each triad (Body, Heart, Head) has one assertive type, one withdrawing type and one compliant type.
This distinction ought not to be confused with the one discussed in the previous article on how each type relates to the energy of the center it belongs to. For instance, Type Two asserts the Heart energy, but in terms of social stance it is a conciliating type, not an assertive one. The expression of a center’s energy is the inherent motor of one’s personality, while the resulting social stance is more of a consequence, though an important one.
Assertive Types: Seven, Eight, Three
The three assertive types of the Enneagram: Three, Seven, Eight
In the Enneagram, assertive types tend to move toward the Other in a more or less bold fashion. They are usually daring and have a practical streak. They go get what they want or need, and do not let other people stand in the way. However, what they need is dictated by the center they belong to.
Type Three is a Heart type, meaning it is concerned with themes of recognition and attention. Three is definitely the show-off of the Enneagram. It asserts itself to emerge as worthy of validation within the system it finds itself in, whether it be school, work, family, etc.
Type Seven is a Head type, which means it desires security and safety, fearing pain and negative states of being. In fleeing from the inner potential for fear and pain, Seven asserts itself on the world around, looking for distractions and diversions, making plans for a thousand projects that keep it from the muted inner sense that all is not well.
Type Eight is a Body type, which means it wants autonomy. Eights are renowned for their ability to assert themselves on others and on reality in general. Even physically they have a certain presence (regardless of their body type) as they present themselves as the fixed point that can deviate the course of reality. Among the Enneagram types, Eight is the least reactive and most naturally active: an Eight doesn’t deal with you, you must deal with them.
In general, assertive types get into trouble with others by generating conflict (whether willingly or not) or by being excessive in their actions and sometimes deaf to other people’s reasons and perspectives.
Withdrawing Types: Nine, Four, Five
The three withdrawing types of the Enneagram: Nine, Four, Five
Withdrawing types do the opposite of assertive types: in order to get their needs met, they retreat from the Other. This is not to be confused with introversion, especially in a Jungian sense, as the Enneagram does not measure this. Any type can be introverted.
Type Nine is a withdrawing Body type. Its need for autonomy is met by not getting into situations of conflict or confrontation that might threaten its autonomous existence. The idea is, if I create a general mood of harmony, don’t demand anything and don’t go against the flow of other people, I will get what I want and won’t create problems for myself. This is the very opposite of what Eights do.
Type Four is a withdrawing Heart type. Fours withdraw into their fantasy, where they cultivate a rich world of images, moods and emotions, hoping that someone will notice them and whisk them away from a dreary, disappointing reality that doesn’t match their wishes. Instead of sucking the air out of a room like a Three, you’ll likely find Fours sulking in a corner, hoping to be asked what’s wrong.
Type Five is a withdrawing Head type. It retreats from the uncertain flow of the world into its mind, a universe filled with concepts, abstractions and logical reasoning. The idea is that, since the truth is the truth is the truth, the more a Five renounces its material and social existence to identify with impersonal, objectively valid thoughts, the less it will suffer from the uncertainty of reality. Dealing with concepts is easier than dealing with people. This is exactly what a Seven would never do.
In general, withdrawing types tend to get into trouble with other people by not being available to them or by being unclear and ungraspable, which can become a rather frustrating experience.
Compliant Types: Six, One, Two
The three compliant types of the Enneagram: One, Two and Six
Compliant types adopt rather complex strategies to fulfill their needs. They do not assert themselves like assertive types, nor do they retreat away from others like withdrawing types. Instead, they seek, as it were, to merit their needs being met, and as such their stance is markedly interpersonal (though not necessarily social.)
Type Six is a compliant Head type. Its core issues are related to security, and to the type’s inability to be the source of its own security. The solution is to find an authority to submit to by deserving their protection. This authority can be, but is not necessarily a person: it can also be an institution, an ideology, etc. Protection is deserved by being a good friend, partner, employee, believer, political activist, etc. As such, Six neither asserts itself like a Seven nor retreats like a Five.
Type One is a compliant Body type, whose need for autonomy is met by earning it. Ones don’t assert themselves unconditionally like Eights, nor do they shy away from conflict like Nines. Instead, they assert themselves on behalf of a higher goal or reason or idea. Being in the right gives Ones the credentials they need to demand other people’s obedience or respect.
Type Two is a compliant Heart type, concerned with recognition and attention. The way Twos seek to meet this need for recognition is by taking care of other people and meeting their (perceived) needs so as to gain a right to have their needs fulfilled. In this way, they neither withdraw for attention nor assert themselves, like Fours and Threes respectively, but instead seek to become indispensable for the other.
In general, compliant types tend to get into trouble with others by stipulating unspoken pacts with them and becoming angry, offended, hurt or scared when the other doesn’t meet their end of this unspoken bargain.
EnergyCenter
EnergyDynamic
Social Stance
Type
Body
Assertion
Assertive
8
Body
Suppression
Withdrawing
9
Body
Transformation
Compliant
1
Heart
Assertion
Compliant
2
Heart
Suppression
Assertive
3
Heart
Transformation
Withdrawing
4
Head
Assertion
Withdrawing
5
Head
Suppression
Compliant
6
Head
Transformation
Assertive
7
The nine Enneagram Types with their social stance.
Everyone’s personality, regardless of their type, is founded on sustaining a separate existence from the whole. You cannot be your regular, daily self without being able to point at something that is not you. There is nothing wrong with separation and duality, in spite of what mystics may say, because it is through separation that unity blooms, pouring forth a thousand forms. More specifically to personality, it is through our consciousness of the universe that the universe perceives itself, and this, as I said, is only possible if the universe adopts our limited perspective through which it can explore itself, and without which it would remain blind.
This limitation takes place as we develop our character or personality, which involves us gravitating toward one of three centers of energy expression: Body, Heart or Head. Each center, as I discussed in the previous article, has its hub in one of the Enneatypes of the inner triangle: Nine (Body, Instinct), Three (Heart, Feelings), Six (Head, Intellect).
These three original types represent their respective center in a rather odd way: they don’t express the corresponding energy. Instead, they suppress it or filter it out. Type Nine, sometimes called the Mediator or Peacemaker, is a rather inconspicuous, self-effacing type, which is the opposite of the choleric drive behind our bodily urge for independence. TypeThree, often called the Doer or the Achiever, seems at first anything but a feeling-oriented personality, concerned as it is with status, competition and practical plans. This seems to go against the Heart center’s urge for mending the bond between Self and Other. Type Six, normally referred to as the Skeptic or the Doubter, appears to be anything but oriented by a clear mind, caught up as it is in constantly catastrophizing and poking holes in its own certainties until all that is left is for it to blindly follow a trusted leader’s instruction. This seems contrary to the intellectual urge.
The full Enneagram, with its inner triangle (9, 3, 6) and the seven derived types.
In reality, though, we need to understand that the Enneagram does not really tell us who we are, but rather what we have a problem with at our core. Type 9 has a problem with its bodily presence, and therefore seems unable to assert itself; Type 3 has a problem with its true feelings, and therefore concentrates on achieving rather than being; Type 6 has a problem with its mind, being unable to trust itself and its own thinking, so it ends up being rather irrational or unreasonable.
But what we deny we imply. I cannot say “there is no flower here” without implying the notion of flower, and therefore the possibility for a flower to be here. So, in each Enneagram center, we also find a personality type that asserts the center’s energy. These are the types that come right before the ones that suppress the energy: Type 8 (coming before 9) asserts the instinctual energy of the Body; Type 2 (coming before 3) asserts the emotional energy of the Heart center; and Type 5 (coming before 6) asserts the intellectual energy of the Head center. In short, 8, 2 and 5 are the types that you spend five minutes with and you know immediately what they are about.
Type Eight, sometimes called the Boss, is assertive, powerful and has no problem going out and taking what its instincts tell it belongs to it. Through Eight, the Body center finds the kind of unobstructed expression that it seems to lack in type Nine. The Other is often either acknowledged as weaker and therefore in need of Eight’s protection, or as a target to direct attacks toward.
Type Two, sometimes called Helper, is relational, caring, interpersonal and motherly, often denying itself to please or help. Through Two, the Heart center expresses itself in a way that is not possible through Three. The Other becomes the object of the person’s attention, in hopes that, by creating a bond with them, Two’s identity and needs may be validated.
Type Five, often known as the Observer, is rational, unsentimental, objective, detached, always willing to follow a line of reasoning to its ultimate conclusions, regardless of how subjectively unpleasant it may be. Here the energy of the Head center asserts itself as it could never do at Six. The objectivity of the thought-process becomes a refuge from the uncertainty of life and the fear it engenders.
As in every dialectical model, where there is assertion and negation there is also a mediation between the two, and this happens in the types following the hub of each center. In all three cases the energy of the center is neither asserted nor negated, but transformed, and redirected, in one way or another, toward oneself. In Type 1 (coming after 9) the instinctive energy of the Body center finds a mediated expression; in Type 4 (coming after 3) the same happens in the Heart center; likewise, in the Head center Type 7 (coming after 6) mediates between affirming and negating intellectual energy.
Type One, usually called the Perfectionist, is strict, precise, law-abiding, just, disciplined. It represents a mediation between the unbridled assertion of instinctual energy of Type Eight and the suppresion of it in Type Nine. In Type One, the idea is: I can assert myself as long as I do it in the right way, or rather, as long as I assert the right thing. In doing so, however, One submits itself to this pervasive idea of right, becoming its own harshest critic.
Type Four, often called the Individualist or the Romantic, is self-involved, introspective, reserved, self-conscious. It mediates between Type Two and Type Three, introjecting the energy of the Heart center to sustain its own moods and cultivate a self-image with which it seeks to flee inward and away from a reality it perceives as tragic, or at least as unkind and unable to recognize it as it truly is.
Type Seven, known as the Joker or the Epicurean, is fun-loving, energetic, excited, unfocused. It represents a mediation between the assertion of mind energy of Type Five and its suppression in Type Six. Type Seven is concerned mainly with self-gratification, and it uses the Head energy to come up with endless ways of feeling entertained, positive and energized, which leads to fleeint out into the world in search of pleasure so as not to acknowledge inner fear.
Type
Center
Energy Dynamic
Description
8
Body
Assertion
Asserts itself physically and attacks obstacles
9
Body
Suppression
Suppresses its own individual energy
1
Body
Transformation
Submits to rules that justify its own assertion
2
Heart
Assertion
Cares for the other to gain validation
3
Heart
Suppression
Performs and achieves to emerge as worthy of recognition
4
Heart
Transformation
Cares for itself to cope with tragic reality that doesn’t “see” it
5
Head
Assertion
Abides by own mental skills to avoid uncertainty
6
Head
Suppression
Seeks external support to avoid relying on own mental skills
7
Head
Transformation
Plans own gratification to avoid thinking about the negative side
The Nine Enneagram Types and their main energy dynamics
In my previous post I discussed the difference between reality and personality. The long and short of it is that an individual’s personality exists essentially by blocking out or filtering out a part of the whole. You cannot be yourself as a single, individuated person and take in everything all at once. Individuation and manifestation (what some occultists call life below the abyss) imply a limitation of perspective.
How we get from the One to the Two, from unity to duality, that is, from the Whole to Self versus Other, is an interesting question, one that cannot be answered satisfactorily in a few words. Saying that duality is an illusion is too simplistic, because even an illusion must be something that exists apart from the real, it must *be* something illusory that is not the real thing, so really this explanation doesn’t explain anything. I will tackle the issue if and when I decide to start talking about philosophy. For my part, all I can say at the moment is that we cannot really understand the One and the Two without taking into account the Zero.
Three Urges, Three Passions
Let us take for granted, though, that Two comes from the One. Individuals come into being as centers of awareness that are separate from the rest of the universe. This can only happen by taking some parts of the whole not to be part of oneself, that is, by filtering them out (“I am this, not that.”) This, according to Enneagram theory, can happen in three ways, depending on what it is that is being blocked out.
Conventionally, we recognize people as being made up of three things: Body, Heart and Head. The Body is sometimes called the Guts, the Heart is sometimes called the Soul, the Mind is sometimes called the Head or even Spirit. I shall stick with Body, Heart and Head.
The three centers: Body, Heart, Head
These three aspects of the human complexion are representative of three urges: autonomy, recognition and security.
Even the meekest individual seeks tomaintain their autonomy, some degree of space for themselves, which requires that they assert themselves as organisms against the world surrounding them. This is Self versus Other in its purest form, where the self seeks to neutralize otherness and bring it under its command. Even in our painfully egualitarian times he who doesn’t want to starve will seek to conquer the world.
Recognition is a much misunderstood concept. It speaks to the junction between our personal and our social existence, and to our desire to match the image of ourselves that we think exists in other people’s perception, or, which is the same, the desire for them to have the image of us that we have of ourselves. This, however, implies that we maintain a self-image, that is, that we can point at certain definite characteristics we either display or wish to display and say, “This is me.” Only, we cannot really know why this is the case: our self-image hangs in the air somewhat, and feels arbitrary. Why are you only yourself when you are X, but not when you are Y? So, in order to validate it and make it real, we seek to reproduce it in other people’s perception to render it stable. Everyone needs recognition to an extent, and this includes hipsters.
The need for security is the need to know that one’s existence is preserved against imponderable forces that we see as alien to our being. If life consists of Self and Other, of Me and the World, there is no way of knowing whether tomorrow something will happen that will favor me against the world or the world against me. The urge for security is the urge to maximize my chances. It is, in a way, similar to the urge for autonomy in that it sees the Self against the Other, but in this struggle it concentrates more on regimenting and strengthening the Self than on conquering the Other.
These three urges come bundled with their negative side or passion. You cannot conquer the world to maintain your autonomy without anger, seen not necessarily as rage, but as a certain choleric disposition to treat that thing outside of you as a potential enemy or obstacle to be overcome. You cannot have recognition without attaching a great deal of value on the small segment of the universe that you call “me” and that you spruce up with wishes and exaggerations which you want other people to validate. This need for recognition creates the potential for lack of recognition and therefore for shame. Finally, you cannot be looking for security without experiencing fear, by which I do not mean any ordinary fear, but rather the sense of your being teetering on the brink of annihilation.
Center
Urge
Desired Outcome
Passion
Body
Autonomy
Subduing the Other
Anger
Heart
Recognition
Connecting Self and Other
Shame
Head
Security
Preserving the Self
Fear
The Three Centers of the Enneagram
The Three Centers in the Enneagram: Types Nine, Three and Six
The three centers, i.e., the Body center, the Heart center and the Head center, work in a circle. You establish yourself as an individual body as opposed to the others, you sustain a self-image which you look to accredit in the eyes of your fellows so as to validate your existence, but you suddenly realize that your condition as a separate entity is precarious, so you use your mind to create survival strategies that lead to you being able to preserve yourself as an individual, and so on.
Of course, this cycle is the basis for everyone’s self-sustained existence as individuals, regardless of their particular proclivities. In a way, this is the minimum needed for you to be you, and not another person, or a bunch of moss gathering on a rock. However, this is also how the Enneagram comes into being as a system of nine types.
Types Nine, Three and Six, the hubs of the three centers
The circle represents the whole, the unbridled and undivided universe, as it were. The triangle indicates the three points in the Enneagram where the three centers have their hub: 9 is the hub of the Body center, 3 is the hub of the Heart center and 6 is the hub of the Head center. Energy flows uninterrupted from 9 to 3 to 6 to 9 (we will see in the next article how the other six types come into existence.)
I have described personality as a filtering system which blocks out certain aspects of reality to privilege others. Interestingly, the three Enneagram types which represent the hubs of the respective centers are qualified exactly by the fact that they block out, or suppress, the energy of their center.
In other words, Type 9, the hub of the Body center, suppresses its own bodily energy; Type 3, the hub of the Heart center, suppresses its own emotional energy; Type 6, the hub of the Mind center, suppresses its own intellectual energy. This has the interesting consequence that, unless you know the Enneagram, you would never guess that Nines are body types, since they seem soo airy and diffuse, nor would you recognize the willful and competitive Threes as heart-driven, nor the insecure Sixes, who never trust their judgment and are always looking for someone trustworthy to make decisions for them as head-driven.
Yet it is so. We will see in the next article that this is part of a dialectical or triadic movement that leads to the emergence of the other types.
The Pale Horse is one of my favorite books by Agatha Christie. I find myself rereading it every couple of years, and I consider it one of the great stories in the mystery genre. Part of it is because it deals (on the surface) with occultism, which is something I am obviously into, considering this website. But mostly it’s because it manages to infuse the reader with an impalpable, ancestral dread that stems from Christie’s almost intuitive understanding of how a human psyche is capable of spiralling into a vortex of mystery, fear and confusion (no wonder she is usually typed as an Enneagram 5 or 6.) Nothing about the plot feels forced: we are led almost seamlessly down the narrow, unlit hallway at the back of our minds into a basement we didn’t know was there at all.
One of the (many) intelligent remarks on human psychology that Christie makes in passing is the following:
“One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again.”
This is a great example of how our character works, at least the way Enneagram theory understands it. The thing you hear mentioned and then pops up again almost serendipitously has obviously nothing to do with odd and mysterious synchronicities, as much as it’s a consequence of the fact that, if we are sufficiently struck by the thing in the first place, we will begin to scan reality for instances and confirmations of it. It is not just a matter of being struck, though, but also of need.
We have all made the experience of reality changing in front of us depending on our needs. Think of the last time you received a parcel and couldn’t just tear it open with your hands. You probably started scanning your environment, and immediately all the objects around you that weren’t sharp enough to be useful in opening the package were blended out of your perception, at least to a degree, and those that were sharp or pointy were more or less intuitively sorted by how useful they might be in helping you achieve your aim.
Now imagine if you did the same thing while at dinner with your significant other and there is no package to open. They are talking about how good the wine is or how classy the music is; all the while you are still categorizing your surrounding by how sharp things are and how useful they might be in cutting open a package (and hopefully not your sweetheart.)
In both cases, what you see isn’t necessarily false or wrong. Even in the second case (i.e., dinner with your partner,) it’s true that a handkerchief is less sharp than the edge of a table, which is less sharp than a knife, etc. What *is* false is the belief that the filtering system you use allows you to always see the whole of reality as it is, instead of just one side, and to capture what is important at that moment. In the first instance the filter is useful, while in the second it’s… well, it’s kind of creepy.
Personality is, essentially, a filtering system. We can’t take reality in all at once, so we concentrate on what we believe is important for us, what will foster our wellbeing, get us through trouble, etc. The difference between personality and the example I have just given is that personality tends to be relatively more stable, while the example of the knife is somewhat contingent. The principle, however, is the same.
There is a great debate among Enneagram theorists on when personality forms and we get our “number”, with some–usually those of a more mystical bent–believing it’s inborn, while others think it develops over time as we learn to cope with the challenges of our early life and deploy more and more fixed strategies that we end up overindentifying with to the detriment of others. Either way, the strategies we pick helped us, to a degree, in surviving, but we end up using them to a fault and tend to rely on them even when it doesn’t make sense or even when they might make things worse. Slowly, our personality is at risk of becoming an echo chamber that constantly reinforces old prejudices about ourselves and others instead of allowing us to change, adapt and react to the present moment rather than to some past problem, wound or fear.
Frankly, it is rather pointless for me to pick a side in this nature/nurture debate, especially because it wouldn’t add anything of consequence: the Ennagram is only useful as a tool once one has lived long enough, made enough blunders and achieved enough successes to develop some sense of self-reflection. Usually this doesn’t happen to the necessary degree until well after puberty has finished pummeling us to the ground (though there are exceptions, of course.)
The Enneagram as a typology system captures the nine basic patterns that people tend to fall into depending on how they structure their personal “filtering system.” The point of knowing it is not to free ourselves of it. This can’t be done, no more than one can step into a bucket and try to lift himself up by pulling at the handle. You are not going to get rid of your personality until you kick that bucket. Nor is personality a disease, as much as some in our vapid spiritual milieau tend to consider separate existence as evil and individuals as walking knots of traumas and darkness waiting to be unraveled by the uttering of the appropriate New Age platitudes.
Personality is a damn fine thing. Through it we can look at the world and see something instead of a confused blur of everything all at once. Think about it. We are capable of consciousness, which means that, through us, the universe experiences itself. Without us, no self-awareness for the Universe, or God, or Spirit, or the Anima Mundi, or Existence, or whatever you wish to call it. This experience, though, is only possible by blending out a part of the whole, so that something can come into focus. And this is glorious.
The problem arises when we fail to understand that our perception is limited, so that we can, at least to a small extent, improve it. Our personality is like a dress. We can wear it loosely and graciously, or it can become a straitjacket. The kind of self-cultivation that the Enneagram renders possible to us is the art of loosening the garment, not casting it off.
Patience is required, and kindness to oneself and to others. The hardest thing for some is learning to suspend judgment and just watch as they deploy their usual mechanism. The point is learning to appreciate the various facets of our response to reality until we can, as it were, catch ourselves in the act of “doing it again.” With practice, it becomes even possible to stop ourselves in the act and choose a better option. Sometimes we will surprise ourselves and the people around us by doing something that is partly out of character, because we have learned to accept other modes of being, thinking and acting as viable options.
This practice of self-reflection is also the process that leads to the development of what has been called the “inner observer.” At a deeper level, I may say that the inner observer is not really developed so much as it is discovered, because, at an even deeper level, we do not so much observe as we are observed into being. But this is neither here nor there at the moment. The point is that this inner observer can look dispassionately at what is going on, and although we may only get glimpses of this clarity, it’s through these glimpses that we are started on our quest of loosening the straitjacket of our personal mechanism and achieve greater balance.
The Enneagram is a great tool for self-reflection, whatever your path in life. It’s a system of personality types consisting of nine main categories based on nine core “sins” or “passions”: Anger, Pride, Falsehood, Envy, Stinginess, Fear, Gluttony, Lust,Sloth. As on this site I share my musings on all things connected with occultism, divination, hermeticism and spirituality, the Enneagram is something I think is useful to present for those interested in internal alchemy work. In this article I discuss a few guidelines I will follow.
I was first introduced to the Enneagram almost ten years ago by my now husband. We had a long distance relationship going on at that time, which meant that every time we actually met we found each other to have turned into an almost unrecognizable person. It is very easy to grow out of sync when you don’t spend much time together. He bought an introductory book on the Enneagram and then lent it to me. It was an incredibly useful tool for keeping track of ourselves and finding a common level of understanding. It made me realize how much of what people do is not due to them wanting to disrespect or hurt other people as much as it is because they are caught up in their unconscious mechanisms. It was a great lesson.
Where did it come from? How does it work? Dunno!
The Enneagram has been popular for some time, but never has it been as popular as now. And of course, nothing ruins something more than popularity, especially in the age of social media. Here I strive to present it in as simple and essential a manner as possible, as way too often people add useless frills to it in an attempt at branding it. At its core, the Enneagram is simple, and I personally love meaningful, essential things.
I’m not going to waste anyone’s time with bogus theories on the Enneagram’s origins, and, to be clear: no claim as to the Enneagram’s antiquity is valid, at least not in today’s form as a psychological typology tool. Nor is it clear why it seems to work. After all, you don’t get your Enneagram type back with your blood work. Some say it’s because its types are transcendental from a Kantian or at least biological standpoint. Maybe, but you’d have to stretch the notion of transcendental and suspend disbelief–to what purpose?
It is much easier to accept that the Enneagram is a human construct to make sense of ourselves, and, because it draws from such archetypal notions as the seven sins or passions (extended to nine), it gives us a good representation of our core motivation in acting the way we do when our default mindset takes over. This doesn’t mean it’s the one true way or the one true model. It is just a (good) model.
It’s not the Tree of Life
There is also a tendency to compile endless lists of correspondences for the Enneagram, such as with astrology or other occult matters (and even with car types). As an astrology and an occult student and practitioner myself, I can honestly say that all these additions are useless. They give one the illusion of having learned something while adding nothing meaningful at all.
Attributing this Type or that Type to Scorpio or to Saturn or to Venus in Taurus sextile Mars in Pisces is purely a way to scratch a pseudointellectual itch for order at all costs, just so one may complacently pat himself on the shoulder and reassure himself that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It also usually betrays a very poor understanding of these subjects, one usually acquired through fifteen minutes spent in the Mind Body Spirit section of the local bookstore. Those of us who have had the Tree of Life drilled into our heads know what I’m talking about, so I shall leave it at that. Again, the Enneagram is simple and it stands on its own two (or rather nine) feet. You CAN use the Enneagram as a substitute for the Tree of Life, but that’s not the Enneagram we are interested in here. Therefore I am going to avoid correspondences.
I’m also going to try to avoid two extremes. One one side we have those equating types with a couple of extremely shallow generalizations (“fours are artsy”, “sevens never finish what they start”) some of which are plain silly (“fives wear glasses”). These things have nothing to do with the type, even when they happen to be true, because they do not capture the essence of each type. So you are a four and you are artsy. What about that artsy eight over there? Clearly there cannot be any link of causality between these traits. This crap is rather popular on social media, especially on sites that favor short-form content, and that therefore tend to attract users that barely have basic object permanence, but are eager to have another checkbox ticked in their bio, because that’s their idea of having an identity.
Let’s Keep it Simple
At the other extreme, we have those who bury the poor reader or listener under an endless barrage of pseudodeep psychobabble. Don’t get me wrong, we could spend hours talking about each type, but the psychobabble I’m referring to is usually accomplished by adding useless complications to a simple system, such as tri-types or even wings. This stems from two common issues: on one hand, as more people discover the Enneagram, more and more people try to come up with their own version of it to sell books and courses; on the other hand there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Enneagram does. Let me give you an example.
If you believe in Sun sign astrology (I don’t) I’m an Aries. People who dabble in astrology constantly tell me “but you don’t strike me as an Aries”, only to go on to learnedly discuss how my Cancer ascendant modifies my character. For some people it gets even more complicated–they drag the Moon into consideration, and Saturn, and the asteroids, and, and, and. In their quest to create ever smaller boxes that cater to their shallow and inauthentic need for uniqueness (despite the fact that they are often all pretty much the same) people keep making up new stuff, disregarding the fact that even if we had one thousand factors at play, we would still end up with a system that considers way too many people to be exactly as way too many other people.
The same happens with the Enneagram. Nine types don’t seem enough. How can you keep harping on how pleasantly peculiar you are if roughly one ninth of the population is like you? And so people came up with wings, and tri-types, and, and, and. Once again, though, no matter how many factors we add, we keep finding that too many people end up in the same category, and so ever newer, more meaningless factors are dragged into the equation.
But here there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Enneagram (just as modern astrology comes from a fundamental understanding of astrology as a divination tool rather than a mirror for narcissistic self-admiration). The Enneagram is not meant to capture every feeling, thought, action and fleeting whim. it is meant to describe the core mechanism and motivation that keeps surfacing through most of what you do, and to make you aware of it. This leaves plenty of space for individuals to be themselves, just as saying that something is a plant because it can effect photosynthesis leaves plenty of space for millions of individual plant species to be discovered.
In terms of the Enneagram, therefore, nine types are more than enough. Everything else is a distraction. Take the concept of wing, which has been popularized mostly by Riso and Hudson and has then gotten out of hand, to the point where wings are often considered to be as important as the type itself. They aren’t. Wings can have some descriptive role in categorizing some of your behavior, I’ll grant you that. But this is not what the Enneagram is for. If you are a Type 8, your core is given by your Lust, and it doesn’t matter whether you are an 8 with a 9 wing or an 8 with a 7 wing. You are an 8.
Sometimes, the concept of wing (and that of tri-type too, but let’s keep it simple) is often used by people to pretend to be a type they aren’t, just because they consider it cool. Example: almost no one on Tumblr or Twitter is a Type 4, yet there is an overabundance of people on Tumblr and Twitter who fake being 4s because they think it makes them deep and creative. But when you ask them how they live out their Envy (which is Four’s core passion) they all resolutely deny ever feeling it. This may be because they are unaware of it or in denial. Or, more often than not, they pick whichever type on the two sides of Type 4 they can pass themselves off as and then say that they are a 4w5 or 4w3 or 3w4 or 5w4. “Yea, I have nothing in common with Fours, but if I frame it in this or that way I can kind of fake it and live my fantasy,” is their reasoning. What they fail to realize is that, no matter how many shallow fourish character traits they may have, if Envy is not there, they ain’t Fours.
I’m a Sinner Just for Kicks Now
This leads us neatly to my next point: each Type can be essentially boiled down to its “sin”, or passion, if you are easily triggered by words. There are also other important considerations (e.g., Four’s melancholy) but the passion HAS to be there, and while it doesn’t need to be interpreted religiously and can (and often must) be seen allegorically, THAT’s the type. Yet, if you look around on the internet, you often see anything mentioned in type descriptions except the very foundation of the type. Why? I would say because in their ceaseless quest to the perfect rose-tinted mirror, people mill endless amounts of fluff that amount to little more than “look how endearing I am, with my quirks and all!”
Here are some other pointers along the way to conclude. The Enneagram is not meant for you to tell yourself who you think you are. “Yup, the Enneagram confirms it, I am THAT smart/funny/unique.” That’s the (not-so-)grown-up version of “My mom thinks I’m special”. The Enneagram should ideally lead you out of your bubble, at least in your most lucid moments.
The Enneagram is not meant to excuse crappy behavior. “I’m a 2, so I can’t help being manipulative” is the “no wonder I’m a bitch, I have Mars in Scorpio” for people who think themselves too smart for astrology. If anything, once you know your Enneatype, you pretty much run out of excuses for being crappy.
Similarly, the Enneagram is not meant for us to pigeonhole people into it and use it against them. If we find that we no longer meet people on the street, but types, that’s a sign it’s best to take a break. It is also not meant to disparage them or their gifts. “You are Three, you should stop trying to have so much success”, “You are a Five, you must give up intellectual occupations”. Each Enneagram type has its gifts. The point of the Enneagram is not to relinquish them, but avoiding them turning into impediments when we are fixated on them to the exclusion of other things. But they remain gifts.
Finally, the Enneagram is not meant as a normative tool. Often–again, especially on social media–you will see people acting out their (supposed) type, adhering to it as if it were a description of what they ought to do. “I’m a One, so I MUST lecture people,” “I’m a Six, so I MUST pick up a cause to work myself up mindlessly about,” “I’m a Four, so I MUST be whiny.” Sometimes this is done by people who, for whatever reason, have decided that they want to be a certain type and so seek to mimic the first traits that come to mind. This is silly though, and it turns the Enneagram from a simple and effective tool for self-discovery into a sex toy for your psychic masturbation. And there’s already altogether too much of it around.
Here you’ll find links to all my blog posts on the Enneagram. You will notice that I try to go back to the basics of the Enneagram. This is not a call to purity (which I don’t give a rat’s tutu about) but a call to simplicity.
