The Enneagram:  A Typology of Personality

Type Identification - Working With the Model

September 2001; 26 January 2010; 21 April 2011; 21 July 2012.
Last Updated: 15 June 2013. First published at Intraspec.ca; moved here 15 June 2013.
Moved to RichardDagan.com, reformatted, with minor updates, 16 June 2013.
Last Modified: 5 March 2015. Site name change, 1 March 2018.
Site name change, 20 February 2019, and modified ⇒ DaganKenaz.com, Studies in Time.

This page presents a detailed overview of the Enneagram, a typology of personality. Tools and techniques for identifying one's type or subtype are explored in some depth, including descriptor comparisons, triadic groupings, selected online tests, MBTI and temperament and Tarot correlations with the nine ennea-types, and an exercise in cognitive mapping to help identify ennea-type or subtype dominance. References and resources are provided for further reading.

Overview...

At once complex and profoundly simple, the Enneagram is an introspective tool, a psychodynamic model of nine types (Gk. ennea, nine), to which some attribute great antiquity. Yet there exists no core text, no seminal work by which to establish that provenance. The fact that it may have been transmitted as oral tradition is difficult to establish. There is no doubt the typology is a recent adaptation of historical schemata applied to the study of divine principles and universal laws. Historically, it does not seem to have been applied as a personal psychology.¹ According to Mitchell Pacwa, S.J., Oscar Ichazo "invented the enneagram of personality types in the 1960s", and Claudio Naranjo helped him "develop and disseminate it in America". Naranjo "contributed to the personality descriptions and correlated Freudian defense mechanisms to each of the nine types", after which he taught the Enneagram at Esalen in 1970.²

The matter of provenance does not much concern me. Of relevance is whether the model has utility in my introspective and interpersonal work. Pacwa expresses criticism of the Enneagram on several important grounds, including the fact that there is no evidence only nine types exist, nor that the correct nine have been identified. He questions the theory of personality upon which the model is predicated, namely, the idea that "everyone was born in their essence but chose an ego fixation around age three or four". In an effort to defend against parental fixations, the child supposedly develops a neurotic habit that characterizes the Chief Feature of acquired personality. This neurotic habit obscures the child's essence, which is otherwise pure and unadulterated, evincing no conflicts of thought, emotion, or instinct.

Ennea-types are referred to by different names, sometimes simply by number. These are some of the variations:

Perfectionist ... Reformer Helper ... Giver Performer ... Producer ... Achiever Tragic Romantic ... Individualist ... Connoisseur Observer ... Investigator ... Sage Devil's Advocate ... Loyalist ... Troubleshooter ... Guardian Epicure ... Enthusiast ... Visionary ... Dreamer ... Generalist Boss ... Top Dog ... Challenger ... Confronter Mediator ... Peacemaker ... Preservationist

Recognition of one's Chief Feature and corresponding ennea-type is not always an easy task. Deep introspective work may reveal it in an AHA! experience, qualified by what Richard Rohr tells us is a rule of thumb: "Whoever is not humiliated has not yet found his or her 'number'".³ One experiences a sense of resonance when work with a psychological concept or model affirms one's awareness of self. In discovering one's core archetype, for example, and recognizing a deeply personal meaning within its mythos, there occurs a sense of "home", of acceptance and belonging. So that is part of this picture. But the humiliation to which Rohr refers, involves the parallel discovery of the hidden and rejected. One's ennea-type describes a narrowing of perspective, a constraint of awareness, maintained in neurotic defense against the intolerable. One feels embarrassed at having been found out.

Consider the following excerpt from an autobiographical sketch, written by Gestalt therapist and trainer Paco Penarrubia during a group workshop on the Enneagram:

Before knowing that I was a glutton [ennea-type Seven], Claudio [Naranjo] was already having me work from that angle. In the first group I did with him, at mealtime I was arguing with a colleague, defending a hedonistic posture against the other's Apollonian position. I asked Claudio his opinion, and he answered me with a saying from his country: "In Chile we say that too benevolent a surgeon allows the wounds to rot". I didn't understand the meaning, but it hit me deeply - one of those impacts that one doesn't forget, which are like turning the consciousness upside down, and which one understands deeply with the passing of time. When I finally knew my sin, I understood that gluttony was nothing less than my permanent anxiety and that my conception of the world was a string of rationalizations, of self-explaining, justification, of charlatanry in the end.⁴

This typologic model is thought by many to foster self-awareness and an appreciation of the differences among people, their ways of apprehending the world and acting within it. The Enneagram purports to classify these differences in a universe of nine categories, the ennea-types. Psychotherapist Margaret Frings Keyes treats of the ennea-types as programs, or life scripts. She suggests that the Enneagram allows inference of "nine distinctly different versions of Jung's notion of the Shadow archetype".⁵ Consistent with this shadow quality, a single "passion" is posited for each ennea-type in consonance with its neurotic fixation. These passions are construed in terms of the seven deadly sins of Christianity, deceit and fear completing the picture. Some people find them extremely useful in the identification of type. And there are many additional descriptors applied to each type. Compare them in the following table.⁶

The Triads

Another approach may help you recognize your Chief Feature: You can assess which core quality of the grouped types applies to you. The Enneagram is organized in three triads, and the ennea-types in each group are thought to share similar characteristics. Rohr refers to these as the Gut, Heart, and Head triads. Other writers designate them differently.⁷ Theoretically, one of these areas predominates in each of us.

Gut-people center their awareness in the underbelly, where they filter reality instinctively, spontaneously, intuitively, in the "raw material" of existence. They are direct, territorial, concerned with power, ruled by aggression, may be troubled by ethical self-doubts and self-blame.

Heart-people have their body center in the heart and circulatory system. They are relationship-oriented, toward intersubjectivity, and their domain is subjective feelings. Concerned with what others think of them, image and prestige, they see themselves as being for others, often believing they know what's best for them. They dislike being alone, may feel sad, inadequate, and ashamed.

Head-people have body center in the brain and nervous system. They withdraw to reflect, to apprehend the situation, understand the pattern of events and their place within it. Detached from their emotions, methodical and orderly, they are ruled by the need to understand the puzzle of life, know where all the pieces fit. Their apparent objectivity and conviction may mask inward feelings of isolation, confusion, loss of meaning, anxiety.⁸

The Chief Feature also might present as a combination of two adjacent types, as, for example, Seven and Eight. This combination may be regarded as a subtype in which the weaker principle, let us say Eight, is termed the wing of Seven. While some writers recognize one wing only, others would treat of Six, in our example, as an equally important wing. Michael J. Goldberg sees the lowest number as indicative of the shadow, conceived, in the Jungian sense, as a rejected part of self. The shadow is "that part of ourselves of which we say, 'Good Heavens, I am not that!'" The ally, on the other hand, corresponding to Eight in our example, is "something of an antidote to one's Enneagram style, a practical source of leverage [that brings to light] what draws you, what excites you, what will get you out of your morass". Goldberg believes we operate at our best when the wings are in balance.⁹

Once the Chief Feature has been identified, the Enneagram can be used for deeper introspection in the identification of integrative and disintegrative behaviors.

Integrative behaviors, in this context, involve self-expression through the positive cognitive strategies evinced by another ennea-type. For instance, when ennea-type Five, the detached observer, adopts strategies more like those of a healthy, self-assertive Eight, the Five is better able to "integrate" experience by standing up for herself.

Disintegrative behaviors, on the other hand, are seen as regressive or debilitating. To continue with our example, Five is less able to act with informed self-interest when engaged in behaviors that scatter attention in an effort to preserve a sense of well-being (this is the negative expression of ennea-type Seven).

Type Identification...

You might recognize your type with little difficulty; for some, the core pattern is immediately obvious. If you've studied the ennea-types and can't identify a personal pattern, perhaps there isn't one. This model might not work for you. Maybe the MBTI or another typology would be better suited to your needs. After all, as Goldberg notes:

...there are no Enneagram types - there are only people, people who have habitual patterns of thinking and seeing and feeling, patterns of being in a relationship, of leading or following or deciding. Getting a handle on these habits and the forces that create and drive them can make a person accessible and understandable, especially if that person happens to be you.

Getting a handle on things, in that sense, can be facilitated through any number of cognitive schemata. If you're able to identify your Myers-Briggs type (INTJ, for example), the important lesson is that other people are not the same type. As INTJ Richard Aylesworth puts it, "we can improve our relations with others by accepting that the basic structures they operate from are different from our own, by seeking to understand those differences and seeing that they are inevitable, not merely capricious".

Tools and exercises that might help you identify your Chief Feature

Online Tests

• The Enneagram Institute
  The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) is a scientifically validated forced-choice personality test with 144 paired statements. It provides a much higher level of accuracy than our free sample test, and much more detailed personality profiles. The test takes about 40 minutes to complete.
• SilimarMinds
  
• Enneagram Dimensions
  

  Susan Rhodes presents a free 180-question self-rating test, formatted as an easy-to-use Excel (.xls) file which records your answers as you go and generates a final tally for each type. Scores of 45-60 strongly indicate type and scores of 30-44 are possible indicators; scores of 15-29 are weaker, and scores of 0-14 are very weak, indicators of type. While such a self-test can show variable results, of particular interest from my perspective is the potential clustering of scores — the possibility of multiple type identifications in expression of plurality in personality.

An exercise in « cognitive mapping »...

NOTE: The following approach may prove more effective if you are familiar with the different
characteristics and descriptors for each ennea-type.

In studying any typology of personality, it is often useful to recognize all types as patterns within oneself.¹⁰ This is an exercise in creative imagination. Think of yourself as a community, a plurality of aspects (alter personalities, sub-personalities, archetypes, whatever you want to call them). If you're working with the Enneagram, think of this as a wheel or round table with nine members. You're the hub, at the center of a dynamic group, and this is the basic structure of your inner community. You determine who will be heard.

Ideally, each member of the community expresses him- or herself through you. Your personality is a functionally integrated whole — a gestalt — that is greater than the sum of its parts. We can visualize this gestalt in the illustration at right. Here, the upper sphere is conceived as a relational self through which, in your own unique way, you relate with the world around you.

The relational self may be inhibited, depending on the tolerance you are able to display in response to the members of your community. If you favor one member, for example, if rely upon that member habitually and limit or deny contribution from the others, your style of relating will reflect that dominance. This helps us identify your core ennea-type pattern.

Remember, the core pattern is habitual, a kind of life script that has evolved from earliest childhood. That information usually isn't consciously available. Deeply engaged in our habits of relating, we remain blind to the scripts we live. In this exercise, we're attempting to identify the dynamics of your community. We want to know on which member(s) you rely the most.

Identifying the key factors...

A cognitive map is a mental representation of external or internal variables. When you visualize how you might walk to the local library from your place of residence, for example, you are using a cognitive map. In this instance, we use a cognitive map to explore the structure and psychological relevance of the Enneagram.

In a receptive, meditative state, imagine that you are at the center of this map; imagine that you can receive communication, in any form, from any of nine directions. Be open. Avoid imposing restrictions on content. You might see images, for example, hear a voice, remember an event, feel an emotion or sensation. The significance of the material is not always self-evident; significance and meaning can be analyzed after the event. Pay attention to the direction from which communication comes - not from North, South, East or West, but from 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

In my experience, Five-Four (i.e., Five, with a strong Four wing), a mixed (or sub-) type, is particularly resonant. In fact, standing at the center of the map, I have a strong feeling that I am experiencing the other members of the community with Five-Four supporting my back, seeing through my eyes. Egoic reality, my sense of "I", is strongly informed by Five-Four. The Chief Feature is obvious in that respect. Deeper analysis confirms that impression in terms of my passion (greed for knowledge, envy), what I avoid [i.e., what makes me most uncomfortable] (embarrassment, mediocrity), and my key coping and defensive strategies (detachment, withdrawal, dissociation). Nine is inevitably my point of focus, the way of transcendence (which can also, at times, involve accidia, or self-forgetting). Active dialogues occur with Three, Six, Eight and One, while Two and Seven present in impulsive action on my part.

Myers Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI)

Several authors have presented correlations between MBTI types and the Ennea-types. If you know your MBTI type, the following table may be of some help in identifying your Ennea-type.

Other tools that might help...

Introspective work is sometimes facilitated by the synthesis of information derived from several tools. The more you explore, the more you have to work with to achieve your "aha!" experience.

• Tarot Constellations is a schema that enables you to identify what Mary K. Greer terms the Soul, Personality and Hidden Teacher cards, in the major arcana, for your particular date of birth. Whether you use tarot or not, you might find this an interesting exercise. Your card(s) may trigger insights that help you identify your Chief Feature.
• Temperament assessment might prove useful. One or more of the four classical temperaments (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic) may apply. You can correlate this information with the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory. Reviewing the Enneagram triads is also helpful in this light.
  

  TEMPERAMENT	MBTI CORE TYPE	SUBTYPES
  Choleric	NT intuitive thinking	ENTJ ENTP INTJ INTP
  Melancholic	NF intuitive feeling	ENFJ ENFP INFJ INFP
  Phlegmatic	SJ sensation judging	ESTJ ESFJ ISTJ ISFJ
  Sanguine	SP sensation perceiving	ESFP ESTP ISFP ISTP
  Source: Williams, Xandria. Love, Health and Happiness: Understanding yourself and your relationships through the four temperaments. London: Hodder & Stoughton (1995/98:267-68)

  At left, for example, is Xandria Williams' correlation of the four temperaments with the Myers-Briggs core types. She organizes the sixteen types in four groups of four, and regards these as temperament subtypes.

  If you've studied the system and are deeply motivated to identify your Chief Feature, dreams may reveal it to you. Dream analysis can provide crucial information regarding your psychodynamics.

  Astrological analysis can be useful too, but identification of the Chief Feature by this means requires in-depth psychoanalytic assessment of chart dynamics. Simple Sun sign correlation may suffice in some cases, but will not apply in others. An interesting Enneastrology schema has been described by Andrea Meek Winchester (2001).

  Darrell Zahorsky presents a typology of entrepreneurs that appears to have been derived from the Enneagram. Type names are somewhat different, but the brief descriptors are remarkably similar, including positive (excerpted below) and negative perspectives. Zahorsky also provides examples of successful entrepreneurs for each type.

  1. The Improver
  If you operate your business predominately in the improver mode, you are focused on using your company as a means to improve the world. Your overarching motto is: morally correct companies will be rewarded working on a noble cause. Improvers have an unwavering ability to run their business with high integrity and ethics...

  2. The Advisor
  This business personality type will provide an extremely high level of assistance and advice to customers. The advisor's motto is: the customer is right and we must do everything to please them. Companies built by advisors become customer focused...

  3. The Superstar
  Here the business is centered around the charisma and high energy of the Superstar CEO. This personality often will cause you to build your business around your own personal brand...

  4. The Artist
  This business personality is the reserved but highly creative type. Often found in businesses demanding creativity such as web design and ad agencies. As an artist type you'll tend to build your business around the unique talents and creativities you have...

  5. The Visionary
  A business built by a Visionary will often be based on the future vision and thoughts of the founder. You will have a high degree of curiosity to understand the world around you and will set-up plans to avoid the landmines...

  6. The Analyst
  If you run a business as an Analyst, your company is focus on fixing problems in a systematic way. Often the basis for science, engineering or computer firms, Analyst companies excel at problem solving...

  7. The Fireball
  A business owned and operated by a Fireball is full of life, energy and optimism. Your company is life-energizing and makes customers feel the company has a get it done attitude in a fun playful manner...

  8. The Hero
  You have an incredible will and ability to lead the world and your business through any challenge. You are the essence of entrepreneurship and can assemble great companies...

  9. The Healer
  If you are a Healer, you provide nurturing and harmony to your business. You have an uncanny ability to survive and persist with an inner calm...¹¹

References:

1. For example, schemata such as those attributed to
   • Pythagoras (6th Century B.C.)
   • Ramon Lull
     (Ars generalis ultima. Published 1305-08 A.D.)
   • Athanasius Kircher
     (Arithmologia. Published 1665 A.D.)

   See James Webb
   The Harmonious Circle
   (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1980:499-519)

2. Mitchell Pacwa, S.J.
   Tell Me Who I am, O Enneagram
   Christian Research Journal. Fall 1991, p.14
3. Richard Rohr & Andreas Ebert
   Discovering the Enneagram
   (NY: Crossroad, 1990:13)
4. Claudio Naranjo
   Transformation Through Insight
   (Prescott AZ: Hohm, 1997:363)

   Also by Naranjo:

   • Ennea-Type Structures
     (Nevada City CA: Gateways/IDHHB, 1990)
   • Character and Neurosis
     (Nevada City CA: Gateways/IDHHB, 1994)
5. Margaret Frings Keyes
   Emotions and the Enneagram
   (Muir Beach CA: Molysdatur, 1992:xiv)
6. Sources for table:
   
   • Richard Rohr & Andreas Ebert
     Discovering the Enneagram
     (NY: Crossroad, 1990:253-55)
   • Maria Beesing, Robert J. Nogosek & Patrick H. O'Leary
     The Enneagram
     (Denville NJ: Dimension Books, 1984:passim)
7. John Fudjack and Patricia Dinkelaker (1996) review four theories
   which each provide different labels and descriptions of the triads.
   
   

   AUTHOR(S) TRIAD 8-9-1 TRIAD 2-3-4 TRIAD 5-6-7 Palmer [Rohr] gut heart head Riso relating feeling doing Wright feelers doers perceivers Hurley and Donson creative relational intellectual Source: The Enneagram and the MBTI: In Search of Common Ground, Part 1 John Fudjack and Patricia Dinkelaker (1996) The Enneagram and the MBTI

8. Richard Rohr & Andreas Ebert
   Discovering the Enneagram
   (NY: Crossroad, 1990:253-55)
9. Michael J. Goldberg
   Getting Your Boss's Number
   (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996:9-12) //Out of Print.

   Republished as:
   Nine Ways of Working
   (NY: Marlowe, 1996/99)

   See also:
   Helen Palmer
   The Enneagram: Understanding yourself and the others in your life.
   (SF: Harper & Row, 1988:43ff.)

   Don Riso
   Personality Types
   (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987/90:35-40)

10. See, e.g.:
    
    • Jean Shinoda Bolen
      Goddesses in Everywoman: A new psychology of women.
      (NY: Harper Colophon, Harper & Roe, 1985:266-67)

      [According to] Joseph Wheelwright, a Jungian analyst ... what goes on in our heads can be thought of as being like a committee, with various aspects of our personalities sitting around the table - male as well as female, young and old, some noisy and demanding, others quiet and cut off. If we are fortunate, a healthy ego sits at the head of the table, chairing the committee, deciding when or who should have a turn or take the floor. A chairperson keeps order by being an observant participant and an effective executive - qualities shared with a well-functioning ego. When the ego functions well, appropriate behavior results.

      Chairing the committee is not an easy task, especially when there are goddesses in every woman, demanding and claiming power, at times in conflict with each other. When a woman's ego cannot keep order, one goddess archetype may intervene and take over the personality. Metaphorically, then, that goddess rules the mortal. Or an inner equivalent of an Olympian war can occur when equally strong archetypal elements are in conflict.

      When a person is in inner conflict, the outcome depends on how the "members" of that particular person's "committee" work together. Like all committees, the functioning of the group depends on the chairperson and the members - who they are, how strong their viewpoints are, how cooperative or how contentious the group process is, and how much order the chair maintains.

    • Gavin De Becker
      The Gift of Fear: Survival signals that protect us from violence.
      (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1997/90:35-40)

      ...[No] matter how aberrant the person whose behavior you seek to predict, no matter how different from him you may be or want to be, you must find in him a part of yourself, and in yourself a part of him. When you undertake a high-stakes prediction, keep looking until you find some common ground, something you can share with the person whose behavior you seek to predict — this will help you see the situation as he perceives it...

11. The 9 Personality Types of Entrepreneurs
    Darrell Zahorsky, Small Business Information
    About.com