The Enneagram

Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their
personality, with inborn temperament and other pre-natal factors being the main
determinants of our type. This is one area where most all of the major Enneagram
authors agree we are born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn
orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early
childhood environment. It also seems to lead to certain unconscious orientations
toward our parental figures, but why this is so, we still do not know. In any case, by
the time children are four or five years old, their consciousness has developed
sufficiently to have a separate sense of self. Although their identity is still very fluid,
at this age children begin to establish themselves and find ways of fitting into the
world on their own.
Thus, the overall orientation of our personality reflects the totality of all childhood
factors (including genetics) that influenced its development.
Several more points can be made about the basic type itself.

People do not change from one basic personality type to another.

The descriptions of the personality types are universal and apply equally to
males and females, since no type is inherently masculine or feminine.
Not everything in the description of your basic type will apply to you all the
time because you fluctuate constantly among the healthy, average, and
unhealthy traits that make up your personality type.
The Enneagram uses numbers to designate each of the types because
numbers are value neutral they imply the whole range of attitudes and
behaviors of each type without specifying anything either positive or
negative. Unlike the labels used in psychiatry, numbers provide an unbiased,
shorthand way of indicating a lot about a person without being pejorative.
The numerical ranking of the types is not significant. A larger number is no
better than a smaller number; it is not better to be a Nine than a Two
because nine is a bigger number.
No type is inherently better or worse than any other. While all the
personality types have unique assets and liabilities, some types are often
more desirable than others in any given culture or group. Furthermore, for
one reason or another, you may not be happy being a particular type. You
may feel that your type is "handicapped" in some way. As you learn more
about all the types, you will see that just as each has unique capacities,
each has different limitations. If some types are more esteemed in Western
society than others, it is because of the qualities that society rewards, not
because of any superior value of those types. The ideal is to become your
best self, not to imitate the assets of another type.

Identifying Your Basic Personality Type

As you think about your personality, which of the following nine roles fits you best
most of the time? Or, to put it differently, if you were to describe yourself in a few
words, which of the following word clusters would come closest?

These one-word descriptors can be expanded into four-word sets of traits. Keep in
mind that these are merely highlights and do not represent the full spectrum of
each type.
Type One is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic. These
people strive for integrity, but can become overly perfectionistic.
Type Two is generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive. These
people are caring and helpful to others, but can also become codependent and lose
sight of their own needs.
Type Three is adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious. These people
strive for achievement and recognition, but can also become inauthentic and overly
image-conscious.
Type Four is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental. These
people strive to be unique and are deeply emotionally sensitive, but can become
depressed and isolated.
Type Five is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and provocative. These people strive
for intellectual mastery and knowledge, but can become very eccentric and lose
themselves in irrelevant thinking.
Type Six is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious. These people strive for
security, but can become paranoid and suspicious.
Type Seven is spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered. These people
strive for excitement and stimulation, but can become impulsive and reckless.
Type Eight is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
These people strive to assert themselves and their authority, but can become
hostile and pugnacious.
Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent. These people strive
for calmness and peace, but can become aloof and disengaged.

Triads
The 9 types can be organized into triads, 3 categories each consisting of 3 of the
types, based on several different criteria.
Triads Organized by Challenged Function

The most common and fundamental triad scheme divides the 9 types based on the
main function Feeling (emotion), Thinking or Instinct (gut impulse that drives
immediate action in the world) with which their greatest strengths when healthy
and their greatest challenges when unhealthy are associated.
The types are organized in this scheme thus:
2,3,4 Feeling Triad
5,6,7 Thinking Triad
8,9,1 Instinctive Triad
Within each triad, there is one type that expresses the function too much, one that
expresses the function too little and one that is most out of touch with that
function. These distinctions break down as follows:
Feeling Triad

o
o
o

Thinking Triad

o
o
o

2 Expresses Feeling too much

3 Out of touch with Feelings
4 Expresses Feeling too little

5 Expresses Thinking too much

6 Out of touch with Thinking
7 Expresses Thinking too little

Instinctive Triad

o
o
o

8 Expresses Instinct too much

9 Out of touch with Instinct
1 Expresses Instinct too little

Triads Organized by Dominant Emotion

The 9 types can also be organized into triads based on Dominant Emotion, the
particular emotion with which each encounters a special challenge due to its
unconscious response to being cut off from the core self.
The types are organized in this scheme thus:
2,3,4 Shame
5,6,7 Anxiety
8,9,1 Anger
Again each group forms a dialectic based on the various ways that the types in each
cope with that Dominant Emotion.

The Basic Fear and Basic Desire

According to the Core Dynamics model, as a result of the particular defenses
developed to cope with being cut off from core self, each individual, based on the
combination of temperament and past trauma, takes on a basic fear common to his
or her Enneagram type. As the persons ego works to defend against the fear, he or
she takes on particular attitudes and behaviors and begins to chase a
corresponding basic desire, also common to his or her type, that seems to promise
an escape from the basic fear. The relationship between the basic fear and the basic
desire is a key dynamic that helps explain the particular fixation and developmental
path characteristic of each of the types.
The basic fears and desires described by Riso and Hudson in Personality Types are:
Type

Basic Fear

Basic Desire

Being unwanted, unworthy of love

To be loved unconditionally

Being worthless

To feel valuable and worthwhile

Having no identity or personal

significance

To find identity and personal

significance from inner experience

Being helpless, useless and

incapable

To be capable and competent and have

something to contribute

Being unable to survive on their

own and having no support

To find security and support and to

belong somewhere

Pain and deprivation

To be satisfied and content and have

their needs fulfilled

Being harmed or controlled by

others

To protect themselves and be in control

of their own life and destiny

Loss and separation

(impermanence)

To have inner stability and peace of

mind

Being corrupt, evil, defective and

imbalanced

To be good, have integrity and be in

balance with everything

Vicious cycles
"Each personality type contains within itself a source of self-deception which, if
played into, invariably leads us away from the direction of our real fulfillment and
deepest happiness. This is an irrevocable law of the psyche, something of which we
must become convinced if we are to have the courage to look for happiness where
it truly resides."
The vicious cycles described in the Core Dynamics model for each of the types as
they become unhealthier, as I understand them, are as follows:

Type 1 -In an attempt to be a good person, they may become overly

critical and perfectionistic. Ultimately, in an attempt to drive out all of the
evil around them, they may become just as cruel and destructive as those

against whom they originally rebelled. This cycle of the 1 is a prime example
of the dangers of

Type 2 In a desperate attempt to be loved, they give so much to others

that it builds inner resentment and engenders manipulation and pushiness
that ultimately drives others away.
Type 3 In an attempt to be seen as worthy, they develop a grandiose
false self that is very fragile. They then become highly sensitive and insecure
that this false self may be revealed or seen through and are ultimately
rejected as they grow more and more deceitful and destructive toward
anyone perceived as a threat to their image.
Type 4 In an attempt to find and live out their own unique identity, they
isolate themselves from others and from a world that they perceive as
demanding conformity. Thus, they alienate others, becoming hopeless and
ultimately indeed do lose their identity or personal significance in the world.
Type 5 In an attempt to become competent and useful in the world, they
build their confidence and perceived mastery through constant observation
and conceptualization. They are then driven to protect their inner space from
external demands in order to continue their deep thinking, and may cut
themselves off from the outer world to the point where they ultimately do
become helpless and without purpose within the community or society.
Type 6 In an attempt to find a safe, supportive place to belong, they may
become extremely protective of their perceived sources of security.
Ultimately, however, they are abandoned as they become more and more
paranoid and suspicious toward anyone perceived as a threat to that
security.
Type 7 In an attempt to generate satisfaction and fulfillment, they
endlessly, and rather addictively, seek new sources of excitement and
stimulation. Ultimately, since this seeking often meets superficial perceived
needs at the expense of deeper, more authentic needs, they may wind up
deprived and suffering.
Type 8 In an attempt to remain in control, they may become more and
more ruthless and dominating. Ultimately, their aggression may become
destructive, leading to the very harm and lack of control that they most fear.
Type 9 In an attempt to achieve inner peace and stability, they may
disengage from and deny real problems in their lives and the world.
Ultimately, they may become so dissociated from reality that their stability
dissolves away, bringing on their greatest fear, disappearance and
separation.

The goal in the Enneagram system is to escape this vicious cycle that keeps us
fixated in our particular types defenses.