deck_4122727 Flashcards
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What is the Enneagram?How the Enneagram works
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The enneagram of Nine Personalities is a system that describes nine basic personalities.It’s like an owner’s manual that shows you how your personality works, how it was formed and exactly where you need to look to uncover your most self-defeating behavior patterns.The enneagram includes both the psychological and spiritual aspects of an individual giving you instant insight into the motivations and beliefs behind your actions.
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What does the Circle symbolize?How the Enneagram Works
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The circle symbolizes the whole of life.
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What does the Triangle symbolize?How the Enneagram Works
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The triangle represents the Law of Three which is two opposing forces and a middle point that connects them — like black/gray/white/ or up/center/down.
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Q
What does the Hexad symbolize?How the Enneagram Works
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The hexad represents the Law of Seven, the process or stages of change in the universe. It’s always drawn in the sequence of 1 4 2 8 5 7 1. (The sequence of numbers comes from converting the fraction 1/7 to a decimal.)
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Q
What are the stages of change?How the Enneagram Works
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The stages of change are: 1 - idea, 4 - creative/imagination, 2 - consensus, 8 - strength/movement, 5 - thought/problem solving, 7 - inspiration/celebration, 1 - and idea to start the process again.
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Q
Where can these three concepts – the Whole, law of three and law of Seven – be found?How the Enneagram Works
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These three concepts – the Whole, law of three and law of Seven – can be found:in the behavior patterns in the nine personalities and how they relate to each other.
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Q
What is the so-called Primary Type?How the Enneagram Works
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The enneagram maps nine personality types and the way they interconnect and relate to one another. You have qualities from each of the types, but one more than any other best describes your personality as a whole. This is called your Primary Type.
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What are the two qualities of each type?How the Enneagram Works
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• Happiness Qualities — these are the qualities that describe your ennea-type when at its best, relaxed and open to challenges. You are at your happiest and most effective when your behavior reflects these contructive traits. • Stressed/Unhappiness Qualities — these are the qualities that describe your ennea-type when you are stressed, fearful and trying to protect yourself. You’re unhappiest when behaving with these qualities.
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Q
Who is Type One and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 1 — The Ethical Idealist Happiness Qualities: + Principled, discerning, idealistic. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be a perfectionist and abrasive.
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Who is Type Two and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 2 — The Nurturing Caretaker Happiness Qualities: + Compassionate, empathetic, affectionate. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: + Can also be a flatterer and meddler.
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Who is Type Three and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 3: The Determined AchieverHappiness Qualities: + Success-oriented, adaptable, motivated. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be driven and image conscious.
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Who is Type Four and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 4 — The Sensitive Individualist Happiness Qualities: + Original, artistic, romantic. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be melancholy and self-absorbed.
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Who is Type Five and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 5 — The Objective IntellectualHappiness Qualities: + Curious, insightful, pioneering. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be cynical and stingy.
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Who is Type Six and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 6 — The Loyal Supporter Happiness Qualities: + Committed, reliable, compassionate. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be suspicious and a worrier.
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Who is Type Seven and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 7 — The Thrill-Seeking Adventurer.Happiness Qualities: + Spontaneous, versatile, fun-loving. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be distracted and undisciplined.
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Q
Who is Type Eight and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 8 — The Protective Leader Happiness Qualities: + Confident, decisive, generous. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be controlling and confrontational.
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Q
Who is Type Nine and what are his/here qualities?How the Enneagram Works
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Type 9 — The Passionate Peacemaker Happiness Qualities: + Receptive, reassuring, passionate. Unhappy/Stressed Qualities: - Can also be stubborn and disconnected.
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Q
How is the information of the Enneagram organized?How the Enneagram Works
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The information about each of the nine ennea-types is organized by system of:Blocks, Triads, Arrows and Wings.
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Q
What do the Blocks describe? Name the main Blocks!How the Enneagram Works
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The Blocks describe the behavior patterns and qualities of the ennea-types:• Natural Center• Connecting Virtue• Separating Vice• Helplessness Belief• Helplessness Fear• Happiness Desire• Missing Connection
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Q
What does the Natural Center Block describe?How the Enneagram Works
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• Natural Center:Your genetic qualities of temperament are your abilities, talents and strengths. The closer you live your life connected to your center, the happier you are.
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What does the Connecting Virtue Block describe?How the Enneagram Works
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• Connecting Virtue:This higher quality summarizes your ennea-type at it’s best, and when developed, connects you to lasting happiness.
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What does the Separating Vice Block describe?How the Enneagram Works
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• Separating Vice:This is the quality that your ennea-type uses to avoid fear.It’s the behavior habit that most interferes with your happiness when you are stressed and off center.
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Q
What does the Helplessness Belief Block describe?How the Enneagram Works
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• Helplessness Belief:This is a belief formed early in your life that affected the development of your social intelligence and still interferes with your adult relationships until you observe it, challenge it and make a choice to change it.
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Q
What does the Helplessness Fear Block describe?How the Enneagram Works
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• Helplessness Fear:This fear is at the root of all your fears.
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What does the Happiness Desire Block describe? How the Enneagram Works
• Happiness Desire:Trying to satisfy this desire in some way is the motivation for all of the actions of your ennea-type.
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What does the Missing Connection Block describe? How the Enneagram Works
• Missing Connection:This is a quality that is absent or weak in your ennea-type and the source of much of your self-defeating behavior. If it's developed, a much higher level of emotional intelligence results and more happiness.
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What do the four basic triads describe and what are they?How the Enneagram Works
The triads describe how the personality works through motivations and beliefs for each ennea-type. The Enneagram has four basic triads describing a different aspect of the emotional style for each of the types. The enneagram triads are:• The Intelligence Triad• The Coping Triad • The Essential Drives Triad • The Disappointment Triad
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What does the Coping Triad describe?How the Enneagram Works
The Coping Triad describes each ennea-type's social style and how that type copes with social fears. Much of our social interactions are rooted in the fear of how we will be seen and treated by others. Your fear reactions formed the behaviors you use to interact with other people. There are three coping styles: assertive, withdrawncontrolled. Your coping style corresponds to the survival reactions of fight, flight or freeze. The assertive types (THREE, SEVEN, EIGHT) react to fear by fighting with others in some way. This can be lashing out, yelling, being confrontational or competitive. The withdrawn types (FOUR, FIVE, NINE) take flight and avoid conflicts with others when they are afraid. This can be withdrawing from relationships or avoiding challenges.It can also be “zoning out” around others. The controlled types (ONE, TWO, SIX) freeze by suppressing their fear reactions. This coping style tends to deny their emotional reactions by calling them something else, or pretending to feel things they don't.
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What does the Intelligence Triad describe?How the Enneagram Works
The intelligence triad describes how the three intelligence functions of instinct, emotion and cognition (or higher thought and reason) affect your personality. These intelligence centers are the neurological tools you use to perceive and experience the world.• Types FIVE, SIX and SEVEN are in the Thought Center, and formed behavior patterns around their thoughts and ability to reason. • Types TWO, THREE and FOUR are in the Emotion Center, placing their priority on the satisfaction of their emotional needs• Types EIGHT, NINE and ONE are in the Instinct Center, focusing their attention on their physical surroundings and security. In that center, you will find both the strength of your type and the source of your self-defeating behavior. When the three intelligences are balanced they create a personality that is adaptable, resilient, flexible, creative, organized, emotionally stable and focused. These qualities are found in the happinest and most successful people.
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What does the Disappointment Triad describe?How the Enneagram Works
Our happiness is largely based on getting the things we expect. How we react to disappointment shapes our personality by affecting our outlook on life and our happiness.The three styles of managing disappointment are:2, 7, 9 Avoiders4, 6, 8 Defenders1, 3, 5 PerformersThe avoiders, types TWO, SEVEN and NINE, have a very positive outlook on life, but tend to manage disappointment by avoiding it with some form of denial. The defenders, types FOUR, SIX and EIGHT, are guarded and often distrustful in their outlook. They manage disappointment by assuming they can only rely on themselves never fully trusting others. The performers, types ONE, THREE and FIVE, are pragmatic in their outlook managing their disappointment with perfomance, becoming highly competent and organized. They try to prevent disappoint from happening by preventing mistakes or controlling the rules and standards.
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What does the Essential Instincts Triad describe?How the Enneagram Works
The Essential Instincts Triad describes the survival needs that we all have of:self-preservation,intimacybelonging. Self-preservation is the need to be safe and free from hunger and pain. This need is satisfied when your survival and safety is assured. Intimacy is the need for pleasure and closeness. It's satisfied when you feel emotionally connected to someone or to a small group. Belonging is the need to have a secure place within a group of people. This need is satisfied when you know your contribution matters to others. Of course, you have all three instincts, but the one that is dominant in your personality is the one that had the most unmet needs in early childhood.
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Describe how the enneagram uses Arrows.How the Enneagram Works
The enneagram uses Arrows to show how your personality moves to adapt to stress and challenge. Each type has two Arrows, an expansion Point and a Stress Point that is found in the traits of another ennea-type. The Expansion Point shows you how your personality will react when things are going well in your life. You can use this information to manage the positive challenges and opportunities you choose for your life. The Stress Point shows you how your personality will react to fear and the difficulties of life. You can use this information to create healthy, constructive strategies for managing stress. The happiest people are the most adaptable and flexible. The key to a happier life is learning how to respond to your challenges instead of reacting to them. The enneagram Arrows not only point out self-sabotaging behavior habits, but how your personality will change and grow if it's strengthened by certain positive traits.
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What are your Wings?How the Enneagram Works
The ennea-types to the left and right of your ennea-type are your Wings. The Wings are another way your personality expands and adapts to be more flexible with greater emotional intelligence. Your Energizing Point to the right of your Primary type, shows the traits you need to develop to become more motivated or inspired to take on new challenges. Your Grounding Wing to the left of your Primary type, shows the parts of your personality that are weaker or under-developed. Your personality formed trying to avoid behaving with these traits. Ironically, these are the very qualities you most need for greater emotional intelligence. Many people have a personality with a strong Wing influence blending qualities of the two types, though one type remains dominant.
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Explain Focus of Attention.Helen Palmer
ENERGY FOLLOWS ATTENTION.YOUR FOCUS OF ATTENTION DETERMINES WHERE TIME AND ENERGY WILL BE SPENT. When your type's focus is engaged, it automatically initiates an unconscious scan of awareness that includes data relevant to your psychological welfare, while excluding equally relevant information. THE FOCUS DETERMINES WHAT APPEARS IN YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND AND WHAT GETS LEFT OUT.
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Explain The Inner Observer.Helen Palmer
The observer-object relationship is a guiding theme in contemplative practice. Our focus of attention is at first directed to the activities of the external world – what attracts us and what we want to avoid. This outer focus masks the presence of a self-reflective capacity to witness the contents of our own mind. When attention is turned to reflect upon our inner condition, we recognize the pattern of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that determine our Identity. The witnessing faculty remains hidden, in the sense that we do not recognize its function as an inner guide to spiritual experience. An observing state of mind reflects the objects that appear within it. It initiates nothing, but objectively reflects our patterns of thought, emotion, and sensation that arise in the inner space.
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What are the properties of the inner witness?Helen Palmer
• It is permanent. • It never becomes wired into the type structure. • It is always present in the “Now.” • It is neutral - without opinion or bias. • Our capacity for witnessing matures with spiritual practice.
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What are the stages of witness development?Helen Palmer
• Can recognize categories and separate from automatic patterns • Can discern between categories • Can unite with or disengage from objects of attention.
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What are our instinctual responses and how do they play out?Helen Palmer
We are each born with 3 instinctual responses that ensure physical survival.Fight, Flight and Freeze are part of out mammalian heredity - and these play out in relationships as Anger, Fear and Panic at loss of contact. Instincts are hardwired into our nervous system, with each type having a first tendency instinctual response that infuses their cognitive/emotional pattern.
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What is the Cognitive/Emotional Pattern of the Body-Based Panel and which first tendency Instinctual Response is supported?Helen Palmer
Body-Based Panel, 9 – 8 – 1: Express Anger (Fight) as a first tendency response. Type Nine: Indolence - Sloth (Self-Forgetting) Type Eight: Vengeance - Lust Type One: Resentment - Anger
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What is the Cognitive/Emotional Pattern of the Head-Based Panel and which first tendency Instinctual Response is supported?Helen Palmer
Head-Based Panel, 6 – 5 – 7: Express Fear (Flight) as a first tendency response. Type Six: Doubt- FearType Five: Detachment - AvariceType Seven: Planning - Gluttony
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What is the Cognitive/Emotional Pattern of the Heart-Based Panel and which first tendency Instinctual Response is supported?Helen Palmer
Heart-Based Panel, 3 – 2 – 4: Express Panic (Freeze) at loss of contact. Type Three: Vanity (Vainglory) - DeceitType Two: Flattery - PrideType Four: Melancholy - Envy
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Type OneHelen Palmer
The PerfectionistBasic Proposition: Only perfect people are worthy of love and respect. Primary Avoidance: Error Focus of Attention: What is right or wrong. Correct or incorrect.Cognitive Habit: Resentment. Worried irritation at a world gone wrong. Emotional Vice: Anger Corresponding Virtue: Serenity Idealized Self-image: “I am good”Quality of Higher Being: Perfection Strengths: Honest, Responsible, Improvement-oriented Challenges: Overly Critical, Rigid, Judgmental
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Type TwoHelen Palmer
The GiverBasic Proposition: Love and survival depend on giving to get. Primary Avoidance: Own needs Focus of attention: Needs of others Cognitive Habit: Flattery. How to impact others by supporting their needs. Emotional Vice: Pride Corresponding Virtue: Humility Idealized Self-image: “I am helpful” Quality of Higher Being: Serving Higher Will Strengths: Helpful, Caring, Relationship-oriented Challenges: Intrusive, Overly Dependent on Approval
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Type ThreeHelen Palmer
The Performer Basic Proposition: Love and recognition are only for champions Primary Avoidance: Failure Focus of Attention: Tasks, Roles and Image Cognitive Habit: Vanity (Vainglory). Presenting a winning facade. Emotional Vice: Deceives self and others Corresponding Virtue: Honesty Idealized Self-image: “I am successful” Quality of Higher Being: Hope Strengths: Energetic, Adaptable, Achievement-oriented Challenges: Competitive, Overworked and Impatient
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Type FourHelen Palmer
The Romantic Basic Proposition: Others enjoy the happiness that I have been denied. Primary Avoidance: The commonplace Focus of Attention: Best in what's missing. Worst of what's here. Cognitive Habit: Melancholia. The sadness of life. Emotional Vice: Envy Corresponding Virtue: Equanimity (Emotional Balance) Idealized Self-image: “I am unique and special” Quality of Higher Being: Spiritual Absorption Strengths: Creative, Empathic, Idealistic Challenges: Envy, Moodiness, Self-Absorption, Unrealistic
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Type FiveHelen Palmer
The Observer Basic Proposition: Love and respect are gained by practicing self-sufficiency. Primary Avoidance: Intrusion Focus of Attention: What others expect. To blocking intrusion and detaching to observe. Cognitive Habit: Detachment Emotional Vice: Avarice Corresponding Virtue: Non-attachment Idealized Self-image: “I am wise” Quality of Higher Being: Omniscience Strengths: Scholarly, Analytical, Self-Reliant Challenges: Withholding self from others, Emotionally detached, Isolated
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Type SixHelen Palmer
The Loyal Skeptic Basic Proposition: Love and protection are gained by vigilance and endurance. Primary Avoidance: Uncertainty Focus of Attention: Hazard Cognitive Habit: Doubt Emotional Vice: Fear Corresponding Virtue: Courage Idealized Self-image: “I am loyal” Quality of Higher Being: Faith Strengths: Bonded, Attentive, Perceptive Challenges: Procrastinating, Reactive, Doubtful
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Type SevenHelen Palmer
The Epicure Basic Proposition: Frustration can be avoided by attending to positive options. Primary Avoidance: Discomfort and Pain Focus of Attention: Positive possibilities in all things Cognitive Habit: Planning Emotional Vice: Gluttony Corresponding Virtue: Constancy of purpose Idealized Self-image: “I'm OK” Quality of Higher Being: Participation in the full spectrum of being Strengths: Optimistic, Fun-loving, Positive Visioning Challenges: Scattered, Impulsive, Self-Referencing
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Type EightHelen Palmer
The Protector Basic Proposition: Love and respect are gained by being strong and just. Primary Avoidance: Vulnerability Focus of Attention: Power and control Cognitive Habit: Balancing the scales of justice. Vengeance. Emotional Vice: Excess (Lust). Corresponding Virtue: Innocence (Receptivity) Idealized Self-image: “I am powerful” Quality of Higher Being: Truth Strengths: Bold, Assertive, Action-oriented Challenges: Domineering, Excessive, Controlling
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Type NineHelen Palmer
The Mediator Basic Proposition: Love and belonging are earned by blending in with other people's agendas. Primary Avoidance: Conflict Focus of attention: Environmental distractions. Primary distraction is other people's wants & needs. Cognitive habit: Indolence. Considers all sides of a question. Obsessive inner rumination. Emotional Vice: Self-Forgetting (spiritual listlessness). Corresponding Virtue: Right Action Idealized Self-image: “I am peaceful” Quality of Higher Being: Love Strengths: Accepting, Calming, Steady, Bonded Challenges: Ambivalent, Forgets own agenda, Self-deprecating, Passive-aggressive
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TYPE ONE - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTIONHelen Palmer
Serenity: The automatic side effect of allowing all feeling impulses into awareness without deflecting the unacceptable ones. . . the interplay of all the positive & negative feelings is allowed to move through the body without inhibition from the thinking self.judging mind recedes. Anger:There is a great attraction to expressing anger through the vehicle of righteous action.Attention locks on the right way to fix what's gone wrong, and anger fuels your conviction.
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TYPE TWO - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
Humility:The recognition of one's exact needs and the natural inclination to take no more & no less than what is necessary. A person who knows his/her own needs will be likely to extend just the right measure of help to others. . . the quality of giving will be in just the right proportion to what is required.Pride:The belief that other people are dependent upon what they choose to give or to withhold. Twos live the ongoing assumption that help emanates from themselves to others, and that w/o them, the rest of the world would be impoverished... their sense of self worth is dependent upon others.
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TYPE THREE - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
THREE Honesty:…. recognize the difference between what their body is really feeling and the habit of shifting presentation in order to get a win.Do I go with what I feel or do I stay with my habit of knowing what to do? The risk in following feelings is that Threes inevitably lose the recognition that achievement guarantees; and the risk of not following feelings is that threes live out life as a fraud.Deceit:. . . aware of the manipulative possibilities of deliberately projecting an image that will generate trust and project success. They also say that they get so immersed in their role that they deceive themselves by paying selective attention to support and discarding negative feedback. . .
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TYPE FOUR - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
FOUR Equanimity (balance):Balance is the resolution of the suffering caused by being pulled to what you cannot have and repelled by what has come to hand...It involves being able to stabilize attention in the present and feeling the satisfaction of having enough.Envy:The knife's twist in the heart when others enjoy the happiness that you long for. Envy fuels your search for the objects and status that supposedly make people happy...You act out the search by a repeating cycle of desire, acquisition, disappointment, and rejection.
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TYPE FIVE - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
FIVE Non-AttachmentRequires that you have a full range of feelings available to you and that you are able to accept any impressions that need to surface into awareness before you let them go.Avarice:When something becomes so valuable that it pervades a Five's private space, when a Five is caught by the wish to possess a person or a thing, then this inner poverty is intensified by the invasion of desire. Fives control by hording space and time...Hording can develop for the resources that support private survival.
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TYPE NINE - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
NINE Right Action...the ability to perceive a correct course of action and to stay on track w/o becoming diverted by inessentials.Sloth (laziness):An over accommodation, a desire to remain comfortable and undisturbed.It feels more comfortable to go along with others than to oppose them.A failure to initiate.Energy for primary goals gets siphoned off to secondary pursuits.
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TYPE SIX - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
SIX Courage:Depends upon the body's ability to act appropriately from a non-thinking state of mind. It is doing before thinking, a time when the body acts before the acquired personality has time to intervene. when doubting mind recedes, there is far less counterforce from the type to interfere with actionFear:Creates dependency on rules and protective authority fear/doubt of those w/power over them, fears of being successful in the eyes of others, fears about, direct anger, suspicious of the motives of others
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TYPE SEVEN - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
SEVEN ConstancyBeing able to continue in a course of action w/o having to introduce diversions or exciting secondary plans.Gluttony (greed):A bodily hunger for excitement and experience...Love the rush of physical energy, the excitement of adventure, and mental stimulation
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TYPE EIGHT - VIRTUE/ PASSION DESCRIPTION Helen Palmer
EIGHT InnocenceWalk into new situations w/o prior ideas or expectations about what they are going to find....open to whatever the situation presents, which allows them to naturally accommodate to a correct course of action.Lust:For the satisfaction of needs...The energy switch is either on or off. A larger-than-life demand to be seen, heard, paid attention to.An escalating desire to get a piece of the action.An urgency to get some more of whatever's vital and good, and to get it firsts.Inclined to follow their impulses...Whatever makes you feel good and powerful must be a correct course of action.
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What are the Triads?
On the simplest level of analysis, the Enneagram is an arrangement of nine personality types in three Triads. There are:three personality types in the Feeling Triad, three in the Thinking Triad, and three in the Instinctive Triad.Each Triad consists of three personality types which are best characterized by the assets and liabilities of that Triad.
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Explain the "dialectic" of the Triads.
Each type results from a "dialectic," consisting of a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, of the psychological faculty characterizing that Triad. In each Triad, one of the types overexpresses the characteristic faculty of the Triad, another type underexpresses the faculty, and the third is most out of touch with the faculty.
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Explain the Dialectical Structure of the Feeling Triad.
The Two has overexpressed its feelings, expressing only its positive emotions while repressing its negative ones, sometimes histrionically or even hysterically. The Three is most out of touch with its feelings, suppressing them in order to function more effectively and to make a favorable impression on others. The Four has underdeveloped the personal expression of its feelings, revealing itself indirectly through some form of art or aesthetic living. Further, the Four's feelings are highly influenced by and dependent on thinking about their feelings.
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Explain the Dialectical Structure of the ThinkingTriad.
The Five's ability to think is overexpressed: it substitutes thinking for doing, endlessly preoccupied with ever more complex, yet isolated, thoughts. The Six is most out of touch with its own thoughts, thus Sixes look for reassurance and confirmation about what they think, or tend to get stuck in circular thinking patterns that have no grounding in their immediate experience. The Seven has an underdeveloped thinking style, in that Sevens tend to leave their trains of thought incomplete. They do not finish one thought before another grabs their attention. Also, the Seven's style of thinking is highly dependent on activity, on anticipating what they are going to do.
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Explain the Dialectical Structure of the Explain the Dialectical Structure of the Instinctive Triad.
The Eight has overdeveloped its instinctive responses to the world, moving on "gut" hunches and powerful reactions but not pausing sufficiently to foresee the consequences of its actions. The Nine is most out of touch with its instincts, and thus its ability to relate to the environment in an immediate way. Nines disengage from their instinctive drives and from their reactions to the world so as to maintain an inner stability and peace. And the One has underdeveloped its instinctive responses, repressing them with a strict, superego-driven conscience. Instinct is usually the source of drive that propels people into action, but in Ones, instinct is highly influenced by and dependent on feelings, particularly anger.
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How do you identify your Basic Personality Type?
Which of the following nine roles fits you best most of the time? Or, if you were to describe yourself in one word, which of the following words would come closest?The Helper (the Two)The Motivator (the Three)The Individualist (the Four)The Investigator (the Five)The Loyalist (the Six)The Enthusiast (the Seven)The Leader (the Eight)The Peacemaker (the Nine)The Reformer (the One)We will now expand these one-word descriptions. Read the following four-word descriptions to see if you still feel comfortable with the type with which you have just tentatively identified yourself. The Two is caring, generous, possessive, and manipulative.The Three is adaptable, ambitious, image-conscious, and hostile.The Four is intuitive, expressive, self-absorbed, and depressive.The Five is perceptive, original, detached, and eccentric.The Six is engaging, committed, defensive, and paranoid.The Seven is enthusiastic, accomplished, uninhibited, and manic.The Eight is self-confident, decisive, dominating, and combative.The Nine is peaceful, reassuring, complacent, and neglectful.The One is principled, orderly, perfectionistic, and self-righteous.
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Define the Feeling Triad: Personality Type Two.
The strengths of healthy Twos result from the ability to sustain positive feelings for others. Healthy Twos are compassionate, generous, loving, and thoughtful; they go out of their way to be of service to people. Average Twos are possessive, controlling, and needy, but not able to express their needs directly. They want to be loved, but often intrude on others too much. Unhealthy Twos deceive themselves about the presence of their negative feelings, particularly rage and resentment. They want others to see them as loving and good all of the time even when they manipulate people and act selfishly.
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Which are "primary" personality types and which are the "secondary" types?
We refer to the three types on the equilateral triangle—the Three, Six, and Nine—as the "primary" personality types because they have the most trouble and are the most blocked in some way with feeling, thinking, or instinct. The remaining six personality types—the One, Four, Two, Eight, Five, and Seven on the hexagram—are the "secondary" types because they are more mixed and not as out of touch with feeling, thinking, or instinct.
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Define the Feeling Triad: Personality Type Four.
The strengths of healthy Fours involve intuitive self-awareness.Healthy Fours are very personal, revealing and communicating their feelings in ways that enable others to get in touch with their own emotions. Average Fours become too aware of their feelings, especially their negative ones, withdrawing from others and living too much in their imaginations. Unhealthy Fours are extremely depressed and alienated from others, tormented by self-doubt and self-hatred. They become suicidal when they can no longer cope with reality.
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Has everyone the ability to feel, think, and respond instinctively to the environment?
Yes. No matter which Triad the basic personality type is in,everyone has the ability to feel, think, and respond instinctively to the environment. We become one of the nine personality types because our sense of self, our ego, beginning in early childhood, has become more identified with one faculty than with the remaining two. But this does not mean that the remaining two faculties are not also a part of us. They are, and we are who we are because all three faculties operate in an ever changing balance to produce our personality.
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What is the Basic Personality Type?
The simplest way to think of the Enneagram is as a configuration of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. One of the nine points on the circumference of the Enneagram denotes a particular personality type which characterizes you more fully and accurately than any other type. This is your basic personality type. Which basic personality type a person has represents the total outcome of all childhood factors that have gone into the formation of the child's personality, including genetics. People do not change from one basic personality type to another. 1) People do change in many ways throughout their lives, but their basic personality type does not change.2) The descriptions of the personality types are universal and apply equally to males and females.3) Not everything in the description of your basic type will apply to you all the time. This is because people fluctuate among the healthy, average, and unhealthy traits that make up their personality type. If you were to become healthy or unhealthy, you would do so in the way the Enneagram predicts.4) The Enneagram uses numbers to designate each of the personality types. Using numbers is an unbiased, shorthand way of indicating a lot about a person. 5) No personality type is inherently better or worse than any other. Each type has its particular strengths and weaknesses, and it is extremely useful to know what they are. While all the personality types have assets and liabilities, some types are usually more desirable than others in any given culture or group. The ideal is to become your best self, not to envy the strengths and potentials of others.
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How do the Fours of the Feeling Triad cope with their common issues?
The issues of Fours are virtually the reverse of those found in Twos. Fours have problems with their identity because they are never quite sure who they really are. Fours do not identify much with other people, and so turn inward to the world of feelings and imagination to construct a self-image. Unfortunately, this self-image may have only a passing resemblance to many of the realities of their lives, so Fours come to reject their real life in favor of the idealized self-image that exists in their imaginations. To their continual frustration, they can never live up to the self-image they have constructed for themselves.Furthermore, Fours are almost the opposite of Twos in that they look primarily inward, rather than to other people, to maintain their sense of self. Also, while Twos need to suppress many of their negative feelings to maintain their self-image, Fours suppress many of their positive feelings to keep their self-image as a "victim" intact. Fours derive a stronger sense of self by seeing how different they are from other people. They have developed a self-image which heightens their uniqueness, even to the point of alienation, while suppressing the aspects of their personality which seem to them "ordinary" or "regular."
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Define the Feeling Triad: Personality Type Three.
The strengths of healthy Threes involve the desire to improve themselves and their ability to adapt to others. Healthy Threes quickly learn how to make the best of most situations, and they are interested in building and maintaining high self-esteem. They are able to motivate others to want to be like them because they are genuinely admirable in some socially valued way. Average Threes, however, are the most out of touch with their emotions and with their individuality. They suppress their feelings in order to perform more effectively and to make others like them. They lose touch with their feelings as they try to get the success and affirmation they crave. Unhealthy Threes can become hostile and extremely malicious if they do not get the admiring attention they desire.
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Define the Thinking Triad: Personality Type Five.
The assets of healthy Fives make them the most profoundly perceptive of the personality types. Healthy Fives are extremely knowledgeable about some aspect of their environment, and are capable of brilliant, original, inventive solutions to problems. However, average Fives feel more at home with thinking and imagining than with doing, and so get lost in the mazes of their minds while their lives and opportunities diminish. As a result of thinking too much, unhealthy Fives create more problems for themselves than they solve because they have become so completely isolated from reality. They are unable to know what is real or unreal, true or untrue.
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What is the common problem of the Feeling Triad?
The Two, Three, and Four have common problems with their identity and with hostility, which they may take out either on themselves or on others, or both. Their problems with identity stem from a rejection of their own authentic self in favor of a persona that they believe would be more acceptable in some way. Although all of the nine types are involved in maintaining a "false self-image," this is the central problem for these types. Thus, all three are highly concerned with issues of self-esteem, personal value, appreciation, and shame, and with getting others to validate the self-image they have created.
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How do the Twos of the Feeling Triad cope with their common issues?
The underlying problem is that Twos look primarily outside themselves to other people for validation of their "selfless" self-image. They seek specific responses that let them know that they are loved and appreciated. If these responses are not forthcoming, Twos repress their disappointment and redouble their efforts to get the positive reactions they want. To the degree that their self-esteem has been damaged, however, Twos become caught in a pattern of trying too hard to win people over, eventually driving them away, and becoming more resentful and heartbroken themselves.The self-image of Twos is bolstered by a sense of closeness and connection with others.
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How do the Threes of the Feeling Triad cope with their common issues?
Threes, in the center of the Triad, both look to others to validate a positive self-image, like Twos, and, like Fours, look inward to their imaginations to create an idealized self that they try to actualize. Of these types, Threes are potentially the most estranged from their own feelings and needs because their image concerns are both externally and internally generated. Threes look outside themselves to determine what activities or qualities are valued by the people who matter to them, and they try to become the kind of person who has those qualities. At the same time, they engage in a lot of inner dialogue and imagination about the kind of person they would like to become. This can be as simple as having inner "pep talks," or may involve long-term fantasies of success and adulation. But as with the Two and the Four, Threes have rejected their authentic self with the result that none of their accomplishments can really affect or satisfy them.
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Define the Thinking Triad: Personality Type Six.
The strengths of healthy Sixes involve the ability to think systematically and to foresee potential problems. When healthy Sixes act, it is to everyone's mutual benefit. As loyal, and faithful friends, they are committed to others, and they look for the same qualities from others. Average Sixes, however, look outside themselves too much for "permission" to act from an authority figure or belief system which will tell them what to do. Unsure of themselves unless the authority is on their side, they nevertheless feel they must assert themselves against the authority to prove their independence, at least from time to time. Unhealthy Sixes succumb to anxiety and feelings of inferiority and insecurity, self-destructively bringing about the very consequences they most fear.
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Define the Thinking Triad: Personality Type Seven.
The assets of healthy Sevens involve their remarkably quick and avid minds, which give them the ability to do many things exceptionally well. Healthy Sevens are exuberantly enthusiastic about the environment, becoming extremely accomplished in a wide variety of activities. However, the thinking of average Sevens becomes extremely restless, moving from one topic to the next before anything can be completed, engaged in an unending search for new experiences. This causes them to do more of everything, although, ironically, the more they do, the less they are satisfied. They want to keep their minds occupied at all times so that their anxiety will not get to them. They constantly imagine that they are "missing out" on something that would be more enjoyable than their current activity, and greedily want more of everything so they will not feel deprived. Unhealthy Sevens become self-centered, dissipated escapists, flying impulsively out of control.
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What is the common problem of the Thinking Triad?
The Five, Six, and Seven have common problems with insecurity and anxiety which they handle in different ways, depending on the personality type. In all three types, a pervasive fear or anxiety arises from a profound feeling of lack of support, either from others or from the environment. Because they are anxious about not having the support they feel they need, the types of this Triad each use a different solution to gain some degree of security as a defense against their fear.
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How do the Fives of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
Fives are anxious about the world around them and their ability to cope with it. They experience the environment as potentially threatening and overwhelming, and view themselves as unable to meet many of life's demands. In response to these fears, Fives seek security in two main ways: first, by developing expertise in some area of knowledge or activity as a way of reinforcing their self-confidence, and second, by reducing their connections with and dependencies on others as much as possible. Fives begin to view most aspects of the external world as overpowering, and so increasingly withdraw into the safety of their minds and imaginations. Basically, Fives deal with their fear of the environment by retreating from it until they can develop the skill or knowledge to cope with it.
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Define the Instinctive Triad: Personality Type One.
The strengths of healthy Ones involve the ability to relate impartially to the environment; they are consequently able to act with wisdom and conviction. Healthy Ones are reasonable, fair-minded, and conscientious, guided by principles and an inner "knowing" which give them strong consciences and a clear understanding of right and wrong. However, average Ones are out of balance with their natural drives, feelings, and instincts, which they try to control too much. They strive for nothing less than absolute perfection, finding it difficult to accept anything as it is since it can always be better. Unhealthy Ones are intolerant and self-righteous, becoming obsessed about the corruption they find in others while ignoring their own contradictory actions. In the name of the highest ideals, they can become extraordinarily cruel to themselves and others.
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How do the Seven of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
In type Seven there is virtually a reverse of the strategy of the Five. Sevens, at first glance, do not appear to be afraid of very much at all. They approach life with great gusto and exuberance, and do not seem to hesitate to explore new experiences, activities, or relationships. A closer look, though, will reveal that Sevens are anxious about their inner reality. Not wanting to feel their anxiety and pain, they plunge into activity as soon as any degree of fear arises into awareness. Sevens doubt their ability to cope with their losses and grief, and so turn to the environment for support and to defend themselves against intolerable feelings. Whereas Fives retreat from the external world of activity into the security of their minds, Sevens flee from the anxiety in their minds by finding security in the external world of activity.
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How do the Sixes of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
Sixes, in the middle of the Thinking Triad, have anxieties about both the external environment and their inner world of fear and grief. Thus, Sixes try to establish support systems in the world that they hope will fend off real world dangers. At the same time, they attempt to establish a consistent belief system which will also give them a sense of security and defend them from their inner demons. Often, Sixes will be more direct in the ways that they seek security and support, turning to things outside of themselves as sources of reassurance. What Sixes depend on for security could be anything from a secure job to a good friend to a philosophical or religious system of thought. In any of these cases, Sixes illustrate clearly the central themes for the whole Triad: anxiety, a feeling of being without adequate support, and a search for security.
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Define the Instinctive Triad: Personality Type Eight.
The strengths of healthy Eights are based on a tremendous vitality and a keen intuition that can see possibilities in situations and in people that others often miss. They feel strong and capable, and can use their immense self-confidence, courage, and leadership abilities to inspire others to great accomplishments. Average Eights, however, tend to dominate everything in the environment too aggressively, asserting themselves impulsively and indulging their instinctual needs for control and satisfaction without much regard for the consequences. Unhealthy Eights relate to their environment as bullies and tyrants, ruthlessly tearing down anyone and anything that stands in their way.
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Define the Instinctive Triad: Personality Type Nine.
The assets of healthy Nines are based on their openness, their ability to identify intimately with a person or belief, and a centeredness that enables them to remain calm even when others around them are reacting hysterically. The receptiveness, optimism, and peacefulness of healthy Nines are reassuring to others, enabling others to flourish because Nines create a harmonious atmosphere for everyone. However, average Nines undermine their own development (and their ability to deal with reality) by disengaging from a real, grounded connection with their own drives, with others, and with the environment. To maintain their tranquillity, Nines begin to idealize the other—whether a person or an abstraction—too much. And unhealthy Nines become dangerously fatalistic and neglectful as they cling to what have become little more than illusions about reality from which they have dissociated themselves.
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What is the common problem of the Instinctive Triad?
The Eight, Nine, and One have common problems with repression and aggression which they handle in different ways, depending on the personality type. All three of these types can also be seen as resisting some part of their experience to maintain ego-boundaries, especially by defensively resisting the influence of others in different ways.
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How do the Eights of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
Eights are perhaps the most openly aggressive or assertive of the nine types. They express their instinctive energy directly, standing up for themselves and saying what they mean. Their powerful connection with their own vitality gives them great self-confidence, and they are less intimidated by conflicts than the other types. Essentially, Eights resist the external world, especially other people. They do not want to be too influenced by others for fear that others would get control over them and harm them. To prevent this from occurring, Eights develop a tough, defiant stance against the world, aggressively asserting their wills to prove to themselves that others cannot "get to them." To do this, though, Eights must repress their vulnerability, their tenderness, and their desire to be close to others—a cost that eventually takes its toll on their health and their spirit.
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How do the Ones of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
In many ways, the pattern of Ones is almost the reverse of that of Eights. Ones are also aggressive, but more subtly so. Much of the aggression of Ones is directed at themselves in a steady stream of self-criticism and demands for better behavior. Ones are quite capable of being aggressive with others as well, but when they are, it is usually because they are trying to deflect the attacks of their own superego. While Eights give free rein to their instinctive drives and intuitions, Ones tend to repress them, becoming tense and angry from the resulting inner conflict. Just as Eights resist the external world, Ones primarily resist their inner world. They are afraid that their impulses, desires, instincts, or other irrational parts of themselves may betray them, so they stay vigilantly in control of their responses and reactions as much as possible. Ironically, the more they do this, the more volatile their reactions and the more out of control they become. Ones ultimately become worn down and dispirited from their endless inner war.
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How do the Nines of the Thinking Triad cope with their common issues?
Nines are the center of this Triad, and therefore resist both the influence of the outer environment, like Eights, and their inner world of instinctive drives, like Ones. Eights, however, are able to use their instincts to defend against the world, but since Nines repress their instincts, their responses become "frozen." They try to maintain a balance between the demands of the external environment, especially people, and the potential turmoil of their inner reactions and responses to those demands, especially anger. The result is a kind of cancellation of their own instinctual life and drives, with a resulting apathy and loss of vitality. Thus, as much as possible, they attempt to inhabit a safe middle ground in which nothing can get to them, creating an idealized version of reality that they find less disturbing. Nines use their imaginations to relate to their image of others in a way that does not threaten their inner stability and peace. Thus, Nines gain some freedom from conflicts and upsets, but they sacrifice a real and vibrant experience of their own lives. Like Eights and Ones, they also suffer a loss of health and motivation as a result of continually resisting life.
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The Wing
One of the two types adjacent to your basic type is called your "wing."Your basic type dominates your overall personality, while the wing complements it and adds important, sometimes contradictory, elements to your total personality. The wing is the "second side" of your overall personality, and you must take it into consideration to understand yourself or someone else. In some cases, people will show a very strong influence from their wing, while in others, even of the same basic type and wing combination, the influence may be slight. Everyone has both wings in the sense that to some extent we all have all nine types in our personality. In our experience, however, the vast majority of people that we have encountered have a dominant wing, and they can be distinguished from members of the same type who have the other wing.
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The Levels of Development
There are nine Levels of Development within each personality type—three in the healthy section, three in the average section, and three in the unhealthy section. Moreover, the traits which appear at each of the Levels of Development are not arbitrary; they are arrayed in related clusters at each Level. To understand an individual accurately, you must perceive not only his or her basic type and wing, but also where the person lies along the Levels of Development of the basic personality type.The Levels help make sense of each personality type as a whole by providing a framework upon which to place each healthy, average, and unhealthy trait. In other words, you have to diagnose (to simplify for a moment) whether the person is healthy, average, or unhealthy.The Levels are also worth understanding because it is in the healthy range of the continuum that we are able to move in the Direction of Integration, just as it is in the average to unhealthy range that we "act out" in the Direction of Disintegration.
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What do the lines of the Enneagram mean?
The way the numbered points are connected is significant psychologically because the lines between each of the types denote the Direction of Integration (health, self-actualization) and the Direction of Disintegration (unhealth, neurosis) for each personality type.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Two: The Helper
Healthy:Empathetic, compassionate, feeling with and for others. Caring and concerned about their needs. Outgoing and passionate, they offer friendship and kindness. Thoughtful, warm-hearted, forgiving, and sincere.Encouraging and appreciative, able to see the good in others. Dedicated and supportive of people, bringing out the best in them. Service is important: they are nurturing, generous, and giving—truly loving people. At Their Best: Deeply unselfish, humble, and altruistic, giving unconditional love to self and others. Feel it is a privilege to be in others' lives. Radiantly joyful and gracious.
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What is the Direction of Disintegration?
1-4-2-8-5-7-19-6-3-9The Direction of Disintegration for each type is indicated on the Enneagram by the sequence of numbers 1-4-2-8-5-7-1. This means that types in their average to unhealthy range of behaviors, under conditions of increased stress and anxiety, will begin to exhibit or "act out" some of the average to unhealthy behaviors of the type in their Direction of Disintegration. Likewise, on the equilateral triangle, the sequence is 9-6-3-9.
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What is the Direction of Integration?
The Direction of Integration is indicated for each type by the reverse of the disintegration sequences. Each type moves toward increasing integration in a direction which is the opposite of its unhealthy direction. The sequence for the Direction of Integration is 1-7-5-8-2-4-1.On the equilateral triangle, the sequence is 9-3-6-9.
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What is the goal of the Enneagram?
Ultimately, the goal is to move completely around the Enneagram, integrating what each type symbolizes and acquiring the active use of the healthy potentials of all the types. The ideal is to become a balanced, fully functioning human being, and each of the types of the Enneagram symbolizes different important aspects of what we need to achieve this end. Therefore, which personality type you begin life as is ultimately unimportant. What matters is what you do with your personality type, and how well (or badly) you use it as the beginning point for your development into a fuller, more integrated person.
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Profile the average level of Type Two: The Helper
Average: Engage in "people pleasing" in order to be closer to others, becoming overly friendly, emotionally demonstrative, and full of "good intentions." Bestow seductive attention on others: approval, "strokes," flattery. Talkative, especially about love and their relationships.Become overly intimate and intrusive: they need to be needed, so they hover, meddle, and control in the name of love. Want others to depend on them: give, but expect a return. Send mixed messages. Enveloping and possessive: the self-sacrificial, parenting persons who cannot do enough for others, wearing themselves out for everyone, creating needs for themselves to fulfill.Increasingly self-important and self-satisfied, feel they are indispensable, although they overrate their efforts in others' behalf. Seek specific forms of repayment for their help. Hypochondria, becoming a "martyr" for others. Overbearing, patronizing, presumptuous.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Two: The Helper
Unhealthy: Manipulative and self-serving, instilling guilt by making others feel indebted to them. Abuse food and medications to "stuff feelings" and get sympathy. Undermine people by making belittling, disparaging remarks. Extremely self-deceptive about their motives and how selfish and/or aggressive their behavior is.Domineering and coercive: feel entitled to get anything they want from others and are bitterly resentful and angry. Somatization of their aggressions results in chronic health problems as they vindicate themselves by "falling apart" and burdening others.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Two: The Helper.
Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Three: The Motivator
Healthy: Self-assured and energetic, with high self-esteem: they believe in themselves and their own value. Adaptable, well-adjusted, and charming, often attractive and popular. Realistic and purposeful with a good sense of their potential.Ambitious to improve themselves, to "be all that they can be"—often become outstanding, a kind of human ideal, embodying widely admired qualities. Others are motivated to be like them in some positive way. High-spirited, goal-oriented, and persistent. They are effective, industrious people. At Their Best: Inner-directed and authentic, everything they seem to be. Accept their limitations and live within them. Self-deprecatory sense of humor and a childlike innocence emerge. Charitable, genuinely modest, and benevolent.
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Profile the average level of Type Three: The Motivator
Average: Highly concerned with performance, doing the job well, being superior, and rising above others. Compare themselves with others in search for status and success. Become driven careerists and social climbers, invested in achievement, exclusivity, and being a "winner."Become image-conscious, highly concerned with how they are perceived. Begin to present themselves according to the expectations of others and what they need to do in order to be successful. Pragmatic and efficient, but also studied, losing touch with their own feelings beneath a smooth façade. Problems with intimacy, credibility, and expediency emerge.Want to impress others with their superiority: constantly promoting themselves, making themselves sound better than they really are. Narcissistic, with grandiose, inflated notions about themselves and their talents. Exhibitionistic and seductive, as if saying, "Look at me!" Arrogance and contempt is a defense against feeling jealous of others and their success.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Three: The Motivator
Unhealthy: Fearing failure and humiliation, they misrepresent themselves, distorting the truth of their accomplishments. They can be extremely unprincipled, covetous of the success of others, and willing to do "whatever it takes" to preserve the illusion of their superiority. Exploitative and opportunistic, but also deceptive so that their mistakes and wrongdoings will not be exposed. Pathological lying, extreme hostility, and delusional jealousy: betraying and sabotaging people in order to triumph over them. May become vindictive, attempting to ruin what they cannot have. Relentless, obsessive about destroying whatever reminds them of their own shortcomings and failures. Psychopathic tendencies: murder.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Three: The Motivator
Key Motivations: Want to feel valuable and worthwhile, to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Four: The Individualist
Healthy:Self-aware, introspective, engaged in a "search for self," aware of feelings and inner impulses. Sensitive and intuitive both to self and others: gentle, tactful, compassionate.Highly personal, individualistic, true to their feelings. Self-revealing, emotionally honest, humane. Ironic view of self and life: can be serious and funny, vulnerable and emotionally strong. At Their Best: Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing, and regenerating—able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: redemptive and self-creative.
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Profile the average level of Type Four: The Individualist
Average: Take an artistic, romantic orientation to life, creating a beautiful, aesthetic environment to cultivate and prolong personal feelings.Heighten reality through fantasy, passionate feelings, and the imagination. Long for the idealized partner. To stay in touch with feelings, they interiorize and personalize things, becoming self-absorbed, hypersensitive, shy, and self-conscious. Temperamental and moody, they play "hard to get," but still feel like outsiders. Feel that they are different from others and are therefore exempt from living as everyone else does until their emotional needs are met. Become melancholy dreamers, disdainful, decadent, and sensual, living in a fantasy world. Self-pity and envy of others leads to self-indulgence. Become increasingly impractical, unproductive, and pretentious—yet, waiting for a rescuer.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Four: The Individualist
Unhealthy: When dreams fail, become self-inhibiting and angry at self, depressed and alienated from self and others, blocked and emotionally paralyzed. Ashamed of self, fatigued and unable to function. Stay withdrawn to protect their self-image and to buy time to sort out feelings.Tormented by delusional self-contempt, self-reproaches, self-hatred, and morbid thoughts: everything about them becomes a source of torment. Blaming others, they drive away anyone who tries to help them. Despairing, feel hopeless and become self-destructive, possibly abusing alcohol or drugs to escape. In the extreme: emotional breakdown or suicide is likely.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Four: The Individualist
Key Motivations: Want to be themselves, to express themselves in something beautiful, to find the ideal partner, to withdraw to protect their feelings, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Five: The Investigator.
Healthy: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Are mentally alert, curious, have a searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Display foresight and prediction abilities. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention. Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical. At Their Best: Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving things.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Five: The Investigator.
Unhealthy: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they reject and repulse others and all social attachments. Get obsessed with yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias. Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones.
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Profile the average level of Type Five: The Investigator.
Average: Begin conceptualizing everything before acting—working things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing, gathering resources. Studious, acquiring technique. Become specialized and often "intellectual": involvement in research, scholarship, and building theories. Increasingly detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by offbeat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a "disembodied mind," although high-strung and intense. Begin to take an antagonistic stance toward anything which would interfere with their inner world and personal vision. Become provocative and abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical and argumentative.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Five: The Investigator.
Key Motivations: Want to be capable and competent, to master a body of knowledge and skill, to explore reality, to remain undisturbed by others, to reduce their needs.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Six: The Loyalist.
Healthy: Able to engage others and identify with them; steadfast, earnest, and affectionate. Trust important: bonding with others, forming relationships and alliances. Dedicated to individuals and movements in which they deeply believe. Community builders: responsible, reliable, trustworthy. Good foresight and strong organizational ability: natural troubleshooters. Hardworking and persevering, sacrificing for others; they create stability and security in their world, bringing a cooperative spirit. At Their Best: Become self-affirming, trusting of self and others, independent yet symbiotically interdependent and cooperative, as an equal. Belief in self leads to true courage, positive thinking, leadership, and rich self-expression.
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Profile the average level of Type Six: The Loyalist.
Average: Start investing their time and energy into whatever they believe will be safe and stable. Organizing and structuring, they look to alliances and authorities for security and continuity. Make many commitments to others, hoping they will be reciprocated. Constantly vigilant, anticipating problems. They seek clear guidelines and feel more secure when systems and procedures are well-defined. To resist having more demands made on them, they react against others passive-aggressively. Become evasive, indecisive, cautious, procrastinating, and ambivalent. Strong self-doubt as well as suspicion about others' motives. Are highly reactive, anxious, and complaining, giving contradictory "mixed signals." Internal confusion makes them react unpredictably. To compensate for insecurities, they become belligerent, mean-spirited, and sarcastic, blaming others for problems. Highly partisan and defensive, dividing people into friends and enemies while looking for threats to their own security. Authoritarian, prejudiced, and fear-instilling to silence their own fears.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Six: The Loyalist.
Unhealthy: Become clingingly dependent and self-disparaging, with acute inferiority feelings. Seeing themselves as helpless and incompetent, they seek out a stronger authority or belief to resolve all problems. Submissive and masochistic. Feeling persecuted, that others are "out to get them," they lash out and act irrationally, bringing about what they fear. Fanaticism, violence. Hysterical, and seeking to escape punishment, they become self-destructive and suicidal. Alcoholism, drug overdoses, "skid row," self-abasing behavior.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Six: The Loyalist.
Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported, to have the approval of others, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to defend their beliefs.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Seven: The Enthusiast.
Healthy: Highly responsive, excitable, enthusiastic about sensation and experience. Most extroverted type: stimuli bring immediate responses—they find everything invigorating. Lively, vivacious, eager, spontaneous, resilient, cheerful. Easily become accomplished achievers, generalists who do many different things well: multitalented. Practical, productive, usually prolific, cross-fertilizing areas of interest. At Their Best: Assimilate experiences in depth, making them deeply grateful and appreciative for what they have. Become awed by the simple wonders of life: joyous and ecstatic. Intimations of spiritual reality, of the boundless goodness of life.
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Profile the average level of Type Seven: The Enthusiast.
Average: As appetites increase, become acquisitive, materialistic, "worldly wise," constantly amusing themselves with new things and experiences: the sophisticate, connoisseur, and consumer. Money, variety, keeping up with the latest trends important.Become hyperactive, unable to say no to themselves, to deny themselves anything. Uninhibited, doing and saying whatever comes to mind: storytelling, flamboyant exaggerations, wisecracking, performing. Fear being bored, so keep in perpetual motion, but do too many things—become superficial dilettantes. Conspicuous consumption and all forms of excess. Self-centered and greedy, never feeling that they have enough. Demanding and pushy, yet unsatisfied, crude, jaded. Addictive, hardened, insensitive.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Seven: The Enthusiast.
Unhealthy: Become offensive and abusive while going after what they want. Impulsive and infantile: do not know when to stop. Addictions and excesses take their toll, leaving debauched, depraved, dissipated escapists. In flight from self, they act out impulses rather than deal with anxiety or frustrations: go out of control, have erratic mood swings, and act compulsively (manias). Finally, their energy and health is completely spent: become claustrophobic and panic-stricken. Often give up on themselves and life: deep depression and despair, self-destructive overdoses, impulsive suicide.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Seven: The Enthusiast.
Key Motivations: Want to be happy and satisfied, to have a wide variety of experiences, to keep their options open, to enjoy life and amuse themselves, to escape anxiety.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Eight: The Leader.
Healthy: Self-assertive, self-confident, and strong: able to stand up for what they need and want. A resourceful, "can do" attitude and passionate inner drive. Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen, champion people, providing, protective, and honorable, they carry others with their strength. At Their Best: Become self-restrained and magnanimous, merciful and forbearing, mastering self through their self-surrender to a higher authority. Courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence. May achieve true heroism and historical greatness.
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Profile the average level of Type Eight: The Leader.
Average: Self-sufficiency, financial independence, and having enough resources are important concerns: become enterprising, pragmatic, "rugged individualists," wheeler-dealers. Risk-taking, hardworking, denying own emotional needs. Begin to dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts. The "boss" whose word is law: swaggering, boastful, forceful, and expansive. Proud, egocentric, want to impose their will and vision; not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect. Become highly combative and intimidating: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything becomes a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off-balance and insecure.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type Eight: The Leader.
Unhealthy: Defying any attempts to control them, they become completely ruthless, dictatorial, "might makes right." The criminal and outlaw, renegade and con artist. Hardhearted, immoral, and potentially violent. Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania. Feel omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly overextend themselves. If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Eight: The Leader.
Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to resist their weakness, to have an impact on the environment, to assert themselves, to stay in control, to prevail over others, to be invincible.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Nine: The Peacemaker.
Healthy: Deeply receptive, accepting, unselfconscious, emotionally stable and serene. Trusting of self and others, at ease with self and life, innocent and simple. Patient, unpretentious, good-natured, genuinely nice. Imaginative and creative, attuned to nonverbal communication. Optimistic, reassuring, supportive: have a healing and calming influence—harmonizing groups, bringing people together. A good mediator, synthesizer, and communicator. At Their Best: Become self-possessed, feeling autonomous and fulfilled: have great equanimity and contentment because they are present to themselves. Paradoxically, at one with self, and thus able to form more profound relationships. More alive, awake, alert to self and others.
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Profile the average level of Type Nine: The Peacemaker.
Average: Become self-effacing and agreeable, accommodating themselves, idealizing others and "going along" with things to avoid conflict. Have a "philosophy of life" that enables them to quiet their anxieties quickly. Submerge themselves in fulfilling functions for others. In their reactions, they are unresponsive and complacent, walking away from problems and "sweeping them under the rug." Become passive, disengaged, unreflective, and inattentive. Thinking becomes hazy and ruminative, mostly about their fantasies, as they begin to "tune out" reality, becoming oblivious. Emotional indolence, unwillingness to exert self (and stay focused) on problems: passive-aggressive and indifferent. Begin to minimize problems to appease others and to have "peace at any price." Become fatalistic and resigned, but also stubborn and resistant to influence. Practice wishful thinking and wait for magical solutions. Inadvertently create conflicts with others by their denial and obstinance.
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Profile the healthy level of Type Nine: The Peacemaker.
Unhealthy: Can be repressed, undeveloped, and ineffectual. Do not want to deal with problems: become depressed and listless, dissociating self from all conflicts. Neglectful and dangerously irresponsible. Wanting to block out of awareness anything that could affect them, they dissociate so much that they eventually cannot function: become numb, depersonalized.Becoming severely disoriented and catatonic, they abandon themselves, turning into shattered shells. Multiple personalities possible.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type Nine: The Peacemaker.
Key Motivations: To have serenity and peace of mind, to create harmony in their environment, to preserve things as they are, to avoid conflicts and tension, to escape upsetting problems and demands on them.
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Profile the average level of Type One: The Reformer
Average: Dissatisfied with reality, they become high-minded idealists, feeling that it is up to them to improve everything. Crusaders, advocates, critics, they embrace "causes" and point out how things "ought" to be. Afraid of making a mistake: everything must be consistent with their ideals. Become orderly and well-organized, but impersonal, rigid, emotionally constricted, keeping their feelings and impulses in check. Often workaholics—"anal-compulsive," punctual, pedantic, and fastidious. Highly critical both of self and others: picky, judgmental, perfectionistic. Very opinionated about everything: correcting people and badgering them to "do the right thing"—as they see it. Impatient, never satisfied with anything unless it is done according to their prescriptions. Moralizing, scolding, abrasive, and indignantly angry.
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Profile the unhealthy level of Type One: The Reformer
Unhealthy: Can be highly dogmatic, self-righteous, intolerant, and inflexible. Begin dealing in absolutes: they alone know "the Truth"; everyone else is wrong. Make very severe judgments of others, while rationalizing their own actions. Become obsessive about imperfection and the wrongdoing of others. Begin to act in contradictory ways, hypocritically doing the opposite of what they preach. Become condemnatory, punitive, and cruel in order to rid themselves of whatever they believe is disturbing them. Severe depression, nervous breakdowns, and suicide attempts are likely.
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Profile the healthy level of Type One: The Reformer
Healthy: Conscientious, with strong personal convictions: they have an intense sense of right and wrong, personal and moral values. Wish to be rational, reasonable, and self-disciplined, mature and moderate in all things. Highly principled, strive to be fair, objective, and ethical: truth and justice are primary values. Sense of responsibility, personal integrity, and of having a higher purpose often make them teachers and witnesses to the truth. At Their Best: Become extraordinarily wise and discerning. By accepting what is, they become transcendentally realistic, knowing the best thing to do in all circumstances. Humane, inspiring, and hopeful: the truth will be heard.
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Profile the Key Motivations of Type One: The Reformer
Key Motivations: Want to be right, to have integrity and balance, to strive higher and improve others, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.
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A brief definition of the Self-Preservation instinct:
People of this Instinctual type are preoccupied with basic survival needs as they translate in our contemporary society.Self-Preservation types are concerned with money, food, housing, health, physical safety, and comfort. Being safe and physically comfortable are priorities. In a nutshell, no matter what Enneagram personality type is involved, Self-Preservation types are focused on enhancing their personal security and physical comfort.
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A brief definition of the Social instinct:
This variant is focused on their interactions with other people and with the sense of value or esteem they derive from their participation in collective activities. These include work, family, hobbies, clubs—basically any arena in which Social types can interact with others for some shared purpose. The instinct underlying this behavior was an important one in human survival. In a nutshell, no matter what Enneagram personality type is involved, Social types are focused on interacting with people in ways that will build their personal value, their sense of accomplishment, and their security of "place" with others.
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A brief definition of the Sexual instinct:
Sexual types are focused on having intense, intimate interactions and experiences with others and with the environment to give them a powerful sense of "aliveness."
