Types and the Enneagram

Integral—AQAL—famously gives an amazingly complete picture of the universe through quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types. Within our shared humanity we are all unique combinations of types of individual human being, and there are countless typology systems.

I’ve found that any coherent typology system is useful. Find yourself somewhere in the system and then discover more of who you are using the system. Strangely (to me), I’ve found this to be even true for birth date oriented systems like human design and astrology. I don’t quite see how they work, but they often seem accurate and have been enormously useful to my clients over the years.

Philosophers and traditions have always postulated typology systems such as the Greek four humors (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic), Aristotle’s vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls, and the Taoist 5 elements. Some systems have made claims about body type correlations like Ayurveda’s pitta, kapha, and vata, and William Sheldon’s mesomorph, ectomorph, and endomorph.

Psychology in the 20th century generated types from two general sources: people starting with a model and creating a typology system (like Freud’s oral, anal, and genital, or attachment researchers secure and insecure attachment styles) and scientists using self-report and factor analysis to look for types independent of theory (like the five-factor model).

Many psychological typologies are explicitly pathology based. Take the MMPI and you’ll get multiple scores of your relative pathology on dimensions like depression, paranoia, and lying. Some are implicitly pathology based like the HEXACO system of honesty/humility, extraversion, emotionality, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Low on honesty/humility bodes badly for you no matter what your scores are on the other scales.

The enneagram is based on spirit. Desert monks in the Mideast almost two thousand years ago saw how passions disconnected them from Spirit and developed systems of exploring the passions to reconnect with Spirit. In the last century George Gurdjieff with his Sufi training and realization of the fourth way taught the enneagram knowledge to Oscar Ocasio, who taught it to Claudio Naranjo in Arica Chile, who taught it to Helen Palmer, Hameed Ali (A.H. Almass), and Sandra Maitre in Berkeley California in the 70s. They, along with luminaries like Riso and Hudson, have all became enneagram transmitters as the system has become increasingly popular over the last fifty years.

Enneagram begins with a holy idea

We each are born with an affinity to a particularly holy idea like holy love for the peacemaker 9 or holy faith for the loyalist 6. Development disconnects us from our holy idea as our personality evolves. This disconnection generates the fixations and passions that turn into our type, challenging us to practice a particular virtue to reconnect with our holy idea. Each of us contains all the types, but we tend to self-organize from a central type which has predictable relationships with other types in the famous nine-pointed star of the enneagram.

Even though there is practically no credible research on the enneagram’s validity and reliability, it continues to be wildly popular and widely used. I’ve found it useful and accurate, validating my belief about the utility of all coherent personality systems. I also appreciate the spiritual foundations. Arguably, being disconnected from our deepest, wisest self is at the heart of most human suffering.

If you don’t know your enneatype, google the enneagram and read descriptions of the types. See where you are attracted and repulsed, interested or irritated. Do you find yourself in any of the types? If so, keep reading about it, looking for identity and insight, strengths and weaknesses. Awareness regulates and finding your enneatype can help you regulate towards a high functioning version of your type, and ultimately to connection with your most resonant holy idea.