Self-discovery is a process that everyone must go through in order to understand themselves. It is only by understanding ourselves that we are able to be comfortable with who we are. However, self-discovery can be a difficult process especially without the right tools to help. Fortunately, the Enneagram is a wonderful tool to help you with your journey of self-discovery. Subtle and complex, the enneagram will become more important the more you use it in your life.
The Enneagram Structure
The structure may look complicated at first but it is quite easy to follow.
- First, draw a circle and mark nine points that are equidistant from the circle’s circumference.
- Second, designate each point with a number, one to nine beginning with nine at the top. Now, every point will represent the nine basic personality types in the Enneagram system which we will look at below.
- The inner lines of the enneagram connect each point to another. The points 3, 6 and 9 form an equilateral triangle.
The different connections
Besides the points 3, 6 and 9 forming an equilateral triangle, no other points do that. In order to connect the rest of the points, connect:
- Point one with four
- Four with two
- Two with eight
- Eight with five
- Five with seven
- Seven with one
These connections will create an irregular hexagram. Not to worry. That is the ideal Enneagram structure.
Your Basic Personality Type
The nine different points on the enneagram represent nine different personality types. Don’t be surprised to find a bit of yourself in all nine personality types. Nevertheless, one of them will definitely stand out as describing you at a greater extent. Now, this is your basic personality type.
From childhood, people develop with one of the nine personality types dominating. Our inborn temperament and pre-natal factors determine our type. Our inborn temperaments influence how we adapt to our childhood environments and an unconscious orientation toward parental figures. By age five, our consciousness has developed enough to begin establishing personal identity and ways of fitting into the world.
Generally, your personality is a reflection of the totality of childhood factors, genetics included which have influenced your development.
There are things you should not about the basic personality type:
- You can’t change from one basic personality to another
- The personality descriptions are gender neutral and universal
- You may not exhibit the description of your basic personality type in totality because other factors may cause the description to fluctuate
- The numbers used in the Enneagram are value-neutral and don’t specify anything as positive or negative
- The ranking of the personality types is insignificant
- No personality type can be defined as either better or worse than another.
The Nine Different Personality Types
Before you determine what your basic personality type is, the nine roles which can best fit you are:
- Type 1: The Reformer
This person can be described as principled, purposeful, self-controlled and a perfectionist.
- Type 2: The Helper
This is a generous person who is demonstrative, people-pleasing and possessive
- Type 3: The Achiever
This is an adaptable, excelling, driven and image-conscious individual
- Type 4: The Individualist
This is an expressive person. He/she can be dramatic, self-absorbed and temperamental
- Type 5: The Investigator
This is a perceptive person who is innovative, secretive and isolated.
- Type 6: The Loyalist
This is an engaging, responsible individual. They are anxious and suspicious
- Type 7: The Enthusiast
This is a spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive and scattered individual
- Type 8: The Challenger
The challenger is self-confident, very decisive, willful and even confrontational.
- Type 9: The Peacemaker
The peacemaker is a receptive individual. Very reassuring, complacent and resigned.
These are just brief highlights of the nine different personality types. Which role suits you most of the time? Would any of these personality types describe you in a few words?
The one that does is then your basic personality type.
The Centers
The Enneagram arranges the nine personality types into three centers, with 3 personalities each:
- The Instinctive Center: Type 1,9 and 8
- The Feeling Center: Type 2,3 and 4
- The Thinking Center: Type 5,6 and 7
At the center, the 3 personality types have common assets and liabilities. For example, the strengths and capabilities of type 4 involve feelings and as a result, it falls within the feelings center. This is true for every other personality type.
The personality types are not just placed in the three centers randomly. No. There is a particular relationship that each type has with a cluster of characteristics that define every center. These characteristics revolve around a powerful and unconscious emotional response when there is loss of touch with the core of self.
The instinctive center is defined by the emotions of anger, the feeling center is shame and the thinking center is fear. In every center, the personality type has a specific way of coping with the dominant emotion.
The Wing
The wing is one or two types adjacent to the basic personality type. The basic type dominates while the wind complements. You are a sum total of your basic personality type and the contribution of your “wings”. Before evaluating your wings, you must know your basic type.
The Levels of Development
Each personality type has an internal structure of behaviors, attitudes, defenses and motivations. Every type has nine levels of development in itself. These levels are what accounts for the differences between people who belong to the same type and how people change for good or bad.
The levels of development give the different personalities a “skeleton” of some sort so that people can clarify the changing states within their personality. The continuum levels of development fall under 3 categories each with three levels. That is,
- Healthy
Level 1: the liberation level
Level 2: psychological capacity level
Level 3: social value level
- Average
Level 4: the imbalance or social role level
Level 5: the interpersonal control level
Level 6: the overcompensation level
- Unhealthy
Level 7: violation level
Level 8: obsession and compulsion
Level 9: pathological destructiveness level
As you realize, the more you move down the levels, the more you identify with your ego and with increasingly negative and restrictive patterns. The vice versa is also true. Moving up the levels is associated with the mind, heart and body becoming more awake and seeing personalities objectively.
Directions of Integration (Growth) and Disintegration (Stress)
The personalities of the Enneagram are not static as they reflect our change over time. There are two inner lines that connect every point. One line connects one specific personality type to a type that a person who is on the healthy level of development is likely to exhibit. This is the Direction of Integration or Growth.
On the other hand, the second line connects to a type that represents the behavior a person is likely to exhibit when they are under stress and pressure. The line is referred to as the Direction of Stress or Disintegration. It all begins at your basic personality type then to your responses and adaptations in different directions.
The sequence for the Direction of Disintegration is given as 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 while the sequence for the Direction of Integration is given as 1-7-5-8-2-4-1. Every personality type must have both a Direction of Integration and Disintegration.
What does the complete picture of yourself look like?
- Your basic type
- Your two wings
- Your Direction of Integration
- Your Direction of Disintegration
These four types blend to give your total personality and the framework for understanding what influences you. The goal is to move around the Enneagram while acquiring the “healthy’s” of each type. There are important aspects in each part of the Enneagram that we need to achieve.
The Three Instincts
Human beings are “hard-wired” as biological beings with specific instinctual intelligence for survival. These instincts are:
- The self-preservation instinct is dominant in people who are always preoccupied with safety, comfort, health and general wellbeing of the physical body. For such people, money, food, housing, medical matters and physical comfort are their concerns and priorities.
- The sexual instinct is dominant in people who have an intense drive for stimulation and awareness of “chemistry” with others. For such people, there is an immediate awareness of either attraction or lack of it between themselves and other people.
- The social instinct is dominant in people who adapt themselves to serve the needs of the social situation they will find themselves in. for social types, it is all about personal connection.
Typing Yourself and Others
Once you discover your dominant through either the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator or an in-depth study of the full descriptions on the Enneagram personalities, then you will become quick in typing other people. It will take time and skill to do so before you can say that you have accurately typed a person.
The Enneagram does is subtle yet flexible. It is an important tool for understanding human beings but it does not have the ultimate say about human beings. Man is dynamic, mysterious and unpredictable and the Enneagram just gives a glimpse of this mystery.