Personality Types

Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery

Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson

• Editore: Mariner Books
• Anno: 1996
• ISBN:
  9780547525747
• Argomento: Psychology
• Categoria: Personality in Psychology

The definitive guide to using this ancient psychological system to gain self-knowledge and achieve personal growth—now expanded and revised. The Enneagram is an extraordinary framework for understanding more about ourselves. No matter from which point of view we approach it, we discover fresh conjunctions of new and old ideas. So writes Don Riso in this expanded edition of his classic interpretation of the Enneagram, the ancient psychological system used to understand the human personality. In addition to updating the descriptions of the nine personality types, Personality Types, Revised greatly expands the accompanying guidelines and, for the first time, uncovers the Core Dynamics, or Levels of Development, within each type. This skeletal system provides far more information about the inner tension and movements of the nine personalities than has previously been published. This increased specificity will allow therapists, social workers, personnel managers, students of the Enneagram, and general readers alike to use it with much greater precision as they unlock the secrets of self-understanding, and thus self-transformation. "No Enneagram teachers I've come across offer such a rich and dynamic picture of how each personality type expresses itself in the world, and the process by which we can move through progressive stages of psychological and spiritual growth."—Tony Schwartz, author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America

Part I

Chapter 1

Understanding Personality Types

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.

—Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

 

What is the point of understanding personality types? Since everyone is unique, the idea of cramming people into categories seems odious. And even if personality types were somehow theoretically valid, they would probably be either too academic to be helpful in our daily lives or too vague to be meaningful—grab bags anyone can read anything into.

These are valid objections, but they miss the mark. There are a number of good reasons to study personality types, the most important of which is that human beings are inherently interesting—and dangerous. Our fellow human beings compel our attention because they are easily the most changeable, infuriating, pleasurable, and mystifying objects in the environment. It would be impossible for most of us to spend a day without coming into direct or indirect contact with dozens of people—family, friends, people on the street, at the office, on television, in our fantasies, and in our fears. People are everywhere, having all sorts of impacts on us—for better or worse.

Most of the time we navigate the shoals of interpersonal life without coming to grief, but there have no doubt been times when we suddenly became aware that we did not really know the people we thought we knew. There may even have been times when we realized that we did not know ourselves. The behavior of others—and even our own behavior—is, at times, strange and unsettling. Odd things keep popping up, or seem to be out of place. Some of these surprises can be pleasant, but some are decidedly unpleasant, having calamitous effects upon us far into the future. This is why, if we are too unthinking about the personality types in which human nature expresses itself, we run the risk of disaster. The person we thought we knew may turn out to be a monster or hopelessly self-centered. We may find that we have been callously used or that our legitimate needs have been selfishly ignored. Unless we have insight, we can be terribly abused. The opposite is equally true: unless we have insight, we may overlook a diamond in the rough, or be too quick to get out of a relationship which is actually worth saving. Without insight, we may be hurt or foolish, and either way end in unhappiness.

Thus, becoming more perceptive is worthwhile, if only to avoid painful consequences. Understanding ourselves and others should make us happier.

The problem is, however, that while everyone wants insight into others, few people are as willing to look so intently at themselves. We want to know what makes other people tick, yet we are afraid to discover anything upsetting about ourselves. Today’s competitive culture has shifted the emphasis of the ancient injunction of the oracle at Delphi from “know thyself” to “psych out the other guy.” We would like to be able to figure out people as if we had X-ray vision, while not wanting others to see our weaknesses and shortcomings. We do not want anyone, including us, to see us as we really are. Unfortunately, something necessary and valuable—looking at ourselves with the same objective eye with which we view others—has been lost.

We have everything upside down. To correct this, we should remember Kierkegaard’s advice. He suggested that we become subjective toward others and objective toward ourselves. That is, when we judge the actions of others, we should put ourselves in their place, trying to understand how they see themselves and their world. And when we judge ourselves, we should see ourselves as others see us, overcoming the ease with which we find extenuating circumstances for ourselves. Of course, Kierkegaard’s suggestion is very difficult to put into practice. We need to cut through vanity and self-deception when we look at ourselves, as well as cynicism and defensiveness when we examine others. We must have courage toward ourselves and empathy toward others.

How can we acquire the knowledge and sensitivity we need? How can we begin to make sense of the vast diversity of human personality? How can we develop insight so that we can lead fuller, happier lives?

The answer is paradoxical: we will discover that we cannot really know anyone else until we know ourselves, and we cannot really know ourselves until we know others. The solution to this seeming conundrum is that understanding ourselves and understanding others are really two sides of the same coin—understanding human nature.

Because such a vast amount of territory is covered by human nature, it would be useful to have an accurate map of that familiar yet ever unexplored territory. It would be helpful to have a reliable means of charting who we are and where we are going so that we will not lose our way.

 

The Enneagram

 

We believe the Enneagram (pronounced “ANY-a-gram”) is the map of human nature which people have long sought. Although the Enneagram symbol is ancient, as are many of the roots of its psychological theory, it is remarkably contemporary because human nature has not changed. The Enneagram, which has been transmitted to us from a variety of history’s rich spiritual and philosophical traditions, represents a profound understanding of human nature, something needed as much now as it was in the past. The Enneagram presented here is a distillation of teachings from several profound schools of spiritual wisdom, combined with insights from modern psychology. It is at once ancient and modern, representing a marvelous and dynamic synthesis of old and new. The purpose of this book is to introduce the general reader to this remarkable system.

 

Psychology has been wrestling with the problem of discovering a workable personality typology (a way of classifying human nature) which is accurate and practical, theoretically comprehensive and elegant. Beginning at least with Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C., Greek philosophers recognized that personality types exist in some form or other. However, no one has been able to discover the fundamental categories which human nature assumes, the basic personality types themselves.

Different classifications have been proposed over the centuries, although none has been without problems, inaccuracies, or contradictions. Many typologies do not do justice to the great variety of human nature—they employ too few categories, they are too abstract, or they concern themselves only with different kinds of neurosis and not with normal behavior. Not only has discovering the individual personality types been an enormous conceptual problem, it has been even more difficult to discover a system which indicates how the types are related to each other, thereby revealing how people change and grow. Finding a personality typology which truly does justice to human nature was an unsolved problem—until the development of the Enneagram. That is the argument of this book.

 

Every psychological system has an organizing principle. If we look briefly at some other systems, we see, for example, that Freud’s three different character types emphasize the belief that psychic energy is fixated during early child development around the mouth, the anus, or the genitals. These fixations yield oral, anal, and phallic types which correspond to Enneagram types. Another Freudian approach to character types emphasizes the dominance of the ego, the id, or the superego in the personality. The latter is a more sophisticated application of Freud’s concepts, one which theorists have found difficult to apply, although it also correlates with the Enneagram, as we shall see.

Jung’s typology delineates eight types based on how a person’s psychological attitude, extroversion or introversion, is modified by one of four basic mental functions which Jung posits—feeling, thinking, sensation, or intuition. Thus, Jung describes an extroverted feeling type and an introverted feeling type, an extroverted thinking type and an introverted thinking type, and so on.

Karen Horney developed character descriptions based on her clinical observations of interpersonal orientations—that a person could be considered as fundamentally “moving toward others,” “moving away from others,” or “moving against others.” She did not work out all of the subtypes within these three general categories, but had she done so, her system would probably have yielded nine personality types, just as the Enneagram does. (There will be more about Freud, Jung, and Horney in the Theory chapter, particularly about the correspondence of their typologies to the Enneagram personality types.)

The organizing principle of the Enneagram is simple: nine personality types result from three personality types in each of three groups, or Triads. The Enneagram’s three Triads specify whether your fundamental psychological orientation, which includes positive and negative traits, has to do with your emotions and self-image (if so, you are in the Feeling Triad) or with your thought processes and how you find security (if so, you are in the Thinking Triad) or with your “gut” instincts and how you relate to the world (if so, you are in the Instinctive Triad).

We can characterize the resulting nine personality types very simply for now; they will become more sophisticated later on. In the Feeling Triad, the types are the Helper (the Two—the encouraging, demonstrative, possessive type), the Motivator (the Three—the ambitious, pragmatic, image-conscious type), and the Individualist (the Four—the sensitive, self-absorbed, depressive type). In the Thinking Triad, we see the Investigator (the Five—the perceptive, cerebral, provocative type), the Loyalist (the Six—the committed, dutiful, suspicious type), and the Enthusiast (the Seven—the spontaneous, fun-loving, excessive type). And in the Instinctive Triad, we find the Leader (the Eight—the self-confident, assertive, confrontational type), the Peacemaker (the Nine—the pleasant, easygoing, complacent type), and the Reformer (the One—the rational, idealistic, orderly type).

You may be able to find your own personality type from these brief designations. If not, do not worry. You will learn how to identify your personality type, or that of someone else, in the Guidelines chapter. Since there is a full chapter about each of the nine basic personality types, there is much more to become acquainted with. (To get a quick idea of any of the personality types, turn to the Caricature and Profile at the beginning of each description. The Profile lists many of the major traits of each type.) There will also be more about the three Triads of the Enneagram and how they produce the nine basic personality types, and many personality subtypes, in the Guidelines, and even more about them in the Advanced Guidelines.

As you might expect, how the Enneagram works is complicated and subtle. Considering your personality type as an expression of one of the fundamental orientations (emotion, intellect, or instinct) is but one possible level of analysis with the Enneagram. By the end of this book you will see that we can approach the nine personality types from Freudian, Jungian, Hornevian, or other viewpoints, because the Enneagram operates on different levels of abstraction simultaneously. It bridges the gap between approaches to personality which emphasize depth psychology and those which emphasize behavior. The insights we can obtain from the Enneagram range from the most abstract generalizations about human nature to highly specific descriptions of each personality type. And yet, as complex as the Enneagram is, paradoxically, it is easy to understand.

Furthermore, while the nine personality types of the Enneagram form discrete categories, you should not think of them as ironclad entities. You will find that the Enneagram is open-ended and extraordinarily fluid, like human nature itself. Movement and change—development toward either integration or disintegration—are essential aspects of this remarkable system. And because the descriptions of the personality types given in this book range from the highest levels of health and integration to the lowest stages of neurosis, they not only describe behavior but predict it as well—something which can be extremely useful.

 

Because an introductory book should be relatively simple, it is not possible to present all the complexities of the Enneagram here. Many of the most advanced, theoretical aspects of the Enneagram have either been omitted or touched on only briefly.

We have also omitted specific suggestions about how you can use each of the personality descriptions themselves. Even so, interested readers will be able to apply the descriptions to many different situations in their lives. For example, psychologists and psychiatrists will be able to diagnose the problems of their clients more accurately—and those in therapy will be able to save time and money by gaining insight into themselves more quickly. The Enneagram will also give clients and therapists a common language with which to discuss their problems and their progress, no matter which school of psychotherapy they follow.

Lawyers will be better able to understand clients, as well as assess their credibility and their capacity to cooperate in legal matters. The Enneagram will help them particularly in situations such as divorce and child custody cases where personality factors are important. Physicians will have more insight with which to counsel their patients, particularly those whose physical ailments are compounded by psychological problems. Clergy can be more psychologically attuned to others in pastoral situations. While this book does not deal with spiritual direction as such, there are common areas between the psychological and the spiritual, since both build upon the whole person. Teachers can become more perceptive of their students. Different personality types have different natural aptitudes, different approaches to learning, and different ways of interacting with other students.

Personnel directors and businesspeople can become better managers by being more aware of their employees’ personality types. Job satisfaction and productivity increase when employees feel that management understands their personal needs and takes them into consideration. Hiring officers and those in charge of building effective teams for all purposes—from the boardroom to the assembly line—will find it valuable to have greater insight into the personality types of the individuals they consider. Understanding personality types can also be useful to journalists, politicians, and those in advertising. In short, understanding personality types is useful to anyone who has a personality (and who does not?) or who is interested in the personalities of others (and who is not?).

Despite its many practical applications, however, this is really a book which has been written for you, the individual, to use in your personal life.

However, we should say that this is not a typical self-help book: it does not promise miracles. It is not possible to write a psychological “cookbook” for becoming a healthy, fulfilled individual. Becoming a whole human being is, by definition, a challenging process which goes on as long as we live. Books can provide valuable information and advice, they can give us new insights, they can encourage. But knowledge alone is not enough to change us. If it were, the most knowledgeable people would be the best people, and we know from our own experience that this is not so. Knowledge would be virtue, and it is not. Knowing more about ourselves is but a means toward a goal of being happy and leading a good life, but the possession of knowledge alone cannot bestow virtue, happiness, or fulfillment on us. Books cannot provide answers to all the problems which confront us or impart the courage necessary if we are to persevere in our search. For these things, we must look both within and beyond ourselves.

Furthermore, this book is not, and cannot be, the last word on either the Enneagram or personality types. There will always be more to be said, new connections to be made, and new understandings to be reached. Perhaps the mysteries of the psyche can never be fully described because they may never be fully understood. How can human beings stand outside of themselves to study human nature in a totally objective way? How can we ever be completely subjective toward others and objective toward ourselves, as Kierkegaard suggests? Psychologists who try to describe human nature are themselves human beings subject to all the distortions and self-deceptions of which humans are capable. No one has a “God’s-eye view” of the whole of human nature, so no one can say with absolute confidence what it all means. This is why there will always be an element of faith to psychology, not necessarily religious faith, to be sure, but a set of beliefs about human beings which goes beyond what can be demonstrated scientifically.

This is why attaining some kind of final, objective truth about ourselves is probably impossible. What may be more important than arriving at ultimate answers is being searchers on the quest. Through the process of honestly seeking the truth about ourselves, we gradually liberate ourselves from many painful and limiting behaviors and beliefs about who we are. Thus, gradually and in ways we do not expect, we are transformed into persons who are fuller, more life-affirming, and self-transcending.

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