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Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their
personality, with inborn temperament and other pre-natal factors being the main
determinants of our type. This is one area where most all of the major Enneagram
authors agree we are born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn
orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early
childhood environment. It also seems to lead to certain unconscious orientations
toward our parental figures, but why this is so, we still do not know. In any case, by
the time children are four or five years old, their consciousness has developed
sufficiently to have a separate sense of self. Although their identity is still very fluid,
at this age children begin to establish themselves and find ways of fitting into the
world on their own.
Thus, the overall orientation of our personality reflects the totality of all childhood
factors (including genetics) that influenced its development.
Several more points can be made about the basic type itself.
These one-word descriptors can be expanded into four-word sets of traits. Keep in
mind that these are merely highlights and do not represent the full spectrum of
each type.
Type One is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic. These
people strive for integrity, but can become overly perfectionistic.
Type Two is generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive. These
people are caring and helpful to others, but can also become codependent and lose
sight of their own needs.
Type Three is adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious. These people
strive for achievement and recognition, but can also become inauthentic and overly
image-conscious.
Type Four is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental. These
people strive to be unique and are deeply emotionally sensitive, but can become
depressed and isolated.
Type Five is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and provocative. These people strive
for intellectual mastery and knowledge, but can become very eccentric and lose
themselves in irrelevant thinking.
Type Six is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious. These people strive for
security, but can become paranoid and suspicious.
Type Seven is spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered. These people
strive for excitement and stimulation, but can become impulsive and reckless.
Type Eight is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
These people strive to assert themselves and their authority, but can become
hostile and pugnacious.
Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent. These people strive
for calmness and peace, but can become aloof and disengaged.
Triads
The 9 types can be organized into triads, 3 categories each consisting of 3 of the
types, based on several different criteria.
Triads Organized by Challenged Function
The most common and fundamental triad scheme divides the 9 types based on the
main function Feeling (emotion), Thinking or Instinct (gut impulse that drives
immediate action in the world) with which their greatest strengths when healthy
and their greatest challenges when unhealthy are associated.
The types are organized in this scheme thus:
2,3,4 Feeling Triad
5,6,7 Thinking Triad
8,9,1 Instinctive Triad
Within each triad, there is one type that expresses the function too much, one that
expresses the function too little and one that is most out of touch with that
function. These distinctions break down as follows:
Feeling Triad
o
o
o
Thinking Triad
o
o
o
Instinctive Triad
o
o
o
Basic Fear
Basic Desire
To be loved unconditionally
Being worthless
Vicious cycles
"Each personality type contains within itself a source of self-deception which, if
played into, invariably leads us away from the direction of our real fulfillment and
deepest happiness. This is an irrevocable law of the psyche, something of which we
must become convinced if we are to have the courage to look for happiness where
it truly resides."
The vicious cycles described in the Core Dynamics model for each of the types as
they become unhealthier, as I understand them, are as follows:
against whom they originally rebelled. This cycle of the 1 is a prime example
of the dangers of
The goal in the Enneagram system is to escape this vicious cycle that keeps us
fixated in our particular types defenses.