This info is taken from various articles, but primarily articles by the enneagram institute at
Your Basic Personality Type
The Enneagram helps us to see ourselves at a deeper, more objective level and can be of invaluable assistance on our path to self-knowledge and personal growth. I tried to synthesize and summarize a complicated idea about the human psyche into very simple language so everyone can have a quick idea of what the Enneagram is and how it works. If this issue sparks your interests, there are several great books and articles to read to learn about this topic in much more depth. For starters, I would google enneagraminstitute.com.
The Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type. 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 your type. Each enneagram type has a different pattern of thinking, feeling and acting that arises from a deeper inner motivation or worldview. Learning about these different types fosters greater understanding of each other.
Important things to note about the personality types: 1) One does not change from one basic personality type to another 2) The descriptions of the personality types apply equally to males and females, 3) Not everything in the description of your basic type will apply to you all the time because you fluctuate constantly among the healthy, average, and unhealthy traits that make up your personality type, 4) The Enneagram uses numbers to designate each of the types because numbers are value neutral, 5) The numerical ranking of the types is not significant. A larger number is no better than a smaller number, 6) No type is inherently better or worse than any other, although some types are often considered to be more desirable than others in any given culture or group. The ideal is to become your best self, not to imitate the assets of another type. Understanding your type aids in self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-development. The enneagram is a path to higher states of being and enlightenment.
Identifying Your Basic Personality Type
There are many ways to determine your type. There are free and also paid tests you can take. A recommended one is the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI® version 2.5), which is the world's most popular Ennegram-based test. I listened to Annie F. Down's podcast entitled That Sounds Fun, episode 53. She was interviewing Beth MCCord who was discussing the Enneagram. As I learned about the enneagram types, I identified which type I was by listening to the description of each type. It sometimes takes awhile to figure out your type. The podcast started with type 1 and I listened to the podcast in parts. I was convinced for a few days that I was type 2 or even perhaps type 3. I could identify with type 2 for I thought that I'm caring, kind and generous. It wasn't until I listened to the complete podcast and heard the description of type 9, that I knew I was type 9. Everything about type 9 resonated deeply with me. It wasn't that I couldn't see myself as some of part two, and it took much further reading to confirm I wasn't, I just could relate so deeply with the type 9. (Nines often have a hard time figuring out their type because they can see themselves I each type and especially type 9 and type 2 have many similarities.
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The Enneagram with Riso-Hudson Type Names
These one-word descriptors can be expanded into four-word sets of traits. These are merely highlights and do not represent the full spectrum of each type.
Type One: THE REFORMER: The Rational, Idealistic Type: is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.
Basic Fear: Of being corrupt/evil, defective
Basic Desire: To be good, to have integrity, to be balanced
Type Two: THE HELPER: The Caring, Interpersonal Type: is generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive.
Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved
Basic Desire: To feel loved
Type Three: THE ACHIEVER: The Success-Orientated, Pragmatic Type: is adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.
Basic Fear: Of being worthless
Basic Desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile
Type Four: THE INDIVIDUALIST: The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.
Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance
Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)
Type Five: THE INVESTIGATOR: The Intense, Cerebral Type: is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.
Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable
Basic Desire: To be capable and competent
Type Six: THE LOYALIST: The Committed, Security-Orientated Type: is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.
Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance
Basic Desire: To have security and support
Type Seven: THE ENTHUSIAST: The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: is spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered.
Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain
Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content -- to have their needs fulfilled
Type Eight: THE CHALLENGER: The Powerful, Dominating Type: is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others
Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life and destiny)
Type Nine: THE PEACEMAKER: The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: is receptive, reassuring, agreeable and complacent.
Basic Fear: Of loss and separation
Basic Desire: To have inner stability "peace of mind"
Directions of Integration (Growth) and Disintegration (Stress):
The inner lines of the Enneagram connect the types in a sequence that denotes what each type will do under different conditions. There are two lines connected to each type, and they connect with two other types. One line connects with a type that represents how a person of the first type behaves when they are moving toward health and growth. This is called the Direction of Integration or Growth. The other line goes to another type that represent how the person is likely to act out if they are under increased stress and pressure. This second line is called the Direction of Stress or Disintegration.
The Centers of the Enneagram
The Enneagram is a 3 x 3 arrangement of nine personality types in three Centers. There are three types in the Instinctive Center, three in the Feeling Center, and three in the Thinking Center, as shown below.
The Dominant Emotion of each Center
The inclusion of each type in its Center is not arbitrary. Each type results from powerful, largely unconscious emotional response to the loss of contact with the core of the self. In the Instinctive Center, the emotion is Anger or Rage. In the Feeling Center, the emotion is Shame, and in the Thinking Center, it is Fear. Of course, all nine types contain all three of these emotions, but in each Center, the personalities of the types are particularly affected by that Center’s emotional theme.
The Continuum of the Levels of Development
Healthy
• Level 1: The Level of Liberation
• Level 2: The Level of Psychological Capacity
• Level 3: The Level of Social Value
Average
• Level 4: The Level of Imbalance/ Social Role
• Level 5: The Level of Interpersonal Control
• Level 6: The Level of Overcompensation
Unhealthy
• Level 7: The Level of Violation
• Level 8: The Level of Obsession and Compulsion
• Level 9: The Level of Pathological Destructiveness
A person's enneagram type is also modified by two other things: a wing type and an instinctual subtype. The "wings" are the two adjacent types to the personal dominant type. While there are two wings, usually one has a dominant wing which modifies their type the most.
The Three Instincts
The three Instincts (often erroneously called “the subtypes”) are a third set of distinctions that are extremely important for understanding personality. We each are endowed with specific instinctual intelligences that are necessary for our survival as individuals and as a species. We each have a self-preservation instinct (for preserving the body and its life and functioning), a sexual instinct (for extending ourselves in the environment and through the generations), and a social instinct (for getting along with others and forming secure social bonds). While we have all three Instincts in us, one of them is the dominant focus of our attention and behavior—the set of attitudes and values that we are most attracted to and comfortable with.
The following are brief descriptions of the three instincts:
Self Preservation Instinct
People who have this as their dominant instinct are preoccupied with the safety, comfort, health, energy, and well-being of the physical body. In a word, they are concerned with having enough resources to meet life’s demands. Self-Preservation types tend to be concerned with food, money, housing, medical matters, and physical comfort. Moreover, those primarily focused on self-preservation, by extension, are usually interested in maintaining these resources for others as well. Their focus of attention naturally goes towards things related to these areas such as clothes, temperature, shopping, decorating, and the like, particularly if they are not satisfied in these areas or have a feeling of deficiency due to their childhoods. Self-Pres types tend to be more grounded, practical, serious, and introverted than the other two instinctual types.
Sexual (aka “Attraction”) Instinct
The key element in Sexual types is an intense drive for stimulation and a constant awareness of the “chemistry” between themselves and others. Sexual types are immediately aware of the attraction, or lack thereof, between themselves and other people. Further, while the basis of this instinct is related to sexuality, it is not necessarily about people engaging in the sexual act. There are many people that we are excited to be around for reasons of personal chemistry that we have no intention of “getting involved with.” Nonetheless, we might be aware that we feel stimulated in certain people’s company and less so in others. The sexual type is constantly moving toward that sense of intense stimulation and juicy energy in their relationships and in their activities. They are the most “energized” of the three instinctual types, and tend to be more aggressive, competitive, charged, and emotionally intense than the Self-Pres or Social types. Sexual types need to have intense energetic charge in their primary relationships or else they remain unsatisfied. They enjoy being intensely involved—even merged—with others, and can become disenchanted with partners who are unable to meet their need for intense energetic union. Losing yourself in a “fusion” of being is the ideal here, and Sexual types are always looking for this state with others and with stimulating objects in their world.
Social (aka “Adaptive”) Instinct
Social types adapt themselves to serve the needs of the social situation they find themselves in. Thus, Social types are highly aware of other people, whether they are in intimate situations or in groups. They are also aware of how their actions and attitudes are affecting those around them. Social types seek personal connection: they want to stay in long-term contact with people and to be involved in their world. Social types are the most concerned with doing things that will have some impact on their community, or even broader domains. They tend to be warmer, more open, engaging, and socially responsible than the other two types. In their primary relationships, they seek partners with whom they can share social activities, wanting their intimates to get involved in projects and events with them. Paradoxically, they actually tend to avoid long periods of exclusive intimacy and quiet solitude, seeing both as potentially limiting. Social types lose their sense of identity and meaning when they are not involved with others in activities that transcend their individual interests.
Sources:
www.enneagraminstitute.com, www.crystalknows.com, truity.com, theenneagramatwork.com, enneagramworldwide.com,
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