 Robert Todd Carroll
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enneagram
The enneagram represents nine personality types. How the types are defined depends on whom you ask. Some define them by a fundamental weakness or sin. Others define them by a fundamental energy that drives one's entire being. Some follow classical biorhythm theory and classify the nine types according to three types of types: mental, emotional and physical. Others classify the nine types according to three types of instinctual drives: the Self-Preserving drives, the Social drives and the Sexual drives.* Some follow Gurdjieff, who claims to have followed Sufism, and type the types as mental, emotional and instinctual. The one who seems to be the father of the enneagram, Oscar Ichazo (b. 1931), spoke of enneagons (nine-pointed figures, enclosed in a circle, with straight lines connecting each point to two others) and ego fixations corresponding to each of the nine points. (Several sources claim that Ichazo learned of the enneagram through Ouspensky's writings of Gurdjieff, but Ichazo denies this.) He called his system Arica, after the coastal city in northern Chile, near the Peruvian border, where he opened his first school in 1971. In the early nineties, there were "forty or so Arica training centers, located in the United States, South America, Europe and Australia."*
Ichazo would make claims like 'the dominant passion of the Indolent fixation is Sloth; the dominant passion of the Resentment fixation is Anger; and the dominant passion of the Flattery fixation is Pride.' In short, he developed a typology of "ego fixations" based on the classical Christian notion of the seven capital sins plus fear and deceit. Ichazo was called the "continuation of Gurdjieff" by filmmaker Alexandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo," "The Holy Mountain"), who claims to have spent a weekend expanding his consciousness with Ichazo and LSD, according to Jay Babcock. It is believed by some teachers of the enneagram that Gurdjieff learned the enneagram from Sufi masters, and that he was trained in the mystical arts not only of Sufism but of the cabala and Zen. He is said to have studied martial arts, yoga, Buddhism, Confucianism, the I Ching and alchemy. Sam Keen (1973) claims that Ichazo told him he began teaching the enneagram after spending a week in a "divine coma." Ichazo denies this. Ichazo claims that he has a scientific basis for his theory of personality types, ego fixations, etc. He denies that his notions were based on visions and insights taken from numerous eclectic sources and freely mixed into an amalgam of mystical psychobabble. The National Catholic Reporter, however, claims that:
Ichazo denies this and says:
Like Gurdjieff—or perhaps not like Gurdjieff—he claimed we are born with an essence (nature) which conflicts with our personality (nurture), and we must struggle to harmonize the two and return to our true essence. He founded his Arica Institute in 1971.* The Institute continues to exist, though it has contracted somewhat from its heyday in the early 1990s, and now offers training in "Nine Hypergnostic Systems" and T'ai chi chuan in centers in New York and Europe. Several former disciples have modified Ichazo's teachings during the past twenty years. (Ichazo's view is that the others have not given him due credit and have engaged in a smear campaign to make him appear to be a kind of "crazy mystic."*) Claudio Naranjo attended Ichazo's lectures on ennead personality types in Santiago, Chile, in the 1970's and published a book called Enneatypes in Psychotherapy in 1995. A Jesuit priest named Bob Ochs got the enneagrams from Naranjo and taught courses on enneagrams at Loyola University in Chicago in 1971. Naranjo also taught Helen Palmer, who claims to be carrying on the esoteric oral tradition in her writings. By the time the enneagram got to Palmer it was imbedded with western psychological notions. Nevertheless, it remained a set of teachings without any scientific foundation. Helen Palmer is the author of The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life (1988). Arica sued Palmer for copyright violations but lost. Nevertheless, she seems to have based her work upon Ichazo's but changed the terminology. Enneagram replaced enneagon and personality type replaced ego fixation, for example. Palmer says that the "Enneagram is a psychological and spiritual system with roots in ancient traditions." She types people by fundamental weakness or sin: anger, pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, fear, and deceit. She calls these weaknesses "capital tendencies." Each of us has a personality that is dominated by one of the nine capital tendencies. Knowing what type you, and what type others are, will put you on the road to "self-understanding and empathy, giving rise to improved relationships," says Palmer. Each personality type is numbered and labeled.
Personality typing is somewhat arbitrary. The classification systems used by Ichazo, and modified by Palmer and others according to their own idiosyncratic beliefs, are not without merit. For example, one certainly could learn much of importance about oneself by focusing on one's central fault or faults, but those who advocate using the enneagram seem to be interested in much more than a bit of self-knowledge. Entire metaphysical systems, psychologies, religions, cosmologies and New Age springboards to higher consciousness and fuller being are said to be found by looking into the enneagram. There is seemingly no end to what one can find in these nine lines. Some, for example, have developed personality profiles for different "styles" of personalities.
Scrooge and Descartes? Now there's an odd couple. What this typology is based on is anybody's guess. But it is reminiscent of astrological forecasts. There doesn't seem to be any way to validate this typology. At the heart of this New Age spiritual psychology are a number of concepts vaguely reminiscent of biorhythms, numerology, astrology, tarot card reading, and Myers-Briggs personality inventories. Nothing in the typology resembles anything approaching a scientific interest in personality. The above Style was said to be mine as a result of a test I took. However, the test came with the following advisory:
If the style doesn't fit, go back and change some answers until it fits but be careful because you may be deceiving yourself when you answered the questions the first time or you may be deceiving yourself with your revisions! Note also how the profile contains several weasel words: 'can be', 'are often', 'tend to', 'can become'. The central feature of the Five is thinking. Nobody needs a personality test to determine if his or her dominant energy, drive, fixation, passion, etc., is the intellectual. Thinkers are observers and intellectuals are often arrogant. This is not a scoop. Nor is it very useful, as is evident by the listing of people who are allegedly all Fives. The limits of the enneagram are the limits of the imagination of those who work with them. One claims that the Five's "primary passion is avarice in terms of their time and possessions, and their chief feature is withdrawal from experience." Another describes the Five as The Thinker and identifies this type by its dominant fear: fear of being overwhelmed by the world. We are told that if we want to get along with a Five
This is good advice for getting along with just about anybody, except for those who would rather be at a big party after spending the afternoon alone with a book. We are also told that for a Five to reach his potential he must go against the grain and strive to be like an Eight, whose main vice is lust. The scientific studies supporting this claim seem to have been lost, however.* Some think there are sixteen basic personality types and use The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® . As Jung said, there could be any number of types, even 360 (McGuire: p. 342), if we wished. Who is right? Maybe they're both wrong. Perhaps we need only think of two types, those from Mars and those from Venus, as John Gray, Ph.D., claims. See also astrotherapy, Forer effect, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, numerology, and tarot cards. further reading
Keen, Sam "Interview with Oscar Ichazo" Psychology Today, July, 1973. McGuire, William and R. F. C. Hull, eds., C. G. Jung Speaking (Princeton University Press, 1977). |
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©copyright 2005 Robert Todd Carroll |
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updated 12/18/07
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An enneagram is, literally, a drawing with nine lines.
Figuratively, however, the enneagram is a New Age mandala, a mystical gateway to
personality typing. The drawing is based upon a belief in the mystical
properties of the 
energy