Enneagram Personalities

By Donald L. Harris

"Enneagram Types and Enneagram Spiritual- Embrace Your Potential, Build Self-awareness, and Achieve Personal Growth With the Enneagram Personality Types"

This Enneagram Type book covers the basics that you will need to understand how the Enneagram works in your life, relationships and work.

The Enneagram is a unique system that focuses on nine basic behavioral types/patterns people develop. Learning about your Enneagram personality type is one of the catalysts to making a positive change in your life as it offers an opportunity to discover the patterns of thinking, feeling, how to interact with each other, communicate, handle conflicts and behaviors that either support or act as a barrier to good working and human relationships.

This book will help you understand the basic facets of self-discovery, growth, and changes, therefore allow you to know yourself much better as a result.
Understanding who you are, what makes you the person you are, and recognizing the personality traits you display yourself can allow you to understand your reactions to situations much better, allow you to make stronger decisions, and also help you understand other people much better as a result.

The Enneagram refers to the nine different personality types and styles, but it is much more than a personality profile or diagram that has nine points on an intersection of a triangle and a hexagon. It is a psycho-dynamic framework that provides a powerful model for understanding how development and integration operate.

Enneagram is a powerful guide towards finding your self-awareness, as well as finding the strengths of others around you so you can use that to build your relationships with one another.  
The Enneagram is not the easiest subject in the world to grasp at first. The key is to find out your core personality type because from that point you can begin to explore your actual internal personality, based on the Enneagram Types. 

Determining your personality type through the Enneagram does not put you in a box, but help you see the box from which we experience the world. With this awareness, you can step outside of your limited perspective. Ideally, personality is an effective way to express yourself, but challenges arise when your point of view becomes rigid and you get stuck in automatic habits. By discovering these unconscious patterns, you can lead more fulfilling lives, enjoy healthier relationships, and connect to your true essence.

By reading this book, you will be able to recognize underlying patterns of The Enneagram that influence the way you and the people in your life have been feeling and behaving. This will increase your compassion for yourself and others.

What you'll find in this book

• You will learn the history of the Enneagram, the basics of each type, the movements, and subtypes.

• You will be able to recognize underlying patterns that influence the way you and the people in your life

• You will have the tools to discover your own enneatype and others in your life.

• You will understand the basics of The Enneagram

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald L. Harris
• Release date: Feb 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393083009

Book preview

ENNEAGRAM PERSONALITIES

Enneagram Types and Enneagram Spiritual- Embrace Your Potential, Build Self-awareness, and Achieve Personal Growth With the Enneagram Personality Types

ENNEAGRAM TYPES

Self-discovery With Enneagram and Discover What Each Type Brings to the Relationships

Table of Contents

Introduction...........................................................................................................7

Chapter 1: What is Enneagram, and what does it mean for You?..........8

What is the Enneagram?......................................................................................8

Where did the Enneagram come from?.............................................................9

Chapter 2: Spiritual Roots: The Enneagram in History..........................13

Psychological insights........................................................................................13

The enneagram today.........................................................................................14

Toward Self-Discovery........................................................................................14

Chapter 3: A Guide to Spiritual Transformation.......................................16

Chapter 4: Enneagram as a self-discovery tool to benefit your life....18

Chapter 5: Understanding yourself and those around you-Personality Types................21

Type 1: The Perfectionist...................................................................................23

Type 2: The Giver................................................................................................25

Type 3: The Performer.......................................................................................27

Type 4: The Romantic.........................................................................................28

Type 5: The Observer.........................................................................................28

Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic..................................................................................29

Type 7: The Epicure............................................................................................30

Type 8: The Protector.........................................................................................31

Type 9: The Mediators........................................................................................32

Chapter 6: Reading a Soul................................................................................33

Chapter 7: Understanding Enneagram Characters..................................37

Characteristic role.............................................................................................37

Ego Fixation.........................................................................................................37

Holy Idea/Ideal....................................................................................................37

Basic Fear.............................................................................................................37

Basic desire..........................................................................................................38

Temptation...........................................................................................................38

Vice........................................................................................................................39

Virtue....................................................................................................................39

Integration and Disintegration types...............................................................39

Chapter 8: The Path to Greatness..................................................................45

Chapter 9: The awakening soul......................................................................57

What Is the Soul?................................................................................................57

Twentieth Century Messengers of Soul Awareness.......................................59

Chapter 10: Self-Awareness Through Your Personality Type...............60

Type One: The Reformer................................................................................60

Type Two: The Helper....................................................................................61

Type Three: The Achiever..............................................................................61

Type Four: The Individualist.........................................................................62

Type Five: The Investigator...........................................................................62

Type Six: The Loyalist.....................................................................................63

Type Seven: The Enthusiast...........................................................................63

Type Eight: The Challenger...........................................................................64

Type Nine: The Peacemaker..........................................................................64

Benefits of self-awareness.................................................................................65

Your coping skills will improve....................................................................65

You will heal yourself......................................................................................65

Your internal sense of balance will increase...............................................65

Your relationships will get better.................................................................66

You will develop presence and mindfulness................................................66

Chapter 11: Enneagram and Relationships................................................67

Enneagram Ones and Twos...............................................................................67

Enneagram Type Three and Three...................................................................68

Enneagram Type Four Goes with Type Five...................................................68

Enneagram Type Ones and Sixes.....................................................................69

Enneagram Type Six and Three........................................................................70

Enneagram Type Six and Eight.........................................................................70

Enneagram Type Seven and Nine....................................................................71

Bottom line...........................................................................................................71

Chapter 12: Accelerating your personal growth and self-expression.73

Chapter 13: Cultivating Healthy Loving Relationships...........................74

Bringing back the magic of passionate love...................................................75

Finding love and cultivating relationships through Your personality type 76

Type One: The Reformer................................................................................76

Type Two: The Giver.......................................................................................76

Type Three: The Achiever..............................................................................76

Type Four: The Romantic...............................................................................77

Type Five: The Observer................................................................................77

Type Six: The Loyalist.....................................................................................77

Type seven: The Enthusiast...........................................................................78

Type eight: The Challenger............................................................................78

Type nine: The Peacemaker...........................................................................78

Chapter 14: Mapping out your path of most joy and fulfillment.........80

Chapter 15: How the Enneagram can help you grow and manifest a joy-filled life.................83

Chapter 16: Discovering the self....................................................................85

The road to self-discovery..................................................................................85

Chapter 17: Spiritual application of the enneagram...............................88

Resolving relationship conflicts........................................................................88

Communication Styles........................................................................................90

Family Relationships and Roles........................................................................92

Strengthening connections................................................................................93

Chapter 18: Growth and change.....................................................................94

The Enneagram and Growth.............................................................................94

Living with Accountability.................................................................................95

Recognizing and changing bad habits.............................................................96

Conclusion.............................................................................................................99

Introduction........................................................................................................101

Chapter 1: What is an Enneagram?............................................................102

Enneagram Personalities.................................................................................105

Chapter 2: How the Enneagram Works.....................................................107

Chapter 3: Understanding the Underlying Principles of the Enneagram................110

Today’s Enneagram..........................................................................................113

The Iceberg........................................................................................................115

Chapter 4: The Nine Types of Enneagrams..............................................117

Type One: The Integrity Seeker......................................................................119

Personality Traits..........................................................................................120

Their Wings....................................................................................................123

Their Arrows..................................................................................................123

Type Two: The Connector................................................................................123

Personality Traits..........................................................................................125

Their Wings....................................................................................................128

Their Arrows..................................................................................................128

Type Three: The Value Seeker........................................................................128

Personality Traits..........................................................................................130

Their Wings....................................................................................................132

Their Arrows..................................................................................................132

Type Four: The Identity Seeker......................................................................133

Personality Traits..........................................................................................134

Their Wings....................................................................................................136

Type Five: The Clarity Seeker.........................................................................137

Personality Traits..........................................................................................138

Their Wings....................................................................................................140

Their Arrows..................................................................................................141

Type Six: The Guidance Seeker......................................................................141

Personality Traits..........................................................................................143

Their Wings....................................................................................................145

Their Arrows..................................................................................................145

Type Seven: The Freedom Seeker..................................................................145

Personality Traits..........................................................................................147

Their Wings....................................................................................................149

Their Arrows..................................................................................................149

Type Eight: The Power Seeker........................................................................149

Personality Traits..........................................................................................150

Their Wings....................................................................................................153

Their Arrows..................................................................................................153

Type Nine: The Harmony Seeker...................................................................153

Personality Traits..........................................................................................155

Their Wings....................................................................................................157

Their Arrows..................................................................................................157

Chapter 5: Structure of The Enneagram Personalities Diagram......159

The Centers:......................................................................................................161

The Thinking Center:........................................................................................162

The Feeling Center:..........................................................................................162

The Instinctive Center:.....................................................................................162

The Wings:........................................................................................................163

Chapter 6: Social Clusters - Which One Are You?..................................165

The Clusters.......................................................................................................165

The Gut Center or the Physical Center......................................................166

The Heart Center or the Emotional Center...............................................166

The Head Center or the Intellectual Center.............................................166

The Hornevian Triads.......................................................................................168

Conflict Resolutions Styles..............................................................................169

Chapter 7: Understanding the Modern Day Enneagram of Personality Tool................171

Chapter 8: Structures, Wings Lines and Integration............................174

Three Centers....................................................................................................174

The Body Center...............................................................................................175

The Head Center...............................................................................................176

The Heart Center..............................................................................................176

How the Enneagram Centers Work...............................................................178

The Head Center: Fixation and Holy Idea.....................................................178

The Heart Center: Passion and Holy Virtue..................................................179

The Body Center...............................................................................................179

Chapter 9: Enneagram Test...........................................................................181

What are Levels of Development?..................................................................182

Chapter 10: Diving Deeper into Who You Are.........................................184

The Sum of Our Parts......................................................................................185

Conclusion...........................................................................................................187

Introduction

This Enneagram book covers the basics that you will need to understand how the Enneagram works in your life and relationships.

This book will help you understand the basic facets of self-discovery, growth, and changes, therefore allow you to know yourself much better as a result.

Understanding who you are, what makes you the person you are, and recognizing the personality traits you display yourself can allow you to understand your reactions to situations much better, allow you to make stronger decisions, and also help you understand other people much better as a result.

The Enneagram refers to the nine different personality types and styles, but it is much more than a personality profile or diagram that has nine points on an intersection of a triangle and a hexagon. It is a psycho-dynamic framework that provides a powerful model for understanding how development and integration operate.

By reading this book, you will be able to recognize underlying patterns of the Enneagram that influence the way you and the people in your life have been feeling and behaving. This will increase your compassion for yourself and others.

Chapter 1: What is Enneagram, and what does it mean for You?

At first glance, the Enneagram can seem a little complicated, but once you look into it further and read this book, you will quickly see that it is not only fascinating, but also once you learn your actual core type, the whole process becomes much easier as a result.

First things first however, let’s explore a little more what the Enneagram of Personality actually is.

What is the Enneagram?

Known simply as the Enneagram, or the Enneagram of Personality if you want to be a little more formal, this is a model of teaching which helps individuals learn more about their personality, thus helping them get to know themselves much better, as well as those around them.

The Enneagram is a framework of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.

The whole process is summed up by using a diagram, which is made up of three different parts – a circle, a triangle within the circle, and hexagonal shape. The circle is there to show unity, the triangle shows the law of three, and the hexagon shows the law of seven. Again, this may sound complicated at this stage, but the murky waters will clear as we go on into our next chapter.

The Enneagram figure shows and lays out nine different personality types. The figure not only shows the individual’s main core personality type, but it also shows connections with other types, via the lines which connect the various points.

The great thing about the Enneagram is that it is a very useful tool to help us recognize not only our faults, but our strengths too, and by understanding both of these sides of the coin, we can improve our weaknesses, and build on our strengths. The key to becoming a ‘better person’, as we all want to be, is to recognize our pros and cons, and if we can learn what are downsides are, we can do something about them, perhaps even catch ourselves in the moment of reaction, and question why we are reacting in a certain way.

Where did the Enneagram come from?

There is some debate over where Enneagram actually came from, because there are much of the modern side of things, i.e. the actual psychological breakdown of the different personality types and their interconnection influences, have been developed over the last few years, by various Enneagram teachers.

It is thought that the diagram can be dated back to Pythagoras, and the actual concept of the personality types could be as far back as the 4th century, or around the development of the Kabbalah, in the 12th century.

Diagram:

kabbalah tree of life

From this, you can understand that Enneagram is not just a theory to be taken lightly, and that it has been used for countless centuries, developed over time to its current state.

Such is the influence of the Enneagram that it is now used in the business world, to help employers understand their employees and how they work together. If you can figure out the different personality types with a team, you can move various personnel around to get the most out of their strengths and weaknesses.

On top of this, Enneagram is commonly used in spirituality, to help individuals gain enlightenment and to help them ‘get to know themselves’ – as much as that might sound like a ridiculous statement, of course you know yourself; think about it – do you really? Do you really know what type of person you are? Do you really understand the way you react the way you do?

Probably not, but this is where the Enneagram can come in very useful indeed. Self-development and the Enneagram go together hand in hand.

If you have ever read anything about Enneagram before, you might have given up at the first hurdle because it all seemed a little complicated, but once you find out your core type, you can easily look at lines and wings, which basically give you an idea on what else can affect your reactions and personality overall.

WINGSMoving around the circle to connect to points on either side of your core type, ‘close neighbours.

LINES

Movement to connected points across the circle, your points of ‘stretch and release’.

To break this down to simplicity – ‘wings’ are the adjacent personality types to the core type, which can have some effect; look at it a little like a horoscope – whilst you have a primary star sign, the neighboring signs can affect you, depending on the date you were born, as well as the position of the moon and other planets. Nothing is ever as simple as black and white!

Moving on from ‘wings’, we have ‘lines’. Now, there is some debate over whether this is actually credible, and teachers do have a slight 0-100 viewpoint on it – some believe it, some don’t, but basically ‘lines’ are the lines which connect to the points on the Enneagram. These can sometimes be called ‘stress’ or ‘security’ points, or ‘integration or ‘disintegration’ points, and again, these add to a person’s overall picture of personality.

So, from looking at the Enneagram, you will have the following information:

Your core personality type

Two wing points which contribute

Connecting lines which contribute

It is worth noting however that you should always pay the most attention to your core type, as this is the one which sums up the most points within your personality.

Okay, by this point you are probably scratching your head in slight confusion, but don’t give up. You are just a step away from learning more about yourself, discovering self-development techniques.

Chapter 2: Spiritual Roots: The Enneagram in History

The nine-pointed Enneagram symbol is said to originate from Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, and was first popularized in the West by Russian spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff in the early twentieth century. He taught the Enneagram as a way of understanding the movements and changes that constitute the spiritual dimension of life. The Enneagram also formed the foundation of some of the sacred dances he guided his students to perform. Gurdjieff’s dances, based on precise and intentional movements, aimed to cultivate attention and awareness. A key aspect of Gurdjieff’s teaching was identifying his students’ chief feature, a prominent psychodynamic behavior pattern that kept them asleep to their true nature. He used this knowledge to personalize his teaching to each student, guiding them on individual paths toward spiritual growth that balanced their mental, physical, and emotional faculties.

Bolivian transpersonal teacher Oscar Ichazo incorporated the idea of people having a weakness or flaw in their point of view into the Enneagram itself. In the 1950s, he developed a system of mapping personality types around the Enneagram, creating the foundation for today’s widespread Enneagram teachings. His system was predicated on opposites: For each of the nine personality types, he assigned a corresponding passion (or emotional imbalance) and virtue.

Psychological insights

In the 1970s, psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo developed Ichazo’s ideas further, sketching profiles of each type’s psychodynamics and describing common type-related pathologies. For each type, he identified motivations, cognitive biases, and neurotic tendencies, such as narcissism or histrionic traits. He was also the first person to use the panel method of teaching. He grouped individuals by type and asked them questions, enabling both Naranjo and his students to get a better understanding of each Type. For example, he would assemble a group of individuals who identified with Type One and ask them questions, illuminating aspects of the type for his audience. This approach to the Enneagram is widely used today.

Naranjo taught his Enneagram material to students in Berkeley, California, as he developed it. His insights spread to Jesuit seminaries where they were further disseminated. The first generation of Enneagram authors learned the Enneagram mostly from this transmission.

The enneagram today

Both Riso and Palmer became leaders in the field and founders of the world’s most prominent Enneagram school. Don Riso expanded descriptions of the psychology of each type to include nine Levels of Development, differentiating healthy, average, and unhealthy manifestations of the types. These span the whole range of human potential, from optimal functioning to psychological pathology. Riso founded The Enneagram Institute and partnered with Russ Hudson to further develop his work. Riso’s contemporary Helen Palmer wrote additional books about practical Enneagram applications and founded the Narrative Tradition. In this influential school, Palmer and her teaching partner David Daniels refined Naranjo’s panel approach—where groups of a certain type were brought together—using personal stories to provide both an understanding of type and a healing experience for panelists.

Knowledge of the Enneagram as a personality system has spread beyond its esoteric roots and entered the mainstream. Across the globe, therapists, coaches, and corporate trainers use the Enneagram with their clients. While we are certified and authorized teachers with The Enneagram Institute and our understanding is deeply influenced by this school’s psychodynamic approach, we have studied with Enneagram professionals who apply the system to fields as diverse as executive coaching and hypnosis. Over the next few chapters, we’ll give you a sense of the diverse ways the Enneagram can be applied.

Toward Self-Discovery

Now that we’ve covered the nine Enneagram types, as well as the different components that make up the system, maybe one of the types sounds a lot like you, or maybe a few different types sound like possible fits. If that’s the case, try them on as you read through the rest of the book, and see which one clicks.

Many people describe feeling a sense of relief when they find their Enneagram type, as they finally have an explanation for why they keep getting caught in the same traps. Through the Enneagram, people not only learn that their personality challenges are not their own fault, but they also get glimpses of their greatest possibilities and gifts. As individuals, we can stop blaming ourselves for our shortcomings and begin to see the beauty in our true selves.

Keep your eyes open and read on with a spirit of self-discovery. As you learn more about your dominant Enneagram type, you’ll gain access to a road map of your gifts and challenges. You’ll begin to notice when your type’s defense mechanisms—the average type mindsets that keep you stuck in limiting patterns of behavior—arise. Noticing your reactions and actions as they arise is the first step toward living a free and mindful life. You’ll realize that, instead of following the script you’re used to, you can make a different choice.

In the next few chapters, we’ll take a look at how the different types operate in the workplace, in relationships, and in day-to-day life. You’ll gain tools for understanding your own type in context and interacting with others in clear, empathetic, productive ways. Through exploring how the Enneagram can be used in the real world, you’ll discover more about yourself and the many ways this system can help you grow.

Chapter 3: A Guide to Spiritual Transformation

The enneagram is a powerful type of gateway towards the understanding of others and self-awareness. It gives a description of different dynamics and structures concerning the major personality types by creating a path to a life which is more integrated and rewarding. It comes from the Greek word ‘ennea’ which loosely translates to nine, and ‘grammos’ that entails a written symbol.

So these are nine distinct strategies for relating to the self and others. Each type for the enneagram represents a different thought approach that comes from a different inner motivation and perspective of the world. The enneagram enables a better understanding thus through universal language which transcends nationality, culture, religion and even gender.

Your enneagram core functions as a home base from which one can make sense of integration and individuation. It is crucial to keep in mind that different enneagrams can display similar behavior. The styles are not based solely according to behavior and outward representations can be deceiving.