Subject:
Enneagram
The Enneagram is a personality framework of 9 numbers,
each representing an archetypal network of defense mechanisms
that we use to deal with the pain of the world.
It provides language and lessons for self-awareness, empathy, and growth.
Created By Me
Other Resources
❔Enneagram Test
www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test
This is the best test I’ve found, and I especially like that it gives you a pie chart! It’s free — you don’t need to buy the “full report” — you can just screenshot the pie chart. The highest 3 numbers are the best place to start looking in discerning your Type. No test is authoritative. No test “knows” your type. You have to spend some time figuring it out.
✨Personality Database
Ever wondered what Barack Obama’s Enneagram was? How about Harry Potter or the Hulk? On the Personality Database you can see what people have voted for on many real and fictional characters. Even the personality types of countries and colors! :)
🎧Podcasts
If you’re a podcaster, The Art of Growth podcast and The Liturgists have some great stuff!
đź“–Articles and Websites
On the classic Centers, Virtues, and Vices: https://theenneagramatwork.com/the-emotional-habits-of-the-nine-personality-types/
On Defense Systems: https://theenneagramatwork.com/the-enneagram-defense-system/
On Triads in the Enneagram: http://www.fitzel.ca/enneagram/harmonics.html
đź“–Knowledge Source: PDB Wiki
wiki.personality-database.com/books/enneagram
This Wiki has a LOT of good resources across a broad range of Enneagram discussion. There are sections on the history of the Enneagram (Ichazo), descriptions of each Type, Tritypes, the Three Instincts (social, sexual, self-preservation), Subtypes, and more.
A tool for Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Growth….
The Enneagram is a tool for self-awareness, empathy, and growth. In spending time with it, you can begin to notice your compulsions, listen to your body, and live more present. It provides a language to understand others and how they operate differently. Work with the Enneagram is not always easy. It is shadow-work: focused on parts of ourselves that go unnoticed… or are avoided.
Each Enneagram number (or type) references an archetypal set of defense mechanisms. Enneagram theory proposes that these defense-mechanism sets develop in early childhood, after experiencing the painful wound of realizing the world does not love us unconditionally. This wound was bandaged with defensive strategies which formed the enneagram type-structure. While the strategies of multiple Enneagram types were used, most commonly one type/number was prioritized, likely because the child perceived that this one worked well and they were good at it. Through continual use of a particular Enneagram type, these strategies became habitual and compulsive, sinking deep into the subconscious. Thus many people find they have predominantly dug themselves deep into one Enneagram type, with various elements of others.
While there are many different ways that defensive strategies could be divided and categorized, the Enneagram provides an elegant system of 9 categories — each one a nuanced network of defenses and motivations/compulsions — and each one deeply connected to the others in complex ways. Thus the Enneagram provides a powerful “latticework of mental models” which affords understanding through categorization, while also inviting transcendence of those very categories. The Enneagram’s strength is in its easy-to-understand 9 number categories, and its incredibly complex and diverse associations.
If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have mental models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models. —Charlie Munger