Structural Enneagram Personality Explained

Transcription

Structural Enneagram Personality Explained
Structural Enneagram
Personality Explained
By Jean Adeler
Copyright Jean Adeler 2009-2014
Contents
Structural Enneagram and Conventional Enneagram ....... 3
Personality as Perspective ............................................................ 4
Developmental Path .......................................................................... 4
The Six Perspectives ......................................................................... 4
Perspective Seven .................................................................. 4
Perspective Five..................................................................... 5
Perspective Eight ................................................................... 6
Perspective Two .................................................................... 6
Perspective Four .................................................................... 7
Perspective One ..................................................................... 8
Binaries ............................................................................................. 8
The Seven-Five Binary .......................................................... 9
The Two-Four Binary .......................................................... 10
The Eight-One Binary ......................................................... 11
Combination Perspectives on the Triangle ..................................... 12
Personality as Structure ............................................................... 13
Personality Dynamics ..................................................................... 13
The Nine Personality Structures ..................................................... 14
The One-Two Structure ....................................................... 14
The Two-Three Structure .................................................... 14
The Three-Four Structure .................................................... 15
The Four-Five Structure ...................................................... 15
The Five-Six Structure......................................................... 16
The Six-Seven Structure ...................................................... 16
The Seven-Eight Structure................................................... 17
The Eight-Nine Structure..................................................... 17
The Nine-One Structure....................................................... 18
Personality Types with Wings ................................................... 19
One-wing-Two, The Servant-Leader .............................................. 19
Two-wing-One, The Altruist........................................................... 20
Two-wing-Three, The Giver ........................................................... 21
Three-wing-Two, The Motivator .................................................... 22
Three-wing-Four, The Achiever ..................................................... 23
Four-wing-Three, The Individualist ................................................ 24
Four-wing-Five, The Artist ............................................................. 24
Five-wing-Four, The Visionary ...................................................... 25
Five-wing-Six, The Observer .......................................................... 27
Six-wing-Five, The Guardian ......................................................... 28
Six-wing-Seven, The Loyalist......................................................... 28
Seven-wing-Six, The Enthusiast ..................................................... 29
Seven-wing-Eight, The Excitement Seeker .................................... 30
Eight-wing-Seven, The Rebel ......................................................... 30
Eight-wing-Nine, The Boss............................................................. 31
Nine-wing-Eight, The Mediator...................................................... 32
Nine-wing-One, The Peacemaker ................................................... 33
One-wing-Nine, The Idealist........................................................... 34
Structural Enneagram
2
Structural Enneagram and Conventional Enneagram
The Structural Enneagram is a fundamental
rethinking of the Enneagram model of personality. The
conventional Enneagram is a system of nine personality
types organized on a graph called an enneagram, or
nine-part figure.
As an adaptation of that well-known personalitytyping system, the Structural Enneagram introduces
several new features, among them:
• Specification of the underlying structures of
personality.
• More-accurate, two-number structures as opposed
to the old single-number types.
These and other modifications of the Enneagram model
add exponentially to its explanatory value and usefulness.
Even at the surface level of delineation and
description of types, the Structural Enneagram's
innovations are quite extensive. For example, while the
conventional Enneagram describes nine personality
types with the option of assigning a wing—the type on
either side of the dominant type—the Structural
Enneagram makes wings an essential factor in
personality typing.
The principal new elements of the Structural
Enneagram are as follows:
• 6 Perspectives that form the building blocks of
personality
• 9 personality structures corresponding to pairs of
adjacent numbered points
• 18 type-plus-wing personalities
Moreover, the Structural Enneagram model exposes the
dynamics of personality, consisting of three separate
moments that drive the personality. In short, the
Structural Enneagram understands the Enneagram to be
not merely an organized collection of personality types
but also a dynamic model of the underlying structure of
personality.
A Note on Language Choices
The basic Structural Enneagram still looks like the
illustration above, although its parts may have different
meanings. For example, in the conventional Enneagram,
the lines connecting numbers map a “direction of
integration”, while in the Structural Enneagram some of
the lines are repurposed to map a developmental path,
the order in which certain perceptual and cognitive
abilities arise in childhood.
For those wishing to break out of personality traps,
the conventional Enneagram's vague recommendations
to behave more like the type in one's “direction of
integration” are replaced by a better understanding of
how and why such traps exist. This information can help
in devising a plan of action for personal growth.
Structural Enneagram
People are more than their personality types. Yet it
gets tiresome repeatedly reading phrases like “a person
having Structural Enneagram type Eight-wing-Seven.”
So instead of spelling the idea out in eight words, I might
shorten it to three: “Eight-wing-Seven”.
In a sense, the Eight-wing-Sevenness of a person
can be said to have its own, autonomous agency, acting
within, and at times almost independently of, the whole
person. In that sense, it can be true to say that Eightwing-Seven does something or thinks something. We all
have occasions (probably many more than we would
care to know) when some unconscious or automatic part
of us takes over. So, although I never mean to imply that
personality is the whole of a person, I will use this
shorthand throughout.
3
Personality as Perspective
At the root of personality is Perspective. The word
perspective has multiple meanings: it is worldview;
point of view; perceptual position; and mental posture
relative to yourself, others, and the environment. In the
Structural Enneagram, Perspective is contingent upon
many factors, among them, physiological capabilities
and constraints, psychological drives, accidents of
personal history, cultural contributions, and (largely
unconscious) linguistic structures.
use of each of these Perspectives contributes something
to your sense of identity, to your selfhood.
The Six Perspectives
The six points on the enneagram hexad—the sixpointed star shape—mark the Perspectives modeled by
the Structural Enneagram. (The points on the triangle
will be covered later in this section.) The typical patterns
of underuse and overuse of these six Perspectives add
up to nine personality structures and eighteen
personality types.
Developmental Path
I believe that five of the six lines connecting the
points on the hexad trace a developmental path,
beginning with Perspective Seven and ending at One.
The origins of Seven are in infancy, and One is the most
sophisticated Perspective and probably the last to be
added.
This model assumes a norm in which, in the course
of growing up, almost everybody acquires and is able to
perform all six Perspectives, but everybody also favors
some Perspectives over others. A stable pattern of lesser
use of some Perspectives and greater use of others is
what determines a personality type. But the common
principle uniting all six Perspectives into a whole—and
the justification for systematizing them—is that your
Structural Enneagram
The six Perspectives that undergird the personalities
of the Structural Enneagram are listed here in the posited
developmental order, which can be traced on the above
enneagram figure by starting at Seven and following in
the direction of the arrows, stopping at One.
Perspective Seven
Perspective Seven is the state of being as one with
people and things—the state of being immersed in the
environment. I also use the NLP term associated to
name this state. From an associated position, you
experience yourself as if inside the scene, using your
senses to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste what is going
on around you. This applies whether the experience is
happening now, is being recalled, or is only imagined.
When you are in an immersed state, your emotions
are activated. While riding a roller coaster, you are
excited and scared. While giving a speech, you are
nervous. While serving on a jury, you become
passionately vengeful in sympathy with a murder
victim's family. You eagerly await the final game of a
tournament.
An amusing illustration of Perspective Seven is
found in the opening paragraph of Edmund Morris's
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Colonel Roosevelt, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt.1
The former president is on an African expedition:
Sitting above the cowcatcher, on an
observation bench rigged for him by British
East Africa Railway officials, he feels the thrust
of the locomotive pushing him upland from
Mombasa, over the edge of the parched Taru
plateau. He has the delightful illusion of being
transported into the Pleistocene Age.
Here TR, as if a part of the train, coursing through the
African landscape, eager for excitement, inhabits the
Seven state to the utmost.
good in a flash. Either way, they are completely
absorbed in the experience.
Although we all retain some access to Perspective
Seven’s immersion in experience, only an infant could
possibly sustain this proto-Perspective Seven for any
length of time. Once we acquire language and the
ability to partialize, we will always, to some extent,
stand out from the world in our own minds.
Uncontaminated Perspective Seven will never again be
possible. But as the personality matures and adds other
Perspectives, the associated, Sevenish point of view will
continue to provide a space for being as one with people,
things, and experience.
Perspective Five
At around 18 months of age, children noticeably
begin to acquire Perspective Five. Using this
Perspective to conceptually distinguish themselves from
the maternal environment, they pull themselves up from
passivity, helplessness, and dependency.
Whether or not you adopted Perspective Five as a
prime component of your personality structure, you
have it available to you. It is a skill set that allows you
to get some distance on your environment and to avoid
feeling that situations and people are swallowing up
your individuality.
I believe that a sort of proto-Perspective Seven
arises in infancy, at the personality's first emergence
from the nurturing maternal matrix, probably at around
six months of age. Before that, although infants may
have a definite temperament, there is little to suggest
that they have a sense of themselves as individuals. Self
and environment are a unity.
Once they do begin to develop a sense of being
different from the environment, they still experience
themselves as a reflection of it. To a large extent, the
state of the environment is the state of the self. Their
budding sense of identity is wrapped up in what they
see, hear, and feel. If the world is orderly and pleasant
and they are well-fed, then they are composed. If the
world is chaotic and noisy and the diaper is clammy and
the child hungry, then everything falls apart. Babies’
selfhood, like their emotional state, reflects their
immediate circumstances.
And their experience is holistic. They don’t draw
fine distinctions. The world is either good or it’s bad at
this moment, although what’s bad now may change to
Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House, 2010),
3.
2
In previous accounts, I used the NLP term dissociated for
Perspective Five rather than detached. However, since in
1
Structural Enneagram
When using Perspective Five, you are detached2, or
objective, as opposed to losing yourself in your
experience. As you are somewhat removed from the
scene, you occupy an observer space, so to speak, from
which you see and hear what is going on “over there.
This Perspective allows you to be less
personally involved and more analytical. If, for
example, you were objectively evaluating an orange—
psychiatry dissociation has all negative connotations, in
order to avoid confusion, I've dropped the term.
5
maybe you're going to serve fruit salad to guests—you
might rate its acidity or notice that the juice tasted
sweeter than usual. Enjoyment of the orange has been
subordinated to observation.
When you are detached, your feelings are more
under your own control and less contingent upon
circumstances. While riding a roller coaster, you may
become curious about the physics of the cars staying on
the pitched track. While giving a speech, you may
evaluate the audience reaction. On the jury in a murder
trial, you can dispassionately weigh the evidence for and
against the charges.
The developmental aspect of shifting from the
associated to the detached perspective is well illustrated
in an account written by psychoanalyst Jeanne Lafont.3
A four-year-old girl is being treated. On a rainy day,
Lafont asks the girl to look out the window and then
draw what she sees. The girl grasps the pencil in her fist
and performs rain by dotting the paper. According to
Lafont, most children at that age take a step back from
the scene of rain and draw vertical lines depicting the
drops falling.
In dotting the paper as if the pencil were the rain,
the girl is taking the perspective of the rain itself; this is
Perspective Seven, associated. Drawing rain as vertical
lines requires detached Perspective Five.
By training her patient on how to enter the detached
state, Lafont reverses the condition that had brought the
girl into therapy. Cognitive therapy does something
similar, teaching the person stuck in all-good or all-bad
thinking to step back and observe a more nuanced
reality.
Perspective Eight
The child once having attained some degree of
distance from the maternal environment, with
Perspective Five, the pendulum again swings in mom's
direction. With the arrival of Perspective Eight, the child
locks into a mother-child dyad, a bonded state steeped
in the fantasy that identity is a function of holding
another's attention. If you believe you are necessary to
mother, then you can be sure she will not lose you.
This is also a time of ego expansion. Children of
three and four can be at their most aggressive and
demanding. And, of course, they are becoming ever
more self-aware.
Under Perspective Eight, self-identity is founded on
a subject-object relationship. This is a common
distinction in psychology, but you can also think of
subject and object in grammatical terms borrowed from
the parts of the common English sentence structure:
subject-verb-object. The subject does something that
involves an object. “I love you”—I am the subject. “You
love me”—I am the object.
While under the influence of Perspective Eight,
people of any age try to earn and maintain the positive
regard of the other. For those who are Eight-dominant,
a recognition-seeking strategy also plays a pivotal role
in self-identity and motivation, as will be discussed in
the descriptions of individual personality structures and
types.
As with the other five Perspectives, you never
outgrow Perspective Eight’s mode of being, even if you
don't express it as a major life theme. While holding
subject position, you love, lead, follow, assert, motivate,
convince, desire, see. In object position, you are desired,
punished, rewarded, valued, taught, led, loved, seen.
Whether the other is giving you attention or wanting
attention from you, Perspective Eight secures a sense of
identity via the recognition and desire of the other.
Perspective Two
Perspective Two connects you to other people's
desires. It often involves the use of what NLP calls other
position—a projecting of consciousness into the space
of the other in order to imagine, from their point of view,
what they think. I tend to discuss this perspective in
terms of the other’s desire because I think the main thing
you want to know about others' thoughts is what they
want, and most particularly what they want from you.
When straightforwardly expressed, Two-consciousness is centered squarely in the other. Some would
Jeanne Lafont, ed. by Ellie Ragland, “The Inherent Twisting
of the Gaze,” (Re)-Turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies Vol.
4, Spring 2008: 127-134.
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Structural Enneagram
6
call it thinking with the heart. It's an empathy that makes
you feel connected to and responsible for each other.
This direct sort of Two-consciousness dominates in the
altruistic and caring types.
Complicating matters, children may feel they have to
compensate for a father who is missing or otherwise not
doing his job of keeping the mother off their back. But
whatever the reason behind a stuck Two pattern, it keeps
the mother (and, later, any other) nearby, while at a
reasonably safe distance.
For you, this childhood drama may have been less
intense and is long since forgotten, but it nevertheless
left you with a highly useful ability to project your
consciousness into other position and emerge with
invaluable information. How else could you know how
your audience is responding to you? Or what your
market will buy? Or even how to love?
Perspective Four
Thinking psychoanalytically, we see that Perspective Two develops when children recognize that the
mother desires something other than them. As the
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said, her gaze is turned
elsewhere. As every mother knows, younger children
often find it totally unacceptable if her entire attention is
not trained on them. But it does happen. By school age,
children solve this problem by putting themselves in her
place in order to find out what she wants—how she
wants them to be. Maybe, by giving her what she wants,
they can draw her gaze back in their direction.
But at some point, in the logic of the budding
psyche, even this much attention can begin to pose a
problem. There might be danger in attracting and
holding the gaze of the mother. Practically speaking,
there is the danger of being overwhelmed by the duty of
fulfilling her desire. Not to mention the dawning
realization that if you are able to project your
consciousness into her mind, then she can do the
reverse. She can possess you with her thoughts!
Granted, you probably don't remember thinking this.
Nevertheless, that this fear of possession is both real and
intense is evidenced by its frequently showing up as the
theme of horror movies, such as Invasion of the Body
Snatchers. Lacan depicted the fantasy of the possessive
mother by the sinister image of the praying mantis.
Given the danger of psychological engulfment and
possession, you would think that we would all be
spurred to abandon Perspective Two at the first
opportunity. But there is a paradoxical reason to cling to
a strategy of monitoring the mother's thoughts—let us
say, her mental condition. A mother’s excessive
neediness or negativity may activate children’s sense of
responsibility for her happiness for the simple fact that
having an unhappy mother threatens their well-being.
Structural Enneagram
Mental separation from the mother is at long last
possible with the acquisition of Perspective Four. Rather
than remaining in thrall to the task of giving the mother
what she wants (in order to remain in some measure the
object of her desire), children at some point identify
more with their own drive for autonomy and selfcreation.
Perspective Four is a turning inward to ask, Who am
I separate from other people, and what do I want for
myself? Such questioning promotes creative thinking
since, without the (m)other to show you who you are and
what to want, you have to discover new reference points
for yourself.
But the crucial first task of Perspective Four is to
cover over, to repress, the Perspective Two’s
enmeshment with the mother. From Perspective Four
you insist on your difference from others. You begin to
create your personal version of reality, a version that will
eventually hook into some set of truths in the larger
world, beyond the family.
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Perspective One
In ways large and small, personality types that rely
on Perspective One are principled reformers. They
notice where people and institutions are not living up to
standard and try to rectify the situation. Moreover, they
notice where family or societal norms lack justification
and try to change them.
It appears that the acquisition of Perspective One
might begin with the young person's decision to
somehow embrace a principle, quality, or worldview
that is not well-represented in their family. They
experience firsthand the family's deficiency, for
example, a lack of education. Then, probably without
going through any formal or even conscious
deliberation, they begin to identify with a principle, or
purpose, that, if realized, would fill the lack. So one
child determines to become the first person in the family
to finish college. Another leaves the city and buys a
farm.
Since Perspective One is rooted in a sort of
judgment on your family's shortcomings, it becomes a
way of distinguishing yourself, a way of individuating
through self-improvement.
At the same time, Perspective One involves heeding
a call emanating from the world beyond the family.
Maturing means being pulled away from parents by the
larger reality and interacting with it in a meaningful way.
Again, a major premise of Structural Enneagram is
that all normally functioning people use all six
perspectives. We all use Perspective One. We are all
principled. Yet some personalities rely more heavily on
Perspective One than do others. This will be explained
more fully in the next section, Binaries.
Structural Enneagram
Binaries
The six Structural Enneagram Perspectives are
further organized into three binary pairs. A binary is a
whole with two parts that stand in polar opposition to
each other. Here, the opposition is between relational
and individuated Perspectives.
As illustrated in the above figure, the three binary
pairs are Perspectives Seven and Five, Perspectives Two
and Four, and Perspectives Eight and One.
As shown in the following table, at one end of each
pole are the relational Perspectives, and at the other end
are the individuated Perspectives:
Binaries
Relational Pole
Individuated Pole
Immersed in
experience
Seven-----Five
Detached from
experience
Oriented to
other’s desire
Two-------Four
Oriented to
own desire
Identifies in
relation to
others
Eight------One
Identifies with
principle
These three binaries represent mutually exclusive
takes on three critical issues. The Seven-Five binary
deals at bottom with the state of being either inside or
outside your environment. The Two-Four binary locates
desire either in the other or in the self. And the EightOne binary locates the source of identity and purpose
either in the other or in an ideal self. This source of
identity, in turn, determines how we channel desire.
Although it appears that almost everyone is capable of
8
taking all six positions, at any given moment only one
position in each pair can be occupied.
And yet, it turns out that a certain sort of access to
the relational Perspectives is absolutely necessary to the
efficient functioning of the individuated Perspectives.
Unconscious access to Perspective Seven undergirds the
ability to perform normally from Perspective Five, and
so on. But to prove this would require an extended
argument, one that I hope will unfold over time (perhaps
in future revisions of this paper). Now to an explanation
of the Structural Enneagram binaries.
The Seven-Five Binary
Over time, your preferred stance with regard to the
two Perspectives of the Seven-Five binary determines
your baseline mental and emotional states for the reason
that it determines how you position yourself relative to
your cognitive and physical environments. You can
continually immerse yourself in experience, which I
also call being associated (Perspective Seven), or you
can step outside of experience and detach (Perspective
Five),4 or you can switch between the two as
appropriate.
Distinguishing Perspective Seven from Five is first
and foremost a matter of determining whether you are
experiencing a situation from the inside or the outside.
Relational Perspective Seven gives the sense of being
inside, or associated to, experience, while individuated
Perspective Five gives the sense of being outside it, or
detached.
Perspective Seven is the recommended state if you
want to really feel something, from having fun and
being happy to enduring an authentic moment of grief
and sadness. It's also essential if you are to be able to
pop into someone else's emotional atmosphere for a
moment, if you want to understand or get into rapport
with that person.
Perspective Five could release you from having to
take on the mood of the moment. It would allow you to
feel objective, or curious, or peaceful, regardless of what
is going on outside you. But for those habitually stuck
in Seven's worldview and unable to detach, having fun
and being happy are absolutely necessary states to be
preserved at all costs. Because of this they develop an
astonishing talent for denial. Denial is a skill that is
usually understood in its pejorative sense, but it comes
in handy whenever it’s not a good time to focus on
hardships; in this sense, denial can also be called
optimism. Yet, to carry on frenetically, pretending
everything is great, ignoring all evidence to the contrary,
is to risk an eventual, devastating incursion of the dark
side of life.
A variant of the Sevenish penchant for refusing to
deal with the negative is talking about it too much. To
off-load all your disturbing thoughts onto another
person tries the patience of the listener and spares you
from facing them yourself.
Normally the Sevenish experience is modulated
through an entire personality structure encompassing
several easily accessible Perspectives. But for the
person in the grip of Seven, not being able to make an
objective, nuanced assessment of reality means that the
world seems pretty much either all good or all bad. (This
is sometimes called “good-bad splitting” or just
“splitting.”) If the world goes all bad for people stuck in
Seven then they flip over from denial into wallowing in
pain. Everything is “horrible”—to use a word I hear a
lot from a distressed Seven-wing-Eight.
People stuck in Perspective Seven often seem to
have their heads in the clouds. They may find that
people actually tell them things like, “You need to come
down to earth.” Not that they don’t try to get themselves
grounded, even if by proxy. For example, some
Sevenish men seem to “collect women,” who may
represent something of nature for them. Or Sevenish
men and women may use pets to help them get
grounded. “Cluttering” is often a problem since, from
Perspective Seven, relating to material things can give
the impression of being connected to physical reality.
One Seven-wing-Six told me she simply couldn’t put
clutter away or else her things might disappear, and this
thought was deeply unsettling to her. All of her things
had to be out in the open where she could see them.
Throwing out even useless junk provoked extreme
anxiety. Her professional work was carried out in the
sublime realms of energy and spirits, but the everpresent signs of her existence in the material world
apparently helped to ground her.
The alternative is to shift into the Five pole of the
Seven-Five binary. Standing apart from a person, place,
or situation, you reach detachment. You can perceive
The associated and detached states are closely related to
extraversion and introversion, respectively.
4
Structural Enneagram
9
patterns that could not be seen from the inside. You can
remove your emotions from the scene and merely
witness. You can evaluate things “objectively.”
Obviously, each position, Five and Seven, has its
merits. It has been recommended that we associate to
positive experiences and detach from negative ones.
Common language testifies, for example, that grieving
must be “gone through” but we are not to “wallow” in
it. So individuated Perspective Five is often considered
to be the more mature and adaptive of the two
perspectives in painful emotional contexts: we do say
we “achieve” objectivity. Yet it is apparent upon
reflection that both perspectives of this binary are
absolutely necessary in all matters of the heart. You
know that you must be immersed in experience, in the
moment, to enjoy being with another person, and yet
you periodically detach in order to view the situation
from the outside, if you want to avoid any number of
atrocious outcomes.
And it's the same with intellectual pursuits.
Perspective Five probably initiates the process of
reasoning, analyzing and synthesizing patterns. But
once you have taken in a certain amount of information
on a topic, you can move seamlessly and intuitively
back and forth from associated to detached states.
You just can't do both at the same instant. And the
state you favor will constitute the foundational factor of
your self-concept and personality.
Perspectives on Experience
Seven
Five
Relational
Individuated
Associated
Detached
Inside
Outside
Subjective
Objective
Participant
Observer
Extraversion
Introversion
Fluent
Hesitant
Uninhibited
Inhibited
Enthusiastic
Discerning
The T-chart is suggestive of some of the basic
differences between Perspectives Five and Seven. This
chart is neither exhaustive nor exact. Each of the
descriptors refers to how the individual interacts with
experiences, including experiencing people and things.
In coming sections I will introduce and discuss
personality structures. All of the personality structures
are influenced by the Seven-Five binary in some way.
The following information is provided as a reference
point.
Structural Enneagram
Personality Structures and the Seven-Five Binary
Seven
Five
In Flux
Two-Three
Five-Six
Seven-Eight
Eight-Nine
One-Two
Three-Four
Four-Five
Six-Seven
Nine-One
Of the nine structures, four include the relational,
Seven Perspective, four include the individuated Five
Perspective and one has a more complicated relationship
to Seven and Five.
The Two-Four Binary
The most telling distinction between the poles of the
Two-Four binary is the location of desire in either self
or other. Personalities incorporating Perspective Two
are prone to a bit of mindreading, paying attention to
what they imagine the other person wants—although
their reply to the other's desire may amount to either a
direct response to it, an interpretation of it, or a defense
or rebellion against it. Personalities relying instead on
Perspective Four pay more attention to their own
desires, through introspection. Even so, they may not go
after what they want due to interference coming from
factors related to other perspectives.
Most of us never lose the ability to empathize that
comes with Perspective Two, and that is obviously a
good thing. But, unfortunately for personalities that are
wedded too tightly to Perspective Two, total attention to
the other’s desire precludes healthy attention to their
own. No matter how rewarding or necessary their
Perspective-Two strategy may be, they eventually or
occasionally crave separation from the other—
separation such as Perspective Four offers.
Some Two-types say that’s when the fear of
abandonment kicks in. This fear is often attributed to the
father’s literal or emotional abandonment. And the
problem is exacerbated by a mother who either does not
know what she wants or who fails to obtain what she
wants and for whose desires the child feels responsible.
10
Later, this habitual willingness to consider the
other’s desire is extended beyond the mother. Although
Two-types may not always respond positively, they do
tune into the other’s demands and preferences.
On the other hand, personalities that use
individuated Perspective Four are only too happy leave
such responsibility for the other behind in order to
follow their own desires. They will be far more
autonomous, and even self-absorbed compared to
someone who favors Perspective Two.
Of course, it is quite possible to be balanced
between Perspectives Two and Four, to switch
seamlessly back and forth between them. Only you can’t
do both at the same time. Most people lean noticeably
toward one or the other.
The following T-chart is suggestive of some of the
basic differences between perspectives Two and Four. It
is neither exhaustive nor exact. Each of the descriptors
refers to how the personality is oriented to other people,
especially as concerns the location of desire.
Perspectives Relative to the Other
Two
Four
Relational
Individuated
Other’s desire
Own desire
Empathy
Introspection
Heart
Libido
Connected
Separate
Giving
Creative
Serving
Self-sufficient
Fear of abanNeed for autonomy
donment
In coming sections I will introduce and discuss
personality structures. All of the personality structures
are influenced by the Two-Four binary in some way. The
following information is provided as a reference point.
Personality Structures and the Two-Four Binary
Two
Four
In Flux
Two-Three
Three-Four
Six-Seven
Eight-Nine
Seven-Eight
Five-Six
Four-Five
One-Two
Nine-One
All of the personality structures are influenced by
the Two-Four binary in some way. Of the nine
structures, four include relational Two Perspective, four
include individuated Four Perspective, and one has a
more complicated relationship to Two and Four.
Structural Enneagram
The Eight-One Binary
Finally, personality hinges on a choice regarding the
Eight-One binary: whether to form an interpersonal
identification and motivational strategy or an
individuated one. The Perspective-Eight self-concept
and purpose come primarily from relationships and
interactions with other people, while the PerspectiveOne self-concept and purpose emerges from a
relationship to ideas and principles. This distinction is
important in that these two Perspectives control not only
how people conceptualize themselves but also how they
express themselves.
Keeping in mind that all normally developed
people, in other words, almost all of us, use both of these
Perspectives. However, people do display a marked
preference for one or the other. Since Eight-types form
an identity out of others' reactions to them, they respond
to interpersonal factors such as power, status, and
hierarchy. For One-types, on the other hand, since an
idea in mind is the guarantor of their existence, selfactivation occurs in response to thought-impressions
such as standards, spiritual beliefs, principles, mission,
purpose, and ideals. They are motivated to thought and
action by something other than what will cause others to
affirm their existence.
Perspectives Relative to
Identity and Motivation
Eight
One
Relational
Individuated
Interpersonal
Principled
Recognition
Being right
Role
Purpose
Hierarchical
Unique
Worldly
Idealistic
The T-chart is suggestive of some of the basic
differences between perspectives Eight and One. It is
neither exhaustive nor exact. Each of the descriptors
relates to the individual’s source of identity and
motivation.
11
In coming sections I will introduce and discuss
personality structures. All of the personality structures
are influenced by the Eight-One binary in some way.
The following information is provided as a reference
point.
Personality Structures and the Eight-One Binary
Eight
One
In Flux
Seven-Eight
One-Two
Eight-Nine
Nine-One
Four-Five
Two-Three
Five-Six
Three-Four
Six-Seven
All of the personality structures are influenced by
the Eight-One binary in some way. Of the nine
structures, four include the relational, Eight Perspective,
four include the individuated, One Perspective, and one
has a more complicated relationship to the two.
Combination Perspectives
on the Triangle
A crucial difference between Structural Enneagram
and the conventional Enneagram of personality is
Structural Enneagram's redefinition of the points on the
triangle as combinations of the six points on the hexad.
Structural Enneagram
The triangle points, Nine, Three, and Six, are
derived from the hexad in the following way:
Six Single and Three Combination Perspectives
Single
Combination
Perspectives
Perspectives
One and Two …
combine at point Six.
Seven and Eight …
combine at point Three.
Four and Five …
combine at point Nine.
The depiction of the combination perspectives through
the triangle is what makes it possible for the Structural
Enneagram to depict nine personality types out of six
Perspectives.
Recap
The Structural Enneagram dictates that each of its
nine personality structures be assembled out of two or
three of its six Perspectives. It is axiomatic that a given
personality will not include both Perspectives in the
same binary since both cannot be expressed
simultaneously. We have seen the logic in this: you can’t
be both associated (Seven) and detached (Five) in the
same instant; similarly, you can’t be impelled by the
other’s desire (Two) and at the same time divorced from
it (Four); nor can you be guided simultaneously by
considerations of power relationships (Eight) and an
ideal principle (One).
The very existence of personality is being redefined
here as the reality that, within each binary, you are
bound to favor one side over the other. Although an
evolved person might be flexible enough to switch
easily back and forth between both poles of all three
binaries, most people will have home positions that they
operate out of most of the time, and by definition
personality stems from the relative balance of
Perspectives in habitual use.
12
Personality as Structure
Each of the Structural Enneagram’s nine personality
structures is a combination of two or three of the six
Perspectives. The following table lists these combinations:
Perspective Three, are not captured by the Three-Four
arc.
Six Perspectives Underlie
Nine Personality Structures
Perspectives
One + Two
Personality
Structure
One-Two
Two + Three
Two-Three
(Two + Seven + Eight)
Three + Four
Three-Four
(Seven + Eight + Four)
Four + Five
Four-Five
Five + Six
(Five + One + Two)
Six + Seven
(One + Two + Seven)
Seven + Eight
Five-Six
Eight + Nine
(Eight + Four + Five)
Nine + One
(Four + Five + One)
Eight-Nine
Six-Seven
Seven-Eight
Nine-One
“One-Two” means a personality structure that
combines Perspectives One and Two. The fully
differentiated personality type could be either Onewing-Two or Two-wing-One. Since the points on the
Structural Enneagram represent Perspectives rather than
types, personality structures are depicted as the arcs, or
sections, between the points. Thus, personality
structures are continua formed by varying weights of
two or three Perspectives.
The personality structure is typically tilted to favor
one of the two or three Perspectives that comprise it.
Seven-wing-Eight means Seven is the prevailing
Perspective. But the structure name “Seven-Eight” does
not specify the prevailing Perspective. Seven-Eight is
the combination of two Perspectives and encompasses
both personality structures Seven-wing-Eight and
Eight-wing-Seven.
Similarly, a Three-Four personality structure
includes both personality types Three-wing-Four and
Four-wing-Three. The relative strengths of Perspectives
Seven and Eight, which make up Combination
Structural Enneagram
And, if it were possible to have a single-Perspective
personality structure, then the arc, or continuum, would
be reduced to a point coequal with the single
Perspective.
Personality Dynamics
In the descriptions of personality structure and type
that follow, one of the points of discussion will be
personality dynamics. Each personality structure has its
own dynamic—its own movement through experience.
These movements are triggered by psychological drives.
(Psychological drives are a source of the theory
underlying this model but are not covered in this
document.)
Parts of the Personality Dynamic
Perspectives/
Binary
Function
Seven or Five
Two or Four
Eight or One
Mode of being in the world
Source of desire
Channel of expression
The aspects of personality dynamics that are
emphasized by the Structural Enneagram are 1) a mode
of being in the world, 2) a source of desire, and 3) a
channel of expression. These aspects correspond to the
binary pairs of the six Perspectives.
13
In the Structural Enneagram model, once drive is
triggered, it sets out from a state, or mode of being in the
world (Perspective Seven or Five). Drive then takes
shape as a desire, seeming to emanate from either the
other (Perspective Two) or the self (Perspective Four).
It is then processed through a motivational channel that
involves your self-identity and sense of purpose
(Perspective Eight or One). Unfortunately, there can be
hiccups in the flow of drive. And some of those hiccups,
along with other personality dynamics, will come up in
the individual structure descriptions that follow, as well
as in the type descriptions in the section after that.
The Nine Personality Structures
Following are descriptions of the nine Structural
Enneagram personality structures. Recalling that these
structures are represented by the arcs between points
around the enneagram circle, note that the list begins
with the One-Two structure and continues around the
circle to Nine-One.
that One-Twos would prefer to maintain detached
Perspective Five, but that certain situations toss them
into a “negative-Seven” state of anger or despair.
One-Twos' personal evolutionary path requires
them to overcome their particular difficulty with holding
Perspective Five. This will be apparent in their choice of
goals that calls for sustaining objectivity, even in the
face of externally or internally generated conflict or
criticism.
The Two-Three Structure
Since Perspective Three is a combination of
Perspectives Seven and Eight, the Two-Three structure
comprises Perspectives Seven, Two, and Eight. Because
all three Perspectives lie at the relational ends of their
respective binaries, Two-Three is the most relational,
least individuated of the nine structures. The result is an
outgoing and charming personality that is rather too
dependent on the reactions of others.
The One-Two Structure
The One-Two structure includes individuated
Perspective One and relational Perspective Two.
Perspective Two’s empathy for others is either
turned to direct service to individuals or sublimated into
social forms of service such as running charities,
performing business support functions, teaching, and
promoting political causes.
Since Perspective One’s idealism tends to turn
thoughts and actions toward more abstract and universal
rather than personal themes, thinking turns to “how
things ought to be.”
What is not immediately apparent in this structure is
where One-Twos stand with respect to their physical and
interpersonal environment. Is their personality usually
absorbed into the world through Perspective Seven or
looking on objectively from Perspective Five? I believe
Structural Enneagram
Two-Threes rely on Perspective Seven, which
means that they turn their attention outward rather than
inward, so in order to feel good they are dependent on
the environment and the people in it to support and
nurture them. Given a supportive environment, TwoThrees are free to be their engaged and enthusiastic
selves.
Their direct expression of Perspective Two makes
them interested in other people and eager to give them
what they need and want: attention, love, entertainment,
gifts, or assistance. In return they might draw to
themselves the loving gaze of the other.
The presence of Perspective Eight means that TwoThrees need the positive regard of important others in
order to be fulfilled. Status is important to them, and
they are likely to achieve it by hitching their wagon to a
star.
14
The Three-Four Structure
The Three-Four structure combines individuated
Perspective Four with relational Perspectives Seven and
Eight to make a highly achieving, adaptable, creative,
and individualistic person. (As explained in the previous
section, point Three unites Perspectives Seven and
Eight.)
Having Perspective Seven in their makeup makes
Three-Fours passionate and engaged. Perspective Four
makes them look to their own desire rather than allow
themselves to be controlled by what others want from
them. On the other hand, having Perspective Eight
makes Three-Fours crave the positive regard of others,
so they will strive to excel and to control their image.
Dynamically, the Three-Four process looks something like this. Three-Fours have in mind some
objective, the achieving of which might reward them
with recognition or improved status. But this objective
needs to align as much as possible with their own desire
for self-expression rather than coming from somebody
else or from society.
Thoughts of achieving a particular objective ignite
their drive. They then set out from the associated Seven
state, which means that Three-Fours will throw
themselves into the project and get swept up in it. As
Four-types, they will prefer to act creatively, not always
following procedure. Unless some external factor stops
them, they will probably achieve their goals because
they are not internally inhibited or conflicted about selfimposed goals, as long as those goals are consistent with
their own values.
The Four-Five Structure
Four-Fives are creative, introspective, and cerebral
individualists. They can at times be alienated, isolated,
and avoidant.
Perspective Five, the quality of being detached and
observant, contributes intuition, introspection, and
insight to this personality structure. But too much of this
Structural Enneagram
cool Perspective may also make it difficult to fully
engage with people and experience. Having Perspective
Four in the personality makes Four-Fives artistic, anticonventional, and original. Too much Four and they
become merely eccentric.
Both Four and Five are individuated rather than
relational Perspectives. Behind a habit of detachment
(Five) lies an original drive to break away from what
feels like the engulfing influence of the family
atmosphere and to stand out from the environment. And
behind a move toward self-expression (Four) lies a
drive to cut the apron strings and release the need to
please the mother. With two individuated Perspectives
and no relational Perspectives, Four-Five is one of the
most autonomous personality structures in the Structural
Enneagram. (Nine-One is the most autonomous.)
Four-Five is one of the three personality structures
that at first glance appear to involve only two
Perspectives rather than three. (The others are SevenEight and One-Two.) As stated earlier, the dynamics of
the Structural Enneagram model require three
Perspectives to complete a personality structure. FourFive has Perspective Five as its mode of being in the
world and Perspective Four as its source of desire but
lacks a secure Perspective on identity, which either
Eight or One would provide.
But Four-Fives do not effectively use either Eight or
One to self-activate and complete projects and bring
them to market. If Four-Fives had settled at Perspective
Eight, then they would have been Eight-Nines and
would have been motivated by the drive to be a leader
and, moreover, to be recognized as a leader. Instead
Four-Fives have shifted away from Eight and are
attempting to use Perspective One.
When they do succeed in holding Perspective One,
then they are like Nine-Ones, motivated by a sense of
purpose to act and achieve completion. Furthermore,
any time Four-Fives attempt and fail to self-activate
through Perspective One, they tend to fall back onto a
15
disempowered position, becoming someone who can
easily be thwarted by criticism and aggression (real or
imagined). This appears to be the pattern of those FourFives who are conflicted about bringing their creations
to the world.
Consequently, Four-Fives’ lives too often appear to
be a roiling mass of unfulfilled desire. Lacking the
effective motivational strategy that either Eight or One
would provide, their output may consist of partially
finished projects and products that never hit the market,
especially if they are acting independently, without an
employer or agent of some kind to motivate them. To
self-actualize, Four-Fives need to either consolidate
Perspective One in their skill set or recruit or be
recruited by another person or agency to manage and
represent them.
Lacking these resources, they revert to their
characteristic ego defense: avoidance. This could mean
they withdraw from the world or simply that they
withdraw drive. The ultimate withdrawal of drive, short
of suicide, is depression.
The Five-Six Structure
The Five-Six structure includes Combination
Perspective Six, which unites Perspectives Two and
One, so this structure comprises individuated
Perspectives Five and One plus relational Perspective
Two. The result is a personality that may be described
as contrarian.
Perspective Five makes Five-Sixes detached from
the environment. This does not mean they are either
uninterested or disinterested. Perspective Five still
leaves people free to be involved and concerned. They
simply remove themselves from the immediacy of
experience and observe it, more or less objectively. This
makes these personalities good investigators.
Having Perspective One means that Five-Sixes are
identified with and motivated to action by a guiding
Structural Enneagram
principle. They are not particularly concerned with
status, if that means compromising their principles. To
some degree they are always going to be reformers.
Their Five and One components are usually pretty
obvious. It’s Perspective Two that you may have trouble
seeing in some Five-Sixes. That’s because, although
they are focused on the other’s desire rather than their
own, they may be quite suspicious of the other’s values
and motives. Or they may simply believe that they know
better what the other should want.
The dynamics of this structure are as follows: FiveSixes observe what already exists (Five) and what
people seem to need (Two). They then compare these
findings to their own guiding principles to see what
ought to be said or done, and that is what they do (One).
The ranks of Five-Sixes include many lawyers,
investigative journalists, investors, philanthropists,
inventors, scientists, and philosophers.
The Six-Seven Structure
In the Six-Seven structure, the combination of
relational Perspectives Seven and Two and individuated
Perspective One produces an engaged, reasonably
stable, and genuinely nice personality, albeit one that is
prone to anxiety.
Their accustomed use of Perspective Seven makes
Six-Sevens throw themselves into life, but they do not
necessarily come across as extraverted. The more Seven
in the personality, the more they turn their attention
outward.
Perspective One makes them identify with a guiding
principle, and they will often build a career around it.
Although their Seven and One components are
usually straightforward and obvious, their expression of
perspective Two may be indirect and not immediately
apparent. Unlike Two-Threes, Six-Sevens are not
necessarily “helper” types in that they don't typically
respond directly to others' needs. Rather, they apply
16
their own principles to deciding what the other should
want and then try to provide that.
The dynamics of this structure are that Six-Sevens
start out from an associated position (Seven), engage
some objective having to do with the other's needs
(Two), and then do something that is consonant with
both the other's desire and their own principles (One).
This often means bringing some value such as laughter,
order, or harmony to a situation that lacks it.
The Six-Seven structure is home to people in a
number of occupations. Many business people, lawyers,
comedians, actors, physical therapists, and medical
doctors share this structure.
The Seven-Eight Structure
The Seven-Eight structure includes two relational
Perspectives, Seven and Eight, and has not comfortably
settled on either Perspective from the Two-Four binary.
This structure produces aggressive, determined, often
rebellious individuals who run the gamut from John F.
Kennedy to Idi Amin.
Perspective Seven makes Seven-Eights crave
material things and experiences that they can either find
themselves or lose themselves in, depending on their
state of mind.
Perspective Eight adds an element of confidence,
tenacity, and intensity. Underlying these characteristics
is a need to be admired and elevated in status.
As rebellious types, Seven-Eights would at first
appear to have entirely rejected Perspective Two as a
home position, but, in fact, they have not. Rather, SevenEights are heavily embroiled in Perspective Two, being
largely incapable of unplugging from the other and
consistently using individualistic Perspective Four, no
matter how much they would like to do so.
Instead, Seven-Eights use Perspective Two to
discern what the other wants, and then, by applying
powerful strategies of influence, manipulate the
situation to either win people over or bring them to their
knees.
Riso and Hudson write about “[personality type]
Eight's destructive antisocial tendencies,”5 but this
characterization really only applies to Seven-Eights, not
to Eight-Nines. These tendencies often trace back to
Seven-Eights' antipathy toward a mother whom they
experienced as neglectful or withholding or whose love
was given conditionally.
The dynamics of the Seven-Eight structure are as
follows. Starting from an associated position (Seven),
they find out what the other wants and generally do the
opposite (inverse of Two). What happens after that will
depend on whether their actions win the esteem of others
or land Seven-Eights in trouble.
As adults, Seven-Eights form very close bonds with
another person, only to sometimes become vindictive
after the honeymoon period, if the other fails them in
some way. All their rebellion is a misguided effort to
claim independence. If Seven-Eights were able to
follow the example of Three-Fours in letting go of their
emotional enmeshment with the (m)other, then they
would succeed in creating a separate identity.
But then who would lead the revolutions?
The Eight-Nine Structure
The Eight-Nine structure is individuated on two
fronts, Perspectives Five and Four, and relational on the
third, Perspective Eight. Eight-Nines are leaders.
Being skilled in the use of Perspective Five, EightNines are ordinarily objective rather than being caught
up in the moment.
Using Perspective Four, they look to themselves
rather than to the other for inspiration. (This most
certainly does not mean, however, that they are
incapable of taking Perspective Two. Most Eight-Nines
are warm and engaging. True leadership requires great
facility in taking the other's point of view.)
However, with Perspective Eight in their makeup,
their self-esteem is a function of how others recognize
them, so they are motivated to win the respect of
competitors and the admiration of others in their “tribe.”
Eight-Nines recognize a hierarchy of authority, and they
want to earn a place high up in it.
Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, Personality Types:
Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery, Rev. ed.
(Houghton Mifflin, Boston), 1996, p. 295.
5
Structural Enneagram
17
The dynamics of the Eight-Nine structure are as
follows. Starting from a detached position (Five), they
turn inward for a plan (Four), then get others to follow
them in carrying it out (Eight).
Because they do enjoy being the linchpin between
the little guy and the higher authority, Eight-wing-Nines
become good at managing, and particularly good at
delegating. Ronald Reagan, a Nine-wing-Eight, had a
reputation for appointing capable people who agreed
with him in principle and leaving them alone to do their
jobs. The movie director Robert Altman, probably an
Eight-wing-Nine, prided himself on casting good actors
and trusting them to interpret their roles without his
interference.
Added to the other two individuated Perspectives,
Perspective One increases Nine-Ones' air of independence and intellectual self-reliance. They consult
their own principles and goals rather than relying on
external demands to direct their actions. Nor are they
particularly motivated by the prospect of recognition
from others. Rather, they take it as an obligation to
respond to the call to bring their ideals into
manifestation.
From being so individuated, Nine-Ones develop a
talent for looking beyond individual interest to the larger
picture. From this comes a unifying point of view that
makes them think more sociologically than other types.
The Nine-One Structure
The Nine-One personality structure is the most
individuated, least relational in the Structural
Enneagram model. All three component perspectives,
Five, Four, and One, lie at the individuated poles of their
respective binaries. This means that Nine-Ones form the
most self-possessed personalities. Consequently, they
may be perceived by people with more interpersonal
structures as being overly detached or cool.
Perspective Five gives Nine-Ones their raw powers
of observation as well as the impetus to bring something
of value to the world.
Perspective Four gives them a mental posture of
separation and difference from others. They look to
themselves rather than to others to determine what
should be done.
Structural Enneagram
18
Personality Types with Wings
The conventional Enneagram assigns one personality type to each numbered point around the circle and allows
for an optional adjacent “wing,” with the wing referring to collateral parts of the personality. Although the Structural
Enneagram adopts the conventional Enneagram practice of calling the secondary number a wing, this model does not
actually recognize a single-number type. Wings are considered to be integral to the personality type. Consequently,
personality types are always identified by two numbers rather than one.
The 18 Structural Enneagram personalities are listed
in this section, in the order that they appear around the
enneagram circle, starting with One-wing-Two and
ending with Nine-wing-One.
One-wing-Two
The Servant-Leader
nobility, a sense of mission, impassioned striving,
orderliness, and intelligence.
Perspective Two, the heart position, is the secondary
posture for One-wing-Twos. Because of their reliance
on Perspective Two, even though they typically
gravitate toward a leadership role, they will lead with
caring and generosity.
Perspective Two's empathy with individuals joins
with One's idealism to form Servant-Leaders, people
who are concerned with improving the human
condition. They are compassionate, caring nurturers and
managers, as well as advocates for the underdog.
Since the dominant Perspective of this type is One,
One-wing-Twos will seek to evince the principles
dictated by the higher self. That is why we see in welldeveloped people of this type characteristics such as
Structural Enneagram
19
Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jerry Brown,
Mario Cuomo, Emma Thompson, and Martha Stewart
probably have personality type One-wing-Two.
Where the other’s desire meets the judgment of the
ideal self, One-wing-Two’s purpose appears. As Bill
Clinton said of his One-wing-Two wife, “She’s got the
best combination of mind and heart … I’ve ever seen.”
Yet “heart” does not always figure prominently in this
type's public image. Obviously, the heavier influence of
mind (One) has something to do with this.
As suggested above, when advocating or working
on behalf of reforms, it is sometimes preferable to avoid
getting too emotionally invested in the process. Onewing-Twos probably do better when practicing
detachment (perspective Five), and they may sabotage
their causes by becoming overly attached to specific
outcomes or taking things too personally.
Moreover, when One-wing-Twos lose their normal
reserve, they seem unnatural and incongruent to
onlookers. On occasion, Hillary Clinton has been
accused of having a “meltdown.” She may tear up or get
melodramatic. She can become overly controlling and
what anti-feminists delight in calling “shrill.” These are
clearly moments of reverting to associated Perspective
Seven when she should have stayed in Five, the observer
state.
I have a hypothesis that because One-wing-Twos
want to help people they may attach themselves to
spouses and employers who actively solicit their
assistance. This dynamic would make both parties feel
loved and appreciated. Potential partners would tend to
be people with an Eight component since they like
making demands on others. Bill and Hillary Clinton fit
this picture since he is a Three-wing-Two (Seven plus
Eight plus Two).
Among the liabilities for One-wing-Twos is that
they can be perfectionistic, impatient, emotionally
constricted, judgmental, inflexible, and intolerant.
Furthermore, they can fail to match up to their own high
standards in any number of ways. But the loss of
Perspective Five under stress and the simultaneous slide
into negative-Seven is the biggest risk for this type.
Two-wing-One
The Altruist
Through helping others, Altruists combine
Perspective Two's generosity with One's principles to
demonstrate unconditional love. Unfortunately, they can
be other-oriented to self-destructive extremes.
You can recognize people of this type by their
warmth, encouragement, and overall air of acceptance.
Structural Enneagram
They enjoy giving smiles, hugs, compliments, and
gratitude.
Probable examples of personality type Two-wingOne are Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa, and
Desmond Tutu. Tutu's Made for Goodness: And Why
This Makes All the Difference (co-written with his
daughter Mpho Tutu) reads like a manifesto for the Twowing-One way of being.
Other reported examples are John Bradshaw and
Danny Glover.
Two-wing-Ones' commitment to service springs
from both the heart and the head. Since Perspective Two
is the main influence, they have a real talent for helping
others. Although they may act in a quiet, personal way,
their secondary Perspective, which is One, gives them a
sense of duty and purpose that may nudge them toward
business or community work rather than strictly family
service.
The childhood need to attend to the mother’s desires
(Perspective Two) carries over into adulthood, with the
mother's role being displaced onto others. Two-wingOnes look after friendships and relationships of all
kinds. Furthermore, like the other type in this pair, they
may attach themselves to Eight-types simply because
Eight-types are more than willing to play this game. But
habitual overuse of Perspective Two can cause Twowing-Ones to lose themselves in the fantasy of being
able to satisfy others’ unrelenting requirements and
demands.
Giving too much of themselves is always a risk with
this type. As illustrated in the biography of famous Twowing-One, Florence Nightingale, somatizing is a
common defense against not being able to say no.
Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a
nurse. In the nineteenth century, that vocation was not
acceptable in a young woman of her social class, yet she
persisted in spite of disapproval. Convinced that
marriage would interfere with her ambitions, she
rejected at least one seemingly advantageous offer.
Through of her experience of nursing soldiers in the
Crimean War, Nightingale revolutionized nursing care
in both military and civilian hospitals of Victorian
20
England, and her influence spread around the world. But
she eventually fell ill and became an invalid. Some
observers have thought there was an element of hysteria
to her illness, which did, in fact, have the effect of
getting her out of a lot of things she didn’t want to do,
while still allowing her to dictate social and healthcare
reforms from her bed.
When Two-wing-Ones allow the hopelessness of
others’ eternal, unremitting need to get under their skin
they may spiral downward into illness, depression, or
escapism. Even as these strategies help them disengage
from the other’s lack, they can prevent them from
fulfilling their own larger missions.
And when frustrated, they may revert to the pattern
of absorbing and getting stuck in others' negative
feelings. A Two-wing-One woman had been going back
and forth between two possible responses to a sticky
family situation for several days. She felt an obligation
to travel to a distant location to support her mother and
other family members through a crisis, but she didn’t
want to become embroiled in their habitual negativity.
Her Seven-wing-Eight mother had even told her not to
come, but that refusal of help was obviously part of a
dysfunctional pattern of her own.
When the daughter tried to think about her dilemma,
she regressed into an inverse-Seven state and just felt
despondent. Using NLP, I guided her into the detached
Five state and asked her to examine objectively not only
every relevant scenario she could think of but also her
present experience of being unable to choose and feeling
bad about it. By the time she completed the exercise, she
had already made a decision to go. She easily followed
through on her decision. Once there, she found that her
presence was helpful to the family, and she was even
able to stay detached from the family drama, all of
which gave her a great sense of satisfaction.
Differentiations
On average, the givingness of One-wing-Twos is
probably a little less personal and more universalized
than that of Two-wing-Ones. The former may be less apt
to get caught up in the net of the other’s perennial
neediness.
You also may be able to differentiate these types by
attending to the degree of warmth they emit. One-wingTwos are relatively more distant and cool; Two-wingOnes are typically more emotive.
Structural Enneagram
Two-wing-Three
The Giver
Givers are friendly, charming, and adaptable. While
they give all sorts of gifts, perhaps the common thread
is that Two-wing-Threes give the gift of making people
feel better. They have the warmth and social graces to
make people comfortable. This makes them welcoming
hosts and effective motivators. Many entertainers are of
this type, but many more are the pillars holding up
families and organizations.
Possible examples of personality type Two-wingThree are Lewis Carroll, Barbara Bush, and Kathy Lee
Gifford. Other reported examples are Barry Manilow,
Sammy Davis, Jr., Kathy Bates, John Denver, and Pat
Boone.
Point Three is a combination of Perspectives Seven
and Eight.
Two-wing-Threes are notorious for expressing
almost exclusively positive affect, at least in public.
Like most Sevenish people, they would prefer that the
dark side be kept out of sight. And if they can add to the
happiness of others through their joyous, affirmative,
and often passionate attentions, then the environment
becomes that much brighter. People of this type, along
with their cousins the Three-wing-Twos, probably
invented business networking and relationship selling.
With Two as the dominant Perspective, this type is
openly loving, friendly, and supportive. In fact, people
of this type adapt easily to the desires of their chosen
other. Of course, anyone with any sense of selfpreservation does the same or pays for it in lost rapport,
lost sales, or lost influence of some other kind. But this
type ratchets up adaptability, turning themselves (or
what they have to offer) into the object of desire. At the
extreme, some especially Two-heavy Givers may
hesitate to even say what they think for fear that it will
contradict what you want them to think.
This type also incorporates Perspective Eight,
which involves an identification with role or status, and
Two-wing-Threes are known for being status conscious.
Although we usually think of Perspective Eight as being
21
a power position, many Two-wing-Threes are willing to
hold a subordinate role. If they think their own talents
can’t get them far enough, then they may hitch their
wagon to a rising star. This is the route of seduction
rather than obvious power.
Beyond positive affect and gift-giving it’s hard to
characterize this personality through typical behavior.
Two-wing-Threes may be active or inactive, attractive
or plain, depending upon whom they are wooing.
However, on occasion they will admit that their
particular adaptation to life has prevented them from
fully becoming themselves. They may feel thwarted in
their self-expression. They would like to be more selfish
and creative. One Two-wing-Three told me she feels as
if her creativity has been bottled up. Suppressed drive
can manifest itself as tension in the chest and abdomen
or may be converted into illnesses that have a marked
stress component—high blood pressure, adrenal failure,
spinal problems, and diabetes, for example.
Two-wing-Threes may on some level be aware of
when they are creating an image of themselves and not
an authentic self. A Two-wing-Three of my
acquaintance acknowledges that many of “her” beliefs
and attitudes really belong to her Eight-wing-Nine
husband and not to herself. To become more authentic,
she would need to take on the perspective of the Threewing-Four. However, if she made that shift, it would
cause friction with her husband, who does not want a
more independent partner.
Three-wing-Two
The Motivator
Motivators are exceedingly charming. They have a
need to be happy, and to accomplish that they also need
the people around them to be happy. Since they often
play the part that they believe will win the other over,
they may be professional entertainers of one kind or
another. They are naturally enthusiastic people who
infect others with their optimism and drive.
Combination Perspective Three incorporates
Perspectives Seven and Eight.
To the degree that Three-wing-Twos rely on
Perspective Seven, they would like to express
exclusively positive affect: they know there’s a dark
side, but ordinarily they don’t see any point in giving
voice to it. I suspect that this is the most likely type to
believe that the most important thing in the world is to
be happy.
Perspective Two influences them to think in terms
of giving and service to others. Three-wing-Twos like
people and want to help and encourage them.
Structural Enneagram
To the degree that they operate from Perspective
Eight they identify with role, image, status, and achievements. This means they will probably be competitive
and compare themselves to others. Although people
with the Seven-Eight or Eight-Nine structure will often
be impelled to challenge others for leadership, Threewing-Twos are more likely to challenge others for moral
authority: they want to influence how others think and
behave.
These three Perspectives come together to form the
following dynamic: The setting is a Sevenish
atmosphere of being immersed and engaged in life.
Three-wing-Twos want to be happy, so their
environment must be happy, so the people around them
must be happy, too. Then, from an Eightish need to win
others over to their point of view, they will give
whatever they think will make important others happy
(Two). Often they will motivate people to achieve their
own happiness.
This particular dynamic requires that Three-wingTwos craft a positive image of themselves. Negativity
must be brushed aside. Three-wing-Twos are always, in
a sense, on stage, acting a role. This often means
attention to wardrobe, spending hours in the gym, and
speaking well, among many other possible factors.
Maintaining an image can become a compulsion.
Probable examples of personality type Three-wingTwo are Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Mary Kay Ash,
Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Cosby,
Anthony Robbins, John Edwards, and Lance
Armstrong. Other reported examples are Elvis Presley,
Burt Reynolds, Christopher Reeve, and Sylvester
Stallone.
In everyday life you will recognize Two-wingThrees as hosts, entertainers, and motivators. As
motivators, they typically try to inspire people to change
at a personal level rather than trying to make societal or
institutional reforms. You can follow this pattern clearly
in Bill Cosby’s career. He started out as an entertainer
and has hosted a television game show. The Cosby Show
had an inspirational element and is credited with helping
to change white America's view of African Americans.
22
Currently, he is a motivational speaker and writer who
emphasizes personal boot-strapping rather than
institutional change.
Cosby also demonstrates that you cannot always
recognize Three-wing-Twos by their dapper appearance. He doesn’t have to worry about his physical
image. It is enough that he is a highly educated African
American role model who has become extremely
wealthy and successful through his own efforts, and that
is the impression that matters to his current audience.
Three-wing-Twos may strive to demonstrate some
virtue, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who achieved fame
as a model of fitness. Like motivational guru Anthony
Robbins, this personality works hard to acquire the skills
and success necessary to make a mark.
Although the emphasis on image might imply that
Three-wing-Twos will always be superficial, that is not
the case. This strategy of projecting a positive image is
not only adaptive, it can also propel them toward true
personal growth. At the end of his acting career,
Schwarzenegger expanded his talents toward childhood
fitness and nutrition programs and then into politics.
Before he could attract followers, Robbins had to
improve his own life in a substantial way through
practicing what he preached. I know a Three-wing-Two
minister who has developed a deep spiritual practice.
Three-wing-Twos' craving for admiration very often
propels them toward becoming authentically admirable
people.
Differentiations
Two-wing-Three leans more toward being a host
and Three-wing-Two is more of a motivator: Two-wingThree Kathy Lee Gifford and Three-wing-Two Oprah
Winfrey are both televisions hosts, but Oprah almost
always has a self-improvement angle.
Three-wing-Four
The Achiever
Achievers are driven and resourceful people who
strive to create and control their own images and their
own lives in order to be recognized as exceptional. They
are skilled at gaining rapport by fitting into their chosen
milieu—except that they’re often the best at what they
do and the smartest guys in the room. Whether because
of or in spite of all this striving, they are typically both
successful and likable.
Since Combination Perspective Three unites
Perspectives Seven and Eight, this type incudes Seven,
Two and Eight.
Structural Enneagram
Perspective Seven makes Three-wing Fours
enthusiastic and committed, and sometimes overly
emotional. When in balance, they can use Perspective
Five (the other Perspective in the Seven-Five binary)
quite effectively. But when something happens to make
them feel insecure, they double down on Perspective
Seven
Perspective Four makes Three-wing-Fours individualistic and original. They want to distinguish
themselves in some way in order to give evidence of
their difference.
Perspective Eight influences them to want to have
an audience and to be motivated by achievement. They
may be interested in teaching others how to do what they
do.
Three-wing-Fours earn success and recognition
through accomplishing self-determined goals, by being
the best at something or projecting the best image.
Probable examples of personality type Three-wingFour are Paul McCartney, Sting, and Taylor Swift. Other
reported examples are Johnnie Cochran, Michael
Jordan, Bryant Gumbel, Salman Rushdie, Andy Warhol,
Richard Gere, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Werner
Erhard, Andrew Cohen, David Copperfield, and Ben
Kingsley.
Since Three-wing-Fours feel they have to work so
hard for recognition, they often feel inauthentic. If they
show—not their real selves—but their whole self, they
fear they may lose the love and respect of others. If even
in their own minds they identify too closely with their
image, this is, of course, the definition of narcissism.
But healthy narcissism is an absolute requirement of
worldly success. Image is properly thought of as merely
the atmosphere one creates around one's true self. At
best, it's a projection of the true self into the
environment.
Werner Erhard, who is reported to be a Three-wingFour, may embody the term “checkered past,” and some
people who took his est training decry its indoctrinating,
even brainwashing tone. But that doesn’t detract from
the fact that he offered a toolkit of useful selfimprovement tactics. And, if he is indeed a Three-wing23
Four, then perhaps his teachings would be especially
good for that personality.
Some of his teachings involve loosening up the
dependence on Perspective Seven and being more
comfortable with Five. This means cultivating a
willingness to look at the whole of reality and even to
be comfortably aware of the dark side. For example, in
an interview with John Denver, who was guest-hosting
“The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” Erhard
advised that people “get in touch with the person they’re
afraid they are.” He then demonstrated a technique for
giving a space to “evil.” With Tom Snyder he talked
about looking at the big picture: “Take the blinders off
and look at it.” Both interviews are available on
YouTube.
If Three-wing-Fours make better use of Perspective
Five to accept themselves warts and all, they may be
able to incorporate some of the better leadership
characteristics of Eight-wing-Nines and be less subject
to unwanted bouts of negative emotion.
Four-wing-Three
The Individualist
Since they view life as art, whether creating music,
running a business, or putting together a wardrobe,
Individualists perform with flair. They win acclaim by
being both original and outstanding.
As explained previously, point Three unites
Perspectives Seven and Eight.
Having associated Perspective Seven, Four-wingThrees are engaged and engaging. They throw
themselves into life and try to set a positive tone. There
can be some emotional volatility if the environment is
difficult, but they will bounce back. Sometimes, when
talking to others, it seems as if they don’t have a filter.
Although they have this penchant for getting caught
up in experiences, they are very independent when it
comes to deciding what to do with their own lives.
Perspective Four makes them outsiders with the desire
to create something unique. Ultimately, the thing they
are trying to create is a better version of themselves, and
they will go to great lengths of self-improvement and
training to do so.
With their Eightish requirements for a good selfimage and self-esteem, Four-wing-Threes are sure to be
both affable and ambitious. If criticized, they develop
thick skin and try again.
One probable example of personality type Fourwing-Three is Cyndi Lauper. Other reported examples
are Tennessee Williams, Marcel Proust, E. M. Forster,
Michael Jackson, Jessica Lange, Jeremy Irons, Paul
Structural Enneagram
Simon, Naomi Judd, Steve Martin, Laurence Olivier,
John Malkovich, and Judy Garland.
Differentiations
Sometimes you can tell the difference between the
two types in the Three-Four structure just by looking at
their clothes. Three-wing-Fours want to dress for
success, so they will usually prefer to look stylish but
also appropriate. Four-wing-Threes want to emphasize
their uniqueness, so their dress may appear costumey or
even eccentric.
Although they may be found in many lines of work,
it is good if they can somehow utilize their knack for
being dreamers, poets, and artists. I know a Three-wingFour who is a minister, but not the kind that heads one
church; rather, she travels, giving clever and profound
sermons at many churches. I know another who works
at a veterinary office and communicates with pets.
Four-wing-Five
The Artist
The Artist is all about creating something new and
different. Four-wing-Fives don’t fit in with the crowd.
Quite the opposite. They are seldom moved by
convention, tradition, or the will of another, although
they may go along to avoid confrontation. This
independence shows up in Four-wing-Fives’ artistic
creativity, original thinking, or bohemian style. Not
every Four-wing-Five is literally an artist, but all bring
individuality and artistic sensibility to whatever they do.
Self-expression above all!
People of this type are introverted, brainy,
insightful, and enigmatic. Their individuality can stretch
all the way to idiosyncratic self-absorption. They
alternate between cool and emotional. They are
romantic dreamers as well as romantic philosophers.
24
their field of endeavor, they are iconoclasts who bristle
at authority. Under difficult conditions, they may
become reclusive.
With Five as their dominant Perspective, Five-wingFours are detached from their environment, which
means they are looking on as if from the outside rather
than immersing themselves in the scene. Although they
may seem emotionally distant, they don’t want to be
rejected by other people, so they strive to prove their
own worth and the worth of their ideas.
Probable examples of the Four-wing-Five
personality type are Søren Kierkegaard, William Blake,
Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence. Other reported
examples are Hermann Hesse, Vincent van Gogh,
Marlon Brando, Harvey Keitel, Johnny Depp, Joni
Mitchell, and Ingmar Bergman.
Four-wing-Fives are drawn to writing, painting,
music, film, crafts, speculative philosophy, and the
social sciences. They bring their imaginative talents to
whatever role they find themselves in.
The thinking style of Four-wing-Fives is more
synthetic than analytic. I know a Four-wing-Five painter
who also has a Ph.D. in English, and she calls upon her
knowledge of each to inform the other.
A clue that you may be dealing with a Four-wingFive can sometimes be found in the colors of their
clothes. Since the dark side is never far from their
awareness, they may wear all black. Then again, many
wear violet, both because more conventional people
have in the past considered it unseemly to wear violet
and because it is a color associated with transformation
and growth—self-creation being the psychological
object of all Four-wing-Fives' creative efforts.
Four-wing-Fives’ dominant drive concerns the need
to sever a certain kind of connection with others.
Imagining (and this would typically be unconsciously
imagining) that you can offer others what they need to
be satisfied is just a way of allowing them to keep you
on a string. It’s called co-dependence. Fours of all types
insist, rather, on their separation from the other, and so
their whole lives emphasize being different.
Five-wing-Four
The Visionary
Five-wing-Fours, whom I call Visionaries, are
introverted, cerebral personalities who enjoy learning,
theorizing, and innovating. They are often artistic,
intellectual, or scientifically oriented. No matter what
Structural Enneagram
On the other hand, this striving is influenced by
Perspective Four, which brings a need to assert their
individuality. So they try to be different, perhaps
through cutting edge or eccentric social movements,
food, clothes, or the books they read.
Combining these two Perspectives, we see that
Five-wing-Fours are continually creating new and
original works in order to make something of
themselves and distinguish themselves from others.
Probable examples of personality type Five-wingFour are Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Sigmund
Freud, Jacques Lacan, Noam Chomsky, Williams
Shakespeare, Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, John
Lennon, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and J. D.
Salinger. Chomsky has elsewhere been pegged as a Onewing-Nine, but I think that, as an anarchist and a system
builder, he belongs in this group. Below I explain part
of my rationale for placing him here.
Other reported examples are Friedrich Nietzsche,
Werner Heisenberg, Umberto Eco, Georgia O’Keefe, k.
d. lang, Laurie Anderson, James Joyce, Stanley Kubrick,
David Lynch, Kurt Cobain, Gary Larson, Franz Kafka,
Tim Burton, and T.S. Eliot.
In business, education, or technical and scientific
fields, Five-wing-Fours will usually be found pushing
the limits of understanding. In the arts, they are drawn
to imaginative roles such as writing, composing, and
designing rather than strictly performance. Even as
scientists, Five-wing-Fours work more in the manner of
25
artists, intuitively and creatively. They are optionsoriented rather than procedural.
It also appears that their reasoning style is more
synthetic than analytic. They are system builders.
Consequently, a Five-wing-Four scientist might tend to
meld science with philosophy. A song writer might
blend music with politics.
Their working style corresponds to their thinking
style. First, as already established, they are more
concerned with their own internal thoughts than with
maintaining a connection to the external world, so they
may be unsuited for teamwork or carrying out other
people’s agendas.
As writers, composers, and philosophers, they lean
toward the experimental and speculative and are
captivated by irony, surrealism, pessimism, and
nihilism. In fact, this may be the type most at home with
looking at the dark side. Because they are so detached,
they can explore the underside freely and not get too
bogged down in bad feelings.
In addition, Five-wing-Fours often have a passion
for neologisms, playing with words, letters, and images.
Partly, this results from an aptitude for seeing patterns
and connections, but it also fits into a general
enthusiasm for the new, the original, and, yes, the
quirky. Yet when others find them opaque, they still
suffer from not being understood.
Five-wing-Fours’ emotional tone can be playful or
serious and is often moody. They may seem distant. In
fact, if you try to get too close too fast they will probably
put up an emotional shield. Too much effort expended
relating to others will require some compensating alone
time.
At times, just by looking, you may be able to
recognize this type by their unconventional dress. Emily
Dickinson wore only white. Or, like the other type in this
structure, Five-wing-Fours may wear dark clothes. I
once gave a Structural Enneagram “reading” to a man
who turned out to be a Five-wing-Four, although he
didn't look like one to me. But I realized his colorblocked t-shirt might be throwing me off, so I asked him
if this was the way he ordinarily dressed. He replied that
he usually wore black, but that he had recently been in a
bicycle accident, and now he wore bright colors so that
drivers could see him when he rode.
You might also recognize Five-wing-Fours from
several behavioral tells. Sometimes their introversion
will be apparent, although introversion does not
necessarily mean shy. They may hesitate, perhaps
speaking in a halting voice, or touching the nose. They
often lean back—possibly a sign of withdrawing, but
certainly a means of getting distance.
Structural Enneagram
On the other hand, Five-wing-Fours may be often in
the public and may talk assertively. Still, closer
observation reveals a certain discomfort or awkwardness mixed in with seemingly extraverted behavior.
Perhaps overcompensating, some may come across as
brash or brusque. Undoubtedly, they can be provocative,
as if being willing to put up with their eccentric or
antagonistic ways were the price you had to pay for their
scintillating company. If feeling criticized, they may
turn snarky. In general, when feeling under attack, they
may defend themselves with rudeness and contempt.
There are a few patterns associated with Perspective
Five’s psychological drive that are noticeably expressed
by Five-wing-Fours. They want to be loved but think
they have to prove themselves worthy of love; to that
end, they can be seductive and anxious to please. They
may have an interest in subjects such as insanity, crime,
and the occult. They may have cleaning compulsions.
They may be collectors. They may have hobbies or
vocations that in some ways resemble the aims of the
alchemists of old, who worked at turning base metals
into gold: finding and preserving rare collectibles,
turning kitchen scraps into compost, and anything
having to do with money and investing. They may take
all this too far and turn demanding, insatiable, greedy,
or parsimonious.
There is one further consideration that is especially
important for the types in the Four-Five structure, and
that is the choice they seem to have made regarding the
Eight-One binary. As explained elsewhere, people who
express Perspectives Four and Five and are comfortable
operating out of Perspective Eight have the Eight-Nine
personality structure. And, if they adopt Perspective
One instead of Perspective Eight, then they have the
Nine-One structure. But it appears that Four-Fives have
renounced Perspective Eight, while at the same time
failing to use Perspective One effectively. With neither
of these stabilizing Perspectives in place, Four-Fives
have no firm identity and no internal motivational
strategy for bringing their work to the public.
Evidence that Four-wing-Fives have indeed rejected
Perspective Eight lies in their antiauthoritarian views
and behavior. Eights are authoritarian, but Four-wingFives are subversive iconoclasts, bristling at any hint of
dominating power.
Either Eight or One would offer the personality a
stable sense of identity and a solid motivational strategy.
But having settled on neither Perspective from the
Eight-One binary, Four-Fives live their lives untethered
and adrift unless they have external support in the way
of people or institutions to manage and push them in the
direction that they already wish to go, or possibly an
audience clamoring for their work.
26
In addition, Five-wing-Fours are hypersensitive to
criticism. Many of them are hindered, inhibited, and
slowed down by fear of not being good enough. They
have anxiety about sharing or publishing ideas, fearing
criticism or ridicule one moment and plagiarism the
next.
For some, Four-Five can be an untenable
personality structure. Four-Fives are always going to be
striving to consolidate Perspective One as their home
position unless they have the external support
mentioned above. Yet, Five-wing-Fours who have found
acceptance from an appropriate audience or whose work
is in demand may seem like Nine-Ones because they are
prolific and in the public and apparently have no lack of
motivational strategy. I am thinking of Noam Chomsky,
who seems to fit this description, if I have re-typed him
correctly. Chomsky gained an academic position as a
linguist and earned a specialized audience for his
scholarly work before spreading out from that base to
attract a wider audience. And it appears that, for any
Five-wing-Fours who may have hit upon an attractive
proposition early in their careers, the missing
Perspective One signifiers can be replaced by external
demand for their talents.
This is not to deny the possibility of some people
having started out as Five-wing-Fours and actually
evolved as adults into Nine-Ones.
Five-wing-Six
The Observer
Observer types investigate and improve their world.
They have to investigate, because they have a tendency
to question received wisdom. As with René Descartes,
their thinking begins with doubting. And they usually
see how they could make something better—better than
what people have been settling for—better than what
people had thought they wanted. Five-wing-Sixes are
true contrarians.
Observer types possess superior perceptual and
reasoning skills, which, nonetheless, often fail them
when it comes to understanding people. Although Fivewing-Sixes are very interested in people, they are at the
same time wary of being overwhelmed by them and thus
feel the need to erect barriers. Some of the most
sensitive Five-wing-Sixes are too defended to be able to
make the empathetic connections that would enable
them to find out what others want and expect from them.
Consequently, they may come off as socially inept. Yet
Five-wing-Sixes' principles and interests almost always
keep them engaged in the world, often with spectacular
success.
Structural Enneagram
Probable examples of this personality type are René
Descartes, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Wozniak,
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Neil Armstrong, John Grinder,
Eckhart Tolle, Alan Turing, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Woody Allen, and Isaac Asimov. Other reported
examples are Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin, B.F.
Skinner, and V.I. Lenin.
The following quotation from Steve Wozniak's
autobiography (iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon,
2006, p. 18) richly illustrates the motivations of a wellrounded Five-wing-Six.
That’s how I was, how I’ve always been—
and still am, it seems. I’ve always had this
technical side and then this human side. For
instance, I remember telling my dad when I was
ten that when I grew up, I wanted to be an
engineer like him, but I also remember saying I
wanted to be a fifth-grade teacher, like Miss
Skrak at my school. Combining the human and
the technical turned out to be the main thing for
me later on. I mean, even when it came down
to something like building a computer, I
remember watching all those geeks who just
wanted to do the technical side, to just put some
chips together so the design worked.
But I wanted to put chips together like an
artist, better than anyone else could and in a
way that would be the absolute most usable by
humans. That was my goal when I built the first
computer, the one that later became the Apple
I. It was the first computer to use a keyboard so
you could type onto it, and the first to use a
screen you could look at. The idea of usable
technology was something that was kind of
born in my head as a kid, when I had this
fantasy that I could someday build machines
people could use. And it happened!
Anyway, anyone you meet who knows me
will tell you that that is exactly me—an
engineer, but an engineer who worries about
people a lot.
27
Six-wing-Five
The Guardian
Keen observers of society, Guardians stand up for
justice and security. Ethical or political commitments
are important to them, and they will devote their lives to
protecting and supporting whichever groups or
individuals they adopt as their own cause.
Although Six-wing-Fives are intensely loyal to
those they have chosen to support to those they disagree
with, they can be contrarian zealots, pushing against
their opposition. You might think of Richard Nixon with
his “enemies list” and Christopher Hitchins with his
proselytizing for atheism. This is a common type for
lawyers and politicians and is probably the most
common type for investigative journalists.
Probable examples of personality type Six-wingFive are Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Richard M.
Nixon, Edward M. Kennedy, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain,
Michael Moore, Gloria Steinem, Rachel Maddow,
Christopher Hitchens, Ralph Nader, and Tucker
Carlson. Other reported examples are Walter Mondale,
Bob Dole, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Phil
Donahue, Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and
Oliver North.
Six-wing-Fives have concerns about security, which
they displace onto selected others, and then set
themselves up as their guardians. People of this
personality type may even sacrifice their own needs to
the safety and well-being of their favored groups and
ideas.
Differentiations
Probably because they are less wedded to the
detached, observer point of view, Six-wing-Fives can be
a lot more sociable than the other personality in the
Five-Six structure.
Of the two personalities dominated by perspective
Five, Five-wing-Sixes exhibit less interiority than Fivewing-Fours. Five-wing-Sixes look out and observe the
Structural Enneagram
world more, while Five-wing-Fours are inside creating
and doing thought experiments and having feelings
about them.
Six-wing-Seven
The Loyalist
Loyalists value harmony and security and carry
these values into both private and public life. Although
they do not directly channel the other’s desire the way a
One-Two might, they are intensely loyal to those they
have chosen to support.
Because of their Seven wing, they highly value a
positive environment, so it is important to them that
those around them also be well and happy. Since they
have Perspectives Two and One in their makeup, their
self-concept relies on making a career, formally or
informally, of improving peoples' lives, even if it is only
to entertain them for an evening. (But entertainment is
sneaky in that a movie can change your life.)
Probable examples of personality type Six-wingSeven are Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tom Hanks, Paul
Newman, Alan Alda, Julia Roberts, and Jennifer
Aniston. Other reported examples are Johnny Carson,
Jay Leno, Sally Field, Candice Bergen, Gilda Radner,
Robert Redford, Marilyn Monroe, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Reggie Jackson, Patrick Swayze, and Tom
Selleck.
As Seven is only the wing and not the dominant
perspective, Six-wing-Sevens are probably less
extraverted than the other personality in the Six-Seven
pair, yet they value friendship and want to be liked. Not
only is it important to them to have a safe, harmonious,
and organized environment, they also want to have
interesting experiences, whether artistic, physical,
social, or intellectual.
Rather than exercising Perspective Two directly by
simply trying to give people what they want, Six-wingSevens interrogate the others' desires, including their
motives, across their own ideals. It seems they may have
actually developed their standards out of a dialectic
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between others’ desires and their own judgment of them
because, although they are warm-hearted, they can also
be opinionated.
Since Six-wing-Sevens want to act from principle
yet do care about the other's needs, and yet again are
always questioning the other’s motives, they face
continual anxiety about what to do. They must be
prepared for all eventualities. They may hash out
alternatives with friends before coming to a decision.
Other ways they resolve internal conflicts are reading
and research. They will often submit their judgment to
preexisting systems of knowledge, such as law,
medicine, or astrology as a means of resolving internal
impasses. One such system may also form the basis for
a career.
Evolving Six-wing-Sevens are typically trying to
incorporate more of the benefits of Perspective Five,
particularly as concerns getting grounded and being able
to face the dark side with equanimity. Their secondary
issue seems to be acquiring Perspective Four and
becoming more independent, and some may go to great
lengths to achieve this. For example, a Six-wing-Seven
had found herself immersed in one too many
relationships in which she had given herself over to
pleasing whatever man she was with at the time.
Wanting to make something more of her life, she arrived
at an almost intentional decision to get fat and use her
less attractive appearance as an obstacle to losing herself
in any more unhealthy relationships.
Six-wing-Sevens' feelings of insecurity are
probably a result of repressing their aggression in order
to keep peace and harmony. If Six-wing-Sevens
overvalue harmony enough to block rather than
sublimate their own aggression, then they are surely
imagining aggression returning to them from the
direction of the other. And when they do lash out at
another person, this is viewed by both parties as an
aberration. Repressed aggression can best be handled by
stepping into detached Perspective Five and facing
buried thoughts head on.
Seven-wing-Six
The Enthusiast
Enthusiasts demand that life be engrossing and
entertaining. And they aren't stingy with the
entertainment, either. Being both other-oriented and
principled, they want to make sure the good experiences
get spread around. So, to ensure a positive environment
for all, they strive to make life fun and fulfilling for
others as well as themselves.
Structural Enneagram
Probable examples of personality type Seven-wingSix are Robin Williams, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
David Letterman, Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, and
Marianne Williamson. Other reported examples are
Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rubinstein, Leonard
Bernstein, Richard Feynman, Timothy Leary, Bette
Midler, Liza Minnelli, Carol Burnett, Jim Carrey, Bob
Hope, Mel Brooks, Regis Philbin, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and
John Belushi.
Even if they have a career in some kind of personal
service, Seven-wing-Sixes won’t be just order fillers.
They could be doctors improving the world by bringing
the highest standard of care to their patients. They could
be realtors creating community while showing clients
the ideal houses for their needs. They could be massage
therapists raising the “vibration” of humanity by giving
clients the kind of care that everybody ought to have. Or
hair stylists spreading beauty by cutting the most
flattering styles.
Seven-wing-Sixes’ demand on the environment
seems to be that it be engrossing. The world is their
playground, and they want to experience as much of the
goodness of life as they can. This makes them restless,
curious spirits. Benjamin Franklin, the wit, writer,
publisher, inventor, lady’s man, politician, and diplomat,
is a good example of that spirit.
To give an example of Seven-wing-Sixes trying to
bring others along on their romp, I will mention Leonard
Bernstein, who devoted the later part of his career to
helping people understand and enjoy classical music as
much he did.
Seven-wing-Sixes’ split loyalty—to their own
ideals and to the other’s needs—introduces some
uncertainty into their thinking: Will their actions really
be what people need, or will they have failed to live up
their own standards? This uncertainty makes them
defensive and a bit dependent on receiving
acknowledgement that they are doing well.
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Differentiations
Since Six-Sevens use Perspective One, their channeling of the other’s desire seems more sublimated,
more universalized than that of Two-Threes, who take
the other’s needs upon themselves in a more personal
way.
Six-wing-Sevens may lean even more than the other
personality in the Six-Seven structural pair toward
universalized expression. Think of Tom Hanks’s war
memorial projects.
Seven-wing-Eight
The Excitement Seeker
People of this extraverted personality are fully and
often fearlessly engaged in experiencing the world.
Having Perspective Seven dominant keeps them
fully engaged in the environment. They like enjoyable
and exciting activities, which includes acquiring
material goods, and when things go badly, their
activities and their possessions help them escape from a
harsh or boring reality.
Having Perspective Eight makes Seven-wingEights want success in the eyes of the world. They may
be strong leaders like John F. Kennedy, who was
probably a Seven-wing-Eight. Kennedy’s ability to
think counter to accepted opinions shows in his handling
of the Cuban missile crisis. Or, if it's peacetime and their
rebellious instincts are stronger than any desire to lead,
they may more closely resemble Joan Rivers and
Howard Stern, who can be blunt, callous, and even
obnoxious in their continual pursuit of saying the
opposite of what the world thinks they should.
Although many of them would probably have liked
to ambivalently include Perspective Four in their skill
set (in which case they would have been Three-wingFours), Excitement Seekers instead remain enmeshed
with others in a variation of Perspective Two. When they
take Perspective Two, putting themselves in the position
of the other, they are likely to do one of two things.
Either they spurn or rebel against others' desires, or they
use their knowledge of others' desires to manipulate
Structural Enneagram
them. Here we should keep in mind that manipulating
people needn't always be a bad thing.
Probable examples of personality type Seven-wingEight are Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ernest
Hemingway, Malcolm Forbes, Timothy Ferriss,
Federico Fellini, Cary Grant, Harry Houdini, and
Howard Stern. Other report Seven-wing-Eights are
Marlene Dietrich, Joan Collins, Joan Rivers, Phyllis
Diller, Helen Gurley Brown, George Plimpton, Noel
Coward, Cole Porter, David Niven, Larry King, Lauren
Bacall, Judith Krantz, Jacqueline Susann, Susan Lucci,
and Geraldo Rivera.
In The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live
Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Crown 2007),
Timothy Ferriss issues the Seven-wing-Eight manifesto,
extolling the benefits and the possibility of designing a
life and career that will make you happy. Oh, and, by the
way, the opposite of happy is not sad, it's bored. In fact,
the real meaning of happiness is excitement! (p. 51).
That's where I got the name for the Seven-wing-Eight
personality type: the Excitement Seeker.
Eight-wing-Seven
The Rebel
Rebels seek autonomy and freedom. In practice,
these “bad boys” tend to go for the opposite of what is—
the opposite of what other people want—so that they are
in fact still tethered to the other's desire, only in a
negative way. Nevertheless, Eight-wing-Sevens are
often able to amass the power to succeed.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Miley Cyrus, Richard Bandler,
Courtney Love, Allison DuBois, and Sylvia Browne are
probably Eight-wing-Sevens. Other reported examples
of personality type Eight-wing-Seven are G. I.
Gurdjieff, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Richard
Burton, Sean Connery, Harvey Keitel, Bella Abzug,
Norman Mailer, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Roseanne
Barr, Leona Helmsley, Muhammad Ali, Richard
Wagner, Sarah Palin, Al Capone, Ferdinand Marcos,
Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Moammar Gadhafi, Idi
Amin, and Jim Jones.
Eight-wing-Sevens have been said to be the most
independent personality. That reputation probably rests
on the fact that they expend the most effort toward
achieving autonomy of desire. True autonomy of desire
(Perspective Four) would, in fact, be their direction of
personal growth. But people of this personality type
have issues with their mothers similar to those of their
cousins the Seven-wing-Eights. Even when Eight-wingSevens seem to idealize their mothers, they have
underlying experiences of neglect or conditional love.
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The more stuck Eight-wing-Sevens are in
personality, the more autonomy eludes them, as they
repeatedly revert to rebellion—which, far from being
independence of the other’s desire is merely the inverse
of it. Nevertheless, that drive for autonomy makes
Eight-wing-Seven a highly motivated personality. They
are often entrepreneurs, promoters, and other kinds of
risk takers. If they are in politics, they may be
revolutionaries, transformational leaders, or mavericks.
Eight-wing-Sevens want to be in control, to be the
subjective agents, mastering their objects, whether
through persuasion, magnanimity, competitive
advantage, or confrontation. Perhaps it is the Seven
wing that makes them also want to dominate the
environment. It would also be great if everyone could
acknowledge their superiority.
Since they want the opposite of what is, they often
have a talent for reform. They can envision what is not
but should be, and, often through manipulation of
others, gain power to bring it into existence. But if the
compulsion to go for the opposite of what others want
gets too out of control, mayhem will ensue. Maybe it
will be a controlled mayhem, as is fairly common in
rockers like Courtney Love. On the other hand, prisons
are full of Eight-wing-Sevens. What can be a talent and
a strength in educated, talented, or well-connected
people can become a curse for someone who is not in a
position to legally grab the bull by the horns.
Eight-wing-Nine
The Boss
Self-confident and assertive Bosses are drawn to
leadership roles, whether in organizations or personal
relationships. They regularly challenge others for
authority but will be affable about it unless the others
resist them, and then the fight is on. But when the
contest is over they will probably shake hands and
respect the outcome.
Structural Enneagram
Probable examples of personality type Eight-wingNine are Franklin D. Roosevelt, Steve Jobs, George W.
Bush, John McCain, Ann Richards, Lee Iacocca, Dick
Clark, Vince Lombardi, and Robert Altman. Other
reported examples are Winston Churchill, Indira
Gandhi, Golda Meir, Martin Luther King, Jr., H. Ross
Perot, George Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Janet Reno,
Charlton Heston, Johnny Cash, Barbara Walters, Ed
Asner, and John Wayne.
Dick Clark has been listed elsewhere as a Threewing-Two. Although he may have presented that cheery
Motivator's image on camera, accounts of his producing
and directing style peg him as a dictatorial, demanding
Boss.
Paul Newman has elsewhere been categorized as an
Eight-wing-Nine, but I believe this to have been an
example of confusing an actor with his roles. To me, the
affable and philanthropic Newman seems to have been
a Six-wing-Seven, a common type for actors. His
racecar driving is probably an indicator of the Seven
wing.
Being the Boss is important to Eight-wing-Nines
because, to the extent that perspective Eight is
dominant, Eight-wing-Nines feel that they are what
other people recognize them to be. They identify with
their role, their performance, their status in a hierarchy.
In their ideal hierarchy, the people below them
recognize them as a superior and a leader and are
rewarded for doing so. The people above them are their
authorities, whose recognition and approval they in turn
require. Even a United States president may not consider
himself to be always at the top of a hierarchy since he
may answer to advisers, Congress, corporate donors, or
an anthropomorphic God. Eight-wing-Nines need
reassurance that they are doing their duty by upholding
and enforcing the will of whatever authority they
subscribe to.
Having perspective Five means this type is selfcontained and not dependent on atmospherics for their
feelings. Using perspective Four, Eight-wing-Nines feel
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their difference from others and don’t need to lean on
others to decide what to do.
In general, Eight-wing-Nines give more thought to
personal or “tribal” rather than universal considerations.
Their actions are governed by their allegiances—the
authorities to which they bow and the in-group they
protect and lead. Their own tribe is always right, as can
be observed in lawsuits, in which Eight-wing-Nines
sometimes refer to their side as the good guys and the
other side as the bad guys.
Perhaps because of the need to always know where
they stand and how they can move up the ladder, Eightwing-Nines are people watchers. They can sniff out
other’s motives; Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw, who probably
has this personality, was a jury selection specialist, and
his ability to size people up quickly now drives his
performance as a television psychologist.
When overusing Perspective Eight way of thinking,
everything can be “personalized,” or anthropomorphized, even countries and organizations. The
United States government is still our Uncle Sam, but his
name is changed depending on the president who is in
office. Similarly, people personalize the Constitution
when they try to interpret it through the founding
fathers’ original intent.
Personalities that rely on Perspective One, the
binary opposite of Eight, might define good citizenship
as acting in conformance with a set of guiding
principles. From Perspective Eight, you would be more
likely to extol loyalty—patriotism—and belief in
country as though it were an actual thing rather than an
abstract or legal idea. In an article called “McCain’s
Embarrassing Last Act” in The Daily Beast
(thedailybeast.com), Tunku Varadarajan quotes a
colleague of Eight-wing-Nine John McCain’s:
What you need to know is that he really does
believe in duty, honor, country... and he is an
American hero. But he thinks that is all there is.
He has no deep interest or principle on any
other subject. Every other issue has become
personal with him, viewed through politics or
pique. He is a patriot for whom most other
issues are simply situational, which is why he
can change so easily on them.
So this brings up the question, do Eight-wing-Nines
aspire to be moved more by principle, like a Nine-One?
During the 2004 election campaign against John Kerry,
probably a One-wing-Nine, George W. Bush repeatedly
accused Kerry of being unprincipled and claimed the
attribute of being principled for himself. Certainly, that
would have been consistent with a Karl Rove tactic: find
out the opposition’s strength, and then attack them for
Structural Enneagram
being weak in that same area. Still, Bush seemed to truly
want to be able to claim this moral high ground.
Nine-wing-Eight
The Mediator
Mediators have strong egos, but they also have the
knack of winning the cooperation of others with less
strife than their Eight-wing-Nine cousins. Their goodnatured, agreeable manner inspires trust. They are
natural leaders who have the ability to smooth over
differences and organize groups toward a common goal.
Since Perspective Nine is a combination of
Perspectives Five and Four, we have to look at those
components first. Perspective Five gives Nine-wingEights the ability to take a step back and study the big
picture. Perspective Four gives them the space to decide
on their own course of action rather than being wedded
to or merely reacting to other people's wants.
Perspective Eight gives Nine-wing-Eights a concern
with position and status. But since Eight is not the
dominant type, they may be less insistent than Eightwing-Nines on being in control. As Riso and Hudson
state, Nine-wing-Eights have an “ability to subordinate
themselves to others” (Personality Types, 371). But
they do seek and hold leadership positions.
Probable examples of personality type Nine-wingEight are Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Other
reported examples are Gerald Ford, Kevin Costner,
Gary Cooper, Woody Harrelson, Keanu Reeves, Ingrid
Bergman, Geena Davis, Sophia Loren, Ringo Starr,
Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Bing Crosby, Walter
Cronkite, Hugh Downs, and Lady Bird Johnson.
Coming out of the military, former president Dwight
Eisenhower exemplifies the Nine-wing-Eight ability to
occupy both subordinate and superior rungs in a
hierarchy. Although Eisenhower had not seen military
action, during World War II his administrative skills and
talent for leadership and diplomacy propelled him up the
ranks to the command of the Allied troops in Europe.
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His success in that role later propelled him into the
presidency.
Perspectives Five and Four would appear to clash
with Eight in that Five and Four drive interior behavior,
while Eight drives external, interpersonal behavior. But,
in fact, the three Perspectives hang together quite
seamlessly, even though it may appear otherwise to the
outside observer. In My Father at 100 (Viking 2011),
Ron Reagan describes his father, Ronald Reagan, as
simultaneously “warm yet remote” (p. 9). Even as he
acted out his extraverted roles as father, actor, and
politician, “another, quieter Reagan, just as vital, rested
invisibly beneath the waves”; that quieter Reagan was
“the producer and director for the man onstage” (p. 13).
Ron Reagan's analysis of his father goes some distance
to illustrate how Five and Four, the behind-the-scenes,
producer-director perspectives, interact with the outfront perspective Eight to create the Nine-wing-Eight
personality.
Differentiations
In the conventional Enneagram, “Nines” (a singlenumber type) are said to be peacemakers. In the
Structural Enneagram, Nine-wing-Eights want everyone to accede to their authority; Nine-wing-Ones want
everything to conform to their ideals. Thus would peace
and harmony be achieved in differing ways for each
type.
Nine-wing-One
The Peacemaker
With their pleasant, easy-going personas, Ninewing-Ones are frequently underestimated. Some
conventional Enneagram writers describe them as lazy
and indifferent; however, many are quite industrious and
effective. At its highest intensity, this personality melds
penetrating insight into what makes people and societies
tick with soaring dreams as to what they may become.
Probable examples of personality type Nine-wingOne are Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Jung,
Joseph Campbell, Queen Elizabeth II, George Lucas,
and Pope John Paul II. Other reported examples are
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Disney, Jimmy Stewart,
Garrison Keillor, Princess Grace of Monaco, George
Lucas, and the Dalai Lama.
When I have given my own sorting test based on
conventional Enneagram types to Nine-wing-Ones, they
resonated with six to eight of the personalities (but never
with “type Eight”). Other have cited similar results as
evidence that “Nines” are out of touch with themselves,
Structural Enneagram
that they lack self-awareness. Rather, I believe this
result merely exposes deficiencies in the conventional
Enneagram understanding of personalities. When Ninewing-Ones find many personality characteristics within
themselves, it is probably because they are more
integrated than most. Whether you see it in them or not,
they sense within themselves many of the characteristics
typically listed for the majority of the Enneagram points.
For example, although Nine-wing-Ones generally
use detached Perspective Four, they do get good rapport
and typically make others feel comfortable. This leads
me to conclude that most of them must not be shut out
of Perspective Two since, as I believe, the ability to enter
the other’s mental or perceptual space is necessary for
rapport.
Still, Perspective Four is often the one that is hardest
for people to discern in Nine-wing-Ones. It is true that
some of them may have difficulty formulating goals
based on their own desires, and this can be perceived as
a deficiency in a Three-type culture that valorizes goalsetting.
Being less influenced than most by perspective
Eight’s need for interpersonal validation, Nine-wingOnes generally take things somewhat less personally.
This, along with their reliance on detached Perspective
Five, allows them to see all sides of an issue. Having the
One component, they have a strong sense of purpose,
although it may not be a reality-shifting purpose.
Finally, Nine-wing-Ones’ concerns and aspirations
will be found at the intersection of reality and their
ideals. If there is a good enough match, they will be
content and relatively non-activist. If there is not a
match, then their choice of goals is apparent: they must
either withdraw from that particular environment or
change it. If Nine-wing-Ones have adopted a view of
themselves as intellectuals, then they will obviously
need to educate an uninformed world. If they view
themselves as spiritual, then they will model holiness for
a materialistic society. If they have had instilled in them
a sense of their obligation to lead, then they will study,
plan, and act toward that end. They unpretentiously
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allow themselves to be used and used up on behalf of
their goals.
One-wing-Nine
The Idealist
Idealists want to express and embody their values
and beliefs, so they push for reforms on either a local or
a more universal level. They want things to be done
according to their own guiding principles. Through
teaching, writing, leading, and mentoring, they attempt
to convince people to overcome groupthink and adopt
principled, self-reliant thought and action.
One-wing-Nines, even if they work in the corporate
world, are teachers, reformers, moralists, and philosophers. They are, if anything, more idealistic than the
other wing in this pair. They can be somewhat ascetic,
suppressing impulses that do not accord with their
principles. And they can be intolerant of the weaknesses
and hypocrisies of others. You are likely to find them
engaged in convincing others to live up to their own
professed ideals. With respect to the greater good, they
see themselves as not only reformers but also rescuers,
saving people from themselves and each other, but
primarily from wrong thinking.
In my observation, One-wing-Nines, more than any
other type, have a tendency to occupy the place of an
abstract idea—to represent an idea and act on its behalf.
This Perspective-One ability to think from the place of
an idea was illustrated by a former teacher of mine, who
would muse, “I wonder what wants to be said on this
topic.” People of other types don’t typically consider
that an idea might “want” something.
Differentiations
Probable examples of personality type One-wingNine are Nancy Pelosi, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore,
Socrates, and George Harrison. Other reported
examples are Plato, Gandhi, and Colin Powell.
Typical Nine-wing-Ones are less standards-driven,
less proactive, and slightly less judgmental than the
typical One-wing-Nine. Consequently, Nine-wing-Ones
appear to have less drive overall. One-wing-Nines
appear to be more principled and purposeful than Ninewing-Ones, sometimes to the point of seeming rigid.
Forward-Evolution of Consciousness
Understanding your personality may be only half
the story. For many people, the second half is putting
that understanding to work in order to evolve
consciousness to the point where they can get what they
want out of life.
Of course, some people are not on any such
trajectory; they are right where they should be for now.
But for those wanting to upshift personal consciousness
to a higher level, the Structural Enneagram is a good
place to start.
It should be obvious to those familiar with NLP that
the Structural Enneagram is full of implications for
change work using NLP techniques. The Structural
Enneagram is also highly useful in the interpretation of
dreams, fantasies, and behavioral patterns.
Structural Enneagram
I continue to research and write about the Structural
Enneagram and its applications, and in the coming
months I will be making more of that work available.
Please check my website for updates.
Jean Adeler, Ph.D.
StructuralEnneagram.com
September 14, 2014
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