History of the Enneagram Types, Tritypes® and Instinctual Subtypes
What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram (pronounced “any-a-gram”) is a personality system with roots in ancient Middle Eastern spiritual traditions. “Ennea” is the Greek word for nine, and “gram” means drawing or graph. The Enneagram symbol is a circle enclosing nine equidistant points connected by nine intersecting lines.
Why is the Enneagram System helpful?
It honors personality diversity
It recognizes 9 views of reality, all of which are inherently valid
It identifies why you do what you do
It helps you to develop critical self-awareness
It improves your relationships with others
It helps to build cohesive groups, families, and teams
It helps you develop compassion for yourself and others
Is a greater catalyst for change than any other personality typology
As we know it today, the Enneagram is a vital link between the psyche and the spirit. It is a complex and sophisticated conceptual system that is also a sensible and easily understood self-discovery tool. The nine points represent how the nine different personality types perceive and defend their realities.
The Enneagram types are distinguished from one another by unconscious motivations and preoccupations that produce patterns of perception, feeling, and behavior, which can be gifts or obstacles to the personality.
The nine points represent the ways in which the nine different personality types perceive and defend their realities. The Enneagram types are distinguished by unconscious motivations and preoccupations, which produce patterns of perception, feeling, and behavior, which can be gifts or obstacles to the personality.
The wisdom of the Enneagram is that it recognizes nine very different yet inherently valid views of reality. The power of the Enneagram is that it is a profound and comprehensive tool to harness and transform self-defeating behavior into life-enhancing personal empowerment. The gift of the Enneagram is that through self-discovery, one can create and sustain meaningful and lasting relationships.
The Enneagram is a useful tool in determining personal patterns of relating and in understanding differing styles of communicating. Through deeper insight, one can more fully understand one’s own communication style, as well as the styles of others.
With this knowledge, one can observe the core triggers influencing one’s ability to respond successfully to any situation and avoid ineffectual, self-defeating reactivity. Ultimately, the Enneagram is an invaluable tool that defines nine distinct life strategies that, when understood, can give crucial insight into developing the self-awareness needed to create change. Enneagram Tritype® Test
Understanding the Enneagram
Many personality typologies identify important character traits, which in and of themselves are very instructive, but only the Enneagram identifies the specific core motivations and often unconscious unmet needs (real or imagined) that may cause the personality to go on red alert and react defensively.
The beauty of the Enneagram is that it is a very simple yet complex personality tool that is easily understood. This is due in part because each of the nine types has a very specific way in which their view of the world is organized.
Once you recognize that your view of the world is along the same lines as one of the nine Enneagram Types, you can begin to examine the predictable ways you will react or respond to different situations. Then, you can use the same considerations when determining your Tritype® Stacking and Instinctual Type and Subtype Stacking.
Discovering your Enneagram Type, Tritype®, and Instinctual Type is truly transformational because once confirmed and understood, it is easy to pinpoint the moments and issues that will cause your defense strategies to go into overdrive.
With this knowledge, it is easy to recognize the very predictable defense patterns of the types. More importantly, with experience, you can discover your own personal triggers and track the ways in which your defense strategies work to protect you in times of stress.
Learning to recognize the micro movements, micro gestures, and micro-expressions that you use and those that signal the possibility of impending distress and potential conflict will give you the much-needed time to intervene on your own behalf long before you have become mired in frustrations or a fixed point of view.
Then, you can begin the process of creating meaningful and lasting change. Enneagram Tritype® Test
History of the Enneagram, Tritype®, and Instinctual Types and Subtypes
Note from Katherine: A student of many teachings
I have had the good fortune of learning directly from the first Enneagram teachers, including Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. I have also certified with Helen Palmer-David Daniels, Don Riso-Russ Hudson, and Kathleen Hurley-Ted Dobson (later Theodorre Donson) and know their work at a master level. In addition, I have conducted 22 completed research studies with tens of thousands of international participants, thousands of qualitative interviews, and In-depth Inquiry Coaching Sessions.
I know that I am forever changed by having had the opportunity to meet and study with such amazing people and teachers. As a result of what I learned from them, I have developed a much more expanded, integrated view of the types, that is, at the same time, a much more focused way of seeing what causes the types to suffer and what supports them in releasing rigid beliefs, negative emotions, and habitual behaviors.
You could say that I now have a more detailed map as to what triggers the defense strategies and coping mechanisms of the Enneagram Types, Tritypes®, and Instinctual Types and Subtypes. And that the types themselves have taught me what is needed to quickly and radically help them to see, know, and feel for themselves the specific patterns and associations that can keep them mired in unnecessary suffering.
I write this now because I realize more and more that these divides are becoming larger and that many people are not aware of what came when and from whom, and why. And, more importantly, how each of these missing pieces of information can help us to more fully love, understand, forgive, guide, and work with those we know and will encounter in the future.
This in no way negates the wonderful work that Enneagram teachers are providing. I just know that each teacher taught me aspects of the Enneagram that the other teachers were unaware of and that many of these gifts modified my understanding of the types, leading to a more compassionate understanding of the internal world of the Enneagram Types.
©1995-2024 Katherine Chernick Fauvre