The Enneagram

A Path to Self-Discovery

by Kelley Granger and photographs by David Cunningham, October 28, 2008

According to the Enneagram Institute, every person embodies characteristics of each number of the Enneagram but will have only one primary type they identify with. Riso and Hudson refer to the nine types with the following titles: One is the reformer, two the helper, three the achiever, four the individualist, five the investigator, six the loyalist, seven the enthusiast, eight the challenger, and nine the peacemaker. Different authors may label the types in different terms, but the attributes generally stay the same. The institute offers the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) test on its website, which allows participants to answer questions about their feelings, behavior, and outlook, to get an idea of which type they are.

“Taking tests can be helpful as a way of eliminating most of the possibilities fairly quickly,” Riso says. “Then, you must read the descriptions carefully and do some observation. The point of the Enneagram is to help us to become better self-observers so that we can be free of old, self-destructive patterns, not just to find some sort of new psychological label for ourselves. You will continue to find bits of yourself in all nine types—but when you find your core type, it should come as a revelation, a relief, an embarrassment, a welcome home, and an invitation to see yourself in an entirely new way.”

Once the basic type is determined, the interplay within the symbol can be assessed. Each type is affected by a dominant “wing,” or one of the numbers at each of its sides. A type four (individualist) with a three (achiever) wing merges the four’s creativity and desire for self-improvement with the three’s inherent ambition and goal-setting, while a four with a five (observer) wing combines four’s creativity with five’s perceptiveness and originality. Depending on our development, our type is influenced by other numbers in the lines of the Enneagram symbol, which serves as directions of integration or disintegration. As an example, a type one (reformer) under stress may disintegrate to four, taking on moody and irrational traits associated with that number. When we make a choice to pursue personal growth, we move in the direction of integration. In that case, a one would take on the spontaneity and joyfulness of the type seven (enthusiast) it’s connected to.
While it’s believed that we are born with a primary number, the Enneagram also has instinctual variants within numbers that some believe are more based on the way we were raised. These self-preservation, social, and sexual instincts also influence aspects of our personalities within our type.

One of Riso’s most significant contributions to the study of the Enneagram is his defining the levels of development within a type. Each person in each type is influenced by a number of factors in their lives that can render them at different levels of development. Riso uses the example of Martin Luther King and Saddam Hussein—both were type eight but at very different levels of the number. To move through the levels of unhealthy and average to attain a healthy status, Riso says you have to have awareness and be able to go against the habits of your personality type.

“The levels are a measure of our fixation—and the measure of how asleep we are to ourselves and to reality,” he says. “A person who is low in the levels is so asleep to themselves, so alienated from the truth of who they are, that they cannot see themselves. They need the help of some external force. Enneagram knowledge alone is not enough. They need therapy or a spiritual teacher, a guide to greater awareness and objectivity. You need somebody to act as an external mirror and guide you to a new understanding of reality.”

Correctly determining your type and its other influences is the first step on a path that can lead to personal growth, relationship improvement, and better parenting. Taylor says that when she and her partner began utilizing the Enneagram, it removed a strain from their relationship.

“[My partner] and I used it as a way to understand why we were so different in a relationship,” she said. “It was like, ‘Okay this isn’t just you not meeting my needs or me not being there for you, this is about our expectations, they’re different. What we’re trying to get out of the world is different. How we’re trying to be in the world is different. No wonder it’s hard for us to understand each other.’ It really helped us in that basic way of accepting each other more.”