The Enneagram is a powerful framework for personal and collective transformation. It's a system of  9 basic personality types that describes patterns in how people relate to the world.

Humans have 3 basic instinctual drives: Self-preservation (SP), sexual (SX), and social (SO). Instinctual drives are a living part of our animal inheritance and are about about how we regulate ourselves.  

When you’re stressed, your body holds tension and seeks relief. Self-preservation types regulate via atmosphere, activity, and other practical resources. Social types regulate via bonding, connection, and social positioning. Sexual types regulate via chemistry, attraction, and what “turns me on.” Because we live in a body that needs ongoing regulation, the instincts profoundly shape how we pay attention. 

We each have all 3 instinctual drives, organized in a stack of priority.

Our dominant instinct directs our attention most of the time, and we experience the most regulation and dysregulation in relation to it. Our blind spot instinct gets the least priority in our lives. It doesn’t usually occur to us to regulate through this instinct.

There are 6 possible instinctual stackings, each with its own energetic flavor, domain of concern, and way of shaping attention. In this way, the instinctual stackings are like a typology unto themselves.

We write the instinctual stacking by naming the first two in order, omitting the implied third. For example, SP/SO means Self-Preservation dominant, Social second, and Sexual blind.

Your Enneagram type determines how you manage your instinctual needs. Meaning, our instinctual drives are actually more fundamental to our psyche than our Enneagram type. Our type is a reaction to whether or not we are getting our instinctual needs met. John's book, The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram, explores this in depth.

We live so much "inside" our dominant instinct that we don't realize how much it runs the show. Conversely, we pay so little to our blindspot that we tend to develop out of balance, which has consequences. The all too common "midlife crisis" is often a result of having neglected one's instinctual blindspot for too long. 

It is painful to confront dimensions of ourselves that we have neglected. But if we can summon the courage to face them, we can tap into huge reserves of energy for renewal and self-actualization. 

Well first of all... you might not. It is very common to misidentify your own blindspot. Many of the experts in our community misidentified theirs at first. People often think they can see their own blindspots, not realizing the contradiction. We have seen people mistype their blindspot for years. If you'd like support discovering your instinctual blindspot, we recommend that you get "officially" typed by the team at Enneagrammer.

If you do know your blindspot, this seminar will help you deepen your relationship with all three instincts, see how they function in your personality, and understand their place in inner work.