OVERVIEW OF THE ENNEAGRAM

In Greek, “ennea” means 9, and “gram” means shape. An Enneagram is a 9 sided shape, just like a hexagram is a 6 sided shape. The Enneagram is the specific 9 pointed star inscribed inside of a circle, shown above. The Enneagram of personality is a psychological framework describing 9 interrelated types. In our view, it is the most robust and penetrating personality framework in the world, and it serves as a map spanning our greatest weaknesses and destructive patterns to our highest gifts and potential. 

We created this page to be the best free Enneagram guide on the internet. In the sections below, we describe the Enneagram's foundational concepts and how the system works. Click the buttons below to go to a section on this page, or check out our Intro to the Enneagram Course to go deeper.

YOUR PRIMARY TYPE

The Enneagram is like a color wheel of personality. There are nine basic types, just like nine basic colors, that can be mixed in different ways. While all nine types exist within you, one is primary, similar to how when you mix paints, the final shade is yellow-ish or blue-ish.

Each Enneagram type is a motivational structure that stems from specific fears and desires, and your primary type indicates which fears and desires drive you the most. The motivations that drive each type are universally human, so what makes a type distinct is not whether it is driven by specific fears and desires, but by how completely. For example, Type 7 fears being trapped in stale and painful experiences and desires to be as vibrant and fulfilled as possible. Everyone can relate to these drives, but they form Type 7's motivational core and give rise to 7’s excitability, visionary thinking, and other key traits.

Your primary type defines the majority of your psychic structure, but your full Enneagram type has many dimensions, including wing, trifix, and instinctual stacking, which we explore in the sections below.

THE 9 TYPES AT A GLANCE

Because the Enneagram is not owned by any one institution, Enneagram schools often differentiate themselves by creating their own nicknames for the types. We have named each type the Seeker of what it most yearns to experience. Please keep in mind that short descriptors can never capture the full texture and complexity of a type.

Type 8: The Aliveness Seeker

• Seeks to feel fully alive, powerful, independent, and in control of their situation.
• Avoids feeling weak, dependent on others, having vulnerabilities exposed, or being in "power-down" positions in which they can be hurt or taken advantage of
• Healthy Traits: Self-confident, Vigorous, Galvanizing, Big-Hearted
• Fixated Traits: Strident, Inexorable, Domineering, Brutal

Type 9: The Harmony Seeker

• Seeks to feel at peace, to "just be" without interference, and to abide in pleasant, harmonious connection with their world.
• Avoids being disturbed, overwhelmed, or dysregulated by unwanted demands
• Healthy Traits: Receptive, Empathic, Self-possessed, Vital
• Fixated Traits: Slothful, Accommodating, Autopilot, Diffuse

Type 1: The Alignment Seeker

• Seeks to align themselves with what is good and right, to correct what is “wrong” in their environments, and to comport themselves such that they do not further contaminate their environment.
• Avoids being "bad,” out of alignment with what is good and right, a source of evil or impurity
• Healthy Traits: Principled, Self-controlled, Discerning, Tolerant
• Fixated Traits: Disapproving, All-knowing, Rigid, Fanatical

Type 2: The Love Seeker

• Seeks to experience the warmth and affirmation of loving connection, and to be a source of love for others
• Avoids feeling unwanted, unworthy of love & connection; that there is no love
• Healthy Traits: Nurturing, Humble, Affectionate, Self-appreciating
• Fixated Traits: Intrusive, Sentimental, Self-sacrificing, Possessive

Type 3: The Value Seeker

• Seeking: to feel valuable, outstanding, and worthy of admiration
• Avoiding: feeling worthless, like a nobody, a failure
• Healthy Traits: Genuine, Self-improving, Driven, Competent
• Fixated Traits: Arrogant, Image-managing, Workaholic, Icy

Type 4: The Depth Seeker

• Seeks to express their identity without contamination from external influence, to stay "true to themselves," and to be saturated in personal beauty and meaning
• Avoids liking what is popular or unaligned to their personal aesthetic, being “not themselves” (disloyal to their depths), or having their identity contaminated by external influence
• Healthy Traits: Self-honoring, Equanimous, Humane, Depth-aware
• Fixated Traits: Haughty, Disdainful, Self-absorbed, Unpleasable

Type 5: The Insight Seeker

• Seeks to see beyond what has been seen and to arrive by their own means at intellectual mastery over their domains of interest.
• Avoids feeling stupid, lost in confusion, incapable of thinking clearly
• Healthy Traits: Original, Concentrating, Fascinated, “Objective”
• Fixated Traits: Detached, Abstract, Cynical, Reclusive

Type 6: The Truth Seeker

• Seeks to be "on the lookout" for what is true and real, to co-create shared mind with others, to be loyal to what is "true" (proven, valid, verified, "real," reliable), to know what to do with certainty
• Avoids being disoriented, reliant on something fraudulent or invalid, unable to determine what is true, "asleep," adrift in uncertainty, without a reliable compass
• Healthy Traits: Alert, Responsible, Questioning, Courageous
• Fixated Traits: Angsty, Defensive, (Self-)Doubting, Internally split

Type 7: The Freedom Seeker

• Seeks to feel an exciting sense of limitlessness and possibility, to experience all that life has to offer, and to engage freely with what brings joy, vibrance, and fulfillment
• Avoids feeling deprived, bored, limited, or trapped in pain, boredom, or stale experiences
• Healthy Traits: Curious, Appreciative, Manifesting, Joyful
• Fixated Traits: Scattered, “Up", Consumptive, Glib

How Does Type Come About?

This is the most common question we get, and the answer is, we don't know.

What we can confidently say is that type is not a choice. We do not “opt in” to be more driven by certain fears and desires than others. Rather, the specific drives of our type are baked into our psychic structure. The questions are when and how?

We do know that pre-natal factors matter. Babies are not blank slates, but have temperaments. If you line up 10 newborns, you’ll see differences in how they behave. One may be shy and squirmy, another bold and serene. We don’t know where temperament comes from, only that it exists, but it leads us to believe that type at least partly inborn.

A common objection is, “But what about parenting and how you grow up? Doesn’t that matter?”

Yes, of course. The conditions you grow up in play a huge role in laying your psychic foundation. But we believe that they do not cause your type — rather, your type determines how you respond to those conditions. Consider that adults who suffered from early physical abuse do not behave uniformly — some freeze at small provocations, while others retaliate with violence. That such a range of responses can stem from the same stimulus indicates that factors intrinsic to the responder determine their response, AKA personality type.

That said, the Enneagram is not just a horizontal categorization system that lists static traits for each type. It is also a vertical development framework that maps which traits types express along the spectrum of mental health. (We discuss this further below.) We believe that early childhood conditions determine probabilities for one's baseline mental health in adulthood, and therefore how much of the “high side” or “low side” of one’s type one expresses.

Of course, early conditions do not determine your mental health once and for all, and the point of the Enneagram is not just to identity “which type am I?” but to grow into the healthy expression of your type.

Does Your Type Ever Change?

No. This aspect of the Enneagram often evokes skepticism because it challenges the deeply held Western idea that you can “be whoever you want to be.” In fact, you cannot, and many people suffer mental health issues from trying to “be someone they’re not.”

This is not to say that you can’t “be all you can be.” With enough hard work, you can excel in whatever field inspires you, as any Type 3 will tell you. But a gazelle cannot become an ostrich. We believe the same about Enneagram type. This is because, as we define it, your personality type is not a set of traits laid over your psychological structure — it is your psychological structure.

Here’s an analogy. The streets of New York City run north-south and east-west. Could they change to run diagonally instead? Technically yes, but to do so, you'd need to level the city and start all over.

From a neuroscience point of view, changing your personality type would mean building a new “city” of neural pathways in your brain, such that your brain defaulted to the new pathways over the old ones. It may be theoretically possible, but practically it is not. Your brain is neuroplastic, but only so far. For example, you can learn a new language at 40, but your mother tongue would still feel more “natural” to you. To have a language learned later in life replace your first language as your default would take extraordinary dedication, and personality is even more fundamental than what language you speak.

What can change is your level of psychological health. If you're a type 3, you won't become a type 7, but you can become a "healthy" 3. In other words, you can’t change the grid, but you can clean the streets. And you can also zoom out to see the city map from above, so you don't get stuck on ground level. Wisdom traditions call this developing the “Inner Witness.” Developmental psychologists call it “making the subject object.” Whatever you call it, a necessary step on any path to transformation is zooming out to observe yourself from an inner distance, giving you greater self-awareness and leverage for change. 

YOUR WING

Your wing is like a sidekick type that influences how you achieve your primary type’s agenda. By definition, it is one of the two types adjacent to your primary type along the Enneagram’s outer circle. For example, if your primary type is 2, your wing will be either 1 or 3.

In the last few decades, Enneagram teachers have debated whether you have both wings. After years of careful observation, we are confident that you do not. Of course, since all 9 types live within you, you will relate to both wings on some level. But one will influence your psychic structure more than the other by a wide margin, though it may be difficult to see at first.

Example of Wings: Type 2

To give an example, Type 2 seeks warm, interpersonal connection, and wants to be—and to be seen as—a loving, helpful person. No matter whether a 2 has a 1 wing or a 3 wing, their primary "agenda" will still be that of Type 2. But with a 1 wing, they will use the 1 strategies of referencing their “inner authority," appealing to high principle, and diagnosing and fixing their environment to support that agenda; whereas a 2 has a 3 wing, they will use the 3 strategies of reading what others value, skill-building, and inspiring others to do so. As a result, 2w1 tends to be more “serious”-feeling and upright compared to their glossier, performance-oriented 2w3 counterparts.

Why do you have a wing?

This is one of the remaining mysteries of the Enneagram, so we don’t know for certain. But we do know that wing is real and observable. Our theory of how Object Relations maps to the Centers of Intelligence gives a possible explanation. For example, if we are a core Attachment type, our choice of wing will always be either a Frustration or Rejection type, as shown in the graphic below. You can read more about our theory in this article about the Centers of Intelligence and Object Relations.

From this point of view, our Core Type & Wing represents a combination of two object relational affects that cooperate together — like an object relational stacking, similar to instinctual stacking or trifix order. However, while our theory does a good job explaining Type & Wing combinations that stay inside one Center (e.g. 2w3, where 2 and 3 are both Heart Types), Type and Wing combinations that cross Center boundaries still remain a mystery (e.g. 2w1, where 2 is a Heart Type and 1 is a Body Type).

THE CENTERS OF INTELLIGENCE

The “Centers of Intelligence” — or body, heart, and mind — are the foundation of the Enneagram. They are not abstract concepts but distinct dimensions of experience. For example, as you read this, you are experiencing sensations in your body whether you are paying attention to them or not. At the same time, you are feeling whether this content accords with your self-image (heart), and you are discerning whether these ideas are worth incorporating into the way you make sense of the world (mind).

The Centers of Intelligence develop sequentially during infancy and represent distinct layers of self, each with its own agenda. We are psychologically anchored in one more than the others, making us a core body type, heart type, or mind type. We go into depth on this topic in our Intro to the Enneagram Course, and we take it further in our course on the Developmental View of the Centers and Object Relations. Below is a brief summary.

The Body

We are born with a Body that manages energy, boundaries, and the sensory impact of our environment on us. When bad sensations “get inside” us or others make unwanted demands upon our energy, our body registers that its boundaries are being violated and re-asserts them with a natural aggression. The body is also what makes a sensory impact on your environment, and you experience our substantiality and aliveness through the body. The body speaks to us in sensation, which is how we know our preferences — from what gives us pleasure or pain, what we want for dinner, and what excites us or turns us off. The Body Types (8, 9, 1) represent different strategies of managing our life-force and boundaries.

The Heart

Once we develop the ability to focus our attention, we can register the quality of others’ attention on us. We intuit what others value through how they pay attention, and attuned, positive attention from others makes us feel valued by them. But when others ignore us or attend to us in a way that misses our inner experience, we feel the pain of not being “seen” or valued. In Enneagram terms, our Heart is what manages our self-presentation to be seen in a way that confirms our value. It is also our inner “I” that pays attention and our very personal sense of identity. The Heart Types (2, 3, 4) represent different strategies for experiencing identity and managing self-image.

The Mind

As we grow, we accrue a baseline mental model of reality, an overall way that we expect things to be. When reality conforms to our expectations, we feel safe, assured, and reasonably in control of our well-being. However, reality often surprises us — “Why does my stomach hurt?” “What made her say that?” When we don’t know what’s going on or what will happen, we feel anxious and eager to make sense of things to restore our sense of stability. Our Mind is what holds and updates our inner map of reality, organizes our concepts and beliefs, and inter- and extrapolates from the data of our experience to help us understand the world, navigate it, and imagine possibilities. The Mental Types (5, 6, 7) represent different strategies and criteria for updating our mental map and reassuring ourselves.

Body Types

The body types represent 3 strategies for managing one’s life force in the face of environmental pressures. When body types are healthy, they feel solid and capable of facing the world in a balanced way. They follow their life-force where it naturally takes them without numbing to, protecting against, or fixating on potential threats to their autonomy. When they are fixated, Body Types fall out of balance and become overly enrolled in defending their boundaries, dealing with annoying demands, and directing their life-force on their own terms.

Type 8

Healthy 8s have an unshakeable confidence that comes from direct contact with their gut. They feel powerful without needing to prove it, and they express their life-force with gusto and solidity. They also respond to their environment with attunement — "just enough" force — that arises from their body's sensitivity to its surroundings.

But in fixation, 8s fear that their vulnerabilities will be exposed and taken advantage of, so they suppress their sensitivity, look for ways to be in “power-up” positions beyond the control or influence of others, and become “tough,” overly forceful, and domineering. Unfortunately, by numbing themselves, fixated 8s cut themselves off from experiencing the aliveness and solidity that they most seek.

Type 9

Healthy 9s experience the paradox of being both distinct from, yet a deep connected to, their environment. They feel substantive, easeful, grounded, and self-possessed. They respond to whatever arises in the moment in congruence with their felt sense — an intelligence that comes from fully inhabiting their bodies.

But in fixation, 9s dissociate, become numb, “diffuse,” and internally foggy, and settle into autopilot mode and comforting routines. They also lose the felt sense of where they end and the world begins — a distortion from the body's natural awareness of its boundaries and capacity to assert them. Unfortunately, by numbing and comfort-seeking, fixated 9s drift through life and delay summoning the life-force required to be in command of their own lives.

Type 1

Healthy 1s are dignified and serene because they allow their life force to flow naturally without wincing or tensing in response to environmental annoyances. This radical "allowing" lets their body relax and express its natural alignment and integrity — as in integrated: "all parts of me/the world are welcome.”

But in fixation, 1s get irritated easily and contract into a reflexive need to fix the source of irritation. They delay relaxing until the environment is “purified,” which becomes a never-ending project. They become tense and self-restricting, lest their darker impulses cause them to be a source of further impurity, causing them to become chronically rigid and critical. Unfortunately, by focusing on irritants, fixated 1s miss the good in the world and get trapped in frustration loops that erode the serenity they seek.

Heart Types

The heart types represent 3 strategies for attempting to be — and to be seen as — a valuable person. When heart types are healthy, they feel valuable as they are, which allows them to “be themselves” without complication or pretense. They express themselves naturally, moment to moment, without getting caught up in managing how they are being perceived, or whether their actions accord with a premeditated, “good” self-image. When they are fixated, they doubt their inherent worth, and they become overly concerned with making sure that they come across in the right way—to themselves and others.

Type 2

Healthy 2s express sincere affection that comes from the warmth and sweetness of their heart. They love to nurture intimate connection with others, and they contribute to others' lives simply because it is a joy to do so. They attune to others' needs with discerning sensitivity, yet they also respect boundaries and take care of themselves without guilt. They feel a

In fixation, 2s become insecure that they are not inherently lovable, and they fear that others don’t want to connect with them. In order to feel like the kind of person that others want to connect with, they attempt to become utterly selfless, thoughtful, and generous. So fixated 2s attempt to notice what others need and give it to them, causing them to become intrusive and overly familiar. Also, by cutting off the non-angelic part of themselves, with it, the ability to receive the warm, affirming love they seek.

Type 3

Healthy 3s truly value themselves and others, are honest about their abilities and achievements, and honor their heart's true desires. They love to develop their innate talents and gifts, to “be all they can be” — and they love to inspire others to do the same. At the same time, they are authentic, gracious, and self-accepting, and even as they strive to maximize their potential, they do not depend on high performance to justify their self-worth.

In fixation, 3s become insecure that they are not inherently valuable, and they fear that without great effort, they will be doomed to mediocrity and worthlessness. They unconsciously anchor their self-worth to their performance and esteem in the eyes of others, causing them to become image-conscious, competitive, and compulsively goal-oriented. Unfortunately, by measuring themselves against an idealized, high(er) performing self-image, fixated 3s can get stuck in patterns of chasing success and never feeling good enough.

Type 4

Healthy 4s value all facets of themselves, and they get that “who they are"cannot be boxed into frame, but unfolds moment to moment. They appreciate their inherent uniqueness and understand that it is impossible not to “be themselves.” They are intimately connected to their innermost depths, which they bring into contact with the world, saturating their lived experience with a profound beauty and personal meaning that can be quite moving to others.

In fixation, 4s begin to fear that their identities may get contaminated by external factors, making what is truly unique and valuable about them impossible to discern. They want to be known and valued for who they truly are, but they feel that they cannot rely on others to accurately attune to them. In order to know what is truly unique and valuable about themselves, they feel that must attune to themselves without being influenced by others. So, they adopt a resting attitude of disdain, whereby everything sucks, doesn’t matter, lacks discernment and taste. By dismissing what others value out of habit, fixated 4s succeed in maintaining a unique and distinct sense of self. But in so doing, they artificially back themselves into an identity corner, become precious and unpleaseable, and block themselves from experiencing the full depth and texture of themselves and the world.

Mental Types

The mental types represent 3 different strategies for making sense of reality, so that we can orient reliably towards nourishment and away from harm. When mental types are healthy, they are alert, curious, and receptive. They get that reality is too complex and random to be fully understood, yet they delight in learning new information and updating their mental models. When they fall out of balance, the fact that they cannot understand, control, or predict reality makes them anxious, and they become fixated on orienting with more and more certainty, often closing off mentally in the process.

Type 5

Healthy 5s delight in investigating and discovering what lies beyond current intellectual frontiers, and they are deeply perceptive, independent, unconventional thinkers. Yet even with all their mental horsepower, Healthy 5s abide in the spaciousness of the quiet mind, and they participate in life without filtering their experience through layers of mental activity. They contact the world freshly in each moment and are illuminated by reality through direct contact with it, rather than mental abstractions.

In fixation, 5s get overwhelmed by the complexity, chaos, and nonsense of the world and take on the project of figuring out reality all by themselves. This requires immense concentration, so 5s self-isolate (often physically, but sometimes just emotionally) in order to think clearly and without interference. It’s as if they mentally seal themselves behind a castle wall and interface with the world across a psychological moat. From this walled inner place, fixated 5s can and do concentrate, but may lose touch with the reality they seek to understand.

Type 6

Healthy 6s are calm, clear-headed, and self-assured. Their minds are alert and “ready,” yet quiet and open, and they are natural “warners” with an ability to call out potential dangers, troubleshoot, and prepare for the future. They delight in collaborating with others to consider options and find the optimal path through any situation. However, they also get that it is not possible to have complete information, and paradoxically this allows them to follow their intuition in a pinch without stressing if they are “doing it right.”

In fixation, 6s become self-doubting, angsty, and insecure about their ability to know what to do. They seek external guidance for answers, yet they can struggle to determine what sources to trust, what is “true,” what reference experiences they need to make such a determination. All this makes fixated 6s quite stressed and tense, and their natural ability to sense what might go wrong escalates into catastrophization, suspicion, and hyper vigilance.

Type 7

Healthy 7s are ecstatic, appreciative, and patient. The love to feast on the banquet of life, savoring each moment and feeling genuine joy and gratitude, even for the bitter stuff. The trick is that Healthy 7s have learned how to be fully present with what is here now without needing to improve it, superimpose a more enticing fantasy onto it, or shorten it just to get to the next fun thing. At the same time, they naturally envision exciting possibilities that can make life better and the focus and optimism to manifest them.

In fixation, 7s that they will be trapped in stale experiences and deprived of the bounty that life has to offer. In order to live an optimally fulfilling life, 7s imagine what could “do it” for them and fill their days with promising activities. Unfortunately, by staying in such consant motion (mentally and physically), fixated 7s can confuse stimulation for fulfillment and fail to drop into any experience enough to be nourished by it, ironically creating the deprivation that they are trying to avoid.

TRIFIX

The word fix, short for fixation, is often used as a substitute for type, because type is essentially a way of being “fixated” on a particular ego agenda.

Your primary type is situated in one of the centers, making you a core body type, heart type, or mental type. But you also have a type, or fix, in the other two centers. The combination of your body fix, heart fix, and mental fix is called your trifixation, or trifix for short.

Because the body types are 8, 9, and 1, your body fix will always be either 8, 9, or 1. Likewise, your heart fix will always be either 2, 3, or 4. And your mental fix will always be either 5, 6, or 7.

In the section on the Centers, we stated that the Centers develop like “layers of self” that deal with their corresponding layer of reality — the body with sensation, the heart with gaze, and the mind with orientation. Your fix in each center is simply how you manage the dilemma of that center. We think of each fix as a “module” of self, or “partial self,” that both cooperates and competes with your other two fixes, making trifix a useful way of accounting for some of the conflicts that happen within each of us. 

Note that sometimes people wonder if the inner lines have something to do with your trifix, and they do not. 8 is connected to 2 and 5 via inner lines, but that does not mean that every 8 has 2 and 5 in their trifix. Below are three examples of possible trifixes.

Does the Order Matter in Your Trifix?

Yes. In our notation, the first number in your trifix represents your primary type. For example, a person typed 936 is a core 9, while a person typed 396 is a core 3. The pictures below show the same trifix in 3 different permutations. Each one is a different core type. 

More subtly, what our colleagues at Enneagrammer have observed is that the order of the last 2 fixes also matters. Like the instinctual stacking, trifix order indicates how the Centers’ respective agendas are prioritized in your psyche. The graphic below shows two core 9s with the same trifix, but one is 936 and the other is 963.

936 indicates body first, heart middle, mind last, whereas 963 indicates body first, mind middle, heart last. Because they are both “body first,” the body’s agenda to protect its boundaries and autonomy is primary for both of them. But for 936, the heart’s agenda to uphold a self-image gets prioritized before the mind’s agenda to stay alert and orient reliably. For 963, the mind’s agenda gets priority over the heart’s.

Does Each Fix Have Its own Wing?

Yes. A full typing includes all three fixes and their respective wings. Including wings on each fix creates of 8 possible variations of each trifix (because two possible wings for each fix gives 2³). The example below shows two people who have the same trifix of 963, but all different wings.

For notation, we write the fixes + wings in order, e.g. 9w8 6w7 3w4. Some schools truncate to 963(874), with the first three numbers being the core trifix, and the three parenthetical numbers being the wings. The typing team at Enneagrammer coined the term "overlay" to refer to the combination of wings, which flavors how one expresses the core trifix.

The person's overlay on the left is 874, and on the right is 152. Despite sharing the same trifix of 963, these two people may seem like different types due to their different overlays. And while we used this example of all different wings to illustrate the point, even just one different wing can effect how someone presents, and how their inner world is structured, as in the example below. 

Some Enneagram teachers feel that trifix is too complex to bother with, let alone this fix+wing business, especially since there is already so much psychological material to work with in your primary type. But humans are complex, and this is one way the Enneagram accounts for that complexity. Most importantly, the fix+wing theory accords with observation, so we believe this is how the Enneagram actually works.

We touch on trifix and overlay in some of our Enneagram Interviews, but we also recommend watching the Enneagrammer typing team in action to observe these distinctions in detail for yourself.

PRESENCE, ESSENCE, & PERSONALITY

The Enneagram distinguishes between two aspects of your consciousness: Essence and Personality.

Your Essence is who you are underneath your fears and desires. Your Personality is a motivational structure based on your fears and desires.

Your Essence has qualities and texture that you can discern if you orient your attention in the right way, and each Enneagram type longs for contact with a particular Essential Quality that feels like home, or what life is all about. (See diagram below). We sometimes contact this Essential Quality during moments of stillness, when we become aware of ourselves in a deeper way. But most of our waking lives are characterized by a restlessness that makes such moments of “dropping into” Essence few and far between.

The distinction between Essence & Personality is what makes the Enneagram not just a psychological framework, but a spiritual one. The longing for Essence, however, need not be couched in spiritual terms. Everyone carries a sense of incompleteness, that something is missing, or that we are not as we should be. Whether we think of it as a desire for happiness, wholeness, healing, peace, actualization, or something else, we carry a sense that something would complete our identity. It’s as if we expect that our “true self” will emerge when the circumstances are just right. This is the chief delusion of the Personality, and the Personality toils to bring those circumstances about.

In Enneagram terms, spiritual awakening is about transcending the Personality and anchoring our identity in Essence. We do this by cultivating a nonjudgmental, non-reactive, wakeful state of attention called Presence. Presence allows us to notice the fears that typically kick our personality into motion without kicking our personality into motion. This is easier said than done. But the more present we are, the less the Personality “takes over,” and the more inner freedom we have.

We experience Essence as the subtle qualities of our consciousness that we discern when present. When a Type 8 becomes present, they discern that Essential Aliveness is not conditional on “just right” circumstances, but is intrinsic to their consciousness and identity. When a Type 9 becomes present, they discern that Essential Harmony is intrinsic to their consciousness and identity. And so on.

Traditionally, it is taught that you lose touch with Essence as a child, forming your core wound, and your Personality tries to help you recreate it. The list below shows each type’s Essential Quality and what the personality does in response to losing touch with it.

• Type 8’s Essential Quality is Aliveness. The 8 personality tries to recreate Essential Aliveness by becoming tough and forceful and pushing against the world.
• Type 9’s Essential Quality is Harmony. The 9 personality tries to recreate Essential Harmony by and going with the flow and not making a fuss.
• Type 1’s Essential Quality is Alignment. The 1 personality tries to recreate Essential Alignment by fixing what is misaligned in its environment and avoiding causing further misalignment.
• Type 2’s Essential Quality is Love. The 2 personality tries to recreate Essential Love by giving selflessly and manufacturing warm, interpersonal connection.
• Type 3’s Essential Quality is Value. The 3 personality tries to recreate Essential Value by manifesting their potential and becoming a person worthy of admiration.
• Type 4’s Essential Quality is Depth. The 4 personality tries to recreate Essential Depth by expressing what is unique about them and defending against external influence.
• Type 5’s Essential Quality is Insight. The 5 personality tries to recreate Essential Insight by mentally isolating and concentrating on its investigations.
• Type 6’s Essential Quality is Truth. The 6 personality tries to recreate Essential Truth by staying alert and piecing together information from reliable sources.
• Type 7’s Essential Quality is Freedom. The 7 personality tries to recreate Essential Freedom by envisioning what might be more fulfilling than the status quo and going after it.

Is the Personality "Bad"?

Not at all. The wisdom traditions teach us to transcend ourselves, but we have to have a self first. Building a strong, individuated ego (or, Personality) helps us function in the world with a clear identity, good boundaries, and healthy self-esteem. The Personality also helps us go after what we want and build a life of our design.

However, it’s tale as old as time that we can work to achieve everything we want only to wonder, "Is this all there is?” That question comes from a deeper place in us than our Personality — our soul perhaps, or our Essence. We can be grateful to our Personality for how it helps us to function in the world, yet recognize that despite all its gifts and strengths, it is not the ultimate substance of who we are. In the end, the point is not to do away with the personality, but to expand beyond it and harness its functionality from a deeper place.

The Spectrum of Health and Fixation

The Enneagram is not just a horizontal framework that categorizes people by type. It is also a vertical framework that maps how each Enneagram type expresses itself along a spectrum of psychological well-being, ranging from the healthiest, most integrated states to the most unhealthy, fixated, and dysfunctional ones.

The most thorough treatment of this topic was by Don Riso (and later expanded with Russ Hudson), who delineated the specific attitudes and behaviors that each type manifests at 9 distinct “Levels of Development.” Riso and Hudson's framework is remarkably thorough and precise, and one of its major benefits is how it combats teacher bias and enables fair treatment of the types, since each type gets equal representation at each level. The Enneagram Institute still teaches this material—and teaches it well—to this day.

That said, we believe that Riso’s framework would better be called the Levels of Health. This is not just a semantic point, but a theoretical one. In our parlance, development refers to a process of growth that begins at a point of origin and advances through distinct stages of maturity. Frameworks like Spiral Dynamics, Piaget’s Cognitive Development in Children, and Susan Cook-Grueter’s Adult Ego Development Theory are good examples of this. Riso’s framework is not quite that, but rather a litmus test for “where you’re at” on a given day, hour, or phase of life. (For more on this, see our article on Development vs Awakening).

However one languages it, what is clear is that mental health exists on a spectrum. The Enneagram’s perspective is that our level of health depends on our ability to be present. The wisdom traditions teach that in our normal state of consciousness, we are “asleep.” Meaning, we are run by our patterns and automatic reactions without really being “awake” in ourselves. Or stated in Enneagram terms, we are unconsciously trapped in our personality without access to our Essential nature. When we are present, we can restrain our dysfunctional reactions, stay grounded and clear, and access to our highest gifts even during adversity. When we are not present, we succumb to fears and become more anxious, disconnected, and defended in the style of our type.

In our type descriptions above, we indicate some of the healthy and fixated expressions of each type, and we go into more depth in our Intro to the Enneagram Course.

But... How Do You Define What a “Healthy Person" Is?

It is surprisingly difficult to define psychological health. If you study kidney disease, you can compare healthy kidneys to sick ones. But what exactly is a “healthy person?”

Traditional psychological frameworks focus mostly on defining mental illness rather than exploring the nuances of mental wellness. Modern frameworks such as positive psychology, Internal Family Systems, and Attachment Theory appeal to concepts like happiness, functionality, and emotional maturity, but even these ideas are hard to pin down and are shaped by cultural values. Part of the problem may be that there is no such thing as a “floor” or a ceiling — there may always be new levels of pathology and enlightenment that humans can attain.

Remarkably, the notion of personality is conspicuously absent from most psychological theories. We consider this a blindspot because definitions of health are biased not just by culture, but by type itself. A Social 3 may conceive of health as a state where they no longer care about what others think of them. But for a Social blind 7, learning to care about what others think might be a sign of growth. The Enneagram broadens the conversation by introducing personality-based considerations, yet proposing a definition of psychological health that transcends type differences and invokes universal principles of growth. It also integrates the full spectrum of pathology and spiritual transcendence.

A Few More Points

1. Most people overestimate how “awake” they are. The part of us that wants to “see ourselves” as awake and Healthy is our ego, but the part of us that can be present—our Essence—doesn’t care about such things.
2. Most people spend most of their time Fixated to some degree. In practice, it is extremely difficult to maintain a consistent state of presence, as any experienced meditator will tell you. It takes years of dedication to inner work to do so — the Buddha himself meditated for 10 years and still hadn’t “arrived” yet. That said, we may have moments or stretches of wakefulness, which give us a taste of what we strive for.
3. “Healthy” and “fixated” do not indicate mood or happiness. It is possible to be unhappy and “Healthy,” or happy yet Fixated. This is a key error that most beginner make. Rather, these terms indicate how much presence one can tolerate. So presence is not about the content of your experience, but your relationship to it. You can be equally present with an orgasm as with a stomach ache. The more present and unflinching we are with our type’s fears, the less gripped we are by them.
4. Riso segments his 9 Levels into into 3 groups of 3 — healthy, average, and unhealthy. We see this as accurate and useful in certain contexts, but we find it easier in our teaching to refer loosely to “healthy” and “fixated” expressions of a type, leaving the full vertical spectrum implied.

THE INNER LINES

Each Enneagram type is connected to two others via lines inside the circle. These lines have psychological meaning and represent how each type “borrows the toolkit” of other types to support its agenda.

There is wide variance in how Enneagram schools teach this topic. Some use directional arrows to suggest that one direction is a type’s “Direction of Integration” or “Security Point,” such that when type is healthy, it manifests the healthy qualities of the type in that direction. By the same logic, when a type is more fixated, it manifests the fixated qualities of the type in the opposite direction, sometimes called the “Direction of Disintegration” or “Stress Point.”

From our observations, we believe that each type pulls qualities from the types in both directions all along the spectrum of health. The types in each direction provide release valves from the psychological pressure created by one’s core type structure and represent aspects of the core type’s shadow. (Shadow is a Jungian term that means aspects of you that are true but do not align to your self-image, including Golden Shadow, or your hidden virtues.)

The inner lines are most vividly observable in close relationships, since that is where our shadows have the freest expression. This is part of the double meaning of the term Security Point. In one sense, we express our best qualities when we feel the most "secure" in ourselves. But in another sense, when we know that a relationship isn't at risk, we feel comfortable “letting it all hang out." So our partners usually see our shadow in action, which usually correspond to the types in both of our directions.

In our parlance, we say that a type “goes to” another when it expresses qualities of a type in one of its directions, e.g. “3 goes to 6.” Note that a type going to another type does not become that type, and may not even look like it. For example, a 3 going to 6 does not become a 6 and likely doesn't express itself like a 6, at least not for long periods. Rather, a 3 will express aspects of 6 in a "3-ish" way.

The Triangle Types

• Type 9 is typically harmonious and easy-going, but its lines to 3 and 6 represent how 9s expresses their deeper needs and edges. At their best, 9s are dynamic and self-possessed in the style of their type, yet they are also self-actualizing and action-oriented like healthy 3s, as well as awake and responsible like healthy 6s. When more fixated, 9s become slothful and self-forgetting in the style of their type, yet they can also be arrogant and validation-seeking like fixated 3s, as well as self-doubting and assurance-seeking like fixated 6s.
• Type 3 is typically self-improving and goal-oriented, but its lines to 6 and 9 represent how 3 expresses facets of itself that are not competence- or performance-related. At their best, 3s are radiant and authentic in the style of their type, yet also devotional and inner-directed like healthy 6s, as well as relaxed and available like healthy 9s. When more fixated, 3s become competitive and image-managing in the style of their type, yet they can also be angsty and self-doubting like fixated 6s, as well as self-forgetting and checked out like fixated 9s.
• Type 6 is typically alert and committed, but its lines to 9 and 3 represent how 6s relax their vigilance and go “off duty.” At their best, 6s are courageous and self-trusting in the style of their type, yet also grounded and self-possessed like healthy 9s, as well as radiant and self-valuing like healthy 3s. When more fixated, 6s become angsty and defensive in the style of their type, yet they can also be slothful and self-abdicating like fixated 9s, as well as image-conscious and overworked like fixated 3s.

The Hexad Types

• Type 8 is typically solid and “tough,” but its lines to 2 and 5 represent how 8 expresses its softness and sensitivity. At their best, 8s are powerful and capacious in the style of their type, yet also generous and bighearted like healthy 2s as well as inquisitive and internally spacious, like healthy 5s. When more fixated, 8s become insensitive and inexorable in the style of their type, yet they can also  be possessive and intrusive like fixated 2s, as well as schizoid and tightly wound like fixated 5s.
• Type 2 is typically interpersonal and other-focused, but its lines to 8 and 4 represent how 2 express its self-focused, non-relational dimensions. At their best, 2s are nurturing and humble in the style of their type, yet also independent and well-boundaried like healthy 8s, as well as self-curious and expressive like healthy 4s. When more fixated, 2s become intrusive and insincere in the style of their type, yet they can also be forceful and transactional like fixated 8s, as well as disdainful and self-pitying like fixated 4s.
• Type 4 is typically dramatic and self-referential, but its lines to 1 and 2 represent how 4 gets outside itself and connects to others and their world. At their best, 4s are equanimous and profound in the style of their type, yet also principled and emotionally tempered like healthy 1s, as well as sweet and nurturing like healthy 2s. When more fixated, 4s become precious and disdainful in the style of their type, yet they can also be rigid and intolerant like fixated 1s, as well as needy and prideful about their role in others’ lives like fixated 2s.
• Type 1 is typically solemn and self-controlled, but its lines to 7 and 4 represent how 1 lets its hair down. At their best, 1s are discerning and serene in the style of their type, yet also loose and playful like healthy 7s, as well as self-exploratory and self-embracing like healthy 4s. When more fixated, 1s become uptight and critical in the style of their type, yet they can also be naughty and demanding like fixated 7s, as well as dramatic and suffering-forward like fixated 4s.
• Type 7 is typically excitable and stimulation-seeking, but its lines to 5 and 1 represent how 7 reigns itself in. At their best, 7s are joyful and appreciative in the style of their type, yet also internally spacious and focused like healthy 5s, as well as disciplined and principled like healthy 1s. When more fixated, 7s become scattered and unquenchable in the style of their type, yet they can also be detached and abstract like fixated 5s, as well as critical and self-punishing like fixated 1s.
• Type 5 is typically cerebral and mentally independent, but its lines to 8 and 7 represent how 5 gets outside of itself and participates in the world. At their best, 5s are illuminating and internally spacious in the style of their type, yet also embodied and capacious like healthy 8s, as well as joyful and enthusiastic like healthy 7s. When more fixated, 5s become detached and cynical in the style of their type, they become overly-forceful and belittling like fixated 8s, as well as manic and entitled like fixated 7s.

THE INSTINCTUAL DRIVES

Humans are mammals. Just like horses, pigs, and kangaroos, we have instinctual drives. There are three basic umbrellas of instinctual drive.

•  The Self-Preservation Drive
•  The Sexual Drive
•  The Social Drive
  

Like other mammals, we require physiological regulation. When you’re stressed, your body holds tension and seeks relief.  Our instinctual drives are what compel us to attend to the resources that regulate us. Because we live in a body in need of constant regulation, the instincts profoundly shape our attention and are worth extended study.

The Self-Preservation Drive makes us attend to what helps us survive and thrive as a physical organism, e.g. food, shelter, creature comforts such as lighting, sound, physical materials, and that which allows us to secure those things (e.g., money). Self-preservation types regulate via atmosphere, food, or other practical resources. 

Our Sexual Drive makes us attend to what helps us elicit the choice of a sexual partner. For example, we enhance facets of ourselves that can “hook” others — our vibe, talents, interests, and behaviors that make us magnetic to the people we would like to choose us. Sexual types regulate via chemistry, attraction, and what “turns me on.”

Our Social Drive makes us attend to what helps us bond socially with others. For example, we dilate our attention to the group or person we are paying attention to, notice what behaviors are appropriate in a given context, and read social cues indicating status, the state of relationships, and where others are "at" internally. Social types regulate via bonding, connection, and social positioning.

Instinct Drives Personality

Our awareness is infused in a flesh and bone mammalian body, and what co-opts our attention most irresistibly are our biological urges. You're hungry? It's going to be hard not to pay attention to that. Someone incredibly attractive just walked into the room? That too. Your friends kicked you out of the group chat? That too. 

All this to say, our instinctual drives are more fundamental than our Enneagram type, and the function of personality is to help you meet your instinctual needs. For example, we need to eat. How do we do that? We develop a personality that allows us to procure food. We get jobs, perform tasks, monitor our spending, etc. We want to have sex. How do we do that? We develop a personality that is sexually attractive to others. We want to bond with others socially. How do we do that? We develop a personality that others will want to socially bond with. 

Instinct and Essence

Recall that the personality is a psychological structure that attempts to reconnect you to Essence, but in a way that will never work. This is because it confuses contact with Essence with the satisfaction of instinctual needs, and instinctual urges always renew. This is the principle mistake of the entire personality and the fulcrum of the whole Enneagram system. 

The Instinctual Stacking

We each have all three instinctual drives. But just like with the Centers of Intelligence, we over-prioritize one instinct and under-prioritize another, resulting in an instinctual stacking. 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 tends to get the least attention and 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, as shown below. The common parlance for this is "self-pres dominant" and "sexual blind." 

Enneagram Types Show Up Differently Depending on Their Instinctual Stacking

Because instincts direct attention, Instinctual Stacking plays a huge role in the expression of personality.  A Type 6 that is self-preservation dominant and social blind will be quite different from one that is social dominant and self-preservation blind. Self-preservation dominant 6s will tend to get most angsty about their physical and logistical needs, yet their healthy superpowers will tend to be in the physical and logistical realm. But Social dominant 6s will tend to get most angsty about social dynamics, and their healthy superpowers will tend to be in the realm of social intelligence. We recommend checking out our Enneagram Interviews to observe people of each Instinctual Stacking for yourself.

The Instinctual Stacking and Inner Work

Because the instincts drive us in different proportions, we tend to give one undue importance in our lives and almost entirely neglect another. There is huge transformative power in working to balance our instinctual drives, and it's one of the most exciting and impactful parts of inner work because of how much life-force gets unleashed.

Often newcomers assume that our dominant instinct is where we have the most skill. This can be true, but not necessarily. A more precise understanding is that our dominant instinct pulls our attention the most -- so the vast majority of our neuroses will be in relation to it. Because of this, our dominant instinct is where we have the most potential, but also the most fixation. For example, a social dominant person's attention may be so dominated by subtle social dynamics that rather than being socially smooth, they become anxious and on edge. 

FAQs

Are Some Enneagram Types Better Than Others?

No, the numbers do not mean anything about the inherent value of a type. A type 1 is not better than a type 2, or vice versa. They are simply different. 

Do Certain Types Have More Men, Women, or Non-Binary?

We do not have enough data to say for certain. It is very difficult to get accurate data because written tests are so unreliable. The typing team at Enneagrammer has made huge contributions to the field with their typing methods using video submissions and collages, but these methods take a long time, and their sample set is celebrities and people who self-select to get typed — neither of which can be considered random enough to represent the overall population.

What we can say is that Enneagram types are gender neutral, and we do see people of all genders in each type. Sometimes people say things like Type 8 is more “masculine” and type 2 is more “feminine,” but we believe that this is largely due to projections of gender stereotypes onto the archetypal energies that these types represent, rather than a genuine perception of masculinity or femininity. Indeed, even with sharp analytical skills, it is difficult to parse social conditioning from pure perception of masculine and feminine archetypes, or of Enneagram type for that matter.

Are Types Equally Distributed in the Overall Population?

One of the most common assumptions that people bring to the Enneagram is that there “should” be an equal-ish distribution of type. Or that, if there 100 people in an organization, there “should” be at least 1 person of each type. But reality rarely conforms to a priori assumptions, and we must be watchful of them.

We do not have enough data to say what type distribution is exactly for the same reasons stated in the last section. However, we can confidently say that type distribution is profoundly unequal. From our limited sample size of typings and personal observations, we believe that the most common types are 9 and 6 by a wide margin, possibly even by an order of magnitude. Type 3 follows, but not closely. Then probably 7, then the rest.

Why are types distributed so unequally? It’s hard to attribute root cause, but it is interesting to note that the three most common types share the Object Relational Affect of Attachment, whereas the rarer types have those of Frustration or Rejection affect. (Read more in our article on Object Relations and the Centers.) Intrinsic to Attachment types is a reflex to adapt to their environments, whereas Frustration and Rejection types tend to “do their own thing” irrespective of environmental pressures. For that reason alone, it is hard to imagine how a society of mostly Frustration or Rejection types could cohere. We find this “what makes sense for the species” theory enticing as a possible explanation, but even if true, the personality “selection mechanism” still remains a mystery.

Of course, it possible that we are wrong about type distribution due to factors of type and sample size. We can only analyze the humans we have access to, and certain types prefer to limit access to themselves — for example, types 4 and 5. So perhaps we don’t see certain types because they don’t want to be seen. But even taking this into account, we still believe that Attachment types dominate the population by a wide margin.

One consequence of this unequal type distribution is that in general, Enneagram content at large biases towards an unexamined Attachment frame of mind. Attachment types are unconsciously seeking common ground with others and assuming that others seeking the same. For better or worse, Frustration and Rejection types are not. But Attachment types project their desire for common ground, and their willingness to create it by adapting, onto others. We call this Attachment Bias, and it often prevents Attachment types from seeing how truly different other types’ motivational structures are. But since the Enneagram is an open source framework, instagram is filled with Attachment type “teachers” that have not confronted this bias and, without realizing it, blur types together by presenting them as variations of a theme.

Are There Really Just 9 Types?

“So you’re saying all of humanity fits neatly into 9 categories?!”

Actually, no. Humans are complex, dynamic lifeforms, not cookie cutouts. No map shows every blade of grass, and no personality framework accounts for the infinite nuance of any individual. The Enneagram is just a map.

But... it does have some ways of accounting for this complexity. First, the categories aren’t rigid. You do have a primary type, but no one is a pure type. All types exist within you to some degree. But perhaps more satisfyingly, the Enneagram's many dimensions of "subtyping" create much more than 9 types.

There are...

6 possible instinctual stackings
6 possible body fix + wing
6 possible heart fix + wing
6 possible mind fix + wing
6 possible center orders

That gives 6⁵, or 7776, possible "complete" Enneagram Types.  If you include Riso-Hudson's 9 Levels of Development, that's 9x more, or 69,984 distinct ways that people can show up.