The Enneagram is a set of 9 personality types (“ennea” means 9 in Greek) developed by Oscar Ichazo, Claudio Naranjo and Helen Palmer.
Ichazo claimed that there were 9 different ways (let’s call them “types”) in which a person’s ego becomes fixated within the psyche during childhood (though when you’re a baby, you have qualities of tendencies from all these 9 types!).
One of the 9 psychological personality types emerges as the core of your self-image — it’s your dominant type — based on childhood events. .
While numbers 1 through 9 are used to delineate each of the 9 Enneagram Types, nicknames for the types have emerged such as those in the awesome figure from LivingDesign above.
Even though one dominant Enneagram personality type (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9) emerges for you, it is common to hold on to a bit of the other 8 Enneagram type tendencies.
For example, an Enneagram 4 (the “Individualist” (aka the “Romantic”) goes to a 1 (the “Reformer” or “Perfectionist”) at its best yet when stressed, a Type 4 goes to a 2 (the “Helper” or “Giver”).
A 4 also has “wings” on each side of the Enneagram circumfrance, meaning an Enneagram 4 person may sometimes lean towards the traits of a 5 “Investigator”) or a 3 (the “Achiever” or “Peforrmer”).
If you don’t know your Enneagram type yet, go check out one of these 2 free Enneagram tests.
