THE ENNEAGRAM
What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram of personality types is a sophisticated and practical tool for helping people discover their inner selves. It enables us to deal with our problems, understand our family and friends and cope with the wide variety of interpersonal relationships which we all experience in the modern world.The Enneagram is a psychological tool which suggests that there are nine central ways of experiencing reality and responding to it, and that each of us acts out of one of these. Essentially, it is a method of self-knowledge designed to help people get a better understanding of themselves and of others. The word itself is relatively recent. It comes from the Greek ennea (nine) and gramma (point, letter or weight). This refers to the nine different personality patterns or types into which human beings can be divided.
The exact origins of the Enneagram are not known. Many authors claim that in its essentials it is an ancient source of wisdom. What we can say is that its introduction to the West was through the work of George Gurdjieff and Oscar Ichazo. Since then it has been developed over the past decades by various teachers like Naranjo, Palmer, O’Leary, Metz, Burchill, Tickerhoof, Keyes, Kelly, Callaghan, Condon, Tomson, Hudson, Hannan, Wagner, Baron, Wagele, McNulty, Olson and many more. We have all been enriched by their contributions. Our own book "An Enneagram Guide: A Spirituality of Love in Brokenness," by Éilís Bergin and Eddie Fitzgerald, is now also published in Chinese and Portuguese and other translations are pending.
Why bother to find out about it?
Because it can help us greatly in our daily lives. It allows us to discover our personality type at great depth in a non-threatening way. It can effectively help us to discover our truest selves, face up to our illusions, identify our defence and coping mechanisms, overcome our compulsions and liberate our special gifts.Most of us find it difficult to face up to the negative elements of our personality. Over the years we have built up defence mechanisms which enable us to block out our shadow side. Sometimes these are so ingrained that we are no longer consciously aware of them and so do not see them as a problem.
But, if we are ever going to discover our personality type and our true selves, it is vital that we courageously face up to the dark side of ourselves, and seek healing and personal growth.
Surely, what you don’t know can’t hurt you?
The problem is it can. The real truth is that what you don’t know does hurt you! One of the principal reasons why we have problems in our personal lives is that we don’t know who we are and what really motivates us. Many of us live on a superficial level and are content with that. An essential part of our task in life is trying to understand what makes us tick. In doing so we can learn how to manage our lives better and, in particular, how to improve our relationships with other people.Will it solve my problems?
No. Hopefully, you will do that yourself with whatever help and guidance you can get. The Enneagram is not a magic solution to life’s difficulties. As it is taught today, it is combined with modern psychological insights and is an invaluable aid to personal growth. It enables us to identify clearly our personality type, discover our deepest motivation and overcome our self-destructive patterns of behaviour. In revealing to us the reasons why we live as we do, it helps liberate us from our compulsiveness and allows us to relate in a more mature and balanced way with others.