by Jeff Kitchen
Unhealthy: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: They reject and repulse others and all social attachments. / Get obsessed yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias. / Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid Avoidant and Schizotypal personality disorders.
Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.
Examples: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Georgia O’Keeffe, Stanley Kubrick, John Lennon, Lily Tomlin, Gary Larson, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, James Joyce, Björk, Susan Sontag, Emily Dickinson, Agatha Christie, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jane Goodall, Glenn Gould, John Cage, Bobby Fischer, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Trent Reznor, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, and “Fox Mulder” (The X Files).
Copyright 2005, The Enneagram Institute. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
6. The Loyalist
Enneagram Type Six
The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious
Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance
Basic Desire: To have security and support
Enneagram Six with a Five-Wing: “The Defender”
Enneagram Six with a Seven-Wing: “The Buddy”
Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Six
Healthy: Able to elicit strong emotional responses from others: very appealing, endearing, lovable, affectionate. Trust important: bonding with others, forming permanent relationships and alliances. / Dedicated to individuals and movements in which they deeply believe. Community builders: responsible, reliable, trustworthy. Hard-working and persevering, sacrificing for others, they create stability and security in their world, bringing a cooperative spirit.
At Their Best: Become self-affirming, trusting of self and others, independent yet symbiotically interdependent and cooperative as an equal. Belief in self leads to true courage, positive thinking, leadership, and rich self-expression.
Average: Start investing their time and energy into whatever they believe will be safe and stable. Organizing and structuring, they look to alliances and authorities for security and continuity. Constantly vigilant, anticipating problems. / To resist having more demands made on them, they react against others passive-aggressively. Become evasive, indecisive, cautious, procrastinating, and ambivalent. Are highly reactive, anxious, and negative, giving contradictory “mixed signals.” Internal confusion makes them react unpredictably. / To compensate for insecurities, they become sarcastic and belligerent, blaming others for their problems, taking a tough stance toward “outsiders.” Highly reactive and defensive, dividing people into friends and enemies, while looking for threats to their own security. Authoritarian while fearful of authority, highly suspicious yet conspiratorial, and fear-instilling to silence their own fears.
Unhealthy: Fearing that they have ruined their security, they become panicky, volatile, and self-disparaging with acute inferiority feelings. Seeing themselves as defenseless, they seek out a stronger authority or belief to resolve all problems. Highly divisive, disparaging and berating others / Feeling persecuted, that others are “out to get them,” they lash out and act irrationally, bringing about what they fear. Fanaticism, violence. / Hysterical, and seeking to escape punishment, they become self-destructive and suicidal. Alcoholism, drug overdoses, “skid row,” self-abasing behavior. Generally corresponds to the Passive-Aggressive and Paranoid personality disorders.
Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.
Examples: Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Princess Diana, George H. W. Bush, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Candice Bergen, Gilda Radner, Meg Ryan, Helen Hunt, Mel Gibson, Patrick Swayze, Julia Roberts, Phil Donahue, Jay Leno, John Goodman, Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, David Letterman, Andy Rooney, Jessica Lange, Tom Clancy, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and “George Costanza” (Seinfeld).
Copyright 2005, The Enneagram Institute. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
7. The Enthusiast
Enneagram Type Seven
The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Acquisitive, and Scattered
Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain
Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content—to have their needs fulfilled
Enneagram Seven with a Six-Wing: “The Entertainer”
Enneagram Seven with an Eight-Wing: “The Realist”
Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Seven
Healthy: Highly responsive, excitable, enthusiastic about sensation and experience. Most extroverted type: stimuli bring immediate responses—they find everything invigorating. Lively, vivacious, eager, spontaneous, resilient, cheerful. / Easily become accomplished achievers, generalists who do many different things well: multitalented. Practical, productive, usually prolific, cross-fertilizing areas of interest.
At Their Best: Assimilate experiences in depth, making them deeply grateful and appreciative for what they have. Become awed by the simple wonders of life: joyous and ecstatic. Intimations of spiritual reality, of the boundless goodness of life.
Average: As restlessness increases, want to have more options and choices available to them. Become adventurous and “worldly wise,” but less focused, constantly seeking new things and experiences: the sophisticate, connoisseur, and consumer. Money, variety, keeping up with the latest trends important. / Unable to discriminate what they really need, become hyperactive, unable to say “no” to themselves, throwing self into constant activity. Uninhibited, doing and saying whatever comes to mind: storytelling, flamboyant exaggerations, witty wisecracking, performing. Fear being bored: in perpetual motion, but do too many things—many ideas but little follow through. / Get into conspicuous consumption and all forms of excess. Self-centered, materialistic, and greedy, never feeling that they have enough. Demanding and pushy, yet unsatisfied and jaded. Addictive, hardened, and insensitive.
Unhealthy: Desperate to quell their anxieties, can be impulsive and infantile: do not know when to stop. Addictions and excess take their toll: debauched, depraved, dissipated escapists, offensive and abusive. / In flight from self, acting out impulses rather than dealing with anxiety or frustrations: go out of control, into erratic mood swings, and compulsive actions (manias). / Finally, their energy and health is completely spent: become claustrophobic and panic-stricken. Often give up on themselves and life: deep depression and despair, self-destructive overdoses, impulsive suicide. Generally corresponds to the Manic-Depressive and Histrionic personality disorders.
Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.
Examples: John F. Kennedy, Benjamin Franklin, Leonard Bernstein, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Taylor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Steven Spielberg, Federico Fellini, Richard Feynman, Timothy Leary, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Bette Midler, Chuck Berry, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Gianni Versace, Liza Minnelli, Joan Collins, Malcolm Forbes, Noel Coward, Sarah Ferguson, Larry King, Joan Rivers, Regis Philbin, Howard Stern, John Belushi, and “Auntie Mame” (Mame).
Copyright 2005, The Enneagram Institute. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
8. The Challenger
Enneagram Type Eight
The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational
Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others
Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to
be in control of their own life and destiny)
Enneagram Eight with a Seven-Wing: “The Maverick”
Enneagram Eight with a Nine-Wing: “The Bear”
Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Eight
Healthy: Self-assertive, self-confident, and strong: have learned to stand up for what they need and want. A resourceful, “can do” attitude and passionate inner drive. / Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen: champion people, provider, protective, and honorable, carrying others with their strength.
At Their Best: Become self-restrained and magnanimous, merciful and forbearing, mastering self through their self-surrender to a high-er authority. Courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence. May achieve true heroism and historical greatness.
Average: Self-sufficiency, financial independence, and having enough resources are important concerns: become enterprising, pragmatic, “rugged individualists,” wheeler-dealers. Risk-taking, hardworking, denying own emotional needs. / Begin to dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts. Swaggering, boastful, forceful, and expansive: the “boss” whose word is law. Proud, egocentric, want to impose their will and vision on everything, not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect. / Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them.
Unhealthy: Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, “might makes right.” The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con artist. Hard-hearted, immoral, and potentially violent. / Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly overextending self. / If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies. Generally corresponds to the Antisocial personality disorder.
Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation.
Examples: Martin Luther King, Jr., Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Mikhail Gorbachev, G. I. Gurdjieff, Pablo Picasso, Richard Wagner, Sean Connery, Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Norman Mailer, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Ann Richards, Toni Morrison, Lee Iacocca, Donald Trump, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Roseanne Barr, James Brown, Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Leona Helmsley, Sigourney Weaver, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein.
Copyright 2005, The Enneagram Institute. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
9. THE PEACEMAKER
Enneagram Type Nine
The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent
Basic Fear: Of loss and separation
Basic Desire: To have inner stability “peace of mind”
Enneagram Nine with an Eight-Wing: “The Referee”
Enneagram Nine with a One-Wing: “The Dreamer”
Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Nine
Healthy: Deeply receptive, accepting, unselfconscious, emotionally stable and serene. Trusting of self and others, at ease with self and life, innocent and simple. Patient, unpretentious, good-natured, genuinely nice people. / Optimistic, reassuring, supportive: have a healing and calming influence—harmonizing groups, bringing people together: a good mediator, synthesizer, and communicator.
At Their Best: Become self-possessed, feeling autonomous and fulfilled: have great equanimity and contentment because they are present to themselves. Paradoxically, at one with self, and thus able to form more profound relationships. Intensely alive, fully connected to self and others.
Average: Fear conflicts, so become self-effacing and accommodating, idealizing others and “going along” with their wishes, saying “yes” to things they do not really want to do. Fall into conventional roles and expectations. Use philosophies and stock sayings to deflect others. / Active, but disengaged, unreflective, and inattentive. Do not want to be affected, so become unresponsive and complacent, walking away from problems and “sweeping them under the rug.” Thinking becomes hazy and ruminative, mostly comforting fantasies, as they begin to “tune out” reality, becoming oblivious. Emotionally indolent, unwillingness to exert self or to focus on problems: indifference. / Begin to minimize problems, to appease others and to have “peace at any price.” Stubborn, fatalistic, and resigned, as if nothing could be done to change anything. Into wishful thinking and magical solutions. Others frustrated and angry by their procrastination and unresponsiveness.
Unhealthy: Can be highly repressed, undeveloped, and ineffectual. Feel incapable of facing problems: become obstinate, dissociating self from all conflicts. Neglectful and dangerous to others. / Wanting to block out of awareness anything that could affect them, they dissociate so much that they eventually cannot function: numb, depersonalized. / They finally become severely disoriented and catatonic, abandoning themselves, turning into shattered shells. Multiple personalities possible. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid and Dependent personality disorders.
Key Motivations: Want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.
Examples: Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Grace, Walter Cronkite, George Lucas, Walt Disney, John Kennedy, Jr., Sophia Loren, Geena Davis, Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Costner, Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Ron Howard, Matthew Broderick, Ringo Starr, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Nancy Kerrigan, Jim Hensen, Marc Chagall, Norman Rockwell, “Edith Bunker” (All In The Family), and “Marge Simpson” (The Simpsons).
Copyright 2005, The Enneagram Institute. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
USING THE ENNEAGRAM TO ANALYZE CHARACTERS FROM TRAINING DAY
Now let’s get a look through the lens of the Enneagram at two of the well-known film characters we’ve been following.
In Training Day, Alonzo is an 8, The Challenger. He definitely has good features—that’s what’s so confusing and beguiling about him. Look at the Healthy traits from this type that match him:
A resourceful, “can do” attitude and passionate inner drive. Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen.
But these attributes can go sour:
Enterprising, pragmatic, “rugged individualists,” wheeler-dealers . . . dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts . . . want to impose their will and vision on everything, not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect.
He certainly doesn’t show Jake much respect.
Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent . . . they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them.
This clearly happens with the group living in the Jungle (the dangerous neighborhood where the final showdown takes place). The Unhealthy aspects of an 8, The Challenger certainly describe Alonzo’s dark side:
Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, “might makes right.” The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con artist. Hard-hearted, immoral, and potentially violent. Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipoten
t, invulnerable.
Alonzo believes his own myth, as when he’s charging into gunfire after robbing the Sandman’s house for the money:
Recklessly over-extending self. If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies.
This quick demonstration provides insight into both the good and bad aspects of Alonzo’s personality, dissecting his underlying motivations the way a psychiatrist would.
Jake seems like a 3, The Achiever:
Self-assured, energetic, and competent with high self-esteem: They believe in themselves and their own value. . . . Ambitious to improve themselves, to be “the best they can be. . . .” Self-accepting, inner-directed, and authentic, everything they seem to be.
But valuing hard work and accomplishment can lead a 3 like Jake down a slippery slope:
Highly concerned with their performance, doing their job well, constantly driving self to achieve goals as if self-worth depends on it. . . . Become careerists, social climbers, invested in exclusivity and being the “best.” Become image-conscious, highly concerned with how they are perceived.
He’s definitely a career climber—we see how ambitious he is. He’s also concerned with how he’s perceived; when people call him a rookie, that really pushes his buttons. When he refuses the marijuana that Alonzo forces on him, the last thing Alonzo says to get him to smoke it is, “Rookie.” Compare his reaction to when someone calls Michael J. Fox’s character a chicken in the movie Back to the Future.