A Fairly Clear History of the Modern Enneagram

Continuing with the IEA conference, Mary Beth and I next attended a session called Historical Evolution of Enneagram Theory. This was probably my favorite session of the conference. The speaker was Patrick O'Leary. Here is part of his bio:
"Patrick H. O'Leary, M.S., M.Div., co-authored the first Enneagram text, The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery, in 1984... O'Leary integrated his studies in environmental biology, physiology, psychology, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), individual counseling, spiritual direction and organizational development into his understanding of the Enneagram. He began offering various seminars on the Enneagram in 1972."
O'Leary is both a scientist and a theologian (he is a 3 and as is typical, seems to have changed course many times throughout his life, but in this seminar, he was emphasizing his scientific point of view.) As such, he attempted to trace the history of the development of the modern Enneagram using evolution as a metaphor. (i.e., ideas were passed from person to person in a "genealogy" and "tested by the environment" via lawsuits, etc.) I tried to follow the main thread of this "genealogy", but at times, O'Leary sketched out some interesting offshoots that "became extinct." I will not discuss those here, as my goal in recounting his presentation is to clarify the events leading up to the Enneagram materials and schools that are available now.
O'Leary was an interesting speaker in that he could provide a first-hand account of events that I have only read about. He noted that he had met all of the key figures (other than Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) in the development of the modern Enneagram. Here is the history, as O'Leary recounted it:
The first important figure was G.I. Gurdjieff, a mystic who gathered ancient wisdom. Gurdjieff had the Enneagram symbol, but was concerned primarily with cosmology (an attempt to explain all things), not psychology. Although he did develop "the work" -- a system of spiritual transformation, he never applied the Enneagram symbol to psychology. We only know about Gurdjieff second-hand, primarily through P. D. Ouspensky.
According to O'Leary, Oscar Ichazo learned about the Enneagram from a Gurdjieff group. (This point was disputed by an individual in the seminar; I will write more about this issue later.) Ichazo then took a group of disciples to Arica, Chile. An American group of 60 people (known as "Chile Peppers") also came to study. The Arica Institute, which still exists, was formed in Chile. It was Ichazo who first connected the Enneagram to psychology. He added the fixation/ passions and virtues to the diagram.
One of those who studied with Ichazo was Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo is a psychiatrist and he connected the Enneagram to modern psychological understanding. Interestingly, it was he who added the arrows connecting points 3, 6, and 9 on the Enneagram diagram. These arrows were not present in any earlier version of the diagram and ran in the opposite direction of the ones we see now (indicating the directions of integration and disintegration for the primary types). When asked about the arrows later, Naranjo said they were "a doodle."
Naranjo left the Arica study group before the teaching was complete and went to Esalen in California. He began teaching in the San Francisco Bay area and Helen Palmer learned from him. Naranjo was using panels of exemplars of the types, which Palmer observed. Today, she is the primary practitioner of this method of teaching.
Robert Ochs, a Loyola University professor, also studied with Naranjo. In 1971, Ochs taught a graduate class on Religious Experience. Patrick O'Leary and Jerome Wagner were students in that class. As student questions along the lines of "Who am I?" and "Why do I have problems relating to others?" began to emerge, Ochs began to talk about personality types 1 - 9. The material was compelling. Religious Experience II became a course in the Enneagram.
O'Leary described a great excitement about the Enneagram among these students. Much like myself and Mary Beth, they had hundreds of acquaintances in common, and thus, hundreds of exemplars of the types to study and discuss.
O'Leary noted that Ochs did not want the information about the Enneagram to be disseminated casually. However, he did decide to open the teaching up beyond the Loyola campus by offering a class over spring break in 1972. A group of Jesuits from Milford, Ohio attended. This group included Richard Rohr (author of The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective and Experiencing the Enneagram) and Maria Beesing. Another group of Jesuits, these from Toronto, were also in attendance. Don Riso learned about the Enneagram from them. Later, Riso would found The Enneagram Institute and bring in Russ Hudson as a co-teacher.
(Note: See the comment thread concerning the accuracy of the previous paragraph.)
From studying with Ochs, O'Leary had produced a series of handwritten notes. He was also doing some counseling and using the Enneagram types in role play with clients who then asked about how he came to his understanding of personality. O'Leary's notes began to be photocopied. Some of the people who got ahold of them were missionaries, and in this way, knowledge of the Enneagram spread around the world.
Eventually, O'Leary joined with Maria Beesing and began teaching a series of workshops. Robert Novosek was a student who took detailed notes. Together, the three of them wrote the book The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery. (Here, we have the 3 - 6- 9 arrows in their current form.) Published in 1984, this book was the first to bring the Enneagram to the public at large. (I will have much more to say about the surprising history of this book in a later post.)
In 1988, the Arica Institute sued for copyright infringement. In 1990, the suit was dismissed with prejudice and the writers were ordered to acknowledge Ichazo's contribution.
Riso and Hudson published their book Personality Types in 1987. Palmer followed with The Enneagram in 1988.
Today, we have three major schools of Enneagram thought in the United States: (1) Helen Palmer teaching with psychiatrist David Daniels on the West Coast, (2) O'Leary and Beesing in the Mid-West, and (3) Riso and Hudson on the East Coast.
At first, these authors. teachers did not communicate much with one another. However, this changed in 1994, when Palmer invited them all to attend an Enneagram conference in Stanford. 1500 people met there. The IEA was founded shortly thereafter, in 1995.
O'Leary went on to talk about "mutations" to Enneagram theory that are still needed. In particular, he talked about the need for more intuitive ways to self-discover type. With this, I heartily agree.

How to determine your Enneagram type: some recommendations

Because I am such an Enneagram enthusiast, I often find myself emailing back and forth with new acquaintances, old friends, etc., to try to help them determine their type.

First, I send them the link to the Eclectic Energies Enneagram Tests. There are two tests there, and I recommend you take them both. The format of the questions is different, and I find them equally illuminating. Results are provided in the form of a list of potential types in their order of likelihood.

After the person sends me copies of their results and we discuss them (usually via email), I send them Riso and Hudson's QUEST. This one's good because it's quick to take, and it doesn't even try to pick out your type: it ranks the nine types into a top three, middle three, and bottom three in terms of likelihood. The prediction is that one of the top three has an 80% likelihood of being your type. This is a good check on the Eclectic Energies results; if, say, Eclectic Energies suggests a type but it's in the bottom tier of the QUEST, it's probably not the one.

After that, I recommend they read my favorite Enneagram book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson. Other good introductions are Personality Types by Riso and Hudson and The Enneagram by Helen Palmer.

The subtext of what I've been saying is that determining your Enneagram type isn't always easy. Some people are able to figure theirs out immediately upon picking up The Wisdom of the Enneagram, but others have a harder time, and there are several people in our Enneagram discussion group whose types are still mysteries to the group.

You'd think it'd be easy to figure out -- you'd just take a test, like with the Myers-Briggs. But it's not that easy -- the Enneagram is not really a science. (Ignore for the moment that there are those who say the same thing about the Myers-Briggs!) In my experience, the MBTI will tell you your type, it'll be correct and it will stay stable over time. But the Myers-Briggs schema consists of continua between four poles. It's obviously much easier to write a test in the forced-choice format for four pairs of opposites than it is for nine types based on 7 deadly sins plus 2! This is why I've never been very impressed with the RHETI (Riso and Hudson's other test), which uses the forced-choice format.

Here's my story of figuring out my own type. It spans the decades:

In 1987, I saw Riso and Hudson's original Personality Types and just had to have the book. (I've always been very interested in both personality and testing.) I read it, and sort of enjoyed it, but didn't much understand it. The types didn't remind me of the people I knew, and I certainly couldn't pick myself out. I wanted to be a 5, cause that seemed like the smart one, but I didn't relate at all to the idea of the withdrawn observer. (My self-image at that time was of someone who was both talkative and needy.) I thought maybe a 4, because it seemed pretty interesting to be the artistic one, but that one was a withdrawn type, too, plus it just didn't feel right. Of all of them, I thought the 7 might be closest, even though I knew that wasn't right either, really, because I was the opposite of a compulsive do-er -- I was more of a compulsive non-doer. I just didn't see any of these patterns in myself or others I knew.

So 12 years pass -- 12 years in which I read every Enneagram book and take every Enneagram test I come across, and get a little better at seeing the patterns in others, and still I don't know my type, although I suspect 7w6. (The RHETI said I was either 7 or 2.) I have a friend named Jeff who likes the Enneagram too, and one day his sister Suzy and I are both hanging out with him on the same day, and we talk about the Enneagram. I told her I didn't know my type, and she says "Oh, you're a 6." I asked how she knew, and she said I just was, and she'd been to an Enneagram conference, and I reminded her of the other 6s, and she'd heard that 6s never knew they were 6s anyway, so if you don't know, it's a good guess. (Pretty good advice, by the way -- if you can't tell, consider 6 or 9.)

Two years later, I met Cindi. We started talking about the Enneagram, and she, too, said "Oh, you're a 6." I asked how she could tell. She said "friendly, funny, nervous." And she's right; I am 6w7.

My reading of profiles of The Loyalist hadn't really evoked "friendly, funny, nervous." That said, the 6 is a particularly hard one to grasp compared to, say, the 1 or the 2. But there's something to the idea that the types can sometimes be easier to identify from the outside. Not only are Enneagram tests just hard to write, but also, you need to see yourself fairly clearly in order to answer the questions correctly. And seeing yourself clearly is why you need the Enneagram in the first place!

Think about it: if you're in the "trance" of your style, and you saw yourself clearly, you wouldn't like what you saw, and you probably wouldn't be choosing those particular strategies. People at the unhealthy levels usually have justifications for their behavior, sometimes elaborate ones, that skew their perspective. [Example from the current news: Lori Drew (the 47-year old woman who pretended to be a 16-year old boy, had an internet flirtation with her 13-year old neighbor that ended in the 13-year old's suicide) thinks: I am a good person, good people don't do bad things, therefore I didn't do anything wrong, therefore why did you attack my Foozball table with an ax? I'm going to the police!]

That's all for right now.