Note: This was originally published on 12/1/07.
A simple comparison of The Enneagram Institute's "Chart 1 -- Personality Elements" (downloadable, for free, here) and Matthew 5:45-48 and 6:1-34 yields this rather pointed advice from Jesus:
To the perfectionistic, judging, in search of integrity, "I am right", identified with the superego - type: '[your Father in heaven] makes his sun rise on the evil and the on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous... be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
To the proud, well-intentioned, "I have no needs", getting his/her sense of value from other people's reactions - type: "Beware of practicing your piety before other in order to be seen by them... whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, so that they may be praised by others."
To the vain type who wants to be effective and who bases his or her value on performance and image: "Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and the street corners, so that they may be seen by others... do not heap up empty words as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words."
To the melancholy type who doesn't "fit in": "Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting... put oil on your head and wash your face so that your fasting may not be seen by others."
To the stingy, avaricious type who thinks he or she can understand by "witnessing" -- "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth... if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your body will be full of darkness... You cannot serve God and wealth."
To the worrying type who fears being without support: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear... Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."
To the gluttonous, fixed on anticipated and planning - type who loses immediacy due to focusing on the future and thinks "if others gave me what I wanted, I'd be happier": "Do not [say] 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?'... your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own."
Jesus seems to have left out types 8 and 9, but Riso and Hudson did not.
Showing posts with label riso/hudson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label riso/hudson. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Power of Negative Thinking
Note: This was originally published on 12/9/07.
Every so often, someone comes along to critique the Enneagram (or, at least, an interpretation of the Enneagram) on the basis that it is too negative. One such critic is Susan Rhodes. In her article "Let's De-Pathologize the Enneagram" in the October 2006 issue of Enneagram Monthly (downloadable, for free, here), she writes, "I never liked the idea of looking at personality as a way to measure pathology. I liked looking at personality as a way to explore individual differences. That's why the MBTI appealed to me so much.
When I encountered the enneagram, I tried to use the MBTI personality descriptions as a reference point for enneagram descriptions. But I found this almost impossible to do. It wasn't because the two systems had a different number of types or even a different way of determining the types. It was because the enneagram descriptions read more like 'neurosis types' than personality types. They seemed to reflect such a pessimistic philosophy of human nature."
I have a different perspective. I am a big fan of the Myers-Briggs system, but I think the Enneagram has a huge advantage over it, precisely because of the "pessimistic philosophy" which is, indeed, present within it. Here's an apt quote from The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery, by Maria Beesing, et al, "In the beginning of this Enneagramic journey into the self what is being asked is the willingness to acknowledge oneself as a sinner. Compulsions are selfish as is typical of sin. They amount to a distortion in being as one ought to be. All the nine types are sin types... If the Enneagram is to be useful, one must discover the negativity of one's personality. Only then can one begin the process of being freed from the compulsion."
This, to me, is the brilliance of the Enneagram. First, it lures you in with what seems to be a neutral to positive description of personality. To a five, it says, Would you agree that your mind is your strongest asset? Would you agree that privacy is something that you value? To the two it says, Would you agree that your personal relationships are of utmost importance to you? Would you characterize yourself as a helpful person? And so on for all of the types.
Next, it says, okay, if you agree, with that, Five, then how about this: Here are all the ways that greed manifests itself in your life. Two, pride is killing you. And so on for each of the types. This second piece is that much harder to dismiss because the first piece was so compelling, and with true realization of the cost of sin comes the willingness to change.
I remember being in Russ Hudson's Psychic Structures and the Superego workshop , learning to meditate, learning to cultivate Presence, growing in compassion, and thinking (as a skeptic and, until recently, an atheist), If it weren't for the Enneagram's precision as a psychological descriptor, I wouldn't even be here to listen to its spiritual implications. And, oh, how I needed to be there!
Every so often, someone comes along to critique the Enneagram (or, at least, an interpretation of the Enneagram) on the basis that it is too negative. One such critic is Susan Rhodes. In her article "Let's De-Pathologize the Enneagram" in the October 2006 issue of Enneagram Monthly (downloadable, for free, here), she writes, "I never liked the idea of looking at personality as a way to measure pathology. I liked looking at personality as a way to explore individual differences. That's why the MBTI appealed to me so much.
When I encountered the enneagram, I tried to use the MBTI personality descriptions as a reference point for enneagram descriptions. But I found this almost impossible to do. It wasn't because the two systems had a different number of types or even a different way of determining the types. It was because the enneagram descriptions read more like 'neurosis types' than personality types. They seemed to reflect such a pessimistic philosophy of human nature."
I have a different perspective. I am a big fan of the Myers-Briggs system, but I think the Enneagram has a huge advantage over it, precisely because of the "pessimistic philosophy" which is, indeed, present within it. Here's an apt quote from The Enneagram: A Journey of Self-Discovery, by Maria Beesing, et al, "In the beginning of this Enneagramic journey into the self what is being asked is the willingness to acknowledge oneself as a sinner. Compulsions are selfish as is typical of sin. They amount to a distortion in being as one ought to be. All the nine types are sin types... If the Enneagram is to be useful, one must discover the negativity of one's personality. Only then can one begin the process of being freed from the compulsion."
This, to me, is the brilliance of the Enneagram. First, it lures you in with what seems to be a neutral to positive description of personality. To a five, it says, Would you agree that your mind is your strongest asset? Would you agree that privacy is something that you value? To the two it says, Would you agree that your personal relationships are of utmost importance to you? Would you characterize yourself as a helpful person? And so on for all of the types.
Next, it says, okay, if you agree, with that, Five, then how about this: Here are all the ways that greed manifests itself in your life. Two, pride is killing you. And so on for each of the types. This second piece is that much harder to dismiss because the first piece was so compelling, and with true realization of the cost of sin comes the willingness to change.
I remember being in Russ Hudson's Psychic Structures and the Superego workshop , learning to meditate, learning to cultivate Presence, growing in compassion, and thinking (as a skeptic and, until recently, an atheist), If it weren't for the Enneagram's precision as a psychological descriptor, I wouldn't even be here to listen to its spiritual implications. And, oh, how I needed to be there!
Mario Sikora, the brain, and the 6's Inner Guidance
Note: This was originally published on 12/16/07, by Mary Beth, of all people.
If you've been following along extremely closely, you know I've been in Tallahassee for the past week. While in Tallahassee I did three things and three things only: work, gain weight, and read books and articles related to the Enneagram. Before I left I had printed out Enneagram Monthly for Nov. of 2006 (one of three issues available for free, here.) My favorite article from it is Notes and Melody #6: Composing the Tune by Mario Sikora. (As you might imagine it is the sixth article in a series; the entire series as well as many of his other articles are available on his website, here, and here is the link to his home page.)
Sikora captured my attention right out of the gate with this clause from his first sentence: "...and being by temperament indifferent to the gentle sound of rustling angels' feathers and earnest tones that accompany much of the talk about the Enneagram...." Hee! I feel the same way. More on that point in a few days.
The article as a whole focuses on coaching Sevens; the part I am going to discuss is about working with Point 5 (whether with Sevens, Fives, or whomever.) I am about to quote a massive amount of Sikora's text; read it here, or read it in the original article (then come back to see what my points are.) It 's the part of the article beginning with the bolded title Point Five. And here begins Mario Sikora's material:
Point Five
I don’t know what you mean when you say Big Mind and Little Mind. First of all there is the brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is a famous medical case discussed in neuroscience literature in which a woman suffered brain damage that impaired her short-term memory. Much like the character in the film “Memento,” she was unable to form memories of events that occurred after the injury. Each time she visited her doctor, he would hold out his hand and introduce himself anew as if it was the first time they met. If he left the room, even momentarily, she would forget who he was and he would have to introduce himself all over again. One day, the doctor decided to try an experiment: He hid a thumb tack in his hand before entering the examination room. When she
shook his hand, she was pricked by the tack and recoiled in pain. The doctor apologized profusely and left the room after calming the patient. Upon returning a short while later, the patient again had no recollection of the doctor, but she refused to shake his hand. She refused to shake his hand at subsequent visits as well, but when asked why she would offer weak justifications, such as explaining that she feared she would spread a cold or catch germs from the doctor. She had no resistance to shaking other people’s hands, however.
The point of retelling this story is to show that the brain processes information in ways that we are not consciously aware of, either because we have habituated the behavior and no longer need to be consciously aware of it or because we do not have the capacity be consciously aware of it. The first situation happens through repetition. If you do something enough times it becomes automatic. The second situation occurs because of the way the brain evolved—giving us the capacity for mental function before giving us the capacity for consciousness of those functions. (See Part Two for more on this.) Therefore, we have the capacity to process information, store experiences, and manufacture responses in ways that are non-conscious. We “simply” do them, not really understanding why. There is a reason, but the reason is formed through cognitive functions that are not connected to the parts of the brain that we have conscious
access to.
This phenomenon—“knowing” something without being aware of how we know it— is Intuition, the core quality found at Point Five of the Enneagram. (Merriam- Webster Online defines “intuition” as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”)
Alec’s younger brother, Alexei, will be six months old when this article goes to print. He has recently begun to learn things—most importantly how to soothe himself to sleep at night by sticking his fingers in his mouth or reaching for the pacifier. Today, Alexei naturally and unconsciously soothes himself with his fingers, but he is still figuring out how to wrangle the pacifier. Manipulating an external object is a more-complex task than sucking on his fingers and he is figuring it out with some effort struggling to coordinate emerging mental skills with emerging manual dexterity. Soon, however, he will be popping the pacifier in and out, literally in his
sleep, as if it were an appendage.
As we grow, we develop the ability to intuitively process more complex situations or tasks. The oldest of the three Sikora boys, Adrian, is three and a half and can catch a ball thrown from a short distance. Last summer, a thrown ball would bounce off Adrian’s chest as his arms flailed together a beat too slowly. In a few years he will be chasing down pop-ups as effortlessly as you or I shoo away a mosquito.
While they are the easiest to describe, it is not only physical activities that we learn to perform intuitively; the brain is constantly habituating thinking processes and carrying them out below the surface of our awareness. We intuitively step away from a dark alley, resist getting onto an elevator with someone who looks “wrong,” and turn one direction rather than the other when lost. We all have the experience of “knowing” something without being sure why we know it.
Once again, however, the socialization process inhibits our trust in our intuition. As children we think we know what is best for us based on what we feel, but our parents—if we are lucky—do their best to keep us from hurting ourselves. The unintended consequence is that we learn to doubt ourselves when we shouldn’t. And the bigger the risk is, the more we doubt ourselves. We stop relying on our inner knowing and we begin to consciously analyze our circumstances and figure out our responses. Casual situations—catching a ball, driving a car on a familiar road, making small talk by the water cooler—are comfortably handled intuitively. Larger, more-critical situations—who should I marry, where should I live, what car should I buy, etc.—are pulled into consciousness for analysis and resolution.
Again, this is as it should be. The problem, which is typically one of efficacy rather than dire consequence, occurs when situations that can be handled intuitively are forced into the conscious: Decisions are delayed or deferred and opportunities are missed. In the business world this phenomenon is called “paralysis through analysis”: deadlines are missed, market opportunities come and go, time is wasted.
This is the central dilemma found at Point Five of the Enneagram. Again, it occurs for each of us, Ennea-type Five feels the disconnection from intuition most acutely. Rather than trusting inner knowing based on experience, they step back and analyze, weigh options, and cogitate. This stepping back, or detaching, leads to the Five’s not actually doing things, robbing them of opportunities to internalize actions and processes and further reinforcing the need to step back and analyze some
more.
Mature intuition, because it is based on internalized experience, takes time to nurture, just like the rest of the core qualities. One way to assist that development is through the accelerator of “conscious practice.”
The focus of the Five tends to be on observing from a distance rather than engaging and doing. They can nurture intuition by consciously practicing activities so that they develop the ability to do them naturally and unconsciously (that is, intuitively). When we practice something we carve neural pathways in our brain that allow for habituated behavior. While I’ve written in past articles about the danger of habitual behavior and how to overcome it, I am not against unconscious behavior. I
am against ineffective unconscious behavior. There are many times when
unconscious behavior works for us: when swerving the car to avoid a collision, snatching a child out of harm’s way, catching a ball.
Conscious practice allows us to create patterns of effective unconscious behavior.
Here’s how.
Learning follows four typical phases:
1. Unconscious incompetence (“I don’t even know that I don’t know how to do this”),
2. Conscious incompetence (“I now see that I don’t know how to do this”),
3. Conscious competence (“I now see that I know how to do this”), and
4. Unconscious competence (“I no longer pay attention to how I do this”).
Making this cycle conscious is what the accelerator of conscious practice is all about. It means not just “practicing” something, but practicing deliberately in a structured manner.(1) Here are two examples:
Beginning martial artists spend countless hours practicing their techniques individually, executing thousands of single kicks, punches, and blocks until they develop adequate coordination. Then they will string the individual techniques into sequences called “kata” or forms and practice pre-arranged combinations with an opponent. Eventually, they will practice free-style sparring. The martial artist who is new to sparring will be trapped in his head, constantly thinking about what his opponent is doing, might do, and how he will respond. This will cause his movement to be hesitant and stiff, and he will easily be defeated by a more experienced fighter. Eventually, however, with enough practice the martial artist will begin to unconsciously act out his training and experience. His movements will be natural and relaxed, he will find himself automatically executing the techniques he has practiced countless times at just the right moments. He has learned to fight intuitively.
Fives are often plagued by an inability to be decisive. They want one more piece of data to analyze, one more variable to factor, or one more day to consider the evidence before being ready to act. This capacity for patient analysis is a gift and has great potential benefit; it is also the source of frustration for many people who expect decisions from Fives and it is the most common behavioral inhibitor of Fives’ careers.
Fives (and others who struggle to be more decisive) benefit from consciously practicing making decisions, starting small and working up to larger matters. I sometimes urge Fives to pick a simple decision they have to make each day, such as what to have for breakfast, what kind of coffee to have, or what to wear to work, and put a short time limit on themselves. Rather than deliberate for the 30 seconds they may usually take at the Starbucks counter (at the risk of being thrashed by the large and irritated Eight behind them), they limit themselves to 10 seconds. Since the stakes are relatively small, the Five doesn’t lose much by making a decision he
later regrets. As time goes on, he can move to larger and more complicated
decisions to practice.
Despite our view of ourselves and rational creatures, most decisions are based on emotion, and there is a specific feeling that accompanies decisiveness. It is important to learn to recognize the feeling that accompanies this exercise. This feeling can then be deliberately recalled in the future as a useful aid in making more important decisions. What typically happens, however, is that practicing decisiveness eventually makes it an unconscious skill that no longer needs to be practiced.
The goal here is not to make anyone rush to decisions; there are many times when that is a mistake. The goal is to develop the ability to be more decisive when the situation requires. Practicing being decisive at Starbucks today helps one be more decisive in critical matters tomorrow.
Thus ends Mario Sikora's writing, and now back to me:
I love the clarity and specificity with which he lays out his points, and I particularly like his use of brain science (with references to popular cinema and observations of his son's development, too!)
The article also has a long section on working with a 7; as a 6, I identify with both 7 and 5 issues, so I found the article helpful. However, I was quite surprised that the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge is used to discuss point 5, rather than point 6. I associate 6 with needing and wanting more certainty before making decisions, rather than 5. I also associate 6 with the compulsive need to drag things into conscious awareness instead of just doing them.
Sikora's discussion of developing decisiveness and learning to trust to one's intuition reminds me of my task as a 6, which is to learn to trust my Inner Guidance. As a 6 (i.e. as the primary type in the thinking triad), I am supposed to be "most out of touch with" thinking. Riso and Hudson in The Wisdom of the Enneagram say "Sixes are the primary type in the Thinking Triad, meaning that they have the most trouble connecting to their own inner guidance. As a result, they do not have confidence in their own minds and judgment. This does not mean that they do not think. On the contrary, they think -- and worry -- a lot." Riso and Hudson discuss contact with Essence as what helps 6s realize that they are on a firm foundation with their own inner guidance: "When Sixes experience this truth, they feel solid, steady, and supported, as if they were standing on a massive bed of granite. They realize that this ground is the only real security in life, and it is what gives Sixes immense courage. This is the real meaning of faith, their particular Essential quality. Faith is not belief, but a real, immediate knowing that comes from experience. Faith without experience is belief. Faith with experience brings reliable guidance. Much of the personality of Sixes can be seen in an effort to imitate or recreate faith in terms of beliefs and to find a substitute for the certainty that they are already secure as an expression of the Divine."
I find this problematic. As a 6, my central sin is faithlessness (as Cindi and I teach it, anyway -- many others teach that the 6's sin is fear.) The 6's dilemma is how to get there from here? (That is, if you haven't had the kind of experiences Riso and Hudson describe.)
As for Sikora's prescription, frankly, I don't find the advice to practice making small decisions ALL THAT satisfying as a way to access one's intuition, but I do see how it would help, and I see why, and it has the added virtue of not making me extremely uncomfortable.
I am interested in reading more by Mario Sikora, for the reasons enumerated above, and I am in luck, because Cindi received his book, Awareness to Action, for Christmas.
Sikora's discussion of practice and martial arts reminds me of this idea about dreams as the dojo for waking life.
If you've been following along extremely closely, you know I've been in Tallahassee for the past week. While in Tallahassee I did three things and three things only: work, gain weight, and read books and articles related to the Enneagram. Before I left I had printed out Enneagram Monthly for Nov. of 2006 (one of three issues available for free, here.) My favorite article from it is Notes and Melody #6: Composing the Tune by Mario Sikora. (As you might imagine it is the sixth article in a series; the entire series as well as many of his other articles are available on his website, here, and here is the link to his home page.)
Sikora captured my attention right out of the gate with this clause from his first sentence: "...and being by temperament indifferent to the gentle sound of rustling angels' feathers and earnest tones that accompany much of the talk about the Enneagram...." Hee! I feel the same way. More on that point in a few days.
The article as a whole focuses on coaching Sevens; the part I am going to discuss is about working with Point 5 (whether with Sevens, Fives, or whomever.) I am about to quote a massive amount of Sikora's text; read it here, or read it in the original article (then come back to see what my points are.) It 's the part of the article beginning with the bolded title Point Five. And here begins Mario Sikora's material:
Point Five
I don’t know what you mean when you say Big Mind and Little Mind. First of all there is the brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is a famous medical case discussed in neuroscience literature in which a woman suffered brain damage that impaired her short-term memory. Much like the character in the film “Memento,” she was unable to form memories of events that occurred after the injury. Each time she visited her doctor, he would hold out his hand and introduce himself anew as if it was the first time they met. If he left the room, even momentarily, she would forget who he was and he would have to introduce himself all over again. One day, the doctor decided to try an experiment: He hid a thumb tack in his hand before entering the examination room. When she
shook his hand, she was pricked by the tack and recoiled in pain. The doctor apologized profusely and left the room after calming the patient. Upon returning a short while later, the patient again had no recollection of the doctor, but she refused to shake his hand. She refused to shake his hand at subsequent visits as well, but when asked why she would offer weak justifications, such as explaining that she feared she would spread a cold or catch germs from the doctor. She had no resistance to shaking other people’s hands, however.
The point of retelling this story is to show that the brain processes information in ways that we are not consciously aware of, either because we have habituated the behavior and no longer need to be consciously aware of it or because we do not have the capacity be consciously aware of it. The first situation happens through repetition. If you do something enough times it becomes automatic. The second situation occurs because of the way the brain evolved—giving us the capacity for mental function before giving us the capacity for consciousness of those functions. (See Part Two for more on this.) Therefore, we have the capacity to process information, store experiences, and manufacture responses in ways that are non-conscious. We “simply” do them, not really understanding why. There is a reason, but the reason is formed through cognitive functions that are not connected to the parts of the brain that we have conscious
access to.
This phenomenon—“knowing” something without being aware of how we know it— is Intuition, the core quality found at Point Five of the Enneagram. (Merriam- Webster Online defines “intuition” as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”)
Alec’s younger brother, Alexei, will be six months old when this article goes to print. He has recently begun to learn things—most importantly how to soothe himself to sleep at night by sticking his fingers in his mouth or reaching for the pacifier. Today, Alexei naturally and unconsciously soothes himself with his fingers, but he is still figuring out how to wrangle the pacifier. Manipulating an external object is a more-complex task than sucking on his fingers and he is figuring it out with some effort struggling to coordinate emerging mental skills with emerging manual dexterity. Soon, however, he will be popping the pacifier in and out, literally in his
sleep, as if it were an appendage.
As we grow, we develop the ability to intuitively process more complex situations or tasks. The oldest of the three Sikora boys, Adrian, is three and a half and can catch a ball thrown from a short distance. Last summer, a thrown ball would bounce off Adrian’s chest as his arms flailed together a beat too slowly. In a few years he will be chasing down pop-ups as effortlessly as you or I shoo away a mosquito.
While they are the easiest to describe, it is not only physical activities that we learn to perform intuitively; the brain is constantly habituating thinking processes and carrying them out below the surface of our awareness. We intuitively step away from a dark alley, resist getting onto an elevator with someone who looks “wrong,” and turn one direction rather than the other when lost. We all have the experience of “knowing” something without being sure why we know it.
Once again, however, the socialization process inhibits our trust in our intuition. As children we think we know what is best for us based on what we feel, but our parents—if we are lucky—do their best to keep us from hurting ourselves. The unintended consequence is that we learn to doubt ourselves when we shouldn’t. And the bigger the risk is, the more we doubt ourselves. We stop relying on our inner knowing and we begin to consciously analyze our circumstances and figure out our responses. Casual situations—catching a ball, driving a car on a familiar road, making small talk by the water cooler—are comfortably handled intuitively. Larger, more-critical situations—who should I marry, where should I live, what car should I buy, etc.—are pulled into consciousness for analysis and resolution.
Again, this is as it should be. The problem, which is typically one of efficacy rather than dire consequence, occurs when situations that can be handled intuitively are forced into the conscious: Decisions are delayed or deferred and opportunities are missed. In the business world this phenomenon is called “paralysis through analysis”: deadlines are missed, market opportunities come and go, time is wasted.
This is the central dilemma found at Point Five of the Enneagram. Again, it occurs for each of us, Ennea-type Five feels the disconnection from intuition most acutely. Rather than trusting inner knowing based on experience, they step back and analyze, weigh options, and cogitate. This stepping back, or detaching, leads to the Five’s not actually doing things, robbing them of opportunities to internalize actions and processes and further reinforcing the need to step back and analyze some
more.
Mature intuition, because it is based on internalized experience, takes time to nurture, just like the rest of the core qualities. One way to assist that development is through the accelerator of “conscious practice.”
The focus of the Five tends to be on observing from a distance rather than engaging and doing. They can nurture intuition by consciously practicing activities so that they develop the ability to do them naturally and unconsciously (that is, intuitively). When we practice something we carve neural pathways in our brain that allow for habituated behavior. While I’ve written in past articles about the danger of habitual behavior and how to overcome it, I am not against unconscious behavior. I
am against ineffective unconscious behavior. There are many times when
unconscious behavior works for us: when swerving the car to avoid a collision, snatching a child out of harm’s way, catching a ball.
Conscious practice allows us to create patterns of effective unconscious behavior.
Here’s how.
Learning follows four typical phases:
1. Unconscious incompetence (“I don’t even know that I don’t know how to do this”),
2. Conscious incompetence (“I now see that I don’t know how to do this”),
3. Conscious competence (“I now see that I know how to do this”), and
4. Unconscious competence (“I no longer pay attention to how I do this”).
Making this cycle conscious is what the accelerator of conscious practice is all about. It means not just “practicing” something, but practicing deliberately in a structured manner.(1) Here are two examples:
Beginning martial artists spend countless hours practicing their techniques individually, executing thousands of single kicks, punches, and blocks until they develop adequate coordination. Then they will string the individual techniques into sequences called “kata” or forms and practice pre-arranged combinations with an opponent. Eventually, they will practice free-style sparring. The martial artist who is new to sparring will be trapped in his head, constantly thinking about what his opponent is doing, might do, and how he will respond. This will cause his movement to be hesitant and stiff, and he will easily be defeated by a more experienced fighter. Eventually, however, with enough practice the martial artist will begin to unconsciously act out his training and experience. His movements will be natural and relaxed, he will find himself automatically executing the techniques he has practiced countless times at just the right moments. He has learned to fight intuitively.
Fives are often plagued by an inability to be decisive. They want one more piece of data to analyze, one more variable to factor, or one more day to consider the evidence before being ready to act. This capacity for patient analysis is a gift and has great potential benefit; it is also the source of frustration for many people who expect decisions from Fives and it is the most common behavioral inhibitor of Fives’ careers.
Fives (and others who struggle to be more decisive) benefit from consciously practicing making decisions, starting small and working up to larger matters. I sometimes urge Fives to pick a simple decision they have to make each day, such as what to have for breakfast, what kind of coffee to have, or what to wear to work, and put a short time limit on themselves. Rather than deliberate for the 30 seconds they may usually take at the Starbucks counter (at the risk of being thrashed by the large and irritated Eight behind them), they limit themselves to 10 seconds. Since the stakes are relatively small, the Five doesn’t lose much by making a decision he
later regrets. As time goes on, he can move to larger and more complicated
decisions to practice.
Despite our view of ourselves and rational creatures, most decisions are based on emotion, and there is a specific feeling that accompanies decisiveness. It is important to learn to recognize the feeling that accompanies this exercise. This feeling can then be deliberately recalled in the future as a useful aid in making more important decisions. What typically happens, however, is that practicing decisiveness eventually makes it an unconscious skill that no longer needs to be practiced.
The goal here is not to make anyone rush to decisions; there are many times when that is a mistake. The goal is to develop the ability to be more decisive when the situation requires. Practicing being decisive at Starbucks today helps one be more decisive in critical matters tomorrow.
Thus ends Mario Sikora's writing, and now back to me:
I love the clarity and specificity with which he lays out his points, and I particularly like his use of brain science (with references to popular cinema and observations of his son's development, too!)
The article also has a long section on working with a 7; as a 6, I identify with both 7 and 5 issues, so I found the article helpful. However, I was quite surprised that the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge is used to discuss point 5, rather than point 6. I associate 6 with needing and wanting more certainty before making decisions, rather than 5. I also associate 6 with the compulsive need to drag things into conscious awareness instead of just doing them.
Sikora's discussion of developing decisiveness and learning to trust to one's intuition reminds me of my task as a 6, which is to learn to trust my Inner Guidance. As a 6 (i.e. as the primary type in the thinking triad), I am supposed to be "most out of touch with" thinking. Riso and Hudson in The Wisdom of the Enneagram say "Sixes are the primary type in the Thinking Triad, meaning that they have the most trouble connecting to their own inner guidance. As a result, they do not have confidence in their own minds and judgment. This does not mean that they do not think. On the contrary, they think -- and worry -- a lot." Riso and Hudson discuss contact with Essence as what helps 6s realize that they are on a firm foundation with their own inner guidance: "When Sixes experience this truth, they feel solid, steady, and supported, as if they were standing on a massive bed of granite. They realize that this ground is the only real security in life, and it is what gives Sixes immense courage. This is the real meaning of faith, their particular Essential quality. Faith is not belief, but a real, immediate knowing that comes from experience. Faith without experience is belief. Faith with experience brings reliable guidance. Much of the personality of Sixes can be seen in an effort to imitate or recreate faith in terms of beliefs and to find a substitute for the certainty that they are already secure as an expression of the Divine."
I find this problematic. As a 6, my central sin is faithlessness (as Cindi and I teach it, anyway -- many others teach that the 6's sin is fear.) The 6's dilemma is how to get there from here? (That is, if you haven't had the kind of experiences Riso and Hudson describe.)
As for Sikora's prescription, frankly, I don't find the advice to practice making small decisions ALL THAT satisfying as a way to access one's intuition, but I do see how it would help, and I see why, and it has the added virtue of not making me extremely uncomfortable.
I am interested in reading more by Mario Sikora, for the reasons enumerated above, and I am in luck, because Cindi received his book, Awareness to Action, for Christmas.
Sikora's discussion of practice and martial arts reminds me of this idea about dreams as the dojo for waking life.
What Is It About 3-ism?
Note: This was originally published on 1/9/08.
On Sunday, The New York Times ran an article by Noah Feldman entitled "What Is It About Mormonism?" (Shockingly), the article is not about the Enneagram per se, but it does end up making a lot of sense to those of us who look at the world from an Enneagrammic perspective.
The article focuses on Mitt Romney and the possible difficulties his Mormonism will cause him in attempting to secure the Republican nomination for President of the United States. In doing so, the article summarizes quite a bit of Mormon history.
My commentary on the article will focus on the tripartite 3-ish-ness of Mitt Romney (commented on as a 3 here and here), Mormon culture, and American political culture. In doing so, I will summarize many of the main points of the article, but you might want to read the whole thing.
According to the article, the Mormon image is pro-business and socially conservative, in line with everything Republicans profess to like. However, a large chunk of Republican voters say they will not support a Mormon candidate for President. The basic problem is two-fold: a matter of evangelical Christians perceiving Mormonism as non-Christian or at least heretical, and a matter of bigotry.
According to Feldman, this lingering bigotry is fueled by "the disconcerting split between [Mormonism]'s public and private faces." Check out this icon of Type 3, created by the Enneagram Institute:
Feldman goes on to explain: "The church's most inviting public symbols [The Enneagram Institute's "Overview of Type 3" describes 3s as "image-oriented, emphasizing style over substance, symbols over reality"] -- pairs of clean-cut missionaries in well-pressed white shirts -- evoke the wholesome success of an all-American denomination with an idealistic commitment to clean living. Yet at the same time, secret, sacred temple rites and garments call to mind the church's murky past... Mormonism, it seems, is extreme in both respects: in its exaggerated normalcy and its exaggerated oddity." To me, it is the exaggerated normalcy that resonates so strongly with type 3.
In order to maintain an appropriate, electable image, Romney will find ways to emphasize the normalcy of his faith without evoking its oddness. Like a good 3 and a good politician, he must spin the facts. More from EI's type 3 overview: "Politics is becoming less concerned with principles or the use of power for the common good than with the display of personalities. Politics serves public relations, selling candidates with their calculated positions to a public which can no longer tell a fabricated image from a real person."
The largest public statement Romney has made about his faith has consisted of: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind." Here's Feldman's take on it: "Romney presumably calculated that speaking about Jesus Christ in terms that sound consistent with ordinary American Protestantism would reassure voters that there was in the end nothing especially unusual about Mormonism." (Why, Mitt Romney! How "pragmatic and calculating"! See Personality Types, page 99.)
Another example of the Romney spin on religion, from Feldman: "Romney has felt the need to minimize the centrality of Mormon scripture by saying he reads the Gideon Bible when he is alone in his hotel room on the campaign trail.
The formulation may be seen as a clever hedge: to the ordinary Protestant listener, it sounds as if Romney is saying that he reads the same Bible they do. To the Mormon insider, however, Romney is simply saying that when he travels to the hotel and finds himself, presumably, without a handy copy of the Book of Mormon, he reads the text of the Bible that can be found in the drawer beside the bed...
This is a perfect example of esoteric public speaking: the attempt to convey multiple messages to different audiences through the careful use of words. Something similar is perhaps contained in Romney's outspoken admiration for Rick Warren, the megachurch pastor and best-selling author. To the general audience, the message is the embrace of an evangelical who is as mainstream as it gets. To a Mormon audience, however, the praise is presumably intended at most as a suggestion that it is possible to learn from the remarkable organizational and evangelizing effects of a well-known public figure."
There are aspects of Mormon identity which can help Romney win the nomination. According to Feldman, "In the elite East Coast worlds where Romney has made his career, Mormanism signifies [among other things] professional competence... [and] the systematic overrepresentation of Mormons among top businesspeople and lawyers affords LDS affiliation a certain cache..." In Enneagram literature, type 3 is the type most associated with professional competence.
Still, there is a difference between respecting Mormon individuals or Mormon culture, and respecting Mormon religion. Many Americans believe that Mormonism is a false religion, and that the Book of Mormon lacks authenticity, and they would have a hard time voting for a Mormon President. This attitude is, according to Feldman, "a complicated outgrowth of the tortured history of the faith's relationship to mainstream American political life over the [last] two centuries..."
Mormonism is a secretive religion; the details of its theology and its rituals are kept from outsiders. (In her book Leaving the Saints, type 3 exemplar and ex-Mormon Martha Beck describes her Mormon temple wedding -- and how she was sworn to secrecy about its particulars. For more info on Beck, see the second half of this post.) Feldman attributes this secrecy to two sources -- internal theology and external persecution.
On the theological front, Mormon founder Joseph Smith claimed to receive revelations that were to be shared with only a few people. The doctrine of plural marriage (no longer practiced by mainstream Mormons) is probably the most famous of these secret revelations, and Smith kept it to himself until after his death. Another revelation, which Smith shared in one of his last communications before his death, resonates strongly with Enneagram type 3.
Quoth Smith: "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man..."The natural outgrowth of this idea is the Mormon tenet of the perfectibility of mankind into divine form. This is close to the 3's goal of becoming "a human ideal, embodying widely admired qualities." (Understanding the Enneagram, page 80.)
Alas, Smith, according to Feldman, "was denounced as a charlatan, an impostor, or worse." Calling someone a "charlatan" or an "impostor" is a pretty specific insult, and it fits with type 3's association with the sin of deceit. Certainly, the allegation that Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself, rather than discovered it when its location was revealed by an angel, comes up over and over. (Two interesting articles on the Book of Mormon, one pro-angelic revelation and one con, are here and here.)
As Mormonism grew under Smith's leadership, Mormon communities in Missouri and Illinois began to be violently persecuted by their neighbors. Smith himself was gunned down by a mob. Smith's successor Brigham Young led the Mormons to Utah, where things were safer. For a while, Mormons openly practiced plural marriage. However, the practice was soon outlawed by the federal government.
One might characterize the Mormon reaction as "deceitful." They said one thing (In 1890, the president of the church advised Mormons not to enter into unlawful marriages), but did another (plural marriage continued in Mormon communities in Utah and elsewhere.)
Feldman writes, "This period of resisting persecution by living outside the law taught Mormons that secrecy can be a necessary tool for survival. As one apostle (there are 12 who guide the church) later put it in a speech recounted by the historian Kathleen Flake, 'I am not dishonest and not a liar... [but] we have always been taught that when the brethren were in a tight place that it would not be amiss to lie to help them out.'"
Feldman recounts another moment of deception in Mormon history. In 1903, the people of Utah elected Mormon apostle Reed Smoot to the House of Representatives. Since many believed that his association with the Mormon church disqualified him to take office, a series of hearings were held on the Senate floor. Then-president of the church Joseph F. Smith (a nephew of the original Joseph Smith) testified and, according to Feldman, "sought somewhat unsuccessfully to conceal both the continuing practice of plural marriage and his own status as seer and revelator."
Soon after, at Smith's urging, Mormons really did stop practicing plural marriage and Smoot took his seat in Congress.
Thereafter, Mormons sought to appear more politically and theologically mainstream. According to Feldman, "The Mormon path to normalization over the course of the 20th century depended heavily on this avoidance of public discussion of its religious tenets... the less said the better about the particular teachings of the church..." Feldman continues, "Another part of the Mormon assimilationist strategy was to participate actively in politics at the state and national levels. The condition for political success was that nobody asked about the precise content of Mormon religious beliefs and the Mormons themselves made no particular effort to tell."
My concern is that, by de-emphasizing the particulars of their faith, Mormon culture has fallen into a type 3 trap. Consider this quote from page 154 of The Wisdom of the Enneagram: "In the headlong rush to achieve whatever they believe will make them more valuable, Threes can become so alienated from themselves that they no longer know what they truly want or what their real feelings and interests are... as Threes learn to pursue the values that others reward, they gradually lose touch with themselves. Step by step, their own inner core... is left behind until they no longer recognize it."
However, this strategy has won Mormon individuals more and more success in politics and business. Over time, writes Feldman, "Mormons began to succeed in national business and came to be seen as exemplars of the patriotic American ethos." Enter Mitt Romney, Mormon Presidential candidate. Writes Feldman, "Precisely because Romney is so accomplished, so telegenic, in short such an impressive candidate, it may be a slap in Mormons' faces if he finds that he cannot garner the support of conservative values voters... Even if the charge against Romney were that he failed because he was a dissimulating phony, that would hardly be an improvement for the church, given the similarity of that charge with the historical bias against Mormon secrecy."
Although truly miraculous events would have to occur before I would give Romney my vote (I will be voting in the Democratic primary and almost certainly for the Democratic nominee), my personal hope for him is that he keeps (or recovers) a strong connection to his inner core. The culture of his faith tradition, the atmosphere of American politics, and his own psychological predispositions will likely make it difficult.
Romney just came in second in the New Hampshire Republican primary. He congratulated John McCain, who "outcompeted" him and repeatedly compared the situation to getting a "silver medal" when you'd rather have the gold.
Perhaps he could take a page from Hillary Clinton's book. After unexpectedly winning the Democratic primary in New Hampshire (after tearing up in public and reportedly "finding her voice"), she said that the Presidential campaign is not a game; it's about people.
Authenticity can go a long way with the right crowd.
On Sunday, The New York Times ran an article by Noah Feldman entitled "What Is It About Mormonism?" (Shockingly), the article is not about the Enneagram per se, but it does end up making a lot of sense to those of us who look at the world from an Enneagrammic perspective.
The article focuses on Mitt Romney and the possible difficulties his Mormonism will cause him in attempting to secure the Republican nomination for President of the United States. In doing so, the article summarizes quite a bit of Mormon history.
My commentary on the article will focus on the tripartite 3-ish-ness of Mitt Romney (commented on as a 3 here and here), Mormon culture, and American political culture. In doing so, I will summarize many of the main points of the article, but you might want to read the whole thing.
According to the article, the Mormon image is pro-business and socially conservative, in line with everything Republicans profess to like. However, a large chunk of Republican voters say they will not support a Mormon candidate for President. The basic problem is two-fold: a matter of evangelical Christians perceiving Mormonism as non-Christian or at least heretical, and a matter of bigotry.
According to Feldman, this lingering bigotry is fueled by "the disconcerting split between [Mormonism]'s public and private faces." Check out this icon of Type 3, created by the Enneagram Institute:
Feldman goes on to explain: "The church's most inviting public symbols [The Enneagram Institute's "Overview of Type 3" describes 3s as "image-oriented, emphasizing style over substance, symbols over reality"] -- pairs of clean-cut missionaries in well-pressed white shirts -- evoke the wholesome success of an all-American denomination with an idealistic commitment to clean living. Yet at the same time, secret, sacred temple rites and garments call to mind the church's murky past... Mormonism, it seems, is extreme in both respects: in its exaggerated normalcy and its exaggerated oddity." To me, it is the exaggerated normalcy that resonates so strongly with type 3.
In order to maintain an appropriate, electable image, Romney will find ways to emphasize the normalcy of his faith without evoking its oddness. Like a good 3 and a good politician, he must spin the facts. More from EI's type 3 overview: "Politics is becoming less concerned with principles or the use of power for the common good than with the display of personalities. Politics serves public relations, selling candidates with their calculated positions to a public which can no longer tell a fabricated image from a real person."
The largest public statement Romney has made about his faith has consisted of: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind." Here's Feldman's take on it: "Romney presumably calculated that speaking about Jesus Christ in terms that sound consistent with ordinary American Protestantism would reassure voters that there was in the end nothing especially unusual about Mormonism." (Why, Mitt Romney! How "pragmatic and calculating"! See Personality Types, page 99.)
Another example of the Romney spin on religion, from Feldman: "Romney has felt the need to minimize the centrality of Mormon scripture by saying he reads the Gideon Bible when he is alone in his hotel room on the campaign trail.
The formulation may be seen as a clever hedge: to the ordinary Protestant listener, it sounds as if Romney is saying that he reads the same Bible they do. To the Mormon insider, however, Romney is simply saying that when he travels to the hotel and finds himself, presumably, without a handy copy of the Book of Mormon, he reads the text of the Bible that can be found in the drawer beside the bed...
This is a perfect example of esoteric public speaking: the attempt to convey multiple messages to different audiences through the careful use of words. Something similar is perhaps contained in Romney's outspoken admiration for Rick Warren, the megachurch pastor and best-selling author. To the general audience, the message is the embrace of an evangelical who is as mainstream as it gets. To a Mormon audience, however, the praise is presumably intended at most as a suggestion that it is possible to learn from the remarkable organizational and evangelizing effects of a well-known public figure."
There are aspects of Mormon identity which can help Romney win the nomination. According to Feldman, "In the elite East Coast worlds where Romney has made his career, Mormanism signifies [among other things] professional competence... [and] the systematic overrepresentation of Mormons among top businesspeople and lawyers affords LDS affiliation a certain cache..." In Enneagram literature, type 3 is the type most associated with professional competence.
Still, there is a difference between respecting Mormon individuals or Mormon culture, and respecting Mormon religion. Many Americans believe that Mormonism is a false religion, and that the Book of Mormon lacks authenticity, and they would have a hard time voting for a Mormon President. This attitude is, according to Feldman, "a complicated outgrowth of the tortured history of the faith's relationship to mainstream American political life over the [last] two centuries..."
Mormonism is a secretive religion; the details of its theology and its rituals are kept from outsiders. (In her book Leaving the Saints, type 3 exemplar and ex-Mormon Martha Beck describes her Mormon temple wedding -- and how she was sworn to secrecy about its particulars. For more info on Beck, see the second half of this post.) Feldman attributes this secrecy to two sources -- internal theology and external persecution.
On the theological front, Mormon founder Joseph Smith claimed to receive revelations that were to be shared with only a few people. The doctrine of plural marriage (no longer practiced by mainstream Mormons) is probably the most famous of these secret revelations, and Smith kept it to himself until after his death. Another revelation, which Smith shared in one of his last communications before his death, resonates strongly with Enneagram type 3.
Quoth Smith: "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man..."The natural outgrowth of this idea is the Mormon tenet of the perfectibility of mankind into divine form. This is close to the 3's goal of becoming "a human ideal, embodying widely admired qualities." (Understanding the Enneagram, page 80.)
Alas, Smith, according to Feldman, "was denounced as a charlatan, an impostor, or worse." Calling someone a "charlatan" or an "impostor" is a pretty specific insult, and it fits with type 3's association with the sin of deceit. Certainly, the allegation that Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself, rather than discovered it when its location was revealed by an angel, comes up over and over. (Two interesting articles on the Book of Mormon, one pro-angelic revelation and one con, are here and here.)
As Mormonism grew under Smith's leadership, Mormon communities in Missouri and Illinois began to be violently persecuted by their neighbors. Smith himself was gunned down by a mob. Smith's successor Brigham Young led the Mormons to Utah, where things were safer. For a while, Mormons openly practiced plural marriage. However, the practice was soon outlawed by the federal government.
One might characterize the Mormon reaction as "deceitful." They said one thing (In 1890, the president of the church advised Mormons not to enter into unlawful marriages), but did another (plural marriage continued in Mormon communities in Utah and elsewhere.)
Feldman writes, "This period of resisting persecution by living outside the law taught Mormons that secrecy can be a necessary tool for survival. As one apostle (there are 12 who guide the church) later put it in a speech recounted by the historian Kathleen Flake, 'I am not dishonest and not a liar... [but] we have always been taught that when the brethren were in a tight place that it would not be amiss to lie to help them out.'"
Feldman recounts another moment of deception in Mormon history. In 1903, the people of Utah elected Mormon apostle Reed Smoot to the House of Representatives. Since many believed that his association with the Mormon church disqualified him to take office, a series of hearings were held on the Senate floor. Then-president of the church Joseph F. Smith (a nephew of the original Joseph Smith) testified and, according to Feldman, "sought somewhat unsuccessfully to conceal both the continuing practice of plural marriage and his own status as seer and revelator."
Soon after, at Smith's urging, Mormons really did stop practicing plural marriage and Smoot took his seat in Congress.
Thereafter, Mormons sought to appear more politically and theologically mainstream. According to Feldman, "The Mormon path to normalization over the course of the 20th century depended heavily on this avoidance of public discussion of its religious tenets... the less said the better about the particular teachings of the church..." Feldman continues, "Another part of the Mormon assimilationist strategy was to participate actively in politics at the state and national levels. The condition for political success was that nobody asked about the precise content of Mormon religious beliefs and the Mormons themselves made no particular effort to tell."
My concern is that, by de-emphasizing the particulars of their faith, Mormon culture has fallen into a type 3 trap. Consider this quote from page 154 of The Wisdom of the Enneagram: "In the headlong rush to achieve whatever they believe will make them more valuable, Threes can become so alienated from themselves that they no longer know what they truly want or what their real feelings and interests are... as Threes learn to pursue the values that others reward, they gradually lose touch with themselves. Step by step, their own inner core... is left behind until they no longer recognize it."
However, this strategy has won Mormon individuals more and more success in politics and business. Over time, writes Feldman, "Mormons began to succeed in national business and came to be seen as exemplars of the patriotic American ethos." Enter Mitt Romney, Mormon Presidential candidate. Writes Feldman, "Precisely because Romney is so accomplished, so telegenic, in short such an impressive candidate, it may be a slap in Mormons' faces if he finds that he cannot garner the support of conservative values voters... Even if the charge against Romney were that he failed because he was a dissimulating phony, that would hardly be an improvement for the church, given the similarity of that charge with the historical bias against Mormon secrecy."
Although truly miraculous events would have to occur before I would give Romney my vote (I will be voting in the Democratic primary and almost certainly for the Democratic nominee), my personal hope for him is that he keeps (or recovers) a strong connection to his inner core. The culture of his faith tradition, the atmosphere of American politics, and his own psychological predispositions will likely make it difficult.
Romney just came in second in the New Hampshire Republican primary. He congratulated John McCain, who "outcompeted" him and repeatedly compared the situation to getting a "silver medal" when you'd rather have the gold.
Perhaps he could take a page from Hillary Clinton's book. After unexpectedly winning the Democratic primary in New Hampshire (after tearing up in public and reportedly "finding her voice"), she said that the Presidential campaign is not a game; it's about people.
Authenticity can go a long way with the right crowd.
Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Healthy 8
Note: This was originally published on 1/21/08
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day. MLK is often cited as an example of the type 8 personality, but people often wonder, how can the leader of a nonviolent resistance movement be type 8 -- the overexpresser of the "anger triad"?
The answer lies in level of health. Don Riso of the Enneagram Institute puts it this way:
"The idea of the levels explains how two people of the same personality type can operate very differently—and seem to others to be different character types. For example, Saddam Hussein and Martin Luther King are both eights on the Enneagram. But they are obviously very different. That's because they are operating at different levels of development within the framework of the eight personality type."
(This is from an interview which originally appeared in The San Francisco Gate. You can read the whole thing here.)
Riso continues:
"The levels are a measure of our fixation—and the measure of how asleep we are to ourselves and to reality. A person who is low in the levels is so asleep to themselves, so alienated from the truth of who they are, that they cannot see themselves."
King and Hussein were both leaders. ("The Leader" is sometimes used as a name for type 8.) The ruthless dictator and the inspiring pioneer are two sides of the same coin. The difference is a matter of "waking up" and putting aside the ego. For type 8, the great spiritual question is, "What is the appropriate use of power?" The answer lies in finding a way to put power in the service of love, to act magnanimously on behalf of others, rather than against them.
At their best, 8s are "courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence." They "may achieve true heroism and historical greatness." (Personality Types, page 297.) Certainly, that was MLK.
This evening, as Mary Beth mentioned in yesterday's post, we will be hearing Bill Clinton speak on behalf of Hillary at Fisk University. Fisk, being a historically and majority African-American institution, and today, being MLK day, I imagine Clinton will have something to say about civil rights and/or race relations. We'll keep you posted.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day. MLK is often cited as an example of the type 8 personality, but people often wonder, how can the leader of a nonviolent resistance movement be type 8 -- the overexpresser of the "anger triad"?
The answer lies in level of health. Don Riso of the Enneagram Institute puts it this way:
"The idea of the levels explains how two people of the same personality type can operate very differently—and seem to others to be different character types. For example, Saddam Hussein and Martin Luther King are both eights on the Enneagram. But they are obviously very different. That's because they are operating at different levels of development within the framework of the eight personality type."
(This is from an interview which originally appeared in The San Francisco Gate. You can read the whole thing here.)
Riso continues:
"The levels are a measure of our fixation—and the measure of how asleep we are to ourselves and to reality. A person who is low in the levels is so asleep to themselves, so alienated from the truth of who they are, that they cannot see themselves."
King and Hussein were both leaders. ("The Leader" is sometimes used as a name for type 8.) The ruthless dictator and the inspiring pioneer are two sides of the same coin. The difference is a matter of "waking up" and putting aside the ego. For type 8, the great spiritual question is, "What is the appropriate use of power?" The answer lies in finding a way to put power in the service of love, to act magnanimously on behalf of others, rather than against them.
At their best, 8s are "courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence." They "may achieve true heroism and historical greatness." (Personality Types, page 297.) Certainly, that was MLK.
This evening, as Mary Beth mentioned in yesterday's post, we will be hearing Bill Clinton speak on behalf of Hillary at Fisk University. Fisk, being a historically and majority African-American institution, and today, being MLK day, I imagine Clinton will have something to say about civil rights and/or race relations. We'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Equal Time for John McCain
Roughly 99.9999% of all people who find this blog do so by searching "Obama Enneagram", "personality type obama", or "egg, bacon, obama, and spam." No one ever gets here by searching for John McCain. Is it just because he's so obviously a 6 that it bears no discussion?
Recently, this article was brought to my attention. It talks about the candidates' relationships to ambivalence and decision-making. Here are the parts that make McCain seem especially sixy:
"McCain's oppositional dynamics seem to dominate the process he uses to make decisions and take action. They reveal themselves in his reflexive defiance of authority, his inability to control his temper, his aura of anger and his touchiness." (From Riso and Hudson's Personality Types, pgs. 218-219: "Of course, in one way or another, all nine personality types have some kind of relationship with authority figures and need some guidance and reassurance in life, but whether supporting authority, rebelling against it, or fearing it, Sixes seem to have the most issues in this area... The key to understanding Sixes is that they are ambivalent: the two distinct sides of their personalities oscillate between aggressive and dependent tendencies.")
"He has been known for nastiness as well. In a private school he attended, his peers called him ' McNasty" and "the Punk." Neither his Vietnam POW experience nor his adult life as a politician cured him of this nastiness, and he gained something of the same reputation among his fellow senators." The article goes on to mention some crude sexist remarks of McCain's. (In describing type Six in the low-average level of mental health, termed "The Authoritarian Rebel" by Riso and Hudson, page 241 of Personality Types reads, "One of the uglier aspects of Sixes at this stage is their need to have a person or group on whom they can release their pent-up anxieties. Their scapegoats are always assigned the basest of motives so that Sixes will feel justified in dealing with them in whatever way satisfies their emotional needs. This can occur in office politics, in a family system, between the sexes, or in national politics.")
As a member of the Senate POW committee, ""He browbeat expert witnesses who came with information about unreturned POWs. Family members who have personally faced McCain and pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper. He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears. Mostly his responses to them have been versions of: how dare you question my patriotism?'" ("... average Sixes are far from innocent. Counterphobia makes them overcompensate; they blame and berate whatever threatens them. They become rebellious and belligerent, harassing and obstructing others however they can to prove that they cannot be pushed around. Sixes at this stage are full of doubts about themselves and are desperate to latch onto a position or stance that will make them feel stronger and dispel their feelings of inferiority." -- PT 239-240.)
"McCain's frank awareness of his own dark inclinations has made him understandably endearing to both press and public. McCain's honesty can be disarming, as when he confessed in his 2003 biography, "Worth Fighting For," that he has "a tendency to overreact" to "slights" in a manner that is "little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy.'" Although Sixes can be nasty, they are also often disarming and endearing. As Personality Types puts it, they are "sweet and sour."
"His biography suggests young McCain had deep reasons to rebel. He was expected to follow his father - who eventually made four-star admiral - into Annapolis and a Navy career. McCain's grandfather had been an admiral and key leader in the Pacific campaign during World War II. A McCain ancestor had served on George Washington's staff during the Revolutionary War. McCains had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. But young John McCain didn't want to attend the Academy and endure its regimentation. As McCain's biographer, Robert Timberg, dramatizes it in "John McCain, An American Odyssey," McCain "knew that if he said what he thought - hold it, screw Annapolis, the place sucks - shock waves would reverberate through countless generations of McCains, shaking a military tradition." So, instead, he went and acted passive aggressive. ("Passive-aggressive indirection shows up in all their social interactions, even in their humor, which now has an edgy sarcastic note. Passive-aggressive humor allows Sixes to get in a jab at people indirectly, by saying the opposite of what they mean ('Of course I respect you -- I treat you will all the respect you deserve.')")
According to the article, "At the Academy, McCain's insubordinate behavior with superior officers would have gotten any other cadet expelled. But he was a McCain. Ironically - an irony probably not lost on McCain - he could get away with such cheekiness precisely because of his father and the family history he was rebelling against."
" The public doesn't know much about what is in the psychiatric reports drawn up on McCain after he returned from Vietnam, but we do know that one psychiatrist concluded McCain had been in a long struggle to escape "the shadow of his father.'" ("Because they are connected to the protective figure, Sixes powerfully internalize their connection with that person, whether it is a loving, supportive one, or a difficult, destructive one. They continue to play out in their lives the relationship with the person who held authority in their early childhood years... if Sixes experienced their protective-figures as abusive, unfair, or controlling, they will internalize this relationship with authority and feel themselves always at odds with those who they believe have power over them. they walk through life fearing that they will be 'in trouble' and unjustly punished, and adopt a defensive, rebellious attitude from the cruel protective-figure they project into many of their relationships." -- PT, pgs. 224-225.)
The article also mentions McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate, saying:
"Palin is clearly more popular with most Republicans than he is, so that at times it appears that she is the top of the ticket and not he. He seems forced and secondary standing beside her. If McCain's first reflex in a charged situation is to rebel against whatever authority he perceives is in control, when he is the authority he engenders a problem" and then goes on to say: "At this point, the two sides of McCain's ambivalence - conforming versus rebellion - have become so inextricably confused that the Obama campaign and the press could accuse McCain of being "risky" and "erratic" as he lurched from one idea to its opposite, his obedient angels and his rebellious angels at war with each other. " -- a perfect metaphor for Six-ishness.
As for Obama, the article's emphasis on his mythologizing of his absent father makes him seem like a 4, its mention of his habit of watchfulness makes him seem like a 5, and its talk of his careful questioning makes him seem like a 6. What a tough nut to crack.
Recently, this article was brought to my attention. It talks about the candidates' relationships to ambivalence and decision-making. Here are the parts that make McCain seem especially sixy:
"McCain's oppositional dynamics seem to dominate the process he uses to make decisions and take action. They reveal themselves in his reflexive defiance of authority, his inability to control his temper, his aura of anger and his touchiness." (From Riso and Hudson's Personality Types, pgs. 218-219: "Of course, in one way or another, all nine personality types have some kind of relationship with authority figures and need some guidance and reassurance in life, but whether supporting authority, rebelling against it, or fearing it, Sixes seem to have the most issues in this area... The key to understanding Sixes is that they are ambivalent: the two distinct sides of their personalities oscillate between aggressive and dependent tendencies.")
"He has been known for nastiness as well. In a private school he attended, his peers called him ' McNasty" and "the Punk." Neither his Vietnam POW experience nor his adult life as a politician cured him of this nastiness, and he gained something of the same reputation among his fellow senators." The article goes on to mention some crude sexist remarks of McCain's. (In describing type Six in the low-average level of mental health, termed "The Authoritarian Rebel" by Riso and Hudson, page 241 of Personality Types reads, "One of the uglier aspects of Sixes at this stage is their need to have a person or group on whom they can release their pent-up anxieties. Their scapegoats are always assigned the basest of motives so that Sixes will feel justified in dealing with them in whatever way satisfies their emotional needs. This can occur in office politics, in a family system, between the sexes, or in national politics.")
As a member of the Senate POW committee, ""He browbeat expert witnesses who came with information about unreturned POWs. Family members who have personally faced McCain and pressed him to end the secrecy also have been treated to his legendary temper. He has screamed at them, insulted them, brought women to tears. Mostly his responses to them have been versions of: how dare you question my patriotism?'" ("... average Sixes are far from innocent. Counterphobia makes them overcompensate; they blame and berate whatever threatens them. They become rebellious and belligerent, harassing and obstructing others however they can to prove that they cannot be pushed around. Sixes at this stage are full of doubts about themselves and are desperate to latch onto a position or stance that will make them feel stronger and dispel their feelings of inferiority." -- PT 239-240.)
"McCain's frank awareness of his own dark inclinations has made him understandably endearing to both press and public. McCain's honesty can be disarming, as when he confessed in his 2003 biography, "Worth Fighting For," that he has "a tendency to overreact" to "slights" in a manner that is "little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy.'" Although Sixes can be nasty, they are also often disarming and endearing. As Personality Types puts it, they are "sweet and sour."
"His biography suggests young McCain had deep reasons to rebel. He was expected to follow his father - who eventually made four-star admiral - into Annapolis and a Navy career. McCain's grandfather had been an admiral and key leader in the Pacific campaign during World War II. A McCain ancestor had served on George Washington's staff during the Revolutionary War. McCains had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. But young John McCain didn't want to attend the Academy and endure its regimentation. As McCain's biographer, Robert Timberg, dramatizes it in "John McCain, An American Odyssey," McCain "knew that if he said what he thought - hold it, screw Annapolis, the place sucks - shock waves would reverberate through countless generations of McCains, shaking a military tradition." So, instead, he went and acted passive aggressive. ("Passive-aggressive indirection shows up in all their social interactions, even in their humor, which now has an edgy sarcastic note. Passive-aggressive humor allows Sixes to get in a jab at people indirectly, by saying the opposite of what they mean ('Of course I respect you -- I treat you will all the respect you deserve.')")
According to the article, "At the Academy, McCain's insubordinate behavior with superior officers would have gotten any other cadet expelled. But he was a McCain. Ironically - an irony probably not lost on McCain - he could get away with such cheekiness precisely because of his father and the family history he was rebelling against."
" The public doesn't know much about what is in the psychiatric reports drawn up on McCain after he returned from Vietnam, but we do know that one psychiatrist concluded McCain had been in a long struggle to escape "the shadow of his father.'" ("Because they are connected to the protective figure, Sixes powerfully internalize their connection with that person, whether it is a loving, supportive one, or a difficult, destructive one. They continue to play out in their lives the relationship with the person who held authority in their early childhood years... if Sixes experienced their protective-figures as abusive, unfair, or controlling, they will internalize this relationship with authority and feel themselves always at odds with those who they believe have power over them. they walk through life fearing that they will be 'in trouble' and unjustly punished, and adopt a defensive, rebellious attitude from the cruel protective-figure they project into many of their relationships." -- PT, pgs. 224-225.)
The article also mentions McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate, saying:
"Palin is clearly more popular with most Republicans than he is, so that at times it appears that she is the top of the ticket and not he. He seems forced and secondary standing beside her. If McCain's first reflex in a charged situation is to rebel against whatever authority he perceives is in control, when he is the authority he engenders a problem" and then goes on to say: "At this point, the two sides of McCain's ambivalence - conforming versus rebellion - have become so inextricably confused that the Obama campaign and the press could accuse McCain of being "risky" and "erratic" as he lurched from one idea to its opposite, his obedient angels and his rebellious angels at war with each other. " -- a perfect metaphor for Six-ishness.
As for Obama, the article's emphasis on his mythologizing of his absent father makes him seem like a 4, its mention of his habit of watchfulness makes him seem like a 5, and its talk of his careful questioning makes him seem like a 6. What a tough nut to crack.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Enneagram and Emotional Maturity
After Patrick O'Leary's talk at the IEA conference, Mary Beth and I attended a session led by Edward Morler. It was called "Integrating the Enneagram of Personality with the Levels of Emotional Maturity." Here's some of Morler's bio:
"Edward E. Morler, M.B.A., Ph.D., is President of Morler International, a management training and development firm specializing in integrity based interpersonal effectiveness. His focus is the custom design and delivery of bottom-line, functional skill enhancement programs that simultaneously integrate the principles and dynamics of integrity, emotional maturity, motivation, leadership, and the Enneagram."
Here is my (admittedly sleepy) account of what he said:
According to Morler, Enneagram theory, particularly Riso and Hudson's Nine Levels of Development, describes healthy and unhealthy levels of emotional health, but does not offer much in terms of how to move from one level to the next.
Morler laid out the following ways of dealing with a problem, arranged here from best to worst:
seeing it as an opportunity
coping with it
being antagonistic toward it
being angry at it
being passive-aggressive
fearing it (Morler defined fear as "considerations of potential loss.")
being anxious about it
grieving
sinking into apathy
death
These, he correlated with the Nine Levels of Development for each type. He talked about how, once you have identified the level someone is working at, you can move them up the scale, but no farther up than where you are. Here's the method he suggested: when someone is in apathy, remind them of a reason to grieve (he gave an example of seeing his mom lying on the bed in apathetic depression and reminding her of a house they once had and lost); when someone is grieving, bring up something anxiety-provoking; and so on, until they are in a much better place than before.
Then, Morler gave us another scale of emotional health:
Leader (one who is emotionally mature; when something isn't right, they respond by doing what they can to make it better)
Doer
Coper
Opposer
Manipulator (the most dangerous of people -- a con artist who pretends to be a doer)
Victim
(You can find a lot more info on this scale here.)
According to Morler, if you're not proactively creating something, you are dropping down this scale, which he also correlated with the Nine Levels.
Here are Morler's steps to change when dealing with a problem: (1) recognition of the problem, (2) ownership of the problem ("What am I contributing to this?"), (3) forgiving oneself and acknowledging one's positive contributions, and (4) doing something different.
Here are some of my critiques:
In my opinion, the Riso/ Hudson material does offer a method of getting healthier; it's simply usually dismissed in favor of more gimmicky approaches. What it doesn't offer is a way of moving another person between levels, but Riso and Hudson would probably say that that's not the point of the Enneagram anyway.
Also, the technique Morler presented seemed like a quick fix. He admitted that his mom, for instance, stayed stuck in the anxiety state most of the time. It seems like his method could be good for talking someone out of a suicide or even just putting someone in a temporarily better mood, but without the hard work of self-observation (advocated by Riso and Hudson), that person is probably never going to become emotionally healthy.
Another thing Mary Beth and I noticed is that some of the responses to problems did not seem entirely logically arranged from best to worst. For instance, why is anger a better response than anxiety? Perhaps Morler has a good reason, but allow me to advance a theory: the arrangement plays into his type bias.
Let me explain. Morler is an 8, the overexpressor of the gut triad. That means he's got a double-dose of preferring the body center (once, because he's a gut type, and again, because he's an aggressive type.) The aggressives repress the heart center. So, as an 8, Morler's preference goes: body, head, heart. And his levels of appropriate response prioritize anger and passive aggression (body center issues) over fear and anxiety (head center issues), which are in turn, placed above grief (a heart center issue.)
Just a theory.
"Edward E. Morler, M.B.A., Ph.D., is President of Morler International, a management training and development firm specializing in integrity based interpersonal effectiveness. His focus is the custom design and delivery of bottom-line, functional skill enhancement programs that simultaneously integrate the principles and dynamics of integrity, emotional maturity, motivation, leadership, and the Enneagram."
Here is my (admittedly sleepy) account of what he said:
According to Morler, Enneagram theory, particularly Riso and Hudson's Nine Levels of Development, describes healthy and unhealthy levels of emotional health, but does not offer much in terms of how to move from one level to the next.
Morler laid out the following ways of dealing with a problem, arranged here from best to worst:
seeing it as an opportunity
coping with it
being antagonistic toward it
being angry at it
being passive-aggressive
fearing it (Morler defined fear as "considerations of potential loss.")
being anxious about it
grieving
sinking into apathy
death
These, he correlated with the Nine Levels of Development for each type. He talked about how, once you have identified the level someone is working at, you can move them up the scale, but no farther up than where you are. Here's the method he suggested: when someone is in apathy, remind them of a reason to grieve (he gave an example of seeing his mom lying on the bed in apathetic depression and reminding her of a house they once had and lost); when someone is grieving, bring up something anxiety-provoking; and so on, until they are in a much better place than before.
Then, Morler gave us another scale of emotional health:
Leader (one who is emotionally mature; when something isn't right, they respond by doing what they can to make it better)
Doer
Coper
Opposer
Manipulator (the most dangerous of people -- a con artist who pretends to be a doer)
Victim
(You can find a lot more info on this scale here.)
According to Morler, if you're not proactively creating something, you are dropping down this scale, which he also correlated with the Nine Levels.
Here are Morler's steps to change when dealing with a problem: (1) recognition of the problem, (2) ownership of the problem ("What am I contributing to this?"), (3) forgiving oneself and acknowledging one's positive contributions, and (4) doing something different.
Here are some of my critiques:
In my opinion, the Riso/ Hudson material does offer a method of getting healthier; it's simply usually dismissed in favor of more gimmicky approaches. What it doesn't offer is a way of moving another person between levels, but Riso and Hudson would probably say that that's not the point of the Enneagram anyway.
Also, the technique Morler presented seemed like a quick fix. He admitted that his mom, for instance, stayed stuck in the anxiety state most of the time. It seems like his method could be good for talking someone out of a suicide or even just putting someone in a temporarily better mood, but without the hard work of self-observation (advocated by Riso and Hudson), that person is probably never going to become emotionally healthy.
Another thing Mary Beth and I noticed is that some of the responses to problems did not seem entirely logically arranged from best to worst. For instance, why is anger a better response than anxiety? Perhaps Morler has a good reason, but allow me to advance a theory: the arrangement plays into his type bias.
Let me explain. Morler is an 8, the overexpressor of the gut triad. That means he's got a double-dose of preferring the body center (once, because he's a gut type, and again, because he's an aggressive type.) The aggressives repress the heart center. So, as an 8, Morler's preference goes: body, head, heart. And his levels of appropriate response prioritize anger and passive aggression (body center issues) over fear and anxiety (head center issues), which are in turn, placed above grief (a heart center issue.)
Just a theory.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
A Pair of 3s?
Way back when, Mary Beth typed politician John Edwards as a 3. Today's New York Times seems to corroborate. It contains an opinion piece by Gail Collins titled "Ken Doll in Lust" and is basically saying that after hearing about other politicians' sex scandals, Edwards should have used that knowledge to handle his own better. Despite the word "lust" in the title, the article is actually about deception, and contains plenty of evidence supporting the 3 theory.
Here it is, if you want to read it in its entirety:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09collins.html.
Here's the first statement in the article that makes me think 3:
"As to why he did it, Edwards blamed 'an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.' ” This is apt, as type 3 is the type most associated with narcissism. Quoth Riso and Hudson's Personality Types: "Average Threes are the most narcissistic of the personality tpes.... Narcissists care principally about themselves -- and about other only to the degree that they reflect well upon themselves. They remain intensely self-centered, with a limited ability to empathize with anyone else's feelings or needs. That is why they have little capacity for love and why -- once they have become narcissistic -- average Threes have little capacity to form lasting, mutually satisfying relationships. Relationships are one-sided because both parties are in love with the same person -- the Three."
And then this, from the NYT piece:
"His 2 a.m. visit with the woman, Rielle Hunter, at a Beverly Hills hotel last month was a secret mission to keep her from going public about their liaison, the briefness and meaninglessness of which cannot be stressed too often. " (emphasis mine) I find this statement interesting because it indicates that the affair itself was a lie, since I suspect Edwards gave Hunter the impression that their relationship was, in fact, meaningful. Edwards seems to be defending himself by saying "I wasn't really lying to you -- public wife, etc. -- all that much; I was actually lying to her -- big time!"
Continuing with the article, "Edwards met Hunter in a bar in New York in 2006, and paid her $114,000 to follow him around, documenting his every move for campaign videos." How could a 3 reasonably be expected not to fall in love with a person employed to take pictures of him? And then, in the same paragraph:
"Said videos were posted, then mysteriously disappeared from the Edwards Web site, with officials muttering something about campaign finance rules." This might be a little dishonest.
As for the videos, "They exist today on YouTube, where you can see the candidate sitting on his plane, grinning like a hound dog in heat, while he tells Hunter that he doesn’t want to be 'some plastic Ken doll that you put in front of the audience,' and pokes himself in the chest while announcing, 'I actually want the country to see who I am — who I truly am.' " This just about speaks for itself, doesn't it?
From Personality Types:
"Because Threes adapt themselves to the desires and expectations of others to validate themselves, they can lose a clear sense of who they actually are... because their sense of their authentic self becomes increasingly blocked, average Threes begin to engage in internal 'pep talks' to convince themselves that they actually are the outstanding person they are trying to become."
Back to the NYT article:
"If Edwards’s political career is toast, it will be because he has always seemed to be less than a sum of his parts: the position papers, the 'Two Americas,' the photogenic grin, the supersmart wife. The only piece of the package that consistently disappointed was the man himself. He wasn’t a very good running mate for John Kerry, and as a presidential candidate, he always struck me as being about 2 inches deep."
Personality Types on how Threes can appear to others:
"Fear of rejection causes average Threes to abandon themselves as they search for the 'right combination' of factors which they believe will enhance them and make them more acceptable... there is an element of slickness, an emotional hollowness about average Threes because much of what they say and do is not a true reflection of who they actually are. 'Who they are' is becoming ever more difficult to identify, both for others and for themselves."
And a final word from Collins:
"how much less damage would have been done if the offender had taken the inventive tactic of not lying."
And now, lest you think we don't know our audience and realize that what you really want is to know Barrack Obama's Enneagram type, I am ready to do some public speculating. Obama is something of an enigma. Mary Beth and I wonder whether he is a 3 or a 9. We also occasionally wonder whether he is a 1 or a 5. We feel that types 2, 4, 6, and 8 are right out.
Continuing with the tactic of using op-ed pieces from The New York Times, here's one by David Brooks about Obama:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/opinion/05brooks.html
While you can find plenty here that will support the 9 theory or the 5 theory, here's the stuff that seems like 3 to me:
"He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it. He had some accomplishments, but as Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker wrote, he was famously bored by the institution and used it as a stepping stone to higher things." (emphasis mine)
And this:
"He has not had the time nor the inclination to throw himself into Senate mores, or really get to know more than a handful of his colleagues. His Democratic supporters there speak of him fondly, but vaguely."
3s are famous for not having long-lasting relationships, despite their apparent popularity.
And, finally, this:
"Obama’s 'Dreams From My Father' is a journey forward, about a man who took the disparate parts of his past and constructed an identity of his own."
Identity formation is an issue of the heart triad.
Here's my question:
If 3s are shape-shifters who lose their identities trying to give people what they want; 9s are ghosts who merge with others' agendas trying to avoid conflict; and 5s are blanks screens reflecting others' desires, trying to not be seen, what is Obama? Anyone have a theory?
I will go on the record now as saying I think John McCain is a 6 -- counterphobic, 5 wing.
Here it is, if you want to read it in its entirety:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09collins.html.
Here's the first statement in the article that makes me think 3:
"As to why he did it, Edwards blamed 'an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.' ” This is apt, as type 3 is the type most associated with narcissism. Quoth Riso and Hudson's Personality Types: "Average Threes are the most narcissistic of the personality tpes.... Narcissists care principally about themselves -- and about other only to the degree that they reflect well upon themselves. They remain intensely self-centered, with a limited ability to empathize with anyone else's feelings or needs. That is why they have little capacity for love and why -- once they have become narcissistic -- average Threes have little capacity to form lasting, mutually satisfying relationships. Relationships are one-sided because both parties are in love with the same person -- the Three."
And then this, from the NYT piece:
"His 2 a.m. visit with the woman, Rielle Hunter, at a Beverly Hills hotel last month was a secret mission to keep her from going public about their liaison, the briefness and meaninglessness of which cannot be stressed too often. " (emphasis mine) I find this statement interesting because it indicates that the affair itself was a lie, since I suspect Edwards gave Hunter the impression that their relationship was, in fact, meaningful. Edwards seems to be defending himself by saying "I wasn't really lying to you -- public wife, etc. -- all that much; I was actually lying to her -- big time!"
Continuing with the article, "Edwards met Hunter in a bar in New York in 2006, and paid her $114,000 to follow him around, documenting his every move for campaign videos." How could a 3 reasonably be expected not to fall in love with a person employed to take pictures of him? And then, in the same paragraph:
"Said videos were posted, then mysteriously disappeared from the Edwards Web site, with officials muttering something about campaign finance rules." This might be a little dishonest.
As for the videos, "They exist today on YouTube, where you can see the candidate sitting on his plane, grinning like a hound dog in heat, while he tells Hunter that he doesn’t want to be 'some plastic Ken doll that you put in front of the audience,' and pokes himself in the chest while announcing, 'I actually want the country to see who I am — who I truly am.' " This just about speaks for itself, doesn't it?
From Personality Types:
"Because Threes adapt themselves to the desires and expectations of others to validate themselves, they can lose a clear sense of who they actually are... because their sense of their authentic self becomes increasingly blocked, average Threes begin to engage in internal 'pep talks' to convince themselves that they actually are the outstanding person they are trying to become."
Back to the NYT article:
"If Edwards’s political career is toast, it will be because he has always seemed to be less than a sum of his parts: the position papers, the 'Two Americas,' the photogenic grin, the supersmart wife. The only piece of the package that consistently disappointed was the man himself. He wasn’t a very good running mate for John Kerry, and as a presidential candidate, he always struck me as being about 2 inches deep."
Personality Types on how Threes can appear to others:
"Fear of rejection causes average Threes to abandon themselves as they search for the 'right combination' of factors which they believe will enhance them and make them more acceptable... there is an element of slickness, an emotional hollowness about average Threes because much of what they say and do is not a true reflection of who they actually are. 'Who they are' is becoming ever more difficult to identify, both for others and for themselves."
And a final word from Collins:
"how much less damage would have been done if the offender had taken the inventive tactic of not lying."
And now, lest you think we don't know our audience and realize that what you really want is to know Barrack Obama's Enneagram type, I am ready to do some public speculating. Obama is something of an enigma. Mary Beth and I wonder whether he is a 3 or a 9. We also occasionally wonder whether he is a 1 or a 5. We feel that types 2, 4, 6, and 8 are right out.
Continuing with the tactic of using op-ed pieces from The New York Times, here's one by David Brooks about Obama:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/opinion/05brooks.html
While you can find plenty here that will support the 9 theory or the 5 theory, here's the stuff that seems like 3 to me:
"He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it. He had some accomplishments, but as Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker wrote, he was famously bored by the institution and used it as a stepping stone to higher things." (emphasis mine)
And this:
"He has not had the time nor the inclination to throw himself into Senate mores, or really get to know more than a handful of his colleagues. His Democratic supporters there speak of him fondly, but vaguely."
3s are famous for not having long-lasting relationships, despite their apparent popularity.
And, finally, this:
"Obama’s 'Dreams From My Father' is a journey forward, about a man who took the disparate parts of his past and constructed an identity of his own."
Identity formation is an issue of the heart triad.
Here's my question:
If 3s are shape-shifters who lose their identities trying to give people what they want; 9s are ghosts who merge with others' agendas trying to avoid conflict; and 5s are blanks screens reflecting others' desires, trying to not be seen, what is Obama? Anyone have a theory?
I will go on the record now as saying I think John McCain is a 6 -- counterphobic, 5 wing.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Russ Hudson is the Boyfriend of the Universe
A few years ago, Mary Beth and I attended the Psychic Structures workshop, taught by Russ Hudson. The experience greatly deepened our understanding of the Enneagram; it also convinced us that Russ is a being of light who is also totally cute. He would probably be (adorably) annoyed by our recent decision to declare him our god.
Anyway, if you would like to become similarly enthralled, he is teaching a workshop on the instincts at the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville, North Carolina later this month. More details are here.
Anyway, if you would like to become similarly enthralled, he is teaching a workshop on the instincts at the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville, North Carolina later this month. More details are here.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
This morning's New York Times features an article by Steven Pinker called The Moral Instinct. It does not relate to the Enneagram per se, but it does touch on individual differences in several places. Pinker:
- asks who is the most admirable, Mother Theresa (2w1), Bill Gates (5w6), or this other, way less famous dude, Norman Borlaug, who's apparently done a lot for humanity.
- mentions the agreeableness and conscientiousness scales on the Big 5 personality test, also known as the OCEAN (for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism),
- explains how and why there may be evolutionary niches for some of us to be high-minded self-sacrificers, some to be grudging reciprocators, and others to be outright cheaters.
- mentions that Hitler probably thought he was acting morally, which I consider enneagram-related -- look at the chart in the back of Personality Types by Riso and Hudson that shows how each type is trying to SOLVE a problem when they're spiraling down the levels. (In this case, type 6.)
I'm also guessing that people interested in the Enneagram are likely to be interested in psychology and morality generally, which is what the article is about.
But before you read it, you will want to go to YourMorals.org and take the Moral Foundations questionnaire: Findings will be discussed in the Pinker article, so this is your last chance to take it before you are forever tainted by hearing what it's about. (The site also features many other tests you can take; most, if not all, are ongoing psychology experiments so if you take 'em, you're also helping some researcher.)
Also, you will want to take this test, the Moral Sense Test (also an actual research project. You will be helping out a researcher named Fiery Cushman, if that makes a difference. If you are like me, you are wondering whether Fiery is a man's name or a woman's; a foreign name or just some American whose mom and dad thought Fiery was underused as a first name. He is a man and looks to be a regular American; his brother's name is O'Neill and his sister's name is Holly. Here is a website that he and his wife Julie have started.) Again, findings from this research project (or a very similar one) are discussed in the article so here's your chance to take it fresh (although granted, the Moral Foundations test is sort of a spoiler for part of the Moral Sense test. So, like, half of y'all take this one first, ok?)
Now, here is the article:
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Some thoughts, randomly presented:
Who can explain the significance of the Adrian Tomine drawing of two women running to catch a cab?
I'm not sure I agree with Pinker about human cloning. In other words, I think this Kass fellow is onto something with his "wisdom of repugnance" as it relates to human cloning. A cursory web search shows that most writers agree that Kass's argument is bogus, and Wikipedia has it listed under fallacies here. (You might also want to check out some of the links; for example, the Uncanny Valley is pretty cool.) And yes, everybody's making really valid points that lots of other things like interracial marriage, homosexual sex, and in vitro fertilization either were once considered repugnant, (or still are, at least to some people, at least the homosexuality.) However, to me human cloning is more similar to murder in the sense that there should just be a line drawn there. For instance, let's say there are some good reasons to kill somebody -- ok, I don't have to think too hard, since I've been reading ethical dilemmas. You are a doctor, and you have five patients needing organs who will die if they don't get organs. And a pharmaceutical rep comes in, who happens to have matching versions of all five organs. And for whatever reason you would never be caught if you were to take them out of the pharmaceutical rep and put them in those five people, saving five people but killing one, and just a pharmaceutical salesman at that. Should you do it? Of course not, and you didn't even have to think hard about it. Should be the same with human cloning; a bright line should be drawn between things up to human cloning and human cloning itself.
As for the trolley problem: I've heard of it before, and I always wondered why most people say that yes, they would push the lever. (Note: here begin those spoilers I was talking about.) Because I said no. For the same reason as not harvesting the organs; you can't kill people even if you think it would help in a utilitarian sense. However, when I actually took Fiery Cushman's test (ok, it's not just his test), I said yes; why? Because what was asked was not whether you'd do it, but whether it is morally permissible, and I think it is: I can certainly see why someone else would do it. Also, in the version where you are actually DRIVING the train, of course I would turn down the track with only one person on it to avoid hitting five. Why is this different? This scenario doesn't posit an inanimate object barrelling down on those five as a fact of nature with me as a by-stander who has the option to not get involved (and not be hauled into court); it is me driving an out-of-control vehicle and I know when I am in that situation I will turn to avoid the worse obstacle to hit; that's just how driving is. Also, there is no question of being a criminal versus not; if there is a question of vehicular homicide it would apply in both cases here.
About a month ago we held a poll about who is more famous, Steven Pinker or E. O. Wilson. The (statistically meaningless) results were: Steven Pinker 2, E.O. Wilson 3, and I've never heard of either of them, 2. Our discussion of this "controversy" here and here. Well, this morning I woke up at 3:35 am, January 13th. This Pinker article came out on January 13th. I'm on Central time, so it had been out for about 4 and a half hours, assuming it comes out right at midnight. In that 4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night, enough people had emailed it around that it had already shot up to number one on the NYT's most emailed articles list. (New articles usually appear on the list after everybody's woken up and had time to look at them.) I think this speaks to Pinker's fame (and the quality of the article, and the appeal of the subject matter.) But don't count E.O. Wilson out! Because a brief web search also turns up this article, Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, which is where I first encountered these ideas about the 5 strands of morality (harm, fairness, authority, purity, and ingroup loyalty) and the Trolley Problem. In it, the author states:
"Most people who study morality now read and write about emotions, the brain, chimpanzees, and evolution, as well as reasoning. This is exactly what E. O. Wilson predicted in Sociobiology: that the old approaches to morality, including Kohlberg's, would be swept away or merged into a new approach that focused on the emotive centers of the brain as biological adaptations. Wilson even said that these emotive centers give us moral intuitions, which the moral philosophers then justify while pretending that they are intuiting truths that are independent of the contingencies of our evolved minds."
and
"I think E. O. Wilson deserves more credit than he gets for seeing into the real nature of morality and for predicting the future of moral psychology so uncannily. He's in my pantheon, along with David Hume and Charles Darwin. All three were visionaries who urged us to focus on the moral emotions and their social utility. "
Incidentally, if you like articles like these, check out the blog http://www.3quarksdaily.com/, which is where I found this article initially.
Finally, one last link, the brain in a vat problem here. Hee.
- asks who is the most admirable, Mother Theresa (2w1), Bill Gates (5w6), or this other, way less famous dude, Norman Borlaug, who's apparently done a lot for humanity.
- mentions the agreeableness and conscientiousness scales on the Big 5 personality test, also known as the OCEAN (for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism),
- explains how and why there may be evolutionary niches for some of us to be high-minded self-sacrificers, some to be grudging reciprocators, and others to be outright cheaters.
- mentions that Hitler probably thought he was acting morally, which I consider enneagram-related -- look at the chart in the back of Personality Types by Riso and Hudson that shows how each type is trying to SOLVE a problem when they're spiraling down the levels. (In this case, type 6.)
I'm also guessing that people interested in the Enneagram are likely to be interested in psychology and morality generally, which is what the article is about.
But before you read it, you will want to go to YourMorals.org and take the Moral Foundations questionnaire: Findings will be discussed in the Pinker article, so this is your last chance to take it before you are forever tainted by hearing what it's about. (The site also features many other tests you can take; most, if not all, are ongoing psychology experiments so if you take 'em, you're also helping some researcher.)
Also, you will want to take this test, the Moral Sense Test (also an actual research project. You will be helping out a researcher named Fiery Cushman, if that makes a difference. If you are like me, you are wondering whether Fiery is a man's name or a woman's; a foreign name or just some American whose mom and dad thought Fiery was underused as a first name. He is a man and looks to be a regular American; his brother's name is O'Neill and his sister's name is Holly. Here is a website that he and his wife Julie have started.) Again, findings from this research project (or a very similar one) are discussed in the article so here's your chance to take it fresh (although granted, the Moral Foundations test is sort of a spoiler for part of the Moral Sense test. So, like, half of y'all take this one first, ok?)
Now, here is the article:
The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Some thoughts, randomly presented:
Who can explain the significance of the Adrian Tomine drawing of two women running to catch a cab?
I'm not sure I agree with Pinker about human cloning. In other words, I think this Kass fellow is onto something with his "wisdom of repugnance" as it relates to human cloning. A cursory web search shows that most writers agree that Kass's argument is bogus, and Wikipedia has it listed under fallacies here. (You might also want to check out some of the links; for example, the Uncanny Valley is pretty cool.) And yes, everybody's making really valid points that lots of other things like interracial marriage, homosexual sex, and in vitro fertilization either were once considered repugnant, (or still are, at least to some people, at least the homosexuality.) However, to me human cloning is more similar to murder in the sense that there should just be a line drawn there. For instance, let's say there are some good reasons to kill somebody -- ok, I don't have to think too hard, since I've been reading ethical dilemmas. You are a doctor, and you have five patients needing organs who will die if they don't get organs. And a pharmaceutical rep comes in, who happens to have matching versions of all five organs. And for whatever reason you would never be caught if you were to take them out of the pharmaceutical rep and put them in those five people, saving five people but killing one, and just a pharmaceutical salesman at that. Should you do it? Of course not, and you didn't even have to think hard about it. Should be the same with human cloning; a bright line should be drawn between things up to human cloning and human cloning itself.
As for the trolley problem: I've heard of it before, and I always wondered why most people say that yes, they would push the lever. (Note: here begin those spoilers I was talking about.) Because I said no. For the same reason as not harvesting the organs; you can't kill people even if you think it would help in a utilitarian sense. However, when I actually took Fiery Cushman's test (ok, it's not just his test), I said yes; why? Because what was asked was not whether you'd do it, but whether it is morally permissible, and I think it is: I can certainly see why someone else would do it. Also, in the version where you are actually DRIVING the train, of course I would turn down the track with only one person on it to avoid hitting five. Why is this different? This scenario doesn't posit an inanimate object barrelling down on those five as a fact of nature with me as a by-stander who has the option to not get involved (and not be hauled into court); it is me driving an out-of-control vehicle and I know when I am in that situation I will turn to avoid the worse obstacle to hit; that's just how driving is. Also, there is no question of being a criminal versus not; if there is a question of vehicular homicide it would apply in both cases here.
About a month ago we held a poll about who is more famous, Steven Pinker or E. O. Wilson. The (statistically meaningless) results were: Steven Pinker 2, E.O. Wilson 3, and I've never heard of either of them, 2. Our discussion of this "controversy" here and here. Well, this morning I woke up at 3:35 am, January 13th. This Pinker article came out on January 13th. I'm on Central time, so it had been out for about 4 and a half hours, assuming it comes out right at midnight. In that 4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night, enough people had emailed it around that it had already shot up to number one on the NYT's most emailed articles list. (New articles usually appear on the list after everybody's woken up and had time to look at them.) I think this speaks to Pinker's fame (and the quality of the article, and the appeal of the subject matter.) But don't count E.O. Wilson out! Because a brief web search also turns up this article, Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, which is where I first encountered these ideas about the 5 strands of morality (harm, fairness, authority, purity, and ingroup loyalty) and the Trolley Problem. In it, the author states:
"Most people who study morality now read and write about emotions, the brain, chimpanzees, and evolution, as well as reasoning. This is exactly what E. O. Wilson predicted in Sociobiology: that the old approaches to morality, including Kohlberg's, would be swept away or merged into a new approach that focused on the emotive centers of the brain as biological adaptations. Wilson even said that these emotive centers give us moral intuitions, which the moral philosophers then justify while pretending that they are intuiting truths that are independent of the contingencies of our evolved minds."
and
"I think E. O. Wilson deserves more credit than he gets for seeing into the real nature of morality and for predicting the future of moral psychology so uncannily. He's in my pantheon, along with David Hume and Charles Darwin. All three were visionaries who urged us to focus on the moral emotions and their social utility. "
Incidentally, if you like articles like these, check out the blog http://www.3quarksdaily.com/, which is where I found this article initially.
Finally, one last link, the brain in a vat problem here. Hee.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Key Defense Mechanisms for Type 6
Riso and Hudson, at the Enneagram Institute, have come out with a bunch of charts; some are free and some are for sale. Info here. Cindi and I have passed out copies of the first chart (the free one) at our class and our discussion group, and some people have commented that they have found the chart extremely helpful as a reference. Last night I noticed that the chart lists three key defense mechanisms for each type, and that I didn't know quite what they all meant. As we talked about yesterday, a suggestion for 6s is to figure out what cause you to project; so I thought this was a good time to research these defense mechanisms (I haven't eaten any candy today, and I have organized the pantry, too, by the way.)
The three for the 6 are identification, displacement, projection.
I have found a good website explaining them here.
Here is identification:
Similar to introjection, but of less intensity and completeness. The unconscious modeling of one's self upon another person. One may also identify with values and attitudes of a group. Examples: (1) without being aware that he is copying his teacher, a resident physician assumes a similar mode of dress and manner with patients. (2) a school girl wants her mother to buy her the same kind of shoes her classmates are wearing; she angrily rejects the idea that she is trying to be like the other girls and insists that the shoes are truly the best available and are the style she has always wanted. Conscious analogs of identification are intentional imitation of others and volitional efforts to conform to a group.
Here's displacement:
Displacement:
A change in the object by which an instinctual drive is to be satisfied; shifting the emotional component from one object or idea to another. Examples: (1) a woman is abandoned by her fiance’; she quickly finds another man about whom she develops the same feelings; (2) a salesman is angered by his superior but suppresses his anger; later, on return to his home, he punishes one of his children for misbehavior that would usually be tolerated or ignored.
Displacements are often quite satisfactory and workable mechanisms; if one cannot have steak, it is comforting to like hamburger equally well. As the March Hare observed, "I like what I have is the same as I have what I like." However, the example of displaced anger illustrates a situation which, if often repeated, could cause serious complications in the person’s life. Conscious acceptance of a substitute with full recognition that it is a substitute for something one wants is an analog of displacement.
And here is projection:
Projection:
Attributing one's thoughts or impulses to another person. In common use, this is limited to unacceptable or undesirable impulses. Examples: (1) a man, unable to accept that he has competitive or hostile feelings about an acquaintance, says, “He doesn’t like me.” (2) a woman, denying to herself that she has sexual feelings about a co-worker, accuses him, without basis, of flirt and described him as a “wolf.”
This defense mechanism is commonly over utilized by the paranoid.
A broader definition of projection includes certain operations that allow for empathy and understanding of others. Recognition that another person is lonely or sad may be based not upon having seen other examples of loneliness or sadness and learning the outward manifestations but upon having experienced the feelings and recognizing automatically that another person’s situation would evoke them. [projective identification]
OK. I can see, now, why identification for the 6 (taking on the attributes of a group) based on theories about 6s, although personally, that's not my thing. Identification is listed for the 2s, also.
Displacement? Well, I have noticed a pattern of 6s yelling at computers. Types 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 also have displacement listed.
Projection. This is considered a big one for the 6s: Hitler, for instance, is considered a 6. It's also listed under 3 and 5. I might be surprised by the association of projection with 3 had I not been the victim of this behavior from more than one 3. As for me, I recall a particular time where I engaged in project (I am not going to go into it on here though.) And I do think I've had a tendency to focus on the idea of people not liking me, when what I really meant was that I didn't like them.
While perusing the list, though, I found some other mechanisms that seem to fit the 6.
Affiliation:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by turning to others for help or support. This involves sharing problems with others but does not imply trying to make someone else responsible for them.
Not very sinister; doesn't sound unconscious, but that's what I do when I have a problem.
Aim inhibition:
Placing a limitation upon instinctual demands; accepting partial or modified fulfillment of desires. Examples: (1) a person is conscious of sexual desire but if finding it frustrating, "decides" that all that is really wanted in the relationship is companionship. (2) a student who originally wanted to be a physician decides to become a physician's assistant.
Aim inhibition, like the other mechanisms, is neither healthful nor pathological, desirable nor undesirable, in itself. It may be better to have half a loaf than no bread, but an unnecessary aim inhibition may rob one of otherwise attainable satisfactions.
Anticipation:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by experiencing emotional reactions in advance of, or anticipating consequences of, possible future events and considering realistic, alternative responses or solutions.
This one seem extremely 6-ish. The paragraph above makes it sound healthy; I don't think enneagram theory usually views this as healthy but as a problem for us.
Help-Rejecting Complaining:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by complaining or making repetitious requests for help that disguise covert feelings or hostility or reproach toward others, which are then expressed by rejecting the suggestions, advice, or help that others offer. The complaints or requests may involve physical or psychological symptoms or life problems.
This one's my favorite. (By which I mean, the one I love to hate.) I don't think I do too much of it myself, but I've observed other 6s doing this a lot.
Humor:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or external stressors by emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of the conflict or stressors.
Humor's a healthy one that some 6s (ex. Steven Colbert) use to good effect.
Incorporation:
The assimilation of the object into one's own ego and/or superego. This is one of the earliest mechanisms utilized. The parent becomes almost literally a part of the child. Parental values, preferences, and attitudes are acquired.
I suspect this one might be common for 6s (or maybe if it's one of the earliest mechanisms utilized it's common for everyone.) I feel this way at work sometime, like I am speaking for my boss' values. I think of the 6 who is just following orders. I also think that some people, including myself, have dated someone because we wanted to incorporate the other's values.
Intellectualization:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by the excessive use of abstract thinking or the making of generalizations to control or minimize disturbing feelings.
Passive Aggression:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by indirectly and unassertively expressing aggression toward others. There is a facade of overt compliance masking covert resistance, resentment, or hostility. Passive aggression often occurs in response to demands for independent action or performance or the lack of gratification of dependent wishes but may be adaptive for individuals in subordinate positions who have no other way to express assertiveness more avertly. (sic)
I've done this a lot, and seen it in other 6s, too.
Reaction Formation:
Going to the opposite extreme; overcompensation for unacceptable impulses.Examples: (1) a man violently dislikes an employee; without being aware of doing so, he "bends overbackwards" to not criticize the employee and gives him special privileges and advances. (2) a person with strong antisocial impulses leads a crusade against vice. (3) a married woman who is disturbed by feeling attracted to one of her husband's friends treats him rudely.
Intentional efforts to compensate for conscious dislikes and prejudices are sometimes analogous to this mechanism.
This is associated mainly with the 1, and the Riso/Hudson chart also ascribes it to the 2, but I as a 6 have done what the last sentence says, bending over backwards and promoting an employee dispite conscious dislike, in the interest of fairness.
The three for the 6 are identification, displacement, projection.
I have found a good website explaining them here.
Here is identification:
Similar to introjection, but of less intensity and completeness. The unconscious modeling of one's self upon another person. One may also identify with values and attitudes of a group. Examples: (1) without being aware that he is copying his teacher, a resident physician assumes a similar mode of dress and manner with patients. (2) a school girl wants her mother to buy her the same kind of shoes her classmates are wearing; she angrily rejects the idea that she is trying to be like the other girls and insists that the shoes are truly the best available and are the style she has always wanted. Conscious analogs of identification are intentional imitation of others and volitional efforts to conform to a group.
Here's displacement:
Displacement:
A change in the object by which an instinctual drive is to be satisfied; shifting the emotional component from one object or idea to another. Examples: (1) a woman is abandoned by her fiance’; she quickly finds another man about whom she develops the same feelings; (2) a salesman is angered by his superior but suppresses his anger; later, on return to his home, he punishes one of his children for misbehavior that would usually be tolerated or ignored.
Displacements are often quite satisfactory and workable mechanisms; if one cannot have steak, it is comforting to like hamburger equally well. As the March Hare observed, "I like what I have is the same as I have what I like." However, the example of displaced anger illustrates a situation which, if often repeated, could cause serious complications in the person’s life. Conscious acceptance of a substitute with full recognition that it is a substitute for something one wants is an analog of displacement.
And here is projection:
Projection:
Attributing one's thoughts or impulses to another person. In common use, this is limited to unacceptable or undesirable impulses. Examples: (1) a man, unable to accept that he has competitive or hostile feelings about an acquaintance, says, “He doesn’t like me.” (2) a woman, denying to herself that she has sexual feelings about a co-worker, accuses him, without basis, of flirt and described him as a “wolf.”
This defense mechanism is commonly over utilized by the paranoid.
A broader definition of projection includes certain operations that allow for empathy and understanding of others. Recognition that another person is lonely or sad may be based not upon having seen other examples of loneliness or sadness and learning the outward manifestations but upon having experienced the feelings and recognizing automatically that another person’s situation would evoke them. [projective identification]
OK. I can see, now, why identification for the 6 (taking on the attributes of a group) based on theories about 6s, although personally, that's not my thing. Identification is listed for the 2s, also.
Displacement? Well, I have noticed a pattern of 6s yelling at computers. Types 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 also have displacement listed.
Projection. This is considered a big one for the 6s: Hitler, for instance, is considered a 6. It's also listed under 3 and 5. I might be surprised by the association of projection with 3 had I not been the victim of this behavior from more than one 3. As for me, I recall a particular time where I engaged in project (I am not going to go into it on here though.) And I do think I've had a tendency to focus on the idea of people not liking me, when what I really meant was that I didn't like them.
While perusing the list, though, I found some other mechanisms that seem to fit the 6.
Affiliation:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by turning to others for help or support. This involves sharing problems with others but does not imply trying to make someone else responsible for them.
Not very sinister; doesn't sound unconscious, but that's what I do when I have a problem.
Aim inhibition:
Placing a limitation upon instinctual demands; accepting partial or modified fulfillment of desires. Examples: (1) a person is conscious of sexual desire but if finding it frustrating, "decides" that all that is really wanted in the relationship is companionship. (2) a student who originally wanted to be a physician decides to become a physician's assistant.
Aim inhibition, like the other mechanisms, is neither healthful nor pathological, desirable nor undesirable, in itself. It may be better to have half a loaf than no bread, but an unnecessary aim inhibition may rob one of otherwise attainable satisfactions.
Anticipation:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by experiencing emotional reactions in advance of, or anticipating consequences of, possible future events and considering realistic, alternative responses or solutions.
This one seem extremely 6-ish. The paragraph above makes it sound healthy; I don't think enneagram theory usually views this as healthy but as a problem for us.
Help-Rejecting Complaining:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by complaining or making repetitious requests for help that disguise covert feelings or hostility or reproach toward others, which are then expressed by rejecting the suggestions, advice, or help that others offer. The complaints or requests may involve physical or psychological symptoms or life problems.
This one's my favorite. (By which I mean, the one I love to hate.) I don't think I do too much of it myself, but I've observed other 6s doing this a lot.
Humor:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or external stressors by emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of the conflict or stressors.
Humor's a healthy one that some 6s (ex. Steven Colbert) use to good effect.
Incorporation:
The assimilation of the object into one's own ego and/or superego. This is one of the earliest mechanisms utilized. The parent becomes almost literally a part of the child. Parental values, preferences, and attitudes are acquired.
I suspect this one might be common for 6s (or maybe if it's one of the earliest mechanisms utilized it's common for everyone.) I feel this way at work sometime, like I am speaking for my boss' values. I think of the 6 who is just following orders. I also think that some people, including myself, have dated someone because we wanted to incorporate the other's values.
Intellectualization:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by the excessive use of abstract thinking or the making of generalizations to control or minimize disturbing feelings.
Passive Aggression:
The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by indirectly and unassertively expressing aggression toward others. There is a facade of overt compliance masking covert resistance, resentment, or hostility. Passive aggression often occurs in response to demands for independent action or performance or the lack of gratification of dependent wishes but may be adaptive for individuals in subordinate positions who have no other way to express assertiveness more avertly. (sic)
I've done this a lot, and seen it in other 6s, too.
Reaction Formation:
Going to the opposite extreme; overcompensation for unacceptable impulses.Examples: (1) a man violently dislikes an employee; without being aware of doing so, he "bends overbackwards" to not criticize the employee and gives him special privileges and advances. (2) a person with strong antisocial impulses leads a crusade against vice. (3) a married woman who is disturbed by feeling attracted to one of her husband's friends treats him rudely.
Intentional efforts to compensate for conscious dislikes and prejudices are sometimes analogous to this mechanism.
This is associated mainly with the 1, and the Riso/Hudson chart also ascribes it to the 2, but I as a 6 have done what the last sentence says, bending over backwards and promoting an employee dispite conscious dislike, in the interest of fairness.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Resolutions for Type 6, and My Resolutions, But Not in That Order
Here are my resolutions for the upcoming year:
1. Clean countertops twice a week. Take dishes out of dishwasher when they are done, and then put clean dishes in, or wash dishes by hand. Keep inside of sink clean. Watch tv from couch, and put away air mattress (in the interest of decreasing clutter.) Take out trash once a week or more often. Take unread magazines to work. Continue getting rid of unnecessary objects. Organize kitchen cabinets. Check oil twice a month. Write these goals (e.g. clean the countertops on Wednesday) in Franklin Planner. Get new pages for Franklin Planner.
2. Don't eat candy. Make one large, healthy food dish each weekend (that I am in town.) Keep weight at current level or lower. If weight gets to a certain line on the scale, ratchet it back.
As you can see from the specific nature of the above two resolutions, I don't believe in just saying "lose weight" or "clean the house more," but in focusing on how specifically I can accomplish it. I have also purchased some great smelling Method products to help me enjoy the cleaning.
3. See Kathy more often. Put in Franklin Planner.
4. Be more responsible about giving gifts. Put in Franklin Planner.
5. Ask the doctor about my sleepiness. Get a mammogram this year. Put making these appointments in Franklin Planner. Start drinking a little less coffee. Drink decaf every other cup, or switch to tea. More exercise might help with the sleepiness.
6. Take the time to blow-dry hair with round brush.
Here are some other things I intend to do, that for one reason or another are not exactly resolutions:
1. Paint finger- and toenails. Watch seasons 2-4 of The Wire. Take books back to the library so I can start getting books out again. Consider getting a cell phone. These aren't resolutions; more of a to-do list.
2. Continue my studies and blogging. Teach Enneagram class. Continue current dating practices (i.e., Willing to go out; Willing to tell someone to take a hike, Not being attached to a particular outcome; Being happy to be alone.) Continuing current good practices is important, but clearly doesn't fall under the rubric of resolutions.
3. There are a couple work-related changes that are being made. These aren't resolutions because they've already been planned for some time.
4. Undoubtably I will flirt with various physical exercise regimens throughout the year. This is not a resolution because I do not have a particular plan in mind.
OK, now let's turn to Riso and Hudson, and see what they have to say for 6's. Will it be cleaning the countertops?
1. Learn to be more present to your anxiety, to explore it, and to come to terms with it. Work creatively with your tensions without turning to excessive amounts of alcohol or other drugs to allay them. In fact, if you are present and breathing fully, anxiety can be energizing, a kind of tonic that can help make you more productive and aware of what you are doing.
2. You tend to get edgy or testy when you are upset or angry, and you can even turn on others and blame them for things you have done or brought on yourself. Be aware of your pessimism: it results in dark moods and negative thought patterns that you tend to project on reality.
3. Sixes tend to overreact when they are under stress and feeling anxious. Learn to identify what makes you overreact. Also realize that almost none of the things you have feared so much has actually come true.
4. Even if things are as bad as you think, your fearful thoughts weaken you and your ability to change things for the better. You can't always manage external events, but you can manage your own thoughts.
5. Work on becoming more trusting. There are doubtless several people in your life you can turn to who care about you and who are trustworthy. If not, go out of your way to find someone trustworthy, and allow yourself to get close to that person.
6. Others probably think better of you than you realize, and few people are really out to get you. In fact, your fears tell you more about your attitudes toward others than they indicate about others' attitudes toward you.
7. You are highly responsible in many areas, but you can be afraid of accepting responsibility for mistakes. You may fear others will jump down your throat, but most people respect those who take responsibility for their actions, especially if they have made a mistake.
8. You want to feel secure, but this will never be possible unless you are secure with yourself. You need to focus on becoming more self-affirming -- developing a realistic belief in yourself and your own abilities. A good way to do this is by getting more grounded in your body and allowing your fretting mind to become more quiet. When this happens, you will naturally feel more confident and supported by life.
9. Examine your attitudes toward authority. Do you reflexively rebel and resist authority? Do you seek it out, hiding behind an "I was only following orders" attitude? For most Sixes, issues with authority are highly charged. The greater your awareness is of your unconscious attitudes in this department, the more you will be able to recognize the authority of your own inner wisdom.
10. Be fair with others and tell them what is on your mind, lest you appear indecisive or defensive. Any of the alternatives cause conflicts and tensions in your relationships.
11. Most of your issues have to do with finding reliable sources of guidance and support outside of yourself. It is good to remember that many of these sources can be useful up to a point, but none of them can provide the kind of unwavering stability and unerring wisdom you want. Only your true nature can give you a deep sense of solidity and capacity in the world, because only the spontaneous intelligence of your own soul can respond to each unique situation freshly. So be grateful for the many sources of support in your life, but lean on them less. You have within you everything you need to move through life with dignity and grace.
Wow, I'm really not feeling most of 'em. I trust others; I take responsibility for my mistakes. Becoming aware of projection and knowing what situations make me overreact are good ideas. I think that meditation (and other forms of spirituality) is the subtext for some of these (having read Riso/Hudson and met Hudson) and I am trying it, but I classify it under "continuing Enneagram studies" rather than an actual resolution.
But let's look at my actual resolutions. Two of them are, I think, related to 6 issues. I wonder sometimes why at my age I have not developed better cleaning habits. I have started to think it is related to the "you can't make me" theme of type 6, and it's pretty obviously related to type 6 dependency issues (i.e. I shouldn't have to do this for myself.) Also, the gift-giving: I have anxiety about gift-giving... I worry what if the person doesn't like it, and then it's a waste of money? (I have a 6-ish terror of wasting money sometimes.) Also, sometimes I worry that my gift won't be good enough for the other person. I also have a similar anxiety about receiving gifts... possibly even more anxiety, because if you don't like a gift you might have to pretend you do, and I hate to have to pretend. I have memories dating back to age 5 in which I got gifts I didn't like and felt sick about it. This Christmas I was feeling anxiety during the gift exchange, mainly about receiving them, because all my gifts this year were surprises. (I ended up liking them all -- luckily! They were great, actually.) So right there during the gift exchange, I did something Riso and Hudson suggest -- observe your reactions rather than "get on the train." And what I observed was something I've read in various places (including, I think, The Wisdom of the Enneagram) that one will observe, that right below the fear was sadness.
Another important aspect of resolutions is accountability; I will keep you updated on how I do. And yet another aspect is starting back when you inevitably fail (if, for example, you eat candy!)
1. Clean countertops twice a week. Take dishes out of dishwasher when they are done, and then put clean dishes in, or wash dishes by hand. Keep inside of sink clean. Watch tv from couch, and put away air mattress (in the interest of decreasing clutter.) Take out trash once a week or more often. Take unread magazines to work. Continue getting rid of unnecessary objects. Organize kitchen cabinets. Check oil twice a month. Write these goals (e.g. clean the countertops on Wednesday) in Franklin Planner. Get new pages for Franklin Planner.
2. Don't eat candy. Make one large, healthy food dish each weekend (that I am in town.) Keep weight at current level or lower. If weight gets to a certain line on the scale, ratchet it back.
As you can see from the specific nature of the above two resolutions, I don't believe in just saying "lose weight" or "clean the house more," but in focusing on how specifically I can accomplish it. I have also purchased some great smelling Method products to help me enjoy the cleaning.
3. See Kathy more often. Put in Franklin Planner.
4. Be more responsible about giving gifts. Put in Franklin Planner.
5. Ask the doctor about my sleepiness. Get a mammogram this year. Put making these appointments in Franklin Planner. Start drinking a little less coffee. Drink decaf every other cup, or switch to tea. More exercise might help with the sleepiness.
6. Take the time to blow-dry hair with round brush.
Here are some other things I intend to do, that for one reason or another are not exactly resolutions:
1. Paint finger- and toenails. Watch seasons 2-4 of The Wire. Take books back to the library so I can start getting books out again. Consider getting a cell phone. These aren't resolutions; more of a to-do list.
2. Continue my studies and blogging. Teach Enneagram class. Continue current dating practices (i.e., Willing to go out; Willing to tell someone to take a hike, Not being attached to a particular outcome; Being happy to be alone.) Continuing current good practices is important, but clearly doesn't fall under the rubric of resolutions.
3. There are a couple work-related changes that are being made. These aren't resolutions because they've already been planned for some time.
4. Undoubtably I will flirt with various physical exercise regimens throughout the year. This is not a resolution because I do not have a particular plan in mind.
OK, now let's turn to Riso and Hudson, and see what they have to say for 6's. Will it be cleaning the countertops?
1. Learn to be more present to your anxiety, to explore it, and to come to terms with it. Work creatively with your tensions without turning to excessive amounts of alcohol or other drugs to allay them. In fact, if you are present and breathing fully, anxiety can be energizing, a kind of tonic that can help make you more productive and aware of what you are doing.
2. You tend to get edgy or testy when you are upset or angry, and you can even turn on others and blame them for things you have done or brought on yourself. Be aware of your pessimism: it results in dark moods and negative thought patterns that you tend to project on reality.
3. Sixes tend to overreact when they are under stress and feeling anxious. Learn to identify what makes you overreact. Also realize that almost none of the things you have feared so much has actually come true.
4. Even if things are as bad as you think, your fearful thoughts weaken you and your ability to change things for the better. You can't always manage external events, but you can manage your own thoughts.
5. Work on becoming more trusting. There are doubtless several people in your life you can turn to who care about you and who are trustworthy. If not, go out of your way to find someone trustworthy, and allow yourself to get close to that person.
6. Others probably think better of you than you realize, and few people are really out to get you. In fact, your fears tell you more about your attitudes toward others than they indicate about others' attitudes toward you.
7. You are highly responsible in many areas, but you can be afraid of accepting responsibility for mistakes. You may fear others will jump down your throat, but most people respect those who take responsibility for their actions, especially if they have made a mistake.
8. You want to feel secure, but this will never be possible unless you are secure with yourself. You need to focus on becoming more self-affirming -- developing a realistic belief in yourself and your own abilities. A good way to do this is by getting more grounded in your body and allowing your fretting mind to become more quiet. When this happens, you will naturally feel more confident and supported by life.
9. Examine your attitudes toward authority. Do you reflexively rebel and resist authority? Do you seek it out, hiding behind an "I was only following orders" attitude? For most Sixes, issues with authority are highly charged. The greater your awareness is of your unconscious attitudes in this department, the more you will be able to recognize the authority of your own inner wisdom.
10. Be fair with others and tell them what is on your mind, lest you appear indecisive or defensive. Any of the alternatives cause conflicts and tensions in your relationships.
11. Most of your issues have to do with finding reliable sources of guidance and support outside of yourself. It is good to remember that many of these sources can be useful up to a point, but none of them can provide the kind of unwavering stability and unerring wisdom you want. Only your true nature can give you a deep sense of solidity and capacity in the world, because only the spontaneous intelligence of your own soul can respond to each unique situation freshly. So be grateful for the many sources of support in your life, but lean on them less. You have within you everything you need to move through life with dignity and grace.
Wow, I'm really not feeling most of 'em. I trust others; I take responsibility for my mistakes. Becoming aware of projection and knowing what situations make me overreact are good ideas. I think that meditation (and other forms of spirituality) is the subtext for some of these (having read Riso/Hudson and met Hudson) and I am trying it, but I classify it under "continuing Enneagram studies" rather than an actual resolution.
But let's look at my actual resolutions. Two of them are, I think, related to 6 issues. I wonder sometimes why at my age I have not developed better cleaning habits. I have started to think it is related to the "you can't make me" theme of type 6, and it's pretty obviously related to type 6 dependency issues (i.e. I shouldn't have to do this for myself.) Also, the gift-giving: I have anxiety about gift-giving... I worry what if the person doesn't like it, and then it's a waste of money? (I have a 6-ish terror of wasting money sometimes.) Also, sometimes I worry that my gift won't be good enough for the other person. I also have a similar anxiety about receiving gifts... possibly even more anxiety, because if you don't like a gift you might have to pretend you do, and I hate to have to pretend. I have memories dating back to age 5 in which I got gifts I didn't like and felt sick about it. This Christmas I was feeling anxiety during the gift exchange, mainly about receiving them, because all my gifts this year were surprises. (I ended up liking them all -- luckily! They were great, actually.) So right there during the gift exchange, I did something Riso and Hudson suggest -- observe your reactions rather than "get on the train." And what I observed was something I've read in various places (including, I think, The Wisdom of the Enneagram) that one will observe, that right below the fear was sadness.
Another important aspect of resolutions is accountability; I will keep you updated on how I do. And yet another aspect is starting back when you inevitably fail (if, for example, you eat candy!)
Saturday, December 29, 2007
"Recommendations for Personality Type Five" vs. My Actual Intentions for 2008
This is another post in a series on New Year's resolutions, based on the "Recommendations" chapter of Understanding the Enneagram. Previous posts on this topic can be found here and here. This time, I'm gonna do things a little differently. First, I'm just gonna tell you more or less exactly what Riso and Hudson said, and then I'll comment in red on whether or not said advice has in any way factored into my resolution-making. Ya dig? Good; let's go.
1. "Learn to notice when your thinking and speculating take you out of the immediacy of your experience... Stay connected with your physicality."I'll get back to this one later.
2. "Make an effort to learn to calm down in a healthy way, without drugs or alcohol." I'm actually pretty good on this one. I will admit that, back in September, after I had spent the whole day nearly drowning (see picture above) and watching Mary Beth and other friends nearly drown, I did drink half a beer to calm down, but no, I haven't reached rock bottom yet, so 2008 will not be the year of total sobriety. "Exercising or using biofeedback techniques will help channel some of your tremendous nervous energy." Other than the aforementioned near-drowning, I have few memories of 2007 that do not involve me sitting on my butt, so exercise is a great suggestion. Getting back into the gym is tops on my resolution list. Also, I did not know what "biofeedback techniques" were, but apparently, they are this. "Meditation, jogging, yoga, and dancing are especially helpful for your type." Another hit! Meditating more regularly is on my list!
3. "When you are caught in your fixation, a sense of perspective can be missing, and with it the ability to make accurate assessments. At such a time, it can be helpful to get the advice of someone you trust while you are gaining perspective on your situation." Whaddaya say, Mary Beth, are you up for talking me off of more ledges in the coming year? If so, I'm down for asking for some advice.
4. "Notice when you are getting intensely involved in projects that do not necessarily support your self-esteem, confidence, or life situation. It is possible to follow many different fascinating subjects, games, and pastimes, but they can become huge distractions from what you know you really need to do." So true. Most of my resolutions this year are about setting aside time for the kinds of things -- timely bill-paying, occasional house-cleaning, grocery shopping -- that I often neglect because they're just so darn boring compared to, say, blogging about the Enneagram. Of course, I could delegate some of those tasks... say, is there anyone out there who would like to help me get my stuff together and, um, connect me with my physicality (see item 1 on this list)? If so, call me, but understand that, as a 5 in good standing, I am obligated to not pick up the phone.
5. "It is important to remember that having conflicts with others is not unusual and that the healthy thing is to work them out rather than reject attachments with people by withdrawing into isolation." Fine. I will pick up the phone. Sometimes. Maybe.
6. "Try to be more cooperative with people and less of a loner."
7. "Some Fives tend to make others feel ill at ease. Because they are so intensely involved in what interests them and find their own ideas so fascinating, they tend to forget the social niceties that help others be comfortable with them. If this applies to you, remember that your very brilliance may be intimidating to many."
8. "Even if other people are not as intelligent, this does not automatically mean that they are stupid or their ideas are worthless. Try to be more accepting of their intellectual limitations without being cynical or harsh in your judgements."
9. "If others begin to avoid you or react to you antagonistically, consider the possibility that you -- rather than they -- have begun the antagonisms. Examine yourself to discover what you may have contributed to your interpersonal conflicts."
10. "Think of ways to develop your compassion for others, to understand what they are going through from their point of view.... Do not use only your head; use more of your heart." I actually think I've been doing a pretty good job with items 6 - 10 lately, so I intend to sort of plateau out and rest on my laurels in the coming year; I hope this will not bite me in the ass.
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