- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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Nine types
The ‘desert fathers’ were the third- and fourth-century forebears of all Christian religious orders. Their extensive theological work comes down to us in our contemporary understanding of Christ and the Trinity – and in the list of ‘seven deadly sins,’ derived from their work on human ‘passions’ or motivations – full of insight into the human condition.
It was Oscar Ichazo in the 1960s who first brought together Gurdjieff’s diagram, the list of seven-plus-two deadly sins, and the concept of ‘types’ of people.
This work was developed by Claudio Naranjo from 1970 onward as a ‘personality typology’ – within a context defined by particular theories in psychoanalysis.
Robert Ochs SJ took Naranjo’s material and developed it specifically for use in spiritual direction – which represents a return to the original purpose of the material as developed by the desert fathers.
From Naranjo and Ochs onward the material is taken up by dozens of different authors with a whole range of perspectives and objectives – some following Ochs into practical Christian spiritual direction, others following Naranjo into the culture of personality typologies, psychodynamic theory, and psychoanalysis.
For most authors the nine ‘personality types’ form the heart of the enneagram system, and the nine types are ‘endlessly described’ in the literature – usually in long lists of characteristics with anecdotes and examples to illustrate each type.
Despite this, there has been no formal consensus on the core definition for each type. It is testimony to the resilience of the system that the types generally emerge in a recognizable form from one author to the next.
Attempts that have been made to define the ‘essence’ of each type have tended to focus on a negative – on the type’s ‘core sin’ or ‘neediness’ or ‘psychodynamic dysfunction.’ These are not good ways to define what it is to be human. The opposite approach – defining in terms of the gifts – also fails to explain the full complexity of the types – or the state of the world.
The present author’s work began as a search for the one essential defining characteristic for each of the nine types in turn.
The concept of the strategy emerged to fill that role.
It began as a marginal note for just one of the nine types: ‘the strategy seems to be…’
Over time it became clear that all of the key features – good, bad, and indifferent – for each of the nine types in turn could be traced back to a single strategy, used by individuals of that type for engaging with the world around. The strategy becomes the defining essence of each type, describing and explaining all of each type’s ‘essential’ characteristics – corrupt and redeemed, effective and ineffective – from a starting point both morally and practically neutral.
The concept of the strategy brings an attractive and powerful simplicity to the system.
It also defines very clearly what the system is about. It is about how individuals engage with the world. It is not primarily about internal processes or psychodynamics or the self in isolation. It is not even primarily about ‘personality’ – however that might be defined. It is very specifically ‘about’ just one thing: how individuals meet the world and interact with it – and so in turn it is about actual temptations faced, and actual gifts used, out there in the world, where it counts.