This is in reponse to Kirby’s comments on this posting.
Kirby, hi and thanks for writing. When you say you’ve been typed by experts, what does that mean? Have you met with enneagram teachers or taken classes? Just curious.
You’re right, the books really contradict each other. And so do many teachers. That’s one reason why, when it comes to enneagram typing, your hunches are most important. Second most important is to locate a teacher you really trust and read his or her work thoroughly. The two I value the very, very most are Helen Palmer and Eli Jaxon-Bear. Their books are my favorites and I’ve re-read both many times. However, what I got the most value from were Helen’s audio book and Eli’s audio book. I’ve had both audio sets in my car for probably 5 years and I listen to them over and over, randomly. Or when I’m about to meet with someone I feel nervous about, I listen to the tape about them when I feel confident I know their type.
I agree with you that thinking of your young self is very important when trying to type yourself. This is when your responses and aspirations were less processed. Soif young Kirby seemed more fourish, I’d count that as another vote for 4.
I can’t really say that any particular test typed me more accurately than another. It was more of a cumulative thing. And then I made friends with someone who knows the enneagram very, very well and he helped me type myself with confidence. So, again, it’s really a combination of factors: reading, taking tests, and trying to talk with people who know the enneagram. Once you know it, it’s not so hard to tell who is who. Although it’s very important to always, always, always leave room for doubt. No one wants to be ghetto-ized as a number and it can be harmful to do that to others or to yourself. So keep doubting.
If you can find your subtype (or instinctual variant), that can be helpful in defining type.
Enneagram numbers are like flavors of ice cream. You can’t quite explain what strawberry tastes like, but you know it when you taste it. It’s similar with the types–often, I don’t know exactly why, but I’ll feel certain that this one is an 8 and that one is a 2. It just feels a certain way to be around them.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Robert Birkenes // Jan 17, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Thanks, Susan and Kirby. I *finally* feel comfortable typing myself, based on the two tests on the Dutch drummer guy’s website that Kirby recommended, plus all the others that Susan had listed earlier.
I am “most likely a type 9 (the Peacemaker) with balanced wings,
Sexual variant”. Yeah! I feel close to “8. The Challenger” and “1. The Reformer”, and that’s what balanced wings means, right? Sexual = prefers one-on-one contacts. Sounds like me.
I had previously come up with “2. The Helper” on some tests, but the suggestion to go back to our personality *before* we began to work on changing (improving) ourselves… that helped me to get to my original nature.
Now I am nervous that this information will change the way Susan and others relate to me. Does that nervousness indicate that I am secretly a Loyalist (worry) or Achiever (fear of being unpopular)?!
Thanks, this has been a fun discussion. Best wishes, Bob
2 Kirby Olson // Jan 17, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Hi, Susan, thanks for this valuable response. You asked me exactly who were the experts and how they typed me.
I’ll give you a short history, but I’m not sure if I should name names. Well, I will, but I won’t tell all!
I first got on to the enneagram when I was living in Finland. I found a book about the system at a giant bookstore in Helsinki called Akateeminen (Academic) bookstore, connected to Helsinki University. My wife (a Finn) was working at Nokia Telecommunications Company and we were in Helsinki for one of her meetings and I had the day to browse. I came across the system in the bookstore and immediately turned to the eight, and read it, and thought, wham, that’s my boss. (I was working at an English department in Finland.)
It was like having an X-ray.
I then went through the rest and thought I was a seven. I told my wife and read the description, and she said, you’re definitely not a seven. You’re way too … I think she said depressive.
I ordered ALL the books: Riso, Hurley & Dobson, Palmer (as well as the tape you mention), and maybe a dozen others (Rohr, Thompson, Bast, to name only a few). I must have forty enneagram books. I did research on the net, and read all the sites, and took all the tests. It was a very helpful thing to be able to see others like you were looking at an X-ray.
But I was never able to see myself very clearly. I thought: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 9. I always knew I was not a 2 or an 8. I don’t like to help other people, and I don’t like to dominate other people.
When I got back to the states I called Mary Bast. She had a free phone deal where you could talk to her for an hour for free. I must have been one of the first to call, because she let me talk to her for a long while. She was likable, and we talked for about six months. She thought I was a four, or maybe a nine. Finally, she didn’t know, I think. I think she too got lost in the trees and couldn’t see the forest after a while.
We ended up just chatting about daily events in our lives, and then she got busy with several big contracts, and that was that. Mary’s a nine.
I next contacted Elizabeth Wagele, who has become a friend. This was about four years of emails, mostly funny, but also kind of personal. Lots of hilarity. Liz is a five.
She wasn’t going to answer, but I think she thinks I’m a five or a six. What’s interesting though is that it seems to me that we tend to see other people as perhaps more like us, and so perhaps, more likely to be our own number. Do you think this is true?
The editor of the Enneagram Monthly (I’ve written some articles for them) has let me rattle on about how hard it is to find my type in the pages of that esteemed journal. Several experts there have weighed in on my case, and some of them have called me, to try to figure out my number. I can’t remember all their names! I think I am a little like a pistachio nut that won’t open, so it arouses the interest of the experts, perhaps.
Sterling Doughty who studied with Ichazo himself, thought at first I was a four, but then he thought maybe I am a five after we exchanged a few dozen emails. He’s a retired airline pilot who lives in Switzerland.
Clarence Thompson said for certain I am a four (he’s been the only one who was absolutely absolutely certain, and said he would place his whole professional identity on it). I emailed him after testing out his website (Enneagram Central), and we exchanged a few hundred emails.
Jack Labanauskas (editor of Enneagram Monthly) thinks I might be a seven.
I think I have to be either a four or a five, and Clarence Thompsen convinced me that the five is an accretion due to years of graduate study, and teaching philosophy.
I really held out for about a year. And it’s been several years since I was in touch with Clarence. But my hunch is that he’s right.
For one thing: I was never interested in science or math but always thought they were ridiculous. Did you think that, too?
I always LOVED the arts, and still do. Now I can listen to a scientific theory, but I have no idea why anyone cares or why people spend their lives among test tubes, in white coats.
At any rate, I’m either a five with a four wing, or a four with a five wing. The subtype is also difficult to determine. If I’m a five, then I’m a sexual five. Because I can talk to people easily and develop real rapport with just about anyone in a matter of seconds.
I don’t think an SP Five or even a Social Five could do that.
I might be a Social Four with a Five wing. That’s my closest guess, if I’m a four. The subtypes have not been described very well, and again, all the different writers have subtle criteria shifts, and then of course, people are constantly trying to come up with a new twist, so that they can feel original, and get some of the moolah, I suppose, or at least some of the fame.
That’s fine, but it muddies the system.
I teach the book The Literary Enneagram by Judith Searle to beginning literature students. They mostly get their types by the end of the semester, and so this is forming a pool of people whose types I can actually see. I’ve never been to a conference or met a real enneagram expert. It’s expensive to do that, and I’m just a teacher at a state college with four small kids. So I can’t get about to conferences.
But many of the students think I’m a four. I have them guess at the end of the class in a secret vote kind of thing, and they vote that I’m a four. This sort of confirms four, for me.
At any rate, thanks for getting back to me, and best wishes.
Oh, another thing. I wrote a novel just before I got on to the enneagram thing. It’s called Temping. In it, a lonely temp in Seattle dreams of having an artistic, spontaneous life. It sounds very much like what the fours generally end up doing: having a lowly ordinary life, but dreaming of something more special and wonderful. In the novel, the lead character slaughters a peacock. I think he did this out of envy for the fact that the peacock was special, and he was not.
The book got published in Seattle by a small press called Black Heron Press, and has gotten a lot of good reviews — there are at least a half dozen that you can google for (and one lousy one from Kirkus Reviews, which hurt my feelings).
At any rate, this was a relatively long answer to a relatively short question.
But I could have gone on for days until you were dazed.
Why don’t you tell us the process by which you figured out you were a four?
3 susan // Jan 17, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Robert–it’s great that you feel like you know your type. And don’t worry, it won’t change the way anyone relates to you, esp me!
Keep reading about 9, anything and everything you can.
And it’s funny that at the end of your post you wonder “am I really a 6? a 3?”3, 6, and 9 have a special relationship to each other. When you learn about the lines of integration and distintegration, you’ll see that when 9 feels good, he integrates at the high side of 3. When under stress, he disintegrates at the low side of 6.
4 susan // Jan 17, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Kirby, this is an amazing post!! It’s so so cool that you’ve met all these teachers and gotten their help with typing. And become friends with some. This is wonderful.
It may be true that we tend to see people as more like us. I seem to know a lot of 4s… I’ve asked myself the same question you ask, and I just don’t know the answer.
It’s interesting that you’ve met someone who studied with Ichazo. I believe I’ve read some posts from Sterling on various enneagram boards over the years.
You emailed with Clarence a few hundred times?! That’s amazing.
I think you can be a 5 but have no interest in science just as I think you can love art and not be a 4. It’s deeper than that. Nonetheless, it sounds like you’re settling for the meantime at 4 w 5 wing or 5 w 4 wing for now.
I appreciate you looking to the subtypes for support in typing yourself. I think that’s very important. I once bought audio of a talk given by Claudio Naranjo on subtypes. It was the best thing ever on subtypes. Here is the link: http://www.conferencerecording.com/aaaListTapes.asp?CID=IEA24
I really like Judith Searle’s book. Do you know of any site that types new movies/books? Tom Condon used to, but seems not to anymore.
I sort of can’t remember what exactly made me convinced I was a 4. I think it was listening to a Helen Palmer tape of a 4 panel.
Will check out your book!
5 Kirby Olson // Jan 18, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Susan, yes, thanks so much for the feedback. No, I know of no site where anyone is typing movies. Sometimes Enneagram Monthly has someone who types a book or a movie, but I don’t know of anyone doing it regularly. Condon’s stuff is excellent.
Thanks for the link on Naranjo.
Also, Condon has new footage up — if you put his name into Google, and then put in enneagram, you get 4 and 5 minute chunks of 9 enneagram types, and other stuff.
The four he has in there is a LOT more like than the five. But of course there are subtle variations.
Condon says in the movie guide that the character James Spader in sex, lies, and videotape is an enneagram five. I can see myself a little like that character, too.
And then there’s the MBTI. I’m kind of between INTP and INFP there, too.
Can’t decide.
Like you say, it’s fun to doubt! And maybe it’s important to doubt the whole system!
Best,
Kirby
6 susan // Jan 21, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Will check out Condon’s site–thanks for the tip.
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