Uses of Enneagram?

[silverchris9]

Okay, so, I know that I am E4w3, sx/so, tritype 4-7-9 (or possibly 4-9-7). What I want to know now is, what do I do with this?

I know what to do with socionics. I observe behavior patterns and use socionics-related information to give me hints as to what I can try to improve social interactions. If I feel a vague "hmmm, I think I can relax and let my guard down around this person" vibe, socionics encourages me to go for it. If I feel a vague, "oh, god, me and this person just aren't going to get along" vibe, socionics lets me off the hook and makes me feel like I don't absolutely have to get on perfectly with everybody. Great. Useful. Interesting.

But what do I do with enneagram? Theoretically it's good for personal development, but... eh, I don't feel like it helps me much to say "stop focusing on your fantasies about yourself and see yourself clearly." I mean, I essentially consist of my fantasies about myself, and I feel like any attempt to define myself "clearly" is reductionist. And what about this 3-wing thing? What does that mean I should do? Should I stop trying to be successful because I'm just using success as a way to not focus on the issues with my soul or whatever? Instinctual variants? Tritype?

I read all these enneagram descriptions, and I get the ideas. I can find the ones that fit me quite easily. But I don't feel like I get anything out of them beyond a series of numbers I can use to describe myself. Whoop-de-doo.

So, 16types friends, tell me how to use the enneagram to actually be helpful to my life. Also, if you can point me towards some resources that go deeper into the enneagram, if there are theoretical underpinnings or just anything that goes beyond regular boring type descriptions, that would be most appreciated.

[DirectorAbbie]

Another label in itself is helpful. It's nice to be able to be as specific as possible about who you are without boring the listener (nothing wrong with confusing them).

It's nice to know other people's enneagram types to better understand their quirks and why they've been offended by something silly.

[silverchris9]

It's nice to know other people's enneagram types to better understand their quirks and why they've been offended by something silly.

Okay, this sounds useful. But how? I need examples, por favor.

[silverchris9]

You use it to manipulate others. If you know their motivations, you know how to massage their egos. POWER!

Example?

[DirectorAbbie]

Okay, this sounds useful. But how? I need examples, por favor.

A two likes to do things for people, but will get really upset if they don't express their gratitude. Routinely saying "Thanks for ___." keeps them happy.

A five likes alone-time. Don't expect them to feel lonely.

[Creepy-male]

The Enneagram is sort of like your map for spiritual/personal development.

3s want to feel loved, Nines want to feel like they have some sort of inviolable consistency ("boundaries"; I like how the enneagram slideshows Xerx posted mentioned of Nines that they represent the part of us that wants to merge with something greater without losing our sense of identity. I've been exploring worlds like that as of late). There's bits and pieces inside of you that are deeply attached to this.

Total tangent, but here's something I've been thinking about. Lately I've been thinking about myself as a discrete microcosm, sort of. I have my own consciousness, my Observer, and a multitude of other awarenesses that I haven't become aware of yet. These make up discrete bubbles in a bigger bubble, which is my "Quantum me", to borrow terminology from my psychologist. Inside my own awareness are bits and pieces that are attached to Ego stuff that feel lonely, jealous, mad at me, whatever. Outside my bubble there are more bubbles that make up other people, and outside all that, maybe many dimensions of bubbles up, is Everything. The Universe. God, even.

My world can zoom in on these feelings, or bits of them; it can tune it out altogether by focusing on something distracting, either through narcotisation or escapism; or it can turn outward to this almost-cavern I'm inside of, and breathe a sigh of relief that yes--everything is connected (this can be a trap too, as it can double as a form of escapism, and a way of escaping challenging the bits about me as a Nine that hold back my spiritual development. That is what my fixation of Indolence means: I switch off and lament "Too much to do! To uncomfortable to face!").

The Enneagram is useful because it teaches you about what your unique challenges are that you need to face in your personal development. It can also be a wonderful tool for actually becoming aware of what happens deep, deep inside of you. (It is my opinion that introverted types look inside but then get distracted, and either fail to see things (like me), or have their inner view overrun by emotions (perhaps like you as a Four, Chris?))

As for your instincts, they cue you into the neuroses you see stalking you. Self-Pres types constantly feel their stability and security are under threat, Sexual types feel keenly the pangs of incompleteness, NFI what the deal with Social types is, because that's my Instinctual PoLR

It's often a balancing act between the extremes of your dominant instinct. For me as a Sexual type, it's finding a balance between being a stone-hearted horny macho guy and being needy and clingy and mergy.

Good resources for this: The Enneagram Blogspot: The Instinctual Variants
Ocean Moonshine (go to your type's specific page).

[Ezra]

silverchris, check this out:

Practical Applications of the Enneagram

[discojoe]

There is no practical application other than handing Ezra's father British Pounds.

[Creepy-male]

I think e-types are most useful for self-development stuff. Understanding yourself and others better. It's a fast convenient language you can use to circumvent tedious psychological analysis and get to the point quicker.

I think the starting point should be to do learn the following....

1) The head, heart, gut triads
2) The 9 type descriptions

This is really the core foundation for everything imho. Once you have both of those down, you can easily go about typing people.

Everything else either gives you...

-more specific information to distinguish the personality further
-ways in which the personality of a person evolves and changes
-different ways to group certain types together or see trends between different types

[Jarno]

What I want to know now is, what do I do with this?

Forget all about it. Enneagram is a pseudo science, and not yet useful.

[Airman]

Socionics is also pseudo-science. It isn´t accepted as a part of formal Psychology science in the West.

Silverchris9...

You´re E4... by knowing the DOWNSIDE of E4 you can know and improve yourself in lots of things. E4 means your vice is ENVY, but if you study enneagram more you will see that many authors say and you´ll observe that E4s have a tendency to feel MEDIOCRE, this is why they´re envious, because they often project on other people the grandiosity they cannot see in themselves (this projection is a lie). They do not want to feel average. To them being average is being mediocre and they usually have this complex of being mediocre. So they can over-act in things such as arts because they want to prove to themselves that they´re not mediocre. E4s want to be grandiose. They´d like to be Beethovens, Bachs, Wagners, wonderful writers and poets of the past. They often dwell in their own personal past much more than is healthy, fantasasing that those were wonderful better times when in fact, they pretty much sucked.

E4s are attracted to melancholy, so keep an eye on that. Don´t feel melancholic, this is not healthy for E4s, it is better to feel really happy. E4s, because of being in the emotional triad, can feel extremely happy or extremely sad. Take care not to feel extremely sad, if that happens, know that it´s your ego pulling you down and have a laugh. Try to be happy with the here and now, because E4s live mostly in the past. Try to be in the here and now. Also, look at your integration and disintegration points. On your integration or growth point you have E1, which is btw my type. Anyway, when you get more critic of others like E1s are, you´ll see they´re not very happy, not grandiose, not very talented and are for the most part just suckers and idiots (ok I might be exaggerating because I´m an E1) but anyway, they´re just regular people with so much imperfections that if you could see them like I do, you´d vomit for weeks. So the problem with self-esteem which E4s have which is basically to feel mediocre and to feel that everyone else is great, to feel shitty while everyone else is awesome, this goes away when you move to E1 which is your growth point.

Check your stress point. It is E2, and then you acquire the vice of that point which is PRIDE. There is nothing more irritating for me than an E4 disintegrated demonstrating pride while I can actually see that inside he/she still feels shitty. Watch out for this. B-Real. Like that rapper. He´s probably E4, btw. Don´t fool yourself. Don´t live too much in your dreams. You have wonderful visions. But don´t let yourself get too carried by them. Their just expressions of your Essence, which is Unlimited Flow. This means you have an unlimited flow of great unique ideas and everything related to arts and feelings which you can express. Try to cultivate your basic Virtue, which is Equanimity. It is a feeling that everyone is equal, just human beings, great human beings, but also beings who poo and stuff like that. Not rats, not angels from heaven. Get away from seeing yourself and people in general as very much different from each other, they´re not. If you see this way, then you will never feel inferior or less talented, nor grandiose and too full of yourself. You´ll just enjoy your own inner treasure and see that everyone has its own inner treasure too, and there´s no one with a better treasure.

I hope this helped.

[Airman]

You may want to download the basic Helen Palmer books on Enneagram, they´re available in PDF in 4shared and other such sites.

There are also good sites such as:

Enneagram Institute: Enneagram Testing & Training

There is a cool one called moonshine, it´s very underground and very good accurate information:

Type Stackings - the enneagram ...info from the underground

These are the best ones I could find so far on the internet. Better detailed information can be obtained mostly from books on the Enneagram. There are some wonderful authors most of whom are from the USA:

Helen Palmer, Don Riso, Richard Rohr, Hurley & Dobson, are some that come to mind whom I´ve read and they have great insight on the subject.

[Jarno]

Unlike Socionics that nobody has verified in any way despite the theory of functions being around for a century....?

Then go ahead and date your conflictor.

[norph]

Okay, so, I know that I am E4w3, sx/so, tritype 4-7-9 (or possibly 4-9-7). What I want to know now is, what do I do with this?

I don't care what you do with this. If you're really so uninventive that you need other people to tell you what to do, then I suggest that you move to Sitka and open an electrical appliances repair shop, which is as good a suggestion as any in my opinion.

[FDG]

So you say that a bad dating experience proves the existence of conflictors? And that such an incident also proves that Socionics is more of a science than the enneagram. You make me lol.

Show me the data PROVING SCIENTIFICALLY that conflictor marriages fail more often than, say, dual marriages. If there is anything to Socionics, it should be REALLY easy to prove. Of course you would have to type the married couples when they marry, and follow them for years, but it should have happened a long time ago, and it hasn't. I have never seen even ONE such study supporting the theory. Actually, the attempted studies I have seen so far, prove nothing, and the conclusions are that they must have mistyped the people.... ahahah...

So far, I mostly see a group of desperate people in Russia trying to earn money somehow, and a bunch of kids on this site using Socionics to explain their personal failures. Be it in dating or otherwise.

There's been studies in Russia, they show how most marriages are actually among duals already...(which isn't surprising to me at all, actually most long-standing couples I know are dual couples)...I'm too lazy to find them tho.

[norph]

So you say that a bad dating experience proves the existence of conflictors? And that such an incident also proves that Socionics is more of a science than the enneagram. You make me lol.

How is that remotely what he said or implied?

[FDG]

As long as those people are typed after they are happily married

Not happily, they were typed after they had been married for a certain amount of time, I remember there wasn't any "satisfaction" rating associated. I'm sure you can find them on the russian version of socioniko.net website, through a google translator or babylon etc. (that's where I did find the article I'm talking about).

[Jarno]

So you say that a bad dating experience proves the existence of conflictors? And that such an incident also proves that Socionics is more of a science than the enneagram. You make me lol.

Show me the data PROVING SCIENTIFICALLY that conflictor marriages fail more often than, say, dual marriages. If there is anything to Socionics, it should be REALLY easy to prove. Of course you would have to type the married couples when they marry, and follow them for years, but it should have happened a long time ago, and it hasn't. I have never seen even ONE such study supporting the theory. Actually, the attempted studies I have seen so far, prove nothing, and the conclusions are that they must have mistyped the people.... ahahah...

So far, I mostly see a group of desperate people in Russia trying to earn money somehow, and a bunch of kids on this site using Socionics to explain their personal failures. Be it in dating or otherwise.

it's not necessery for me to persuade you, you will soon notice socionics relationships yourself and then you'll persuade yourself of me being right. Let me know when it happened.

[norph]

We discussed whether or not Socionics is more or less scientific than the Enneagram. I see both as pseudo-sciences, but the Enneagram has the benefit of being a lot easier to use, as it's easier to type people in the enneagram than in Socionics. That was my point.

A perfectly fine opinion, all of which has nothing to do with what he said or with your tendency to put words in his mouth (at least in how it appears to me from reading this thread).

[norph]

Irrelevant.

It's irrelevant that you accuse Jarno of basing his opinions off of "a bad dating experience [which] proves the existence of conflictors" when he said nothing of the kind?

In that case, surely your views about the enneagram's utility are the result of your sexual insecurity and latent homosexuality. Yes, that must be it, it explains perfectly why you look for other people's neuroses and thus more easily see their negative fixations than non-normative attributes. Utter lack of evidence for this point of view is irrelevant.

[norph]

You seriously aren't worth my time.

Okay.

[blankblank]

This long, detailed description of type four may be helpful: link

Personally, the type 6 one really helped me put into words what I've been wanting out of life. Dunno if it will help you, too.

[neverthesame]

Both the Enneagram and socionics are almost useless. Us people play with types like we knew what we're actually talking about, as most typings are ludicrously inaccurate. Besides, both systems teach a lot of crap together with the good stuff.
They are useful for self-discovery and introspection nevertheless as they can show you your strengths and weaknesses. But they don't really teach you how to increase your abilities for example as they're far from practical, so as I said - basically useless.

[Creepy-male]

They are useful for self-discovery and introspection nevertheless as they can show you your strengths and weaknesses. But they don't really teach you how to increase your abilities for example as they're far from practical, so as I said - basically useless.

To vaguely paraphrase something Tom Condon said, the Enneagram is like a roadmap, but it gets treated like a vehicle. It most certainly is useless as a vehicle... pondering about your current position and where you could go, well, that obviously doesn't get you anywhere.

The problem is not that the Enneagram is useless. The problem is that the Enneagram is useless as a vehicle. It can tell you where to go, where to avoid going, what you'll face getting there, and the various signs that you're on the right (or wrong) track.

If you had a vehicle, but no roadmap, how would you know where to go? The Enneagram is most certainly useful if you think of it that way, no?

[Gilly]

The Enneagram is vastly more useful than Socionics, assuming you type yourself correctly. I typed myself as 7w8 for the longest time and it was just kind of an excuse for me to be me, but when I came to grips with the fact that I was a 3, it actually started to help me sort some things about myself out, and it continues to give me a valuable perspective on my actions that I would not have fully objectified otherwise.