Quote:
Vanity is a passionate concern for one’s image, or a passion of living for the eyes of others. Living for appearances implies that the focus of concern is not in one’s own experience, but in the anticipation or fantasy of the experience of another, and thus the insubstantiality of the vain pursuit. Nothing could be more appropriately called “vanity of vanities,” of which the preacher in Ecclesiastes speaks, than living for an ephemeral and insubstantial image (rather than out of oneself).
To speak of vanity as a living for a self-image is not different than speaking of narcissism, and indeed we may regard narcissism as a universal aspect of egoic structure, mapped on the right corner of the enneagram. Yet, since the word “narcissism” has been used in reference to more than one personality syndrome, and mostly since the publication of DSM III in reference to our ennea-type VII, I have not included it in this chapter heading.
Vanity is present especially in the “hysteroid” region of the enneagram (comprising ennea-types II, III, and IV), yet in the case of pride, as we have seen, it is satisfied through a combination of imaginative self-inflation and the support of selected individuals, while in ennea-type III, instead, the person mobilizes herself to “prove” objectively her value through an active implementation of the self-image in the face of a generalized other. This leads to an energetic pursuit of achievement and good form as defined by quantitative or generally accepted standards.
The difference between ennea-types III and IV lies mostly in the fact that the former identifies with the image that it “sells,” while the latter is more in touch with the denigrated self-image and is thus characterized by the experience of a vanity never fulfilled. As a result, ennea-type III is cheerful, ennea-type IV depressive.
As mentioned in the introduction, Ichazo spoke of “deceit” rather than vanity as the passion of ennea-type III, relegating vanity to the sphere of the fixations. Throughout most of my teaching experience I have chosen, rather, to consider vanity as a passion akin to pride, while seeing in deception the cognitive core or fixation in ennea-type III character. The word “deceit” is not the best to evoke the particular manner of deception that goes with vanity, however—different from the lying of ennea-type II or the conning of VIII, for instance; rather than a lack of truthfulness in regard to facts (ennea-type III may be a faithful, factual reporter) there is in vanity a lack of truthfulness in regard to feelings and pretense.
In contrast to the comic vein of ennea-type II and the tragic vein of ennea-type IV, the characteristic mood of ennea-type III is one of neutrality or feeling control—where only “correct feelings” are acknowledged and expressed.
Though pride (superbia) and not vanity is included among the traditional capital sins of Christianity, it seems that both ideas are commonly juxtaposed—as is suggested by the common iconography that depicts pride through a woman looking at a mirror (as in Hieronymus Bosch’s “Seven Deadly Sins”).
It is interesting to observe that the characterological disposition involved in ennea-type III is the only one not included in DSM-III—which raises the question as to whether this may be related to the fact of its constituting the modal personality in American society since the twenties.