User talk:Admin/Critique of Enneagram

From Wikisocion

[edit] Go to the source

According to enneagram.com, the system derives from Plato. You couldn't learn classical socionics from the writings of current professionals; you're not going to learn the enneagram from its modern practicioners. I was hoping McNew would do it but he doesn't seem to be in the mood. Do share with us your findings. tcaudilllg 08:36, 31 March 2009 (BST)

Typologists like to hearken back to Plato because it sounds ancient and reputable. He was simply the first to create a typology, as far as I'm aware. Or are there more concrete connections? I have read some Gurdjieff, but in the work mentioned the Enneagram as a typology was not developed. Gurdjieff only spoke of three types of people -- those of the body (instincts), the heart, and the mind. Even these don't seem to correspond entirely in their content to the 3 divisions of the Enneagram. It has been my impression that the Enneagram only acquired its current content in the mid-20th century. --Admin 15:03, 31 March 2009 (BST)

[edit] Report on the Roots of the Enneagram

OK, I tracked down the supposed Plato connection through the thread at metasocion.com. First observation: it's not Plato, but the neoplatonic movement of the IV century AD, and the role of the 9 passions was proposed by people who were not necessarily part of the platonic tradition — Christian hermits living in the deserts:

It was Evagrius who was to reveal that the Christian aesthetics of the Byzantine deserts had discovered that 9 passions − anger, pride, vainglory, envy, greed, incontinence, gluttony, lust and acedie, distorted human perception and consigned the human search for the divine to the banal and ordinary.

So, the link to Plato himself is extremely tenuous, or simply nonexistent.

The article is mistaken about the term "aesthetics." They mean ascetes who practiced an ascethic lifestyle of self-denial. It doesn't make sense otherwise. Here's more on ascetism and the "desert fathers" who practiced it in the IV century. So the original "9 passions" were formulated in the context of trying to purge oneself of earthly desires and unite with God through a hermit lifestyle. Each person who chose this path encountered different obstacles on his pursuit of self-denial and godliness, depending on his personal makeup. That's where the basic idea of the Enneagram came from, and the idea of transcending the weaknesses inherent to each type.

Ascetism as a philosophy was preserved for centuries in Christian monastic traditions. At some point it connected with Islam through the Sufi tradition: "Sufism evolved not as a mystical but as an ascetic movement, as even the name suggests; the word Sufi may refer to a rough woolen robe of the ascetic. " [1]. A typology such as the Enneagram of the time could be a useful tool for helping understand the challenges different disciples faced on their ascetic path.

Often, in the evolution of ideas, the form is more memorable than the content. For instance, that there are 4 elements (earth, fire, air, water) as opposed to the specific interpretation of these elements. What I find is that the form of philosophical ideas such as this is more resistant to change over time than their content. In other words, although people remember the four elements from 2 millenia ago, the meaning they attribute to them isn't necessarily the same as that of 2000 years ago. That means that, in the case of the Enneagram, what may have been passed down is simply the existence of 9 types, whereas the content and interpretation of those types has almost certainly undergone considerable evolution.

Gurdjieff himself was probably not an ascetic in the sense of the early Christians. For instance, he advocated living a normal sex life. He also did not see spiritual development as taking place through overcoming moral weaknesses. It seems that by this time the 9 types had lost much of their initial content. Today, the proponents of the Enneagram are not ascetics by any stretch of the imagination, but believe in self-perfection by transcending one's weaknesses, which is a more general philosophy than ascetism. Today's Enneatypes preserve some of the form of the original 9 ascete types, but now the main emphasis has shifted from describing and overcoming vices to describing personality. If the original emphasis had been preserved, I would expect to see type descriptions that focused mainly on the 9 passions, their influence in personality, and the route for that type to overcome its particular vice. Today, when you read "the 7's vice is gluttony" tacked on to a type description, it seems like a totally peripheral aspect of the type as opposed to the central aspect that it originally was.

So that's my assessment of the Enneagram's roots. Today's enneatypes are similar in form but different in content from the original ones, which can only be understood within the context of the Christian ascetic tradition where it was born. --Admin 03:14, 1 April 2009 (BST)

Any links between the vices seems tenuous. To start, it is necessary to break them down by element; type is too broad. Anger is clearly Fe(N); pride is Se(T); vainglory is Fe(S); envy is probably Fi(N), but I can't prove it's not Fi(S) -- no wait, there's lust also, which I think we can set as Fi(N), therefore envy is Fi(S); sloth is Ti(S); greed is Te(N); gluttony is... probably Si(F). Incontinence refers to lack of control... it almost certainly refers to Ni(F), given Ni(F) is the function of behavior.

Altogether it would appear the enneagram corresponds directly to 9 of the 16 elements. Missing are vices for uncoordination (Te(S)), ignorance (Ti(N)), lack of contact (Se(F)), unhealth (Si(T)), naivete (Ne(F)), lack for imagination (Ne(T)), and lack for vision (Ni(T)). All in all, the enneagram seems to have been intended as a typing system on basis of PoLR. (human weakness) It is an incomplete Model A.

Notice that some aspects of the 9 concentrate on the lack of a thing, others on too much. Which means there should be 32 total elements in the vice system. tcaudilllg 08:39, 1 April 2009 (BST)