Jerome Wagner - Nine Lenses on the World: the Enneagram Perspective

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Jerome P. Wagner, Ph.D.

NineLens Press Evanston, Illinois

Nine Lenses on the World: The Enneagram Perspective

Copyright 2010 by Jerome P. Wagner, Ph.D.

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

Cover design and typesetting:

Julia Lauer, Ambush Graphics

ISBN: 978-0-9827620-0-4

First published in 2010

NineLens Press

2603 Broadway

Evanston IL 60201

847-400-6507

www.enneagramspectrum.com

This book is dedicated to Bernie & Mary Kate

Salvatore Maddi (1976) offered a scheme for studying various theories of personality. He noticed it was common for personality theorists to make two kinds of statements. One set describes the things that we all have in common and that are inherent attributes of human beings. These common features dont change much over the course of living and they exert an extensive, pervasive influence on our behavior. So we are all searching for the good, philosophized Aristotle; or we all have a superego, ego, and id, analyzed Freud; or we are all motivated by a self-actualizing tendency, as Carl Rogers reflected.

The other set of statements about personality refers to attributes that are more concrete, closer to the surface, and so can be more readily observed. These features account for the differences among people and are generally learned, rather than genetic. They have a more circumscribed, limited influence on our behavior. The concept of individual traits falls into this set of characteristics. In all the billions of individuals who have ever lived and ever will live there is only one Anne, the youngest daughter of John and Marie Jones with her distinctive temperament, experiences, and responses.

As for those characteristics that are unique to each reader, we anticipate the publication of their autobiographies where those features will be properly extolled.

Somewhere in between what we have in common with everyone else and what we share with no one else lies a partition of characteristics that overlap with some people but not with others. So we share our blond hair and blue eyes with some people but not with raven haired people with green eyes. Or we share a birthday range with people having the same astrological sign but not with others born in different months. Or we have some features in common with fellow extraverts that we dont share with introverts. This is the realm of type . Typologies offer a taxonomy of the different styles of life that are possible.

We can type people in a myriad of ways, grouping short and tall people together, fat and skinny people, Buddhists and Christians, Democrats and Republicans, light and dark skinned, type-A achievers and type-B acedias, open-minded and closed-minded, ad infinitum.

How we sort human characteristics, the various parts of the human puzzle, is a convention. There are no right or wrong ways of organizing our thinking about persons, only useful or less-useful ways. We create certain prototypes in our minds and then fit people into them. Since a prototype is a mental abstraction, no living prototype exists and no one fits the mold exactly. Real people only approximate ideal archetypes.

So personality typologies are useful fictions , some more heuristic than others.

A typography Ive found especially useful is the Enneagram (Any-a-gram) with its spectrum of nine personality styles. Its quite comprehensive and provides a framework for pulling together many features we all share in common; it is remarkably perceptive in delineating the dimensions of nine different personality styles that we have in common with some people; and it leaves a lot of leeway for the particulars of our unique selves. With its numerous applications for personal growth, therapy, spirituality, education, business, etc., the Enneagram theory generates many helpful hypotheses.