Claudio Naranjo - Character and Neurosis: An Integrative View

TO THE MEMORY OF KAREN HORNEY

Gentle-rebel of psychoanalysis
who was the first to see through what many
are today discovering and who is alive in
this book through her insight
into character and her faith in self-analysis.
Through her indirect influence I began to become an
effective psychotherapist and to her I am
grateful for bringing us Fritz Perls to America .

Books by Claudio Naranjo

Character & Neurosis: An Integrative View

The Enneagram of Society: Healing the Soul to Heal
the World

Ennea-Type Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker Enneatypes in Psychotherapy

The End of Patriarchy

and the Dawning of a Tri-une Society

The Divine Child and the Hero

Gestalt Therapy: The Attitude and Practice of an Atheoretical Experientialism

Gestalt sin Fronteras

La Vieja y Novsima Gestalt: Actitud y Prctica

How to Be

Techniques of Gestalt Therapy

The Healing Journey

The One Quest

The Psychology of Meditation

Earth , bas-relief sculpture by Totila Albert, 1962
Artistic Rendering by Kelly Rivera

ISBN: 0-89556-066-6

1994 by Claudio Naranjo
All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
First Printing: July, 1994.
Second Printing: June, 1996
Third Printing: October, 2001
Fourth Printing: October, 2003
Interior pages printed on 100% recycled paper.

Published by:
GATEWAYS/IDHHB, INC.
PO Box 370
Nevada City, CA 95959
(800) 869-0658 or (530) 272-0180

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Naranjo, Claudio
Character and neurosis : an integrative view / Claudio Naranjo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-89556-066-6 : $24.95
1. Enneagram. I. Title.

BF698.35.E54N37 1994 94-21263
155.26dc20 CIP

Acknowledgments Portions of this book have been published previously in the following Gateways Books editions: Ennea-type Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker 1990, 1991 by Claudio Naranjo . Protoanalysis is a registered service mark of the Arica Institute, Inc. Editor and Project Manager for Gateways: Iven Lourie
Cover design by Nancy Christie.
Cover art: Drawing by Kelly Rivera after bas-relief sculpture Earth by Totila Albert, 1962. Quotations of Karen Horney reprinted from Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney, by permission of W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. Copyright 1950 by W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., renewed 1991 by Jeffrey Rubin and Stephanie Steinfeld. Quotations of Theodore Millon from Disorders of Personality, DSM-III: Axis II , reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1981 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Quotations of Catherine R. Coulter from Portraits of Homoeopathic Medicines , Vol. 1, 1986, by Catherine R. Coulter, and Vol. 2, 1988 by Catherine R. Coulter, both published by North Atlantic Books, current editions from Ninth House Publishing (Bethesda, MD: 2001) Volumes 1 and 2, reprinted by permission of Catherine R. Coulter.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

These are the hindrances: the darkness of unwisdom, self-assertion, lust, hate, attachment. The darkness of unwisdom is the field of the others The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in these hindrances.

PATANJALI BOOK II

So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth, -wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,
By the oergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much oer-leavens
The form of plausive manners; that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect
Being natures livery, or fortunes star,
Their virtues else, be they as pure as grace ,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
For that particular fault: the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt,
To his own scandal.

SHAKESPEARE (HAMLET - ACT I - SCENE IV)

Introspection is the first step toward transformation, and I understand that, after knowing himself, nobody can continue being the same.

THOMAS MANN - ON HIMSELF

PREFACE

by Frank Barron

Claudio Naranjo has always been associated in my mind with surprise and a touch of mystery. In the beginning I simply knew that someone existed in far-off Chile who was responsible for visits I would receive at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research in Berkeley. The visitors were invariably non-psychologists and Chileans, and they would ring the front doorbell at the Institute and ask to see me, saying it had been suggested to them to do so by Dr. Claudio Naranjo. Invariably they would turn out to be interested in my ideas about simplicity and complexity, symmetry and asymmetry. Some were artists, some were architects, none were psychologists or psychiatrists. They arrived steadily enough, one by one, that it became customary fro the receptionists to call me on the inter-com and say, Its another architect from Chile.

So I knew Claudio simply as the source of some very entertaining and intelligent interested parties who had a curiosity about the same sorts of things that interested me. Then one day, when I was teaching at Harvard, Claudio himself appeared, unannounced, at my door in the Center for the Study of Personality. He seemed very shy, introduced himself diffidently, and almost immediately we became friends. I knew him immediately to be unique and uncategorizable. Several years later, when he was staying in Berkeley himself, I asked him to be a subject in a double-blind experiment I was doing, comparing the effects of alcohol, psylocybin, and mescaline on various behaviors, including finger-painting. Claudio was one of the lucky ones, and he was soon deeply engrossed in his paintings, an occupation new to him. (He also made some piano compositions and played them while under the same beneficent influence.) A bit later I was preparing an article on this and other experiments for Scientific American , and I asked him whether I might use his painting as one of the illustrations, perhaps with identification of the subject. He laughed and replied, Frank, yes of course, and you can print my MMPI profile next to it if you wish.

In the light of the formidable effort Dr. Naranjo has made in integrating typological approaches to personality, I think this a telling anecdote. He takes typology very seriously, as one should, but attaches no onus to any group membership. He is a typologist who does not think in terms of groups or diagnoses, though he will do so as necessary. His typologies, I should add, are dynamic not static; his framework is appropriately simple and symmetrical, but the inner differentiation is complex and somehow open-ended, or what I might call asymmetrical.

I am tempted to go on with anecdotes about Claudio, but perhaps I should stick to a narrative of his comings and goings in the service of his remarkable work as a psychologist of personality. He stayed at Harvard only a few days on that first visit, and his reason for being there was that he had brought his mother to Boston for some specialized eye surgery at the Phipps Clinic. My wife and I got to know her quite well in the course of her hospitalization and convalescence, and I learned something of Claudios educational history and the distinctions and honors he had been accorded: a year in Paris on a musical fellowship, won by his early piano compositions, his field work in anthropological medicine in South America, his place as a cultural leader in democratic Chile before the authoritarian darkness descended. Mrs. Naranjo herself was a lady of the highest degree, a true pleasure to know.

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