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February 19 - May 19, 2023
In psychological terms, this “dimming of consciousness” expresses the fact that as a basic survival mechanism, the human psyche automatically “goes to sleep to,” or dissociates from painful experiences as a way of surviving or staying safe in the world.
TYPE NINE REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who seeks to harmonize with the external environment as a way of staying comfortable and peaceful, even though this means a loss of contact with their internal environment.
this archetype’s drive is to maintain a sense of calm and connectedness through merging with the outside and diminished awareness of the inside.
Oriented toward inclusion, consensus, and harmony, they excel at understanding and valuing different perspectives and mediating between them to resolve disputes and maintain peace.
they can over-adjust to others and then have a hard time registering their own desires and asserting their own agendas.
Nines often report that they grew up in a family in which their opinions weren’t heard, in which others were more forceful in expressing their opinions, or where the best strategy to feeling calm and avoiding upset was to go along with what others wanted.
Nines often decided as children to resign themselves to going along with what others want in order to maintain positive connections with others.
Nines play the role in the family of mediating between people to reduce tension and maintain the sense of connection that feels crucial to their survival.
This over-adjustment reflects their experience that any strong feeling or preference on their part may put them in conflict with others; at an unconscious level, their personality is set up to avoid adversarial interactions at all costs.
Nines have a natural talent for mediation because they deeply understand others’ points of view.
Self-Preservation Nines are concrete people, oriented to immediate experience, who don’t relate much to abstractions or metaphysical concepts.
they don’t talk a lot about what is going on inside them in general.
Self-Preservation Nines can actually find it more relaxing and grounding to be by themselves, as it allows them to more fully relax into whatever activity they are engaged with.
it’s as if they have resigned themselves to not actively receiving love for themselves. For the Self-Preservation Nine, the search for comfort in pleasurable activities may reflect a desire for compensation for their deeper sense of abnegation, or a giving up of the need for love, with the fulfillment of other appetites.
they do have forceful energy, especially in contrast to the Sexual Nine, which is a much less assertive character.
Sexual Nines unconsciously express a need to be through another—to gain a sense of “being” they don’t find inside themselves through fusion with somebody else.
they substitute another person’s agenda for their own because it feels more comfortable to stand or be through another.
They have a sense of uncertainty about their own identity and a lack of structure in their lives, and they look to other people to satisfy their sense of who they are and what they want without realizing that this is happening. Sexual Nines tend to be very kind, gentle, tender, and sweet.
Sexual Nines can resemble Type Fours, as they may feel a sense of melancholy and experience and express similar themes and feelings related to relationships.
However, while Fours are self-referencing, Sexual Nines are primarily other-referencing, and they may take on the feelings of another as opposed to having more immediate awareness of their own emotional ups and downs, as Fours do.
By creating a stronger connection to their own inner world, asserting their needs and wants, and acting more powerfully on their own behalf, they can avoid their tendency to overadjust to others to the point of forgetting themselves completely.
which you are part of the group and take in how much people value your hard work and support as a way of actively addressing your deeper needs for belonging. Sexual Nines can travel the path from laziness to right action by recognizing and acting on their deeper need for separation: making time to be alone more and not always finding a sense of “being” through others. Recognize the ways you may have inadvertently erased yourself to maintain specific relationships and take action to create healthy boundaries with those you are closest to. Notice when you are not “in” yourself. Act to find your
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TYPE EIGHT REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who denies weakness and vulnerability by taking refuge in fearlessness, power, and strength.
This archetype tends to express instinctual drives in a less inhibited way and to push back on whatever might restrict them.
This approach entails identification with a glorified self (rather than a diminished sense of self).
the Eight personality is “an ego that sides with instinct” rather than the expression of instinct itself.5
this archetype’s basis in “counter-repression” and always siding with and defending desires can, in a paradoxical way, make Type Eight rigidly intolerant of constraints.
Type Eight represents the “pro-instinctual” force inside all of us.
Just as the Type Two archetype embodies a version of “the inner feminine” principle, the Type Eight archetype communicates the archetypal idea of “the masculine” in women and in men.
As Enneagram scholar Sandra Maitri puts it, the Eight archetype represents our identification “with the body and with its drives and biological imperatives.”
Their strength and power often represents overcompensation for not wanting to feel weak or own their vulnerable feelings.
Eights often fail to see the negative effects they create by expressing too much power without a balanced recognition of normal human weaknesses. They can be intense and fun-loving, but they may also be overbearing, impatient, and intolerant of frustration.
EIGHTS BELONG TO THE BODY-BASED TRIAD, which is associated with the core emotion of anger and themes of power and control.
Eights, meanwhile, have easy access to angry energy, and they often overdo their anger. They often move impulsively to express their anger before giving themselves time to think.
Most were unable to maintain a sense of childlike innocence because they were either deprived or not sufficiently protected as children—often in the face of some sort of violence or neglect.
As Naranjo notes, “it is my impression that violence in the home [of an Eight] is more frequent than in the life histories of other characters, and in such cases it is easy to understand the development of insensitivity, toughening up, and cynicism.”
As “self-forgetting” types, they tend to minimize their own physical needs and natural human limitations. Doing so supports their stance of being able to take on a lot—to work very hard and bear the burden of many responsibilities—even when this is detrimental to their health and well-being.
an intense need for “vindictive triumph,”
Eights tend to see the world in terms of a grand vision or a broad perspective of what is possible. Their big view of things matches their big energy and their larger-than-life sense of their own power and authority.
As Maitri explains, “perhaps the most complete way of understanding the meaning of lust as it is used in the map of the Enneagram is as an orientation excessively tipped toward the physical.”
Except for possibly the Sexual Four and the Sexual Six, Eights have more access to anger than any other type.
Type Eights rebel in the sense that they don’t easily acknowledge an authority above themselves.
Many Type Eight individuals have histories in which they learned not to expect anything good from their fathers, so they “implicitly come to regard parental power as illegitimate.”25 When you view the power of the most obvious authority as illegitimate, it is an easy step to assert your own authority as the highest or only authority.
Naranjo calls Eights the most “sensory-motor” of personalities. This means that Eights are firmly rooted in the physical, in the “here and now” sphere of the senses, and in a kinesthetic, body-based way of functioning.
Even though Sexual Ones are zealous in going after what they want, they still observe social norms, whereas Self-Preservation Eights care less about social conventions and will make their own rules to satisfy their cravings.
Social Eights represent a contradiction: the Eight archetype rebels against social norms, but the Social Eight is also oriented toward protection and loyalty. They express lust and aggression in the service of life and other people.
According to Naranjo, this individual’s main drive is for something like loyalty. The Social Eight subtype is the most intellectual of the three, but these Eights also rebel against the dominant (patriarchal) culture.
Sexual Eights have a strong antisocial tendency. People with this subtype are provocative people who express lust through open rebellion—through declaring in word and deed that their values differ from the norm. Along with being the most rebellious of the Eight subtypes, the Sexual Eight is, interestingly, also the most emotional.
Eights can tend to fall into “it’s true because I say it’s true” ways of thinking.
TYPE SEVEN REPRESENTS THE ARCHETYPE of the person who seeks pleasure in different forms as a distraction from the discomfort, darkness, and downside of life.
