The Wisdom of the Enneagram

by Don Richard Riso

The Triads are important for transformational work because they specify where our chief imbalance lies. The Triads represent the three main clusters of issues and defenses of the ego self, and they reveal the principal ways in which we contract our awareness and limit ourselves. This first grouping of the types refers to the three basic components of the human psyche: instinct, feeling, and thinking. According to Enneagram theory, these three functions are related to subtle “Centers” in the human body, and the personality fixation is associated primarily in one of these Centers. Types Eight, Nine, and One comprise the Instinctive Triad; types Two, Three, and Four make up the Feeling Triad; and types Five, Six, and Seven are the Thinking Triad. It is worth noting that modern medicine also divides the human brain into three basic components: the root brain, or instinctual brain; the limbic system, or emotional brain; and the cerebral cortex, or the thinking part of the brain. Some teachers of the Enneagram also refer to the three Centers as the head, heart, and gut, or as the thinking, feeling, and doing Centers respectively.