It’s the Instinct, silly

Leveraging Instinctual Drives for Transformation

Many people wonder why, after years of studying Enneagram typology system and their type within the system, they’re still struggling to ease their ego’s voice or can’t overcome a particular behavior despite their awareness.

While understanding and knowing the nuances of your type and Trifix can help people see their egoic tricks and strategies more clearly, it doesn’t ensure change. In Ichazo’s teachings at the Arica School, considerable emphasis was placed on the instinctual drives, which he saw as inseparable from the more advanced ego functions of the nine types. The instinctual drives, Social, Self Preservation, and Sexual, are the rudimentary forms of the human ego and part on a much more primitive level than the more advanced functioning type points  (1-9). Learning how to harness the considerable energy of the instincts and their role in galvanizing the complex ego defenses of the nine types is a bit like harnessing the power of alchemical transmutation.

Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik on Unsplash

Knowing your primary instinctual drive is the first step in helping understand what triggers the type’s defenses, but it is easier said than done. We teach that the instinctual drives are what trigger the Enneagram type. Failing to acknowledge the importance of the dominant instinctual drive is like failing to understand that if you don’t plug in the computer, it won’t run. The instinctual drive is the primordial fuel that gives the organism (which is you) the energy to well…be a person.

So, what does this mean in practical terms? Let’s look at the unconscious drives of each instinct to unpack how they can potentially trigger our Enneagram type defenses.