No, you can't type yourself, by yourself
Self-analysis is tricky and often very biased
No, you can’t see yourself accurately. It’s virtually impossible to gain a completely transparent view of ourselves. Even the most reflective among us are subject to various biases and limitations. Yes, some are more honest with themselves than others. In contrast, others may have a particularly rosy (or unfavorable) view of themselves that excludes anything that doesn’t match their codified idealized self-image. But overall, we often need mirroring from other people to help build a composite of ourselves in a way that gets anywhere close to accurate. Even with all the outside mirroring and feedback in the world, we’ll still have various parts of ourselves hidden from ourselves and others because we’re constantly growing, changing, and evolving as we integrate new experiences.
The Enneagram is a tradition that requires the knowledgeable eye of a compassionate and careful teacher, coach, or guide because when viewing ourselves through the lens of a psychological system like the Enneagram, it’s easy to craft a self-image that matches an idealized version of ourselves to fit into a type description that we’d like to be. For example, we’ve worked with many clients who, because of the glamorization of Type Four, believe they’re fours. It’s not their fault if you follow pop-Enneagram wisdom. Four sounds like a beautiful rare orchid and taps into the universal human desire to be “special. Who wouldn’t want to be “introspective,” “intuitive,” “deep,” and “creative.” However, those clients often ignore some of the more negative aspects of the type, such as the propensity toward hateful envy, the adoration and attachment to suffering as an ideal, and the exclusionary and often fussy demand for beauty, refinement, and “taste.” The result is that someone begins to build a self-conception based on misunderstanding the type’s motivation due to incomplete or heavily biased information. The longer someone identifies with a type without understanding the nuances of the type’s psychological structure, the more likely the person will codify identification with a type based on superficial behaviors, stereotypes, or buzzwords.
However, there can be great value in mistyping because it allows someone to explore aspects of themselves through the lens of another type and create, with the cultivation of a curious, open mind, a greater understanding of what psychological defenses and gifts are working in the psyche. And more importantly, an opportunity to explore the deeper hidden motivations behind each type's stereotypical behaviors or traits.
Oscar Ichazo often told his students what type they were on the first day of a retreat or intensive, using a combination of his intuition and physical characteristics as per his system of protoanalysis (facial and body archetype reading). Despite Ichazo typing his students without their “consent,” he made room for exploring their type because all students learned about all nine fixations and couldn’t simply focus on the type they believed he or they believed themselves to be. Gaining this 360-degree perspective of all the ego fixations ensured that students approached their self-typing from a fully informed space and, thus, with greater accuracy. In addition to this 360-degree approach, Ichazo’s workshops were filled with interactive exercises, meditations, and feedback from other participants on what aspects of the nine fixations appeared in interactions with other students and the exercises themselves.
Most Enneagram students today are self-taught through books, online tests, and increasingly more commonly, through internet memes and forums. Books at least provide a cohesive narrative and description of the types (with varying accuracy depending on the author). Still, they lack the interactive and human element necessary to gain a more accurate snapshot of the enneagram type, instinct, and Trifix facets. Internet forums and groups are, in our opinion, some of the least effective, safe, or nurturing environments for discovering one’s types because they attract many armchair experts, trolls, or well-meaning but ill-informed people who base their assessments of others off poorly integrated information, or at their worst, ill intent.
To ensure that someone gets a comprehensive view of themselves, we recommend not only taking a complete Enneagram course or series of courses with feedback from other students and working with a knowledgeable and trustworthy teacher who can act as a guide. We hide from ourselves all the time, and while we may see parts of our psyches with clarity, a large percentage of that inner content will remain undiscovered without the help of a guide. Even still, when we have that guide, we must remain open to the feedback we’re receiving and follow a process of integration, reflection, and filtering that will eventually allow us to gain a more complete (although still perfectly incomplete) picture of our egoic structures.
