Reconciling the Modern Enneagram
Demystifying Original Disseminations and Modern Translations
Over the past fifty years, the Enneagram has undergone various transformations as the system's inherently narrative and oral tradition was distilled through multiple teachers and schools of thought. Some of the changes to the system have been instrumental in providing greater detail about the personality types. In contrast, other crucial aspects of the system have been lost to oversimplification, generalizations, and outright distortions based on inaccurate or incomplete understandings of the types.
Bolivian Mystic Oscar Ichazo is mainly responsible for bringing the Enneagram as a spiritual tool to the Western consciousness via his groundbreaking work through the Arica school. However, Ichazo’s Enneagram is largely ignored in modern disseminations. While in some ways, Ichazo’s Enneagram can appear divorced from the personality psychology-based system most are used to, some aspects of Ichazo’s Enneagram are fundamental to understanding the system overall.
Let’s get into some of it…
The Three Domains and the Three Instincts
Ichazo’s insights about the nine fixations based on the distortions of the human ego were never conceptualized as personality “types” so much as natural egoic “stuck points” the human ego experiences in three domains of human experience.
The three domains are the Doing Group, also known as the Adaptation instinct (later renamed the Head center); the Being Group, also known as the Conservation instinct (later renamed the Gut center); and the Living Group, also known as the Relation instinct (later renamed the Heart center).
Each group/domain encompasses a central question, set of beliefs, and attitudes and governs various biological processes that typify the group’s function in the human experience. Ichazo believed that we, as part of our evolution as human beings, become naturally fixated in these three domains.
Furthermore, in Ichazo’s Enneagram system, what many now refer to as the instinctual types (Social, Self Preservation, and Sexual) were indistinguishable from the centers of intelligence (Head, Gut, and Heart)*. This is where the notion of the Enneagram as inherently “trialectic” becomes integral to understanding the holistic wisdom of the system
Being Group/Conservation Instinct=Gut Center=Self Preservation
Living Group/Relation Instinct=Heart Center=Sexual
Doing Group/Adaptation Instinct=Head Center=Social
*From studying what is now available about Ichazo’s teachings (much of his work was unavailable to the general public until he died in 2020), it appears that it wasn’t until Claudio Naranjo’s that the instinctual subtypes were separated from the centers of intelligence (or Ichazoan groups). Naranjo appeared to have realized that the instinctual type could be applied to each fixation/type in the group.
Trifix as Fundamental to the Enneagram
Ichazo posited that the human ego becomes fixated in each of the three domains (a state he referred to as the Trifix). At the same time, one domain becomes our primary “stuck” point. He believed that human beings become stuck in each of the other two domains and adapt the behaviors, “mentations” (thought patterns), and distortions of a fixation in each group.
The controversy around whether Trifix is necessary or “real” becomes completely moot (and honestly, ridiculous) when you consider that the Enneagram was never intended to be understood without focusing on how the Trifix affects the evolution of the human consciousness since we exist in all three domains by nature of being a human.
Ichazo’s Enneagram was decisively spiritual, and he found the specific behavioral patterns and nuances between each of the fixations secondary to the egoic distortions that motivated those behaviors. He saw the Trifix as working in tandem to create an overall egoic pattern that, through observation, could be freed, aiding in the emancipation of the spirit from limiting egoic concerns.
Fixations vs Types
The taxonomizing or the Enneagram based on nuances of complex psychological dynamics was an exercise greatly expanded upon by his student, psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo. Using his expertise as a psychiatrist and keen observations of the fixations during his time in the Arica school, Naranjo expanded upon Ichazo’s original insights and further refined the type descriptions.
Ichazo was admittedly no psychologist, although he had a firm grasp and understanding of the human psyche due to his profound spiritual insights into the nature of the human ego. Ichazo’s method of “autodiagnosis” (the process of observing one’s ego) and “protoanalysis” (the method he developed to help transcend the Trifix) were his primary concern, and he reportedly grew disillusioned with the increasingly superficial way the Enneagram was being utilized, particularly in the west.
While Ichazo was far less interested in the hair-splitting trait differences that exemplify the Enneagram study today, his fundamental intuitive insights and assessments of the nature of the nine ego fixations are more than sufficient in understanding the way the primary fixation (Enneagram type) and Trifix display themselves in human beings.
Recovering the Original Fixation Descriptions
Our teaching has primarily focused on helping to correct many type misconceptions that have increased over the past forty years and attempting to marry the original disseminations of Ichazo’s spiritual system with the psychoanalytic approach of Naranjo to build a greater awareness of the true nature of the types.
We only need to look at Ichazo’s original names and their dichotomies for each fixation to understand how many types have become distorted throughout the Enneagram’s dissemination in America.
To delve into the above chart and learn about the true meaning of the dichotomies, the original fixation names, and the nature of the three domains and groups, sign up for our newest course offering, Reconciling the Modern Enneagram: Demystifying Original Disseminations and Modern Translations.
In the course, we will:
Illuminate the deeper meaning of Ichazo’s names for the nine fixations and reconcile them with modern “type” names. For example, why did Ichazo call the Four the Reasoner when it later became “The Romantic.”
Unpack the nature of the nine dichotomies. For example, why does The Eight alternate between hedonism and puritanism, or why does the Five alternate between alienation and meddling
Discuss the aspects of Ichazo’s fixation descriptions that were omitted or altered in later disseminations and expand on his insights based on our research with clients and study participants
Offer suggestions for breaking free of the limitations of the fixations by utilizing the wisdom of the type dichotomies
This course is three parts (six hours) and will be offered live via Zoom and recorded for later viewing. This exclusive offering is open to Enneagram students of any level, but sign up now because this course will become part of our Teacher Certification Part II curriculum after this initial offering. It will then only be available to certification students after completing the third session.
When: Saturday, February 24th, Saturday, March 9th, and Saturday, March 30th.
Time: 12:00pm CST-2:00pm CST via Zoom
Cost: $300
Early Bird Discount $250 sign up by February 2nd.