Enneagram glossary

Terms A–Z

Arrow (stress / growth)

A traditional line connecting each type to two others, describing how its traits can shift under pressure or in health. Traditional, with little specific empirical support. See arrows. Also called the lines of integration and disintegration.

Centre

One of three groupings of three types each — Body, Heart, Head — organized around a shared core emotion (anger, shame, fear respectively). See centres.

Counterphobic

A Six who meets fear by moving toward it, and can look bold or confrontational. In Chestnut and Paes's framework the counterphobic Six is the Sexual Six, the best-known countertype. See Type Six.

Countertype

A subtype whose outward presentation runs opposite to its type's usual stereotype, while the underlying motivation stays the same — a common cause of self-mistyping. Naranjo's teaching, as published by Chestnut and Paes, names one per type. See instincts & subtypes. All nine are listed on the countertypes page.

Fixation

Ichazo's term for the core mental habit or distorted belief pattern that travels alongside a type's passion.

Harmonic group

Riso and Hudson's own grouping of the nine types by how each typically responds to disappointment: Positive Outlook, Competency, or Reactive.

Hornevian stance

One of three habitual strategies for getting needs met — Assertive, Compliant, Withdrawn — adapted from psychoanalyst Karen Horney, brought into the Enneagram by Claudio Naranjo, and formalized as a grouping by Riso and Hudson.

Instinct (Self-Preservation / Social / Sexual)

One of three instinctual drives everyone carries in some priority order — Self-Preservation, Social, Sexual (One-to-One) — which combines with core type to form a subtype. See instincts & subtypes.

Instinctual stacking

Also: Instinct stack, stack

The ranked order of a person's three instincts, most to least used. sp/sx means Self-Preservation first and Sexual second, which leaves Social last. The Enneagram Institute (Riso and Hudson) calls this the "instinctual stack". See instincts & subtypes.

Integration and disintegration

The Enneagram Institute's names for the two arrows from each type: the Direction of Integration (growth) and the Direction of Disintegration (stress). See stress and growth.

Level of health

The range from a type's freest, healthiest expression down to its most constricted and defensive one. Type doesn't change across the range; how much the core motivation is running the show does. See levels of health. Adapted from Don Riso's nine-level model of a type's health, developed with Russ Hudson.

Passion

Oscar Ichazo's term for the core emotional habit — sometimes called a "vice" — that each type organizes around: anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust and sloth, for types One to Nine.

SP, SO, SX

Also: sp/sx, so/sp, sx/so

Abbreviations for the three instincts: SP for Self-Preservation, SO for Social, SX for Sexual (One-to-One). A code such as SP4 or SX6 names a subtype. A pair such as sp/sx names an instinctual stacking.

Subtype

A core type crossed with its dominant instinct — the same motivation, expressed through a different lens. Twenty-seven in total. Written in shorthand as SP, SO or SX plus the type number, e.g. SP4.

Tritype

A later addition to the system, from Katherine Chernick Fauvre, who dates it to her 1994 research and has registered the name as Tritype®. It holds that each person uses one type from each of the three centres, with one of the three as the core type. It is less established than the core system, and this library does not use it.

Virtue

Ichazo's term for the quality that answers a type's passion when the pattern relaxes — serenity for One, humility for Two, courage for Six, and so on. Named on each type page.

Wing

The type adjacent to a person's core type on the nine-pointed figure, which flavours the core type without changing it. See wings. Written as 5w4 and similar.

Wing notation (5w4, 9w1 …)

Shorthand for a core type and its wing. 5w4 means a core Five with a Four wing; 9w1 means a core Nine with a One wing. The first number is the type. The second is always one of its two neighbours on the circle. See wings.

Sources