gimley reviewed The enneagram by Helen Palmer
Review of 'The enneagram' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
"The idea that we are blind to much of our own basic character is commonly accepted in our time," says Helen Palmer. That was at the time she wrote the book, but now this is no longer how most people understand their world. People seem predominantly focused outward believing they are "evidence based" yet rarely examining the instrument with which the evidence is gathered--their own awareness. Sure we acknowledge cognitive biases but only as exceptions to the rule. We like to be reminded that we are not as rational as we think we are and thus think that makes us even more rational.
The enneagram is easily mistaken for a parlor game, akin to a newspaper's (remember newspapers?) daily horoscope but it is meant to be a DSM, which, if you don't know, is the book of diagnoses of mental illnesses. If we take as true Ms. Palmer's statement above, …
"The idea that we are blind to much of our own basic character is commonly accepted in our time," says Helen Palmer. That was at the time she wrote the book, but now this is no longer how most people understand their world. People seem predominantly focused outward believing they are "evidence based" yet rarely examining the instrument with which the evidence is gathered--their own awareness. Sure we acknowledge cognitive biases but only as exceptions to the rule. We like to be reminded that we are not as rational as we think we are and thus think that makes us even more rational.
The enneagram is easily mistaken for a parlor game, akin to a newspaper's (remember newspapers?) daily horoscope but it is meant to be a DSM, which, if you don't know, is the book of diagnoses of mental illnesses. If we take as true Ms. Palmer's statement above, that we are blind to ourselves, it makes sense that we would all get diagnosed, not just those who can't function and go see a doctor.
The DSM itself is something like a checklist akin to those online tests that one could take to determine one's enneagram. In the preface to the book, Charles T. Tart, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of California at Davis extols its use as a powerful tool and adds "When the nature of my type was explained to me, it was one of the most insightful moments of my life".
However, later in the same preface, he also says "Used as The Truth, used as a substitute for actual observation of ourselves and others, the Enneagram system, like any conceptual system, can degenerate into one more way of stereotyping ourselves and others". Like the warning on a pack of cigarettes, it is easy to miss and the system is presented with the authority of capital T Truth despite qualifications such as "each of us has the potentials of all nine types". What's more it didn't work for me as a method of understanding myself and others. It seemed too uncomplicated for the kind of people I tried to apply it to, e.g. me. I found that I and the others I tried to classify could fit parts of several types while we failed to fit any one completely. The underlying principle that we each have a "chief feature" didn't seem to apply.
But, then, I never found the DSM itself all that useful either. I find it better not to consider people as collections of symptoms but rather focus on how I experience them in the context of our relationship. You might find that attitude typical of enneagram type 9.