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Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Little Side Quest: Correlating Enneagram and Myers-Briggs

  Two of my favorite play-toys that are my favorite partly because they are useful and helpful and partly because they are fun are the two "personality inventories" called Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.  I am curious about them both.  They are both helpful to me in different ways.  Myers-Briggs is helpful to me in understanding the mechanism of personality--how exactly thoughts, feelings, and perception goes down in human consciousness.  Its value (as far as I know) is more phenomenological than anything else.  It explains more that you have x or y preference for viewing and interacting with the world not why.  The more serious and formal the study of Myers Briggs the less it claims to be interested in telling you what an ENTP is other than a person whose preferences for cognitive processes stack up in a particular way, beginning with Extroverted iNtuition and ending with Extroverted Sensing.  The more serious one gets about Enneagram on the other hand, the more one learns that the system concerns motive, virtue, and identity more than anything else.  (I am nowhere near understanding why a nonagon is important.  I do understand that number values are employed, not in any numerological way, but because number values are neutral unlike most appellation.)
   So the little pet theory or interest I have is how the two correlate . . . and it would be nice to understand eventually--perhaps before I die--why they correlate.  But if you wouldn't mind leaving a comment telling me what your Myers-Briggs letters is and your Enneagram is, I would be greatly entertained.  From time to time I shall perhaps post some articles or thoughts about why such and such MB type correlates often with an E type.
   If you are interested in playing my little game, but don't know what your MB letters or E numbers are, please see this site for Myers Briggs (I also like this one, but not for its inventory) and this site for Enneagram.  These are my favorites for various reasons.  There are certainly other ones.

A starting example:  The author is an Myers Briggs ENTP and an Enneagram 5.  ENTPs are rare enough that I don't know for sure if I've met another ENTP 5.  The chief irregularity according to the Enneagram theory is that 5s tend to be introverted, not extroverted.  My preference for extroversion is low, but there is no question in my mind that my Extroverted iNtuition vastly outstrips my Introverted Thinking.  It seems to me also that I get less extroverted as I get older.  Also, when I first became introduced to the Enneagram in high school, I misidentified as an 8 (the 5's arrow of integration).  While that seems to bespeak high school as a time of positive integration for me, it also underscores the extroverted dimension of my personality.

8 comments:

Rebecca said...

me first! ENFP 7 all the way baby. Which I can only imagine is highly normal.

Unknown said...

I wish I could "like" blogpost comments. He-he.

Suzy Lou Who said...

ENFP 7 too.

dadaemi said...

INFJ 9 :)

Unknown said...

I tied between 1, 5, and 9. Though, this isn't my favourite version of the Enneagram. Some of the distinctions between the two choices seemed to merely be semantics. I also question the point of providing your results in a histogram when there are only nine types....

I sincerely doubt there are many Eights in the world because I haven't met, or heard of, anyone in my lifetime that I'd consider "powerful" or "strong". Politicians are spineless as are most people in any type of authority whether it be supervisors or mayors. The pop psychology nomenclature of Type A personality don't possess the self-confidence to be in this category either and are certainly of rare intelligence or capability to referred to as "resourceful".

And "straight-talking" just makes me laugh.

Jared said...

Hmm... I tied between 2, 3, and 9. My score as a 1 wasn't even close. But then again, I took the quiz very quickly and while procrastinating on a paper, so... will investigate more later I guess.

Unknown said...

Oh, Jenna, you're so funny! I imagine that you are a 1, although I have been recently convicted of mistyping a friend as a 1 who is probably a 9 (also a INTP), so I may have to get over my INTPs-are-not-supposed-to-be-9s prejudice. INTPs tend to type as 5s (for obvious reasons), and 1s and 9s are wings, so there is obviously some overlap there. Maybe the arrows of integration or disintegration would clear things up for you?

Martin Scharnke said...

ISTJ 6