The Enneagram: Psychic Babble
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The Enneagram: Psychic Babble
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The Enneagram: Psychic Babble
by Mary Jo Anderson
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No fad has swept through Catholic seminaries and
retreat centers in recent years with as much fervor as has the
Enneagram.* Teaching the Enneagram, variously billed as “the mirror of
the soul” and “a map to the psyche,” has become the new profession of
former priests, who offer it as a spiritual guide and an aid to
pastoral practice. Welcomed in some dioceses, reviled in others, the
Enneagram is a growing source of controversy among Catholic
professionals in the fields of education, counseling, and priestly
formation.
Shrouded in an ancient, semimysterious past, the Enneagram Theory
of Personality is often compared to the better-known Myers-Briggs
Personality Inventory. What most Catholics do not know is that the
Enneagram has its origins in the occult, specifically in alchemy, Sufi
mysticism, whirling dervishes, astrology, Hindu mantras, and the
occult Kabbala. Catholic defenders of the Enneagram, anxious to shed
any relationship with the occult, point to similar teachings in early
Greek geometry, Pythagorean seals, the Desert Fathers, Christian
Mystics, and Scripture. As one trainer explained, "What is good we may
appropriate for Christianity, just as we did with the thought of
Aristotle."
What's Your Type?
The Enneagram's proponents claim that it is superior to all other
systems of personality theory. Extolled as a psychological tool for
self-discovery, the Enneagram typology is employed in business and
management training, family counseling, education, and a myriad of
self-help groups. Study of the Enneagram has exploded-hundreds of
books and tapes, dozens of schools, countless seminars and retreats
are available to the public. Each teacher or "master" gives his or her
school a particular flavor. Leaving aside the intricacies of the
different teachings and the squabbles among factions, a basic outline
of the Enneagram provides a framework for an examination of the theory
and its application. Greek for nine (ennea) letters (gramma),
"Enneagram" stands for both the symbol and the typology that has grown
up around it. The symbol, which some call the "Face of God," consists
of a circle enclosing an equilateral triangle and two incomplete
triangles that meet in nine points along the circle's circumference.
The typology is based on the nine points, each of which is ascribed a
particular personality trait or style of character. How those styles
are labeled-either as positive (reformer, helper) or negative
(self-righteous, manipulator)-depends on your school of thought.
Enneagram theorists assume that everyone responds to the world from
within the fixations of their type. The goal of Enneagram
practitioners is to achieve liberation from the ego limitations
determined by one's placement on the circle. The discovery of one's
location, one's point-on-the-circle, say believers, also is the
discovery of an inner dynamic that indicates the direction of change
leading to freedom from "brokenness." Once you have determined your
type or number, principally by "auto-diagnosis" with the aid of a
teacher, you'll soon understand why your behavior follows certain
patterns. Equally intriguing, of course, is that you also may solve
the mystery of your spouse's stubbornness or your pastor's love of
tradition.
Thus, in theory, the Enneagram provides tools that enable you to
relate to others more effectively. By detaching yourself from your
point on the circle and moving toward the center, you gain the
enlightened perspective of truth in the round. Once capable of seeing
reality from the center-that is, detached from the deficiencies of
your type-you rediscover the "divine within," unified now with the
whole of reality. Enneagram gurus caution that few reach this lofty
goal; most content themselves with a lifetime of movement toward the
center. For example, one Enneagram theory identifies the following
nine personality types, each with a "root sin" and "wings" or
tendencies toward those types on either side of their primary
fixation.
Subscribers to Enneagram theory concede that at the identifying
stage, it is critical that one be honest and not attempt to choose a
type, but recognize what one is. “Why prefer one personality over
another when all are equally dysfunctional? Who'd prefer leukemia to
lupus? The goal is to become healthy," commented Jack Labanauskas,
copublisher of the Enneagram Monthly magazine. Admitting that
self-description often leads to wrong typecasting, many teachers
advise working with others who know you, and taking multiple classes
until you are confident you have arrived at your correct
identification.
After a correct diagnosis, the objective is to dismantle the
fixation by seeking its redemption in a corresponding virtue. Thus an
anger-fixated 1 seeks tranquillity, while the greed-dominated thinker,
type 5, is counseled to learn to love, and so forth.
It was in an ancient text (a medieval grimoaire) about the Chaldean
seal (enneagram) where I first came across this diagram which, for the
Chaldeans was a magical figure….
The enormous appeal of this typology is the belief that one gains a
guilt-free blueprint to the soul: "What's wrong with me? Why do I
always do this?" In response, the Enneagram comforts its believers
with the teaching that we are not responsible for our behavior
patterns. Having arrived in this plaoe &127;hole-before the world
inflicted its trauma upon us-we became determined at our respective
points along the circle, perhaps as three- or four-year-olds. Trapped
in this type, the personality has an excuse for everything, "Well,
what did you expect-after all, I am a 3."
Roots of an Occult Practice
As the popularity of the Enneagram grows, so does the concern that
this bogus New Age practice is being more widely accepted among
Catholics. That's the opinion of Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., of the
University of Dallas. Pacwa is best known for his witty and
intelligent debunking of the New Age movement. "I was one of the first
teachers of the Enneagram in this country," he reports, "and I learned
it in Chicago from Father Bob Ochs. I taught it to Father Richard Rohr
in his kitchen! Now he is an Enneagram expert with books and tapes,
hopping across the country giving workshops."
Pacwa's book, Catholics and the New Age Movement, devotes a chapter
to the Enneagram, "Occult Roots of the Enneagram." An enigmatic Greek
Armenian, George Gurdjieff, born in Russia about 1870, is generally
acknowledged as the bearer of the enneagram to the West. His
autobiography relates his travels through Central Asia, Tibet, and
India. Gurdjieff's wanderings led him to Nasqshbandi Sufis and their
claim to be "Masters of Wisdom," where an inner circle of enlightened
masters teach these ancient truths, orally, to selected
student-seekers. The esoteric teachings that characterize their
beliefs were revealed to men by spirits called "Transformed Ones."
Gurdjieff gathered a band of believers and in Moscow they established
The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Fleeing to Paris
and on to New York following the Bolshevik Revolution, Gurdjieff set
up shop, teaching "Esoteric Christianity."
A catalog of the beliefs of Gurdjieff's Esoteric Christianity
includes the head, heart, and gut division of man, which must be kept
in balance by spiritual dances (based on enneagram dynamics) ensuring
that one remain spiritually awake. Most importantly, the essence of
man is the material of the universe-a divine essence. According to
Margaret Anderson, author of The Unknown Gurdjieff, few people are
able to shed their ego-the personality style adopted at age three-in
order to release their essence, entrapped by the personality. The
spiritual exercises taught by Gurdjieff were designed to effect that
transformation. Gurdjieff's zeal for the enneagram lay in its power to
reveal to men the cosmic process-the natural ordering of the
universe-as he believed the enneagram reflected the numerical order of
the universe itself. The symbol's numbering also fascinated
mathematician Peter Ouspensky, who became a Gurdjieff disciple. The
mathematical fact that 1 divided by 7 results in the repeating,
nonterminating decimal .142857, without the digits 3, 6, or 9, while
dividing 3, 6, or 9 into 1 results in self-repeating decimals was
believed by Ouspensky to be the mathematical map of a harmonic
universe-a divine inner order of all things. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky
revered the enneagram to such a degree that they taught "Only what a
man is able to put in the enneagram does he actually know, that is,
understand." Gurdjieff's work evolved into the "Fourth Way," which is
a method of achieving inner perfection in ordinary life, rather than
withdrawing from the world as do the yogi, fakir, and monks. The goal
of Fourth Way practitioners is an accelerated transformation,
returning to pure essence.
Gurdjieff, though he described the enneagram as the ultimate
arbiter of truth, is not credited as the source of the Enneagram
personality typing system. That claim is held by Oscar Ichazo.
Ichazo's Enneagrammatic theory of "Protoanalysis" is recognized as the
first systematic application of the enneagram to personality theory.
His lifelong study spans three continents and brought him a United
Nations award. Ichazo's initial encounter with the ancient symbol
reads like mythology:
In 1943 I inherited my grandfather's library from my uncle Julio,
who was a lawyer and a philosopher. It was in an ancient text (a
medieval grimoaire) about the Chaldean seal (enneagram) where I first
came across this diagram which, for the Chaldeans was a magical
figure…In 1949 I started reading he work of Ouspensky, and in 1950 in
Buenos Aires I was invited to a closed study group ofTheosophists,
esoteric Rosicrucians and Martinists, where I participated in long
discussions about the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Here is where I
first pointed out to this group that all the ideas proposed by
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky could be traced to certain forms of Gnosticism
and to specific doctrines of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the
Manichaeans.
During his twenties, Ichazo traveled through Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and Kashmir to study with the Sufi's before returning home to craft
his new theories. Ichazo's work in Trialectics, described as the
logical laws of the "process of becoming," was complete by 1960. It
became the principle behind Ichazo's Protoanalysis, which is a method
"to acquire the supreme Good of enlightenment and unity with the
Divine." Throughout South America groups formed to investigate this
new synthesis of psychology, philosophy, and religion, and by 1969 in
Santiago, Chile, Ichazo presented his teachings on Protoanaylsis and
the doctrine of "Fixations" at the Institute of Applied Psychology.
Soon thereafter, an American group of students, including Claudio
Naranjo, traveled to Arica, Chile, for a ten-month study with Ichazo
and his method of analysis. Ichazo moved his base to New York by 1971,
founding the Arica Institute. Since that time Arica schools have
opened worldwide. Arica claims to teach the deepest states of
Protoanalysis, or the nine Divine Gnoses. The Arica school represents
the founding of modern enneagrammatic practice, and is one of its two
main branches. Its followers hint it is the only uncorrupted Enneagram
teaching available.
Arica training and rituals include: Black Earth of Perfect Harmony
Ceremony; Chua Ka; Psychocalisthenics, and The Nine Ways of Zhikr. A
description of The Nine Ways of Zhikr is instructive: To Zhikr is to
repeat the name of God. In the Arica Zhikr, Toham Kum Rah, the
internal mantrum of the Divine, is repeated to specific patterns of
music, movements, and breathing to produce a state of mystical,
ecstacy and union with the Divine."
The Catholic Connection
Claudio Naranjo, a Fulbright scholar who studied with Ichazo in
Chile, generally is credited with beginning the other branch of
Enneagram teaching. Naranjo, a medical doctor and psychoanalyst,
conducted research in psychopharmacology and taught psychology at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. A Guggenheim Fellow at the
Institute for Personality and Research at UC Berkley, Naranjo left
academia after his first visit with Ichazo in the late 1960s. Known
for integrating Western psychotherapy with Eastern spirituality, he
persuaded more than forty friends and followers to join him in his
year's sojourn to Chile.
Upon Naranjo's return to California following his apprenticeship in
Chile, a notice was posted at the Jesuit seminary in Berkley inviting
interested persons to attend an introduction to the Enneagram given by
Claudio Naranjo, M.D. Two of those who attended Naranjo's seminar were
Helen Palmer and Bob Ochs, S. J. Celebrities of the Enneagram world
Oscar Ichazo (top left) first to apply the enneagram to personality
theory; Dr. Claudio Naranjo (top right) known for integrating Western
psychotherapy with Eastern spirituality; Richard Riso (bottom left), a
former Jesuit priest, worries that the Enneagram will become just
another new age system; Fr. Richard Rohr (bottom right)
founder/director of a retreat center popular among dissident
Catholics.
Like dropping a pebble in a pond, so has the Enneagram spread since
that first Berkley seminar. Palmer, a psychologist and a leading
Enneagram teacher and writer, acknowledges a Catholic upbringing, but,
according to her assistant, incorporates “facets and traditions from
all the great religions." Fr. Ochs moved on to Chicago, where he
taught the Enneagram to confreres and seminarians, including Fr. Mitch
Pacwa, S.J., and Fr. Pat O'Leary. Fr. Jerry Hair taught the Enneagram
at retreat houses. Fr. Colin Maloney taught at the Jesuit theologate
in Toronto, passing the Enneagram on to Tad Dunn, who trained novices.
Fr. Richard Riso, too, was among the early students of the Enneagram.
Pacwa remembers:
It was like a plague! Deacons and seminary candidates were required
to be typed before entering seminary. It was pseudo-spirituality. We
were encouraged at Enneagram workshops to use hallucinogenic drugs to
achieve the altered states we were told we would later learn to reach
on our own without the use of drugs. This pseudo-spirituality teaches
that what you see in altered states of consciousness is the reality,
our unaltered state is illusory. Pacwa is quick to point out that most
teachers at parish centers, retreat houses, and workshops are unaware
of the occult roots of the Enneagram. "Many, many good people and
pastors have become entangled in this. They were brought the Enneagram
by someone they trusted, so it's taught at parish retreats and
workshops-they have no idea what this is." Pacwa's revelation has been
unwelcome in some locales, while other dioceses have called on him to
combat the system's popularity. Stressing the Gnostic theology at work
in the Enneagram and all its offshoots, Pacwa further attacks the use
of the system in psychology: "For pastoral counseling, the Enneagram
is neither theologically correct nor psychologically effective."
Nevertheless, the Enneagram continues to be widely taught in official
Catholic settings, most recently by former priest, Pat Aspell, at the
1997 National Conference of Catholic Deacons.
The Rohr Connection
Popular retreat master Fr. Richard Rohr penned Discovering the
Enneagram: Ancient Tool for a New Spiritual Journey. Rohr's particular
twist attaches a "root sin" to each fixation, and uses religious
language for many of his explanations. Our root sin, in his scheme, is
the obsession that defines all our choices, the friends we make, the
jobs we take. This root sin is the source of our energy-the backside
of our virtue.
Rohr is founder and director of the Albuquerque Center for
Contemplation and Action, a gathering place for heterodox, dissident
teachers. Visitors to Rohr's center include: Matthew Fox, Rosemary
Radford Reuther, Joan Chittister, Daniel Berrigan, Edwina Gately, and
Bishop Raymond Luker. Rohr retreated for a month of contemplation to
the cottage of his late mentor, Thomas Merton, before withdrawing from
New Jerusalem, a lay community he founded, in order to establish his
Center for Contemplation and Action. Pacwa points out that the
Enneagram pioneers were lapsed Catholics. "Gurdjieff left the seminary
as a teenager. His parents wanted him to be an Orthodox priest; his
own interests were in science." Gurdjieff's book, Meetings With
Remarkable Men, recounts his fascination with the occult, including
telepathy and astrology. He simply wandered off into Central Asia in
order to follow his occult interests. Living with the Naqshbandis he
learned that faith arose "from understanding…the essence obtained from
information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences
personally experienced." This claim is clearly opposed to Christian
teaching: faith is a gift, freely given, independent of understanding.
Oscar Ichazo, Pacwa explains, "at age six became disillusioned with
the Catholic Church because its teachings contradicted what he learned
through an occultic out-of-body experience. He rejected what his
Jesuit teachers told him of heaven and hell, claiming to have been
there and learned more than Christ and the Church." According to
Pacwa's research, Ichazo now declares he is a "master" in touch with
previous esoteric masters, including the dead.
Bad Theology and Poor Pastoral Practice
Pacwa has said in summary, "The Enneagram is a combination of bad
theology and poor pastoral practice, for which reasons I now criticize
it. In the end, I quit teaching it because it didn't work. I noticed I
was always mistyping people. Fr. Ochs quit teaching it. It is not
science. It is not a new psychological development." The major
objection from the scientific quarter is that no definitive proof
exists for there being only nine personality types; a construct of
Ichazo's that Pacwa maintains is based on Sufi numerology. "After
taking the course on the Enneaoram, I searched for more information. .
. . Ouspensky and other Gurdjieff disciples described cosmic
interpretations, or used it to describe scientific experiments. None
of them describes nine personality types." Indeed, even a cursory
examination of the leading Enneagram books demonstrates a lack of
basic consensus.
Among the leaders in the Enneagram world is the former Jesuit
priest, Don Richard Riso. Riso is founder of The Enneagram Institute,
located in New York with affiliations in Paris, Tokyo, and Zurich.
Riso trademarked the phrase describing the Enneagram as "The Bridge
Between Psychology and Spirituality." Interestingly, Riso worries
about unscrupulous use of the Enneagram "bastardizing it to make it a
function of our own egos, of our emotional needs, of our financial
gains . . . [T]he Enneagram is much more powerful within an authentic
spiritual community, led by a genuine spiritual teacher."
That said, it is ironic that a primary concern of Riso's has been
to remove the mysticism and Sufi spirituality as the primary
identification of the Enneagram, concentrating instead on research. He
frets, "Without precision and clarity, the Enneagram is reduced to
being simply another 'New Age' system." His fear is borne out in the
Enneagram advertisements promising dating based on your number, or
Tarot readings based on your type.
Dr. Theodore Millon (left) expressed reservations as to the
Enneagram’s theoretical model, and compared it to the Rorschact
test—an intuitive tool. Says Millon: “It may be art, but it is not
science.” Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. (right): “The Enneagram is a
combination of bad theology and poor pastoral practice…In the end, I
quit teaching it because it didn’t work.”
Copublisher of the Enneagram Monthly, Jack Labanauskas was careful
to point out for Crisis that the Enneagram is neutral; that just as
fire can keep you warm or burn your house down, so the Enneagram is
for good or evil. Citing Claudio Naranjo's new book, with an
endorsement from Dr. Theodore Millon, professor of psychiatry at
Harvard and professor of psychology at University of Miami,
Labanauskas believes there is a growing acceptance of the Enneagram
within the medical profession. This might not be so.
Pacwa reduces the problem of the Enneagram to its foundation: "We
humans cannot save ourselves…Salvation is a free gift of God's grace
which no human can earn."
Although Millon remeobered being asked by his publisher to write a
blurb for the Naranjo book, he was clear that he was not endorsing the
Enneagram system; rather, he was praising Naranjo as the "brilliant,
intuitive clinician that he is." Millon explained further, "A thinking
process is not the framework of the Enneagram. Naranjo is insightful;
he is a keen observer." Millon expressed reservations as to the
Enneagram's theoretical model, and compared it to the Rorschach
test-an intuitive tool. "It may be art, but it is not science."
Millon offered an explanation for the Enneagram trend: "Life is
chaotic. Chaos causes fear. People who need to create order are drawn
to a model that explains it all. They are attracted to a fanciful,
appealing schemata that neatly divides the world into categories. Once
charismatic types come on the scene to give these schema purpose and
direction, it gives them comfort. Spatially constructed templates are
not equal to a scientific mode. It's not all that different from
astrology."
Suggesting that the Enneagram is devoid of any spiritual content
until paired with the spiritual discipline of one's own choosing,
Labanauskas, too, resisted the characterization of the Enneagram as
occult. A former Catholic alter boy, he recounts that as a teenager he
developed an interest in graphology. He read The Tibetan Book of the
Dead at nineteen. Transcendental meditation followed at twenty; he
moved on to numerology and Tarot during the 1960s and 1970s.
Labanauskas also practiced Chinese medicine in Italy before
immigrating to New York, where he studied with a Tibetan group. It
seems clear that for many in pursuit of "a higher consciousness" that
no activity, save for witchcraft, is understood as occult.
Labanauskas, Riso, and others are earnest, warm, and intelligent
men. They are, perhaps, the result of poor catechesis and the confused
implementation of Vatican II. The striking factor present in all who
talked of their involvement with the Enneagram is a deep spiritual
hunger. The desire to be in union with God and to be whole is their
preeminent goal. A disconcerting number of Catholics, even priests,
who are enamored with the Enneagram are unclear on the doctrinal
beliefs of Catholicism. Many fervently await a union of world
religions, which they believe will initiate an era of true peace.
Redemption, to most of them, means a return to a state of full
knowledge from which we came. They are not reluctant to identify with
Gnosticism; some suggest Gnostic teachings were unfairly suppressed by
a patriarchal Church.
Pacwa reduces the problem of the Enneagram to its foundation: "We
humans cannot save ourselves…Salvation is a free gift of God's grace
which no human can earn." Neither is he convinced that the Enneagram
can be purged of its occult roots or ever be acceptable for Christian
use. In his experience, everyone who shared their excitement with the
Enneagram also practiced one or more of the following: Zen,
transcendental meditation, numerology, tarot, or astrology. Mixing
these practices with Christianity is really no different than
Santerria, where voodoo is awkwardly combined with certain aspects of
Catholicism. Pacwa is unequivocal in his warning: "No Jesuit from my
class, except myself, who took the Enneagram teaching is still a
Jesuit today. All have left the priesthood."
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