A Reply to Bea Chestnut.pdf

Enneagram Type is With Us At Birth:

A Reply to Bea Chestnut

by Susan Rhodes

Reprinted with permission from The Enneagram Monthly (Issues #52 & 53, Oct. & Nov. 2008)

I n an article published in the irst edition of Ennea-

I’m not sure exactly what this means. But I was in-

trigued enough with the ideas in this article to delve into

the psychoanalytic literature and get out my Naranjo

books (plus a few others) in order to igure out for myself

what intrinsic relationship, if any, exists between psycho-

analysis and the enneagram. Realizing that the roots of

psychoanalysis are in the 1890s, I also looked at recent

empirical research on infant development to see whether

the psychoanalytic approach to personality development

is compatible with recent research indings on personality

development.

In this article, I discuss the nature of psychoanalysis

and the implications of adopting a psychoanalytic frame-

work for enneagram work. Essentially, the results of my

inquiry convince me that the psychoanalytic approach

does indeed have something to contribute to our under-

standing of human nature and personality. But its con-

tribution is not empirical—that is, it is not the kind of

contribution that will enable us to deinitively prove any-

thing about human nature, particularly that personality is

formed mainly by negative childhood conditioning. Its

greatest contribution is to show us a way of thinking that

discourages scientiic reductionism and the tendency to

discount as valueless anything that cannot be measured

using the technology of the day.

hus, psychoanalysis reminds us that the psyche is

something complex, layered, and subtle in nature; it is

not just a black box, biological computer, or the product

of random mutation. To the extent that psychoanalysis

gives us an alternative to these kinds of reductionist mod-

els, it renders a valuable service.

At the same time, it is also clear to me that the psycho-

analytic approach is useful only to the extent that we can

distinguish the genuinely insightful bits from the bits that

are the product of Freud’s overactive and fearful imagina-

tion. So before deciding that psychoanalysis ofers the

right paradigmatic framework for enneagram work, it’s

important to take a close look at what psychoanalytic

theory actually says about human nature.

gram Journal , “Understanding the Development of

Personality Type,” 1 author Bea Chestnut describes the

parallels she sees between the tripartite enneagram and

three stages of early personality development as described

in the psychoanalytic literature. She argues that the en-

neagram and psychoanalysis share a common perspective

on the nature of human personality—the idea that per-

sonality is the outcome of early conditioning, much of

which is negative. he personality that therefore develops

is actually false in nature, and as such, gets in the way of

both our relationship with other human beings and our

relationship with God. She says that understanding the

nature of this false personality self and how it develops of-

fers us a way to grow to our full potential.

According to Chestnut, the enneagram delineates the

forms that the false self can assume while psychoanaly-

sis 2 demonstrates the mechanism by which the false self

develops in the irst place. hus, the enneagram reveals

the nine patterns “that get in the way of the creative and

free-lowing expression of a person’s real, creative self ” (p.

22); psychoanalysis focuses on “the vicissitudes of early

childhood relationships and their impact on the child’s

development” (p. 24). If we combine these two systems,

Chestnut maintains, we can create an integrated model

of personality that supports personal growth work, thera-

peutic intervention, and spiritual transformation.

his is the author’s argument in a nutshell. It is an

interesting argument, in that it attempts to account not

only for the nature of our enneagram type, but how that

type comes to develop in the irst place. But as far as I can

determine, it is not a new argument. As Chestnut points

out, its origins lie in the work of psychiatrist Claudio

Naranjo. What Chestnut adds to the mix is the argument

that it is possible to establish a relationship between the

three enneagram centers and several three-part psychoan-

alytic theories of personality development. By doing so,

we will be able to “gain insight into the essentially dialec-

tical nature of development, gain faith in the accuracy of

these models, and enhance the usefulness of the common

insights of the diferent models” (p. 29).

page 1

The enneagram types:

• Enneagram types are not the same thing as personality types,

but are more like a temperament types

The Structure of My Argument

Because the article I am critiquing is very detailed and

formal in its exposition, my reply is also detailed and for-

mal. I originally thought to reply by submitting it for

publication in the Enneagram Journal , but that would

mean a year’s delay. Also, this article would not it within

the prescribed limits (6000 words). So I am publishing it

instead here in the Enneagram Monthly , in the interests of

generating some debate within a month or two after the

original article was published.

My article has three parts. In Part I, “Deconstructing

Freud,” I look at the Freudian world-view, how it has af-

fected the ideas of various psychoanalytic theorists (i.e.,

those discussed in Chestnut’s paper), and how their ideas

have now been supplanted by modern research in infant

development.

In Part II, “Deconstructing the Freudian Enneagram,”

I look at how psychoanalysis has inluenced the develop-

ment of the ield of enneagram studies, in particular the

way we view personality (i.e., as a pathological construct).

I show how this process began with the teachings of psy-

chiatrist Claudio Naranjo and the degree to which those

teachings have colored our view of the enneagram and,

hence, form the basis for many of the ideas expressed in

Chestnut’s article. I discuss key elements in Chestnut’s

article in an efort to show why her argument does not

succeed. Although I do not agree with her conclusions,

I’m glad to have the opportunity to look at the nature and

origins of the nine enneagram types, because this is an im-

portant topic about which a discussion is long overdue.

In Part III, “he Origins of Type and Type Motiva-

tion,” I set forth an alternative theory incorporating cer-

tain basic assumptions about the nature of the enneagram,

enneagram type, and motivation, as delineated below.

• hese enneagram temperament types are innate (with us

from birth)

• hey play a central role in shaping personality but are not

the same thing as personality

Motivation and personality formation:

• Personality is formed by a combination of innate tempera-

ment, environmental conditions (but not just parental con-

ditioning), and free will

• Although negative experiences in early life can afect the

functionality of the personality (i.e., how healthy it be-

comes), it cannot actually determine its basic structure and

function

• It is our enneagram type that is the single largest factor

which determines our personality, where type is considered

to be (a) primordial and archetypal, (b) essentially posi-

tive (life-airming), and (c) with us from birth (if not ear-

lier).

• Type motivation is therefore a more elemental than either

the need to relieve instinctual tension (Freud’s position) or

the need for social mirroring and interaction (the Object

Relational position)

* * *

I will unpack these concepts in the pages that fol-

low. Here I will say only that it is for all these reasons

that we as a ield need to develop our own paradigmatic

framework(s). Relying on somebody else’s frame of refer-

ence (e.g., that of psychoanalysis) imports the biases of

another ield into our own. (What is worse, it tends to

import them as “givens” to be accepted, not hypotheses to

be tested.) A ledgling ield matures when its practitioners

begin to closely examine the assumptions of its borrowed

paradigms. hat is what I intend to do here.

The enneagram:

• he enneagram is a universal, unbounded system that is

constrained only by the limits of the human imagination

• he enneagram is not a system that ought to be solely inter-

preted according to the constraints of any one interpretative

framework, including a psychoanalytical framework

• Making best use of the enneagram requires us to look at

the relationship between the enneagram and many diverse

systems of thought

• By taking such an approach, we avoid the pitfalls of narrow,

negative, and divisive thinking that could retard our ability

to mature as a ield

page 2

Part I: Deconstructing Freud

Phenomena of normal development can best be understood when elements of the process are some-

what out of kilter.

– Mahler, he Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (1975)

his statement by Margaret Mahler—one of the key

igures in the Objects Relations psychoanalytic move-

ment—relects an idea dear to the hearts of many psycho-

analysts: that we can understand what is normal by look-

ing at what is abnormal . his kind of thinking doesn’t

make a lot of sense—unless, of course, we actually assume

that abnormality itself is the norm.

his may sound a little strange, but here’s what I

mean: if for whatever reason we start out with a basically

pessimistic view of human nature, then whenever we look

at human behavior and motivation, we will tend to notice

what is lawed about it (i.e., what is abnormal) and to

ignore (or perhaps just not to notice) what is function-

ing well. In this way, the “abnormal” actually becomes

the norm. And from this point on, there is really no way

of ever conceiving of human behavior and motivation as

healthy, functional, and genuinely well-meaning. 3

Pessimistic philosophies about human nature are not

just pessimistic—all too often, they are also coldly ana-

lytical and intellectually haughty. hey relect a way of

thinking that is rigid, ideological, and arrogant. From a

discourse analytical point of view, we can recognize this

kind of attitude when we see a great deal of reliance on

abstruse terminology (including psychoanalytic neolo-

gisms), maze-like sentence structures, and passages full of

arcane obscurations.

Take for example, the strange designation “Object Re-

lations.” What exactly does it mean? How can an object

relate to anything? It didn’t make sense to me. It took me

quite some time to grasp what sort of object would attract

the attention of somany psychoanalysts.

When I inally igured it out, it turned out to be a lot

less arcane that I thought. As one writer notes, “ ‘Object’

is the unfortunate term psychoanalysts use to talk about a

person ” 4 [italics mine].

So what is the study of “object relations”? Simply the

study of human relationships. Or put more formally:

“Object relations theory is a modern adaptation of psy-

choanalytic theory that places less emphasis on the drives

of aggression and sexuality as motivational forces and

more emphasis on human relationships as the primary

motivational force in life.” 5

Psychoanalysis is full of terms like “object relations”—

terms that seem to obscure as much as they reveal. It is

one of the more tiresome features of the psychoanalytic

approach. Even so, with a bit of perseverance, it is pos-

sible to penetrate the obscuration—to put psychoanalysis

“on the couch” and see what is really there.

Once we do, what do we ind? We ind a philoso-

phy of the psyche that combines brilliance with blind-

ness, depth with danger. While it can at times pierce the

densest veil of the deep psyche, it can also create in its

adherents an unhealthy obsession with the darker aspects

of human nature, a morbid fascination with all that ap-

pears to be pathological about human nature. We see this

in Sigmund Freud and many of his followers—we see it

in the way they talk, the way they write, and the kind of

counsel they ofer. When we listen to what they see, we

see people in the grip of a negative fascination that keeps

them constantly churned up. heir habitual preoccupa-

tion with negativity is not surprising, since we tend to

become whatever we attend to—especially if we attend to

it for a long time.

his is why focusing too much (and for too long) on

what is wrong about human nature is a hazardous busi-

ness. As a Sui teacher once said to me, “Only great men

like Jung can go deeply into the unconscious; for most of

us, it’s enough simply to open the door and give it a brief

glance.” When even a Sui master takes heed, the rest of

us should certainly pause to consider what it really means

to mine the unconscious depths. Otherwise, we may be

in danger of becoming lost in the darkness, trapped in a

maze of negativity and suspicion.

his is what happened to Sigmund Freud. Freud was

a brilliant theoretician but a man sorely lacking in psy-

chological balance. He was not a happy person, and he

projected his own lack of contentment onto human na-

ture in general, developing a theory of the psyche steeped

in negativity, suspicion, and even paranoia. After several

prominent theorists (i.e., Adler, Stekel, and Jung) broke

with Freud, a secret cabal of loyalists was organized on

Freud’s behalf whose work it was to make sure that no

more sheep strayed from the fold. 6

Freud’s obsession with loyalty and desire to punish the

disloyal is not surprising, since he has most often been

typed by enneagrammers as a Six with a Five wing. If

we were to try to assess his mental health using Riso &

Hudson’s nine-level scheme, I doubt that Freud would

come out as a mentally healthy Six—his mentality is bet-

ter described by words associated with the lower three

page 3

levels: intensely anxious, over-reactive, and potentially

hysterical. 7 his doesn’t take away from his intellectual

brilliance but it can make us question which aspects of

Freud’s theory are genuinely useful and which aspects are

too colored by his paranoid imagination to be useful to

the rest of us.

When we go to separate the wheat from the chaf, it’s

not an easy task. How can we determine which elements

of psychoanalysis are useful and which ones are not?

How do we know which school of thought is actually

the “right” one? here are so many of them, each with a

unique interpretation on how to work with the approach

that originated with Freud (and each one disavowing the

work of other schools).

Some of these schools—such as Classical Psychoanaly-

sis, Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Ego Psycholo-

gy—retain so many elements of the original theory that

we think of them as similar in nature (despite the fact that

they tend to ight bitterly with one another about their

areas of disagreement); these are the schools that we call

“Freudian” or “neo-Freudian.” Other approaches—e.g.,

Analytical Psychology (Carl Jung), Archetypal Psychology

(James Hillman), and various intersubjective paradigms

(e.g., Robert Sokolow’s; see discussion below)—have di-

verged suiciently from Freud’s original vision that they

really seem like philosophies in their own right. But these

latter approaches can also be thought of as psychoanalyt-

ic in that they retain the key Freudian idea that there is

not just a conscious self, but an unconscious aspect to the

psyche, and that the unconscious aspect plays a very sig-

niicant role that should not be ignored.

It is this idea that there is a hidden part of ourselves in

need of discovery that psychoanalysis and the enneagram

have in common, the idea that—when it comes to the

psyche—“what we see is not what we get.” he prob-

lem with the classical psychoanalysis (the purely Freudian

strain) is that this hidden part of the psyche (the id) is

thought to be inherently chaotic and violent, and thus in

need of either suppression or (at best) sublimation. Jung

found a way to redeem the unconscious, by postulating

the idea that the this seemingly chaotic energy is not in-

herently destructive, but is actually the prima materia that

can spiritually transform us once we know how to use it.

And Jung tells us how to do this, as well, in his discussions

about the animus/anima, the shadow self, individuation,

and alchemical transformation.

But the Jungian approach rests upon the understand-

ing that human consciousness has a transcendent com-

ponent—it is more than the produce of biological drives.

Freud has no such understanding; he was an atheist who

despised religion. hus, although he promoted the idea

of a “talking cure,” we may well ask what kind of cure he

is really talking about. If his cure has no way to integrate

the most primal aspects of the psyche, then to what extent

can it actually promote psychological well-being?

hese are the kinds of issues that inevitably arise when

we closely examine the foundations of psychoanalytic the-

ory. hus, if we who study the enneagram are interested

in determining how psychoanalysis can inform our study,

we cannot avoid looking at them.

So for the remainder of Part I, we’ll focus on psycho-

analysis—what it is, and—more importantly—what it is

not . he next section focuses on psychoanalytic theory

in general and on the four theorists whose theories Bea

Chestnut discusses in her article: Margaret Mahler, Mela-

nie Klein, homas Ogden, and Heinz Kohut. hen we’ll

look at recent research indings on infant cognition and

perception, demonstrating how these indings basically

demolish psychoanalytically-motivated theories of per-

sonality development. We’ll end by considering what, if

anything, psychoanalysis does have to ofer the ield of

enneagram studies.

Psychoanalysis as a Movement

Psychoanalysis is a philosophy and methodology de-

veloped by Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) to account for

and treat human psychopathology. 8 he fact that psycho-

analysis was from the beginning oriented toward psychopa-

thology should alert us to the idea that it is not likely, in its

original form, to provide an adequate account of normal

personality and personality development (unless, as I said

above, we equate pathology with normalcy). his does

not mean that Freud has nothing useful to tell us, but it

does mean that we need to be careful when evaluating his

ideas.

While it has a well-developed body of theory, psycho-

analysis is not a scientiic discipline in the empirical sense,

because—from a scientiic point of view—its theory has

always been considerably more elaborated than its verii-

cation procedures. his is the major reason why psycho-

analysts receive their training at psychoanalytic institutes,

not at departments of research psychology—because psy-

choanalysis does not meet the scientiic requirements of

the latter ield. It is also why its ideas have had more

impact on literary theory and art than on mainstream psy-

chology.

his is not to denigrate the contribution of psycho-

analysis or Freud himself. Freud was a visionary thinker

who pioneered a new way of conceptualizing the psyche.

Whether we agree with his ideas or not, it is hard not to be

impressed by the sheer scope and depth of his work. 9

When Freud irst set forth his ideas on human nature

and personality development, they were controversial and

thus widely-rejected both by his medical colleagues and

page 4

the public at large. It is easy to see how a Victorian cul-

ture intent on repressing any thought of sexuality or other

unwanted psychic material would try to hush up the work

of a man like Freud (and indeed, why he might have felt

compelled to do this work). It is also easy to see why—as

those Victorian ideals began to crumble—people would

look in new directions for answers to the question, “What

makes human beings the way they are?”

As people began to search for answers, the ideas of

Freud—while still regarded as provocative and even

scandalous—began to have a certain appeal, especially

among intellectuals. hey talked about those ideas and

wrote articles. Gradually, the more understandable (and

less scandalous) of his ideas became not only accepted

by the public, but part of the popular imagination—

concepts like the existence of the unconscious or the idea

that painful memories can be repressed. hey began to

be perceived as “givens.”

However, this shift in perception took place around

1910 to the mid-1930s. his was still a time when the

discipline of psychology was new and standards for verii-

cation of major theories were not well-established. hus,

the transition from public skepticism to public acceptance

did not occur because the claims of psychoanalysts were

in any way scientiically validated. It occurred because it

told a fascinating story that eventually captured the mind

of the public.

However, the story which captured the public imagi-

nation is only the tip of a very big iceberg. he general

public know about some aspects of Freud’s theory, there

are countless intricacies (some would say the complica-

tions) of the theory remained largely unknown to people

outside of the psychoanalytic community. Even the na-

ture of the psychoanalytic community itself has remained

largely unknown to those outside of it. In fact, what we

might term the psychoanalytic community is not really

a community—it is simply a way of referring to people

using a diverse (and ever-diverging) collection of theories

based in some way on the work of Sigmund Freud. he

psychoanalytic “community” has always been rife with

conlict, intolerant of dissenters, and quick to ostracize

anyone who is foolish enough to depart from the party

line. Carl Jung was the irst such victim; many others

followed—e.g., Otto Rank, Alfred Adler, and Sandor Fer-

enczi, just to mention a few.

he more successful and charismatic of these ostracized

theorists went on to form their own schools, in which

schisms inevitably developed, leading to new rounds of

consolidation of the faithful and exclusion of the hereti-

cal. Books on the history of psychoanalytic movement

contain frequent references to psychoanalysts modifying

or disguising their views in order to avoid censure from

the Freudian establishment. 10,11 Former psychoanalyst

Jefrey Masson talks about the impossibility, during psy-

choanalytic training, of criticizing one’s training analyst if

one wants to obtain the credentials necessary to practice

psychoanalysis, even for conduct that most people would

consider unethical. 12

hus, it comes as no surprise that there is no uniied

theory of personality development upon which most psy-

choanalysts agree. here are instead sharply-divided opin-

ions about the nature of infant motivation, personality

development, and the etiology of psychopathology whose

very proponents (e.g., Anna Freud and Melanie Klein)

have historically engaged in acrimonious and protracted

debates over the iner points of analytic theory in a sort of

modern version of the medieval “how-many-angels-can-

stand-on-a-pinhead” disputes. 13

So we need to know not only how psychoanalysis

can enhance our understanding of the enneagram, but

to which speciic ideas, schools, or theorists do we look

for that understanding? Even the four theorists cited by

Chestnut do not have identical views on personality de-

velopment, as we shall see below. On what basis do we

decide whose ideas are the best?

Neo-Freudian Theories of Infant Development

In her analysis, Bea Chestnut focuses mainly on Ob-

jects Relations theorists, a group that places particular

emphasis on the need for social bonding as a motivation

behind the development of ego and personality. 14 How-

ever, the idea that infants were particularly motivated by

the desire to bond was not Freud’s position.

Sigmund Freud . From Freud’s perspective, infants at

birth were said to be pure “id” or unconsciousness (which

is why the earliest period of life was so often character-

ized as autistic by the next generation of psychoanalytic

theorists.)

In Freud’s eyes, the id served as the basis for personal-

ity development. His theory is synopsized as follows:

he id, present at birth, is the foundation of personal-

ity containing all of the instincts and receiving its energy

from bodily processes. Id operates according to the pleasure

principle, meaning it avoids pain and seeks pleasure using

two processes—relex actions and primary process. Relexes

are inborn actions that reduce discomfort immediately, like

a sneeze. Primary process is very simply forming a wish-ful-

illing image [i.e., a fantasy] of what is desired. For example,

if you were hungry you might start imagining your favorite

meal. Imagining of course will not satisfy hunger, or most

other needs, and the ego develops to deal with reality and sat-

isfy the id’s demands because the id cannot tell the diference

between what exists in reality and what is in the mind. 15

his theory is usually referred to as the “two-drive”

page 5

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