Point Three: The Performer

The preoccupations of Point Three include:

• Identification with achievement and performance.
• Efficiency.
• Competition and the avoidance of failure.
• The belief that love comes from what you produce, rather than for who you are.
• Selective attention to whatever is positive. Tuning out of negatives.
• Poor access to personal feelings. Emotions are suspended while the job gets done.
• Presentation of an image that is adjusted to gain approval. A high-profile public persona.
• Confusion between one's real self and the characteristics that are appropriate to one's role or job.
• A way of paying attention that is called convergent thinking, in which a multitrack mind is focused upon a single goal.
• Intuitive adjustment of self-presentation, often to the point of believing that the image is one's true self.

Helen Palmer

The Enneagram:
Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life
Harper & Row, 1988, 392 pages