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Re: Enneatype: Defense Mechanism?
Re: Enneatype: Defense Mechanism?
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Posted by Geenius at Wrok on July 01, 1998 at 10:24:59:
In Reply to: Re: Enneatype: Defense Mechanism? posted by Hal on July 01, 1998 at 09:50:13:
: : Just a side comment from me, a 4w5. When I first took the RHETI I tested as a 7 (with high on both 4 and 5, but definite a 7). After I had studied the enneagram for some months I realised why I was acting like a 7 - and I now know I am not a 7 at all but a 4w5 struggeling with my defense mechanisms (disintegrating to 7, for example).
: : That does not mean I have CHANGED personality, but I have leanred a lot more about myself and why I do what I do, and I have no doubt that I am a 4w5. When I do the test now, the 7 comes out a LOT lower, as I have started to learn not to act out in my wing's point of disintegration as much as I did before.
: : I think it would be difficult for most people to answer the test a 100% honestly (or accurately) the first time, especially if one doesn't really know oneself as good as one thinks. Well put, Aislinn.
: I see everyone's point, but I'm not convinced that your enneatype never changes.
: If you act like a 7 and have motivations like a 7, does that not make you a 7?
: And if you then "fix" those problems so you now act out of the motivations of
: a 4w5, does this really mean you were a 4w5 all along, even though all evidence
: suggested you were a 7?
You're making the erroneous assumption that it's possible for one's true
motivations to change so drastically. It's not. Example: Freddy tests
highest in Two (basic fear: being unloved), second-highest in Six (basic
fear: being abandoned). Gradually he overcomes his fear of being unloved.
Does that mean he has become a Six? No, it means he has become a healthy
Two. Or it means that he was really a Six all along, because it was so
easy for him to overcome the one fear (perhaps not really his most basic
fear) but not the other. You aren't going to suffer from one fear, overcome it, then start
suffering from a completely different one. If it seems like you have, they
are probably just different aspects of the SAME fear.
: In my own case, by all accounts I used to BE a 5. I felt like a 5, acted like
: a 5, and everyone else could instantly identify me as a 5. Now I test as a 4,
: and it feels right--it describes me, the way I am now, much better than 5 does.
: And all my friends can see how much I've changed and moved towards 4. Has my
: type not changed, even though my personality and motivations have? Have I
: spent my life as a 4 in 5's cloting?
That is actually the most likely explanation. Try this scenario on for
size: You grow up with an amount of uncertainty about your true identity,
groping for a sense of self. You have intellectual leanings, and in a
society that likes to categorize anyone with such leanings as a "brain,"
that's the image that people seize on, because the "real you" is rather
more impenetrable. To get along in the world, you take on that role
yourself, but you're never completely comfortable in it; it represents a
side of your personality but not your personality as a whole. Nevertheless
you stick with it because everyone has to be SOMETHING -- the idea that
there might be a whole "something" of people who aren't any other
"something," who just don't fit into the simple scheme, isn't common
currency -- and this "something" seems more true for you than any other
"something" you're aware of. Then you get involved with the enneagram,
start addressing some of the issues you have around this personality
(which you now know to call "Five"), find them relatively easy to deal
with -- and then, lo and behold, discover that your true "something" wasn't
Five at all but Four, a "something" that goes almost completely
unacknowledged in society at large. Has your type changed? No. Has your PERSONALITY changed? No. Only your
conception of what it's possible for you to be has changed.
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