Posted by Dave on July 01, 1998 at 19:45:20:
In Reply to: Re: Enneatype: Defense Mechanism? posted by Hal on July 01, 1998 at 09:50:13:
Some of my comments you might find usefull:
The RHETI is a tool to determine type. It's only one tool. If it's results don't coincide with your own self-perspective:
1.You aren't self-aware or self-honest enough to be objective on your personal characteristics.
2. Your more focused on the traits of a certain type because:
a. it's a desired trait
b. the circumstances of your life are utilizing the resources of a particular enneatype and are focused on its a ennea-point of attention .
3.You're good enough at test taking and know how to create a test result that you want.
4. The test has a degree of inaccuracy, so the test results might be wrong.
Couple the RHETI with awareness training, meditation, early life review, and experiences to see if you can form correspondences to the typing information you study.
The Enneagram is also a tool to uncover, explain, and show the way out of patterns of attention and behaviour that are "automatic" and often unconscious. These are probably formed in the early developmental years and are ingrained neurologically as patterns, and therefore permanent. They may even be a genetic component, or a karmic component as our metaphysical enneagram teachers sometimes claim (Hi Claudia!). Therefore, it's probably a "default setting" and permanent. You can learn, and this is the point of the enneagram training, to let go of this perspective and "move around" the enneagram, and live parts of your life in the consciousness of other types, but yours will always be the foundation. As we grow older, our type's mellow according to some enneagram teachers.
As far as personality, the enneagram has 2 main functions in personality, one is in the placement of attention and motivation, and the other is the personality structure that develops from it. Now, there are other measures of personality style, MBTI and Merril social style to name two, which are more malliable and changable. Your enneatype is deeper, so it's more a fixed part of you, even if its expression (as shown in personality) is less pronounced.