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The
Enneagram Theory of Personality
Why it's
use is incompatible with Christianity
(from the January/February 1999 issue)
ALTHOUGH A GOOD DEAL has
been written about the fraudulence of the enneagram and
its Theory of Personality, this system of typology
continues to be enthusiastically embraced by not a few
Catholic institutions. Last summer, for instance, in the
June, July and August issues of Guardian Angels Press
(GAP), parish newsletter for Guardian Angels Church in
Cincinnati, parishioner Jerry Miller penned a three-part
article on the popular practice of the enneagram,
entitled "Reflections on the Spiritual Way."
The article presents a
brief overview of the personality-typing theory which has
been popular in Catholic circles for more than a few
years now. It is taught by faculty members at
Cincinnati’s Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, is
commonly used in retreats, is promoted in Catholic high
schools, and is discussed in official parish and diocesan
publications. Clearly the appearance is given that the
Church endorses, even embraces, this "spiritual
way."
Miller explains in his GAP
article that the purpose of the enneagram is "to
discover one’s own type of driving force for
one’s actions or energy directions which one
pursues." According to various practitioners of the
enneagram, he writes, this "theory of
personality" is to be understood as "the mirror
of the soul" and "a map to the psyche."
Quoting Jesuit Father Anthony de Mello, whose writings
were recently censured by the Vatican, Miller explains:
"For some, the enneagram wakes us up to our blind
side… If you use the enneagram as a technique to
better understand yourself, it can help you on your
pilgrimage."
In the Dec. 98/Jan. 99
issue of The Times of St. Mary, parish newsletter
for St. Mary’s Church in Hyde Park (Cincinnati), an
interview with Fr. Ray Aichele, director of spiritual
formation at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati
since 1986, reveals that Aichele presented the enneagram
to St. Mary’s parishioners at their 1997 Lenten
Series. "The idea is to become balanced, or free
enough to let the face of God shine forth, to become free
enough to be led by the Spirit," Aichele told The
Times.
Incompatible with
Christianity
However, there are issues
surrounding the origins, practice and conclusiveness of
the enneagram which render the Church’s endorsement
a distinct impossibility. "It is incompatible with
Christianity," Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J. told SCR in
a phone interview.
Pacwa, perhaps the
Enneagram’s most vocal critic in the Catholic world,
was, ironically, one of the first teachers of the
"enneagram theory of personality." Pacwa, who
is now a professor of Scripture Studies at the University
of Dallas, taught at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati
at the time and recalls that he used the enneagram during
retreats. Since those early years Pacwa said that he did
his "homework" and discovered the true origins
of the enneagram. "Ultimately I quit teaching it
because it didn’t work. It is neither theologically
correct nor psychologically effective."
In the early 70’s
Pacwa enrolled in an eight-day seminar at the Jesuit
theology school in Chicago on the subject of the
enneagram. He became "an instant expert," he
says. He was taught by Jesuit Father Bob Ochs who had
only just been introduced to the enneagram himself some
months before. Ochs brought the new methodology back to
Chicago from a workshop he attended at the Esalen Center
in California.
The opening activity of
the Ochs seminar, Pacwa relates in his book Catholics
and the New Age (CATNA), "was stuffing
small, round black pillowcases for use in seated
meditation exercises." Learning the enneagram method
involved physical exercises such as "rolling our
heads around our necks to loosen the muscles and slowly
jogging in place, while we imagined that we were picking
grapes above our heads."
Ochs taught them a variety
of meditative techniques in the seminar, says Pacwa.
"We lay on the floor and imagined that we were
burning logs turning into ashes. The goal was to let go
of thought and identity and attain
‘no-mind.’" Ochs also explained to the
students, mostly seminarians, that the nine personalities
are located on the circle around an inner triangle and
hexangle.
Ochs’ mediation
exercises and physical activities were meant to free us
from "the ego compulsions of our enneagram
types," says Pacwa. "Their goal was spiritual
enlightenment," he said, which Ochs’ called nirvana.
Basic objections
The enneagram theory of
personality purports to be able to classify each person
into one of nine personality types, based on a
description of one’s basic character traits. Donna
Steichen, author of Ungodly Rage: the Hidden Face of
Catholic Feminism, believes that people find the
enneagram attractive for the same reason they love to
look up their horoscopes or take those quizzes in
women’s magazines and Reader’s Digest
(e.g. "How Loveable Are You?"). "It arises
from endless fascination with their inner lives,"
she said. "The reason the personality descriptions
sound plausible is that we have many common
characteristics. Even horoscopes sound
recognizable—especially about others than
ourselves."
The enneagram, as Pacwa
taught it, used to be to identify your principle
obnoxious trait, which was referred to as your
"toxic" or your "demon." It was
explained, relates Pacwa, that there were nine demons and
nine faces of God, one face to counteract each of the
nine demons. "Nine faces of God?" asks Pacwa,
"what does this say about the relevance of the
Trinity?"
Pacwa explains that the
most profound problem with the enneagram is its
underlying theology. "The goal of the enneagram is
different from the goal of Christianity," says
Pacwa. "Redemption wrought by the cross is
meaningless," he explained. "Redemption is not
and cannot be integrated into the enneagram theory of
personality. One sometimes hears, ‘I am a redeemed
type three.’ This is sheer determinism."
Fabricated by an
occultist
Enneagram teachers will
almost always claim that they have nothing to do with the
New age movement. It is important to note that many are
"honest, but uninformed," says Pacwa.
"They don’t understand the origins of the
enneagram," he explained.
While practitioners and
teachers of the enneagram claim that the system was used
more than 2000 years ago by Suffi mystics in the Middle
East, Pacwa says: "Impossible. The Suffis are a
Moslem sect. Islam was founded only in 600 A.D.—1400
years ago."
Even so, roots of the
enneagram as we know it, stretching from Chile in 1968 to
the libertine Esalen Center in California in 1972, do not
run deep: "This system was a complete fabrication
based on instructions an occultist named Oscar Ichazo
received from a spirit he was channeling," explained
Pacwa, who uncovered this fact himself. Ichazo claimed to
be in contact with long-dead Suffi mystics.
Ichazo is often credited
as the man who brought the enneagram to the United
States. In a sense that is the truth, says Pacwa. The
diagram itself, with its 9-pointed star-like shape, was
used by Suffi mystics for fortune-telling (as opposed to
personality typing) as early as the first decade of the
20th century.
Pacwa explained that,
according to Ichazo the channeled spirit directed him to
take the seven capital sins and place them on the
9-pointed enneagram form. He needed two additional
capital sins, so he added "deceit" and
"cowardice," for a new total of nine capital
sins. enneagram theories claim that we are "born
divine, but then when we’re about three years old we
cover over that divinity with an ego type. One of the
"nine capital sins" is at the core of each ego
type.
The personality
descriptions were later applied to the enneagram by Karen
Horney. Then Freud's defense mechanisms were added to
each personality type. Thus, says Pacwa, while the
9-point diagram might be close to 100 years-old, the
enneagram theory of personality was pushed through its
birth canal by Ichazo thirty years ago in 1968. When
Helen Palmer wrote a book about the enneagram (The
Enneagram, 1988), Ichazo even brought a lawsuit
against her, claiming that he "invented" the
enneagram yet she wrote a book on it. Ichazo won the
lawsuit.
"The mixture of so
many non-Christian elements in the enneagram
system," writes Pacwa in CATNA, "raises
the need to be very careful about accepting it
wholeheartedly. St. Paul instructs us, ‘Test
everything; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from
every form of evil’ (1 Thes 5:20-21). When we test
the enneagram, we use the gospel of Jesus Christ as the
norm by which we judge it. We do not use the enneagram to
test the truth of the gospel."
—Michael
S. Rose
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