The Enneagram: A tool, but in subservience to which goal?

[Vive]

Hammers are tools. They are mostly used to hammer down nails, but it would not be nuanced to say a hammer merely has one purpose. With a minor amount of creativity hammers can be used not just to build, but also to destroy. A hammer can also be used to reshape things in ways that are more to your liking.

Now, the Enneagram, I hear, is also seen as a tool and I wonder:

• What kind of tool do you think the Enneagram is?
• What do you use it for?
• To what end can one use it well? What are ways in which you can use it poorly?

These are just starting questions, feel free to ask new ones, answer questions of your own or talk about anything related to the thread's topic.

[Vive]

Roshan , I'm not sure to what degree the video reflects your opinion, but regarding the video:
I don't think it's surprising that the people he has used in his example 'have come out on the other side'. If you go an use any typology system to try and 'put everything into boxes', proceeding to use it as a moral framework that explains all and then assume it will just all work out fine, then it's really no surprise that eventually you'll toss typology aside as a previously interesting hyperbole or a past escapade. It's like trying to use a hammer to do eye surgery; the goal is way too complex for it to ever work.

When or if typology will work out for you depends on the intentions you have, along with what Animal describes: that there is 'a right and wrong time, place and manner in which to use [it] - for each person.' However it also depends on the perspectives of people you get into contact with. If all I knew was Riso and Hudson's perspective, I would've never properly respected the Enneagram as something that had value. It's rigid and not nuanced and It's because I got into contact with so many people's perspectives that it started getting value. To quote the popular animated tv-series 'Avatar': "If you draw your knowledge from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale."

Even when I thought that for example Naranjo's descriptions were honestly just bonkers, I still had the idea that the Enneagram had some kernel of truth to it, or at least I thought that by using it I could learn something new about myself or others. I kept moving away and again moving towards the system, questioning it each time. There was a lot of trial and error, looking at what didn't work, didn't make sense and I stripped that away. Honestly, I now look at the Enneagram as a tool to help ascertain what remains consistent in myself and others over time, or in other words: it's a tool I use to better understand people's personalities, including my own and it helps me understand what archetypes people represent.

The has helped me really take a good hard look at some of my issues and make real improvements and sometimes it just made my overthinking worse or send me down useless spirals. I went down those spirals in search of my identity, so whether the tool I was using to try and discover that was the Enneagram or not, I would've gone down that rabbit hole anyways. There are downsides to everything, I think the most important thing is that no matter what tool you use is that you do research on it, discuss it with others, you analyze it, try it out and you figure out whether for you the benefits outweigh the costs and then you make an informed choice on what to do with it.