The Circle of Nine Basic Characters - Excerpts from Naranjo's "Enneagram and Society"

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The Circle of the Nine Basic Characters

by Claudio Naranjo
Excerpts from his book:
"Enneagram and Society - Healing the Soul to Heal the World"

Symmetry and Polarity in the Enneagram

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ENNEATYPE II: PRIDE Meddling seems to be an excessively good disposition both with respect to words as well as acts. The meddler is an individual capable, after having stood up, of promising what he is not going to fulfill... He insists that the slaves mix more wine than the guests can drink ... He acts as a guide along a short cut and then cannot find the place he wanted to go to ... He likewise appears before a superior officer to ask when he is going to decide to begin the battle and what the password is going to be for the day after tomorrow ... At the tomb of a recently deceased woman, he has the name of her husband, her father, her mother, that of the deceased woman herself, and her date of birth inscribed. As if this were not enough, he also asks for it to be engraved that they were respectable people.

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ENNEATYPE VII: GLUTTONY

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ENNEATYPE IV: ENVY

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ENNEATYPE V: AVARICE

The person who suffers from this defect is capable, in a banquet he has organized, of not serving an adequate amount of bread and of asking the guest he has received in his house for a loan ... If he sells wine, even to a friend, he mixes it with water. He takes his children to the theater the day when entrance is free ... He makes his servant carry too much weight and to make things worse, he gives him less food than the other masters ... If he considers that one of his friends has bought something cheap, he buys it from him and resells it at a profit.

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ENNEATYPE VIII: LUST He could be one of those who gather around themselves and convoke a circle of people and then, with a powerful, cavernous voice, apostrophize and strike up a conversation with them15 ... He finds no better occasion to make a show of his cynicism (shamelessness) than when there is a public feast.

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ENNEATYPE I: ANGERWe ought to get together, just ourselves, and make decisions concerning these matters, avoiding the crowd and the agora. Let us put an end to our participation in magistracy, and thus to the criticisms and honors of this rabble. This city must be governed by them or by us ... The oligarch never goes out before midday; his cloak is carefully draped, his beard neat and tidy and his fingernails properly cut. ... They dislike sitting in the assembly next to a subject who is dressed in rags.

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ENNEATYPE IX: INDOLENCE

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ENNEATYPE III: VANITY

He possesses a small gymnasium with a court for ball games, and he goes around the city inviting sophists, fencing masters, and musicians to perform there; and he makes sure to arrive late at the exhibition so that people can say: He is the owner of the gymnasium.

The fundamental defect of the vain is falseness, inauthenticity, their confusion between the image they offer to the world and their actual reality. More than a falsification of facts, this falseness entails a particular viewpoint about themselves. In contrast to the proud, who exaggerate their merits, here we have confusion with respect to value criteria, which are external and excessively concrete. This is the kind of mind referred to by the Little Prince when he speaks of adults who like numbers a lot, who ask how old you are and how much you earn, though it would never occur to them to ask whether you collect butterflies.

A prominent defense mechanism in this character is negation, by means of which they affirm something that is not true in order to distract (themselves) from the awareness of what is. Their tendency to identify is also marked, particularly in the sense of modeling themselves in an imitative manner around extrinsic patterns.

Among the Italian masks, we find the character of Florindo. Carla Poesio says of him:

Is he intelligent or stupid, brave or vain, is he ignorant or wise, this gentleman dressed so elegantly, with a velvet tricorn decorated with small, costly feathers that is so well-positioned by the hand of an expert on his curly wig? It is not so easy to know, it depends on the occasion. Maybe it is not of interest to know. What can be said without doubt is that he is handsome and elegant, that he chooses well his words, his gestures, and how he is dressed. He seems made for the role of the lover. We shall ask no more.

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FACING THE TRUTH