On categories and categorization

Some thoughts on the enneagram and personality typing

I recently learned about the enneagram and found it to be useful in generating personal insight. (In case you’re curious I identify most with type four.) It gave me more language and a framework for describing behavioral and emotional patterns I’ve long noticed about myself. Pathways for growth were also described, not as answers to all of my problems, but as suggestions and possibilities that would make my life more pleasant if reasonably put into practice.

I mentioned all of this to a friend and asked her to identify her type for fun. (I’ve asked several of my friends to do the same since identifying my own.) Afterwards she raised some questions I’ve been pondering. Aren’t these personality tests too reductionistic? How can we pin down all of human behavior into X distinct categories without losing something in the process?

I’m aware of the dangers of any classification system. They can do (and have done) real harm at both the individual and collective level; they become stifling straitjackets when misapplied and abused. But that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely. Pursuits like philosophy and science are inherently reductionist—even when you’re a die-hard phenomenologist or a practitioner of complexity theory—yet they have led to the development of many things that have benefited us. This is because understanding itself is a form and act of compression wherein the richness of experience can be made comprehensible. In turn we are able to generate common points of discussion, fruitful conversation, and collective knowledge (and misunderstanding!).

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for being raw-dogged by existence. Hence, in part, why I meditate! Hence, in part, why I have an annoying tendency to argue about terms and definitions, to ask for clarity when people talk as if everything were “obvious.” But to disregard typology and categories completely is to forget that they are useful because they simplify the world. Whether these simplifications are valid and useful in a given context is important to consider, especially when applied at scale. All rigid systems falter when individual variability is an important feature of the system, as is the case with humans. On a personal basis though, the measure of a personality test is probably better judged with regard to your specific circumstances. If identifying as a type four helps you live a better life, this is a good thing.

Sure, the devil lies in the details. Viewing yourself only as a depressed person or an enneagram type four can lead to trouble, and we certainly have a tendency of doing so. The nuances of our everyday challenges and complexities will always exist and confound the predictions of any typography. One needs discernment and a certain degree of a priori self-knowledge to make the most of these classifications. An awareness of the context for which they were developed helps too. At best the enneagram functions as a mythological vehicle that highlights truths about ourselves. It’s not a device for fact-finding, nor was it meant to be.

Funnily enough, the same can be said of much of what constitutes modern psychology. Plug a given person’s attributes into a psychological model and you’ll find that it isn’t that great at predicting individual outcomes. Even the championed five-factor model of personality (OCEAN) fails at making accurate predictions at the level of the individual, which is ultimately what matters to you. They just weren’t designed to do that well. The benefit of something like the enneagram is that you have more to work with in terms of descriptors. It’s much easier to map who you are and your struggles onto what are essentially storied archetypes of thought, emotion, and behavior than it is to do the same based on loose theories and statistical models. Academic psychologists have to come up with explanations anyways about why particular traits (which they also have to define) correlate with different outcomes at the population level. In the end we are all storytellers.

We should be vigilant when attempting to understand ourselves and the world in too neat a fashion. I’m especially wary of typologies that classify people based on essentialist principles, i.e. as unchanging, immovable entities, which includes the enneagram. We are pattern-seeking, pattern-making beings who constantly dance and contend with the inseparability of form and emptiness, to frame it like a Buddhist. Put another way, we are not really fixed. We do present and discover patterns. Patterns remain endlessly abound within and all around us. To type and categorize them is to be wholly human. The enneagram is useful in that it provides richer food for thought than other typing systems when used as a tool for reflection.