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The Good, The Bad, and The Enneagram
A not so critical review
Depending on your location, friend group, career, and spiritual leanings, you’ve probably at least heard about the Enneagram. I first heard about it on my favorite new age/comedy podcast, You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes and they made a compelling case. Being a professor, I have since seen it spread like wildfire through wide-eyed college students, many of whom are freshman dying for someone to just give them an identity already. Don’t worry kids. Same.
So, as any good lover of humans should do, I decided to dive in and make sure that this wasn’t a cult… or at least, not a dangerous one? At first glance, it seemed to be no different than the other personality tests peddled by corporate trainers and leadership retreat leaders like the Myers-Briggs, Four Temperaments (Also known as the Harry Potter Houses), Strengthsfinder, VARK, and all the rest, but there’s something unique about both the Enneagram’s implementation and reception these days. Being adopted seemingly by everyone from straight-forward business professionals to Zodiac fanatics alike, there’s something, just, different about the Enneagram.
Because there are plenty of articles that do the deep dive into this juggernaut of personality theory, and people (that I know, personally, in real life, that are doing this unironically) are paying to become “certified Enneagram experts”) I will keep the whole “Enneagram 101” brief.
The short-note breakdown, for those who don’t know, is typically as follows: The general principle is that there are nine numbers and after taking the Enneagram test (there are many free options out there) you are told which number or number options you are likely to be. The beauty is that your number is your number and you’re meant to explore and find which one you are, with the test serving as merely a guide.
For those of you who don’t know anything about the Enneagram, I highly recommend that, as a voyeur or a participant, you do some reading up on it. It is far too complicated to tackle in this article, but The Enneagram Institute puts it perfectly and succinctly on its website.
