Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types - Softcover

Riso, Don Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618004157 ISBN 13: 9780618004157

Verlag: Mariner Books, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

PERSONALITY TYPES, the first book by Don Richard Riso, has become the leading guide to the Enneagram, as well as a cherished classic in the literature of personal growth around the world. This is the groundbreaking book that set the standard for insight and accuracy about this ancient symbol of human personality. UNDERSTANDING THE ENNEAGRAM soon followed and has since become another indispensable reseource, teaching readers not only how to understand this psychological framework in daily life but how to use it in many different settings. Don Riso and Russ Hudson have now fully revised and updated this authoritative guide to the Enneagram, based on their continuing work in the field, which is attracting ever-increasing attention. Discover how to use the Enneagram to find fulfillment in your personal develpemnt and in all of your relationships.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DON RICHARD RISO, M.A. (1946-2012) was the foremost writer and developer of the Enneagram in the world and the most-published and bestselling author in the field. The president of Enneagram Personality Types, Inc., and co-founder of The Enneagram Institute, he taught the Enneagram for more than twenty years, pioneering a revolutionary new approach to ego psychology through his 1977 discovery of the Levels of Development. His five bestselling books with Russ Hudson have been published in more than a dozen countries and languages. Mr. Riso was a Jesuit for thirteen years, with degrees in English and philosophy, was elected to the Jesuit Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Nu, and was a Ford Foundation Fellow at Stanford University in communications (social psychology).

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Chapter 1
The Practical Guide to Personality Types

We are like prisoners in an unguarded cell. No one
confines us against our will, and we have heard that
the key that will release us is also locked inside.
If we could find the key, we could open the door and
be free. Yet, we don't know where it has been hidden,
and even if we knew, part of us is afraid to break
out of our prison. Once out, where would we go, and
what would we do with our newfound freedom?
This is not a meaningless metaphor: we are
prisoners of our ego, enchained by our fears,
restricted in our freedom, suffering from our
condition. No one prevents us from searching for the
key that would free us. We must, however, know where
to look for it and be willing to use it once we have
discovered where it is.
With the Enneagram, we have found a master
key, one that will unlock many doors. It gives us
access to the wisdom we need to escape from our self-
imposed prison so that we can embrace a fuller life.
The Enneagram helps us to let go of the limiting
mechanisms of our personality so that we can more
deeply experience who and what we really are. It
provides insights that can help in freeing us from
our fears and conflicts, from our wayward passions
and compulsions, from our disordered desires and
inner confusions.
No part of this process is automatic,
however. Even after we have identified our
personality type, it still may not be clear how to
use the insights we have been given. People often
ask, "Now that I know my type, what do I do with it?
Where do I go with it now?" Understanding the inner
workings of the personality types helps to some
degree, but information alone is not enough to free
us. Instead, we need to understand the transformative
process and our role in it. The paradox is that we
cannot bring about our transformation yet, without
our participation, it cannot be done. So what part do
we play in our own inner development, and how can the
Enneagram help?
The Enneagram can help because it is an
invaluable map for guiding us to the points of
blockage in our particular personality structures.
The fundamental premise of the Enneagram is that
there are nine basic personality structures in human
nature - nine points of view, nine value systems,
nine ways of being in the world. They have much in
common with each other, although each manifests its
own set of attitudes and behaviors, reactions and
defenses, motivations and habits. And each requires
its own unique prescriptions for growth.
The central message of this book is that by
showing us what our personality is made of, so to
speak, the Enneagram indicates what is necessary for
our real growth and transformation. Everyone is not
cut from the same cloth, or poured into the same
mold; therefore everyone's psychological and
spiritual issues will be somewhat different, and the
order in which they can best be addressed will be
different. By helping us understand the structures of
our own personality type, the Enneagram shows us how
and why we have closed down and become constricted in
our growth. It provides us with a panoramic view of
what is happening in us and in our significant
relationships. It gives us nonjudgmental,
nontechnical language in which to talk about these
ideas, and it demystifies much in the realms of
psychology and spirituality. We see that these
realities are neither foreign nor strange: they are
the worlds in which we already live.
In addition to giving us insight into our day-
to-day behaviors, the Enneagram offers an answer to
our spiritual yearnings because it shows us with
great specificity how our personality has limited us,
what our path of growth is, and where real
fulfillment can be found. It teaches us that the
longings and structures of our personality are
actually useful guides to the greatest treasures of
our soul. By regarding our self-defeating patterns
and even our psychological pain and limitations as
indicators of our spiritual capacities, we are able
to see ourselves in a different light. With this new
perspective comes compassion, healing, love, and
transformation.
We believe that, rightly understood, the
Enneagram can have a tremendously positive effect in
the world today. By touching people profoundly,
mirroring their experience of themselves and helping
them trace the trajectory of their lives, it reveals
our common humanity. It speaks to the soul,
reawakening faith, hope, and love. Many of our
students and readers have told us that the Enneagram
has helped them to rediscover spirituality - and even
brought many of them back to the churches and
traditions they once left. Their deepened
appreciation of spirituality and awareness of what
spirituality really means allowed them to operate
more gracefully within institutional frameworks. They
could see the soul of the religion they had left and
were able to orient themselves to its true Spirit.
In this book, we have enriched our
presentation of the Enneagram with ideas from Fourth
Way* schools such as the Gurdjieff Work, the Diamond
Approach of A. H. Almaas, the seminal insights of
Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo, and other awareness
practices. We have also drawn upon major religious
traditions (principally Christianity, Buddhism,
Islam, and Jewish mysticism). We hope that this book
will be a useful introduction to the Enneagram for
those who are unfamiliar with this system, as well as
a valuable resource for those already familiar with
it, as there is much new information here.
Above all, we hope this book will demonstrate
the Enneagram's relevance to all forms of
transformational work - and firmly place the
Enneagram in its true psycho-spiritual context. The
Enneagram can be applied on a superficial level, of
course, and the reader may wish only to use this
information to find out what type he or she is, or to
find out the type of someone else. New and valuable
insights are possible with even this kind of
pragmatic information. But to get the full benefits
of the Enneagram, one must integrate it into a
genuine spiritual practice. Otherwise, the
information alone tends to become an end in itself -
and ironically tends to solidify the personality
structures rather than liberate the person from them.
But when the Enneagram is part of a spiritual
practice, it more readily becomes a means for
recognizing our True Nature, and hence for loosening
the structures and limitations of the personality.
Of course, having a spiritual practice does
not guarantee ego transcendence and liberation from
egocentric structures and consequent suffering. But
without a spiritual practice, it is less likely that
we can become liberated from the limitations of our
personality. The momentum of the ego is too great,
and it cannot be transformed without bringing an even
greater force to bear upon it: the awareness that
comes from a spiritual perspective on ourselves and
our lives.

The two principal areas in which to use the Enneagram
are for self-understanding (seeing ourselves as we
actually are) and for understanding others (so that
we can have more harmonious relationships).
By far the most legitimate use of the
Enneagram is to understand ourselves. It can help us
understand our fears and desires, strengths and
weaknesses, defenses and anxieties, how we react to
frustration and disappointment - and, more
positively, what our truest capacities and greatest...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Mariner Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0618004157
• ISBN 13: 9780618004157
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: HarperCollins Publishers, Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland