Disseminations of the Enneagram - Overview
1st Dissemination of the Enneagram of Personality — Oscar Ichazo
The originator of The Enneagram of Personality
The Enneagram of Personality was created by Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian spiritual seeker and mystic. He introduced his process of working with the Enneagram Instinctual Triads, Protoanalysis, Trialectics, and Dichotomies along with spiritual traditions to his students in Arica, Chile, in 1968.
Later, in July of 1970, he introduced the Enneagram and Protoanalysis as part of a 10-month spiritual training, which was also in Arica, Chile.
In April of 1971, after this initial dissemination of the Enneagram, Ichazo's students went on to create the Arica Spiritual School based on Ichazo's groundbreaking work.
Over the years, Ichazo added advanced concepts to his work, including his 40-day Training and his 2-week Domains of Consciousness Training. He also added tri-fix to his work, teaching students that they had 3 fixations circa 2005. Originally, tri-fix referred to the three instinctual centers and that each center had a fixated view, a central question. In addition, he taught a 5-day intensive every five years with new information and materials on the Enneagram and spirituality.
2nd Dissemination of the Enneagram — Claudio Naranjo, MD:
Creator of Instinctual Subtypes
The Enneagram was further developed and transmitted by Dr. Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean Psychiatrist and spiritual seeker.
Naranjo had been a student of Ichazo’s and attended his training in Arica, Chile, beginning in April of 1970. He also attended 5 months of the 10-month training in Chile that began July 1, 1970.
According to Naranjo, he had many conversations with Ichazo in 1970, discussing both the spiritual and psychological aspects of the Enneagram and the 9 types.
In 1971, after his time studying and collaborating with Ichazo in 1970, Naranjo went on to teach the Enneagram in confidential study groups he called SAT groups for "Seekers After Truth" in Berkeley, California. He continued these SAT groups for 18 months from 1971-1973. Over time, he added his own work, including the Instinctual Subtypes.
In 1973, Naranjo stopped teaching in the US, stating that he did so because other people were taking credit for his work and misstating some of his key teachings.
First Diverging Viewpoints
As a result, both Ichazo and Naranjo's Enneagram teachings grew into two separate schools of thought.
3rd Dissemination of the Enneagram — Jesuits: Father Robert Ochs: Catholic Pipeline:
Added Integration and Disintegration*, does not include Subtypes
Another variation in the dissemination of the Enneagram occurred when Father Robert Ochs, from Loyola University in Chicago, began teaching the Enneagram at Loyola.
While on sabbatical in 1971, Ochs attended Naranjo’s SAT (Seekers After Truth) groups in Berkeley, California. Naranjo then gave Ochs permission to teach the Enneagram, which he did. Ochs focused on teaching from the short notes he had taken regarding Naranjo's descriptions of the nine types. His notes ended up in the hands of many Enneagram enthusiasts because nothing was published about the Enneagram by Ichazo or Naranjo.
Ochs did not include the Instinctual Subtypes as part of his teachings because Naranjo had yet to fully develop his work with the Instinctual Subtypes. This is why those "East of the divide" (those that learned the Enneagram via Ochs) did not know about the Instinctual Subtypes.
Ochs did, however, mistakenly misquote Naranjo with respect to the movements between the types and their lines of connection. Naranjo taught and documented that integration and disintegration was an incomplete understanding to his teaching of the types and that the types move to "both lines of connection" as well as their "wing types" when integrating and when disintegrating.
What went wrong? Why does it matter?
Ochs continued to teach integration and disintegration as a formula for working with the type's fixation based on a false premise that the types move to one line of connection when integrating and to the other when disintegrating.
Those who studied with Ochs and went on to became teachers did the same. Over time, this error exponentially spread misinformation about the types, and according to Naranjo, led to many mistypings and misunderstandings of the richness of the types.
In 1996, Naranjo said that he was misquoted in 1971 regarding the movement of the types' lines of connection within the Enneagram symbol. He said that this error went around the world and negatively impacted the understanding of the inner workings of the nine Enneagram Types.
He went on to explain that he did explore an idea regarding the arrows one evening with his SAT group but immediately saw that it was not viable the same evening. He went on to say that this was because it was dialectic in nature and not Trialectic, which is what the Enneagram of Personality was based on.
Naranjo reiterated that he never taught that the Enneagram types move one direction in security/integration and the other in stress/disintegration, nor do they become another type. He stressed that such a view would negate the intrinsic dynamics of the Enneagram system because every type is constantly moving to both of its lines of connection and to both wing types at all times.
Katherine attended Naranjo's 1996 training in Boulder, Colorado, and so was present when he explained this misunderstanding to that group of attendees.
Naranjo also taught that integration/disintegration was an error in his SAT groups. In 1994, he documented it in his book Ennea-types and Psychotherapy, which was published in 1994, and on video in 2010 when he was teaching the Enneagram in Germany.
Ichazo never taught integration and disintegration to his students and aspirants either.
Confirmation that such a theory was not in Ichazo's teachings was confirmed in 2005 and again in 2019 by two teachers from Arica, Ichazo's Spiritual School. These teachers taught Ichazo's 40-day Training and his 2-week Domains of Consciousness Training, and other diverse workshops. One teacher, in particular, attended the 1970 training in Arica, Chile. So they are well acquainted with the history of Ichazo's work.
Katherine states that she personally met and conversed with them regarding Ichazo's work with the Enneagram of Personality the year she lived on Maui from November 2004 to December of 2005. This same year was when she attended Ichazo's 5-year Anniversary Intensive. To confirm important facts about Ichazo's dissemination of the Enneagram of Personality, she communicated with them again via email in 2019 and 2020.
3rd Dissemination of the Enneagram of Personality — Jesuits: Don Richard Riso M.A.
Levels of Development and Instinctual Variants 1999 (Subtypes)
Three schools of thought
Many people do not know that this inaccurate dissemination of the Enneagram occurred, so it still continues to circle the planet, and even more so due to the internet highway. The misquoting of such an important aspect of the Enneagram system changed the course of the Enneagram.
Hopefully, the misunderstanding will be corrected to include the Enneagram Types, the use of both lines of connection when stressed, and both lines when secure, via the same internet highway, which is why I include this information here.
Until that time comes, there are Enneagram students and teachers that were not taught Ichazo's tri-fix and others that were not taught Naranjo's subtypes as a part of their Enneagram training.
Because of these differences, three very distinct schools of thought on the Enneagram came into being.
4th Dissemination of the Enneagram — Katherine Chernick (Fauvre)
Research, Certifications, and Introduces 3Types, Tritype®, Tricenter, Trigram, Instinctual Stacking, Identifications, Patterns, and Proportions
1985, Katherine Chernick (Fauvre) was introduced to the Enneagram before there were any books written of the Enneagram.
In 1994, just after the Enneagram conference, she began her formal research on the Instinctual Subtypes.
After 10 years of studying the Enneagram and teaching it to her clients and groups, she then began her three certification courses.
In 1995-1996, she certified with 3 different Enneagram Schools; Palmer-Daniels, Riso-Hudson, and Hurley-Dobson. She teaches that she learned a great deal from each certification process and from every participant she met along the way.
While certifying in 1995, she continued with 3 of her of 22 Enneagram studies on diverse aspects of the Enneagram.
Tritype®
In 1994, while conducting hundreds of Enneagram Typing interviews, Katherine confirmed that participants used three Enneagram types and not just one and that these types appeared to be used in a specific order. She called this understanding both 3Types and TriCenter.
In April of 1996, after nearly a 24 year absence, Claudio Naranjo taught the Enneagram for the first time in the U.S. since 1973. According to Naranjo, it was the first time he ever taught the Enneagram as a full intensive. Katherine had a chance to attend his 7-day Intensive in Boulder, Colorado.
She found Naranjo's course to be eye-opening and that it filled in many important gaps in her understanding of the Enneagram types. She learned a great many things about the types that had been lost in the dissemination of the Enneagram or were incorrectly assigned to another type. These errors, great and small, altered the dissemination of the Enneagram. These were key errors and additions about the types as they were initially taught by Ichazo and Naranjo.
These differences made a great deal of sense to her. She had studied many personality typologies prior to learning the Enneagram. Katherine had also worked with thousands of people in her earlier career. In addition, she had studied a great deal about faceology, archetypes, body language, micro-expressions, and MBTI before encountering the Enneagram.
By 1996, she had already conducted three qualitative studies on the 'internal experience' of the types and Instinctual Types and had written two books: Enneastyle: The 9 Languages of Enneagram Type and A Study of the Instinctual Subtypes. She had also researched and discovered the Idealized Images and Core Fears of the 9 Enneagram Types.
As a result of these studies, with over 1,000 study participants, she was able to confirm that each type moves to both lines of connection when secure, calm, and healthy, and when troubled, stressed, and unhealthy. This was true with participants that were correctly typed and true of those inaccurately typed as well. In fact, it was one way to see their "Truetype™" (correct Enneagram type, Tritype®, and Instinctual type, and Subtype).
So, Naranjo's way of teaching validated what the types had said about themselves.
Later, in 2005, as mentioned above, while living on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, she was able to attend Ichazo's 5-day intensive.
Since her first study in 1995, she continued to work with and to interview thousands of clients, continued to research, collect, and evaluate tens of thousands of study participants' test results, and correlated the test-taker's Enneastyle Questionnaire (EQ) with 7 other testing instruments within their Enneagram Tritype® Test results.
This knowledge has remained a cornerstone of her work regarding how to work with the Enneagram type passions, fixations, preoccupations, core fears, idealized self-images, coping mechanisms, and defense strategies.
1995 Research Findings Validate both Ichazo's Tri-fix and Naranjo's Instinctual Subtypes
Her first research findings on the 'internal experience' of the nine types and three Instinctual types revealed many key distinctions and nuances of the types and led to the creation of what is now known as Tritype®.
What is noteworthy and of interest is that these studies validated and continue to validate Ichazo's tri-fix and Naranjo's subtypes, and in particular, the advanced theories they added after 1971.
Especially meaningful is that the initial studies and resulting findings of her 1995 research studies, Enneastyle, and the Instinctual Subtypes, were conducted and evaluated before she met Naranjo and had learned of his corrections and additions to the Enneagram and his subtypes before she knew of Ichazo's tri-fix.
This suggests that the fears, concerns, preoccupations, coping mechanisms, and defense strategies of the Enneagram Types, Tri-fixes, Tritypes®, Instinctual Types, and Subtypes can be observed and, with awareness, understood.
Therefore, Katherine feels that it is imperative that one combine Ichazo's and Naranjo’s later views on the Enneagram. In addition, it is also deeply enriching to add the views, fears, and concerns of the nine types as revealed by thousands of her study participants and her interviews with tens of thousands of test-takers.
Accurately Typing Oneself and Others
Katherine believes that combining all of these approaches makes it much easier to accurately type oneself and others. It also makes it easier to understand the 'internal experiences' of the types and the processes operating at the most primal and fundamental levels of the types' defense strategies.
With this knowledge, she feels one can create and sustain meaningful and lasting relationships.
Behavior vs Motivation
Pay attention to what is motivating your behavior and not the behavior itself. This is crucial to accurately type oneself. This is especially difficult for the Type 6 and a small number of 9s to do because their defense strategies are designed to track behavior rather than motivation.
Read the In-Depth History, Transmission, and Timeline of the Enneagram
©1995-2024 Katherine Chernick Fauvre: Originator of Tritype®
Take the Enneagram Tritype® Test here: https://enneagramtritypetest.com
Katherine is an IEA Accredited Professional with Distinction