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The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

theparisreview.org

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Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#31

Post by normalaccess »

For anyone who wants to do a deep dive look into the life and works of George Gurdjieff and Oscar Ichazo. The Enneagram did not originate from the scientific method. It is a rebranded meld of eastern mysticism, new age woo, and Greek philosophy sold to the corporate elite as a tool to brand and control their employees. It's as much a religion as is Scientology.

Just take a look at one of the testing centers and the history they themselves list. https://www.integrative9.com/enneagram/history/

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#32

Post by normalaccess »

rel_ic wrote: post #19
bambax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're skeptical or unsure of any of these frameworks I am not unsure. I'm quite certain it's all complete and utter garbage protected with circular ex post facto justifications (and I'm surprised the author of the post is an assistant professor in a University).

Reasonable people find value in it. You might be missing out by shutting yourself off from it!

"Reasonable"? The idea was popularized by Gurdjieff, G. I. who was a mystic teacher. There is nothing reasonable about it. not a single wiff of actual truth, just rebranded new age woo for corporate elite. I may sound harsh but from what I've found in my own personal research it is much of a religion as scientology and as much science as astrology.

https://www.integrative9.com/enneagram/history/

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#33

Post by prewett »

bitwize wrote: post #5
tgv wrote: post #4

You may like it or whatever, but don't think this is in any way objective, a trait which it has in common with practically all personality psychology.

The Big Five and HEXACO models have proven pretty statistically reliable. But yeah, most any predecessors to those were complete ass pulls, often by people not really versed in the field (like Myers and Briggs).

> were complete ass pulls

Boy is that a dismissive overstatement. Briggs began thinking about personality in 1917, intentionally read biographies to get more data on personalty, and incorporated Jung's ideas in 1923 when his book was published, albeit with her own interpretation. Meyers did an apprenticeship with a test developer to learn how to make tests. So both Meyers and Briggs were, in fact, reasonably well versed in the field. They did not even make the test until 1944, after they'd been thinking about these ideas for over 20 years. Note that the Big 5 was not developed until the 1980s, almost half a century after they developed their theory. Ass-pulling this is not.

Wikipedia hates on the MBTI, but the actual test that you have to pay for is hardly "Barnum effect, flattery, and confirmation bias": you have 50 or so questions that you have to choose between two options of what you do. Now, you do have to answer what you actually would do rather than what you think is best or what you should do or what you should do culturally, so there is some confounding effects there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#34

Post by klik99 »

normalaccess wrote: post #31

For anyone who wants to do a deep dive look into the life and works of George Gurdjieff and Oscar Ichazo. The Enneagram did not originate from the scientific method. It is a rebranded meld of eastern mysticism, new age woo, and Greek philosophy sold to the corporate elite as a tool to brand and control their employees. It's as much a religion as is Scientology. Just take a look at one of the testing centers and the h…

It's weird to me that Gurdjieff is never mentioned when people talk about enneagram. I guess the personality stuff is inspired by Gurdjieff but deviates from it. But I would bet a lot of HN readers would dig Gurdjieff. If you're into absurdist new age stuff, it's a precursor to things like Discordianism, but def with more woo.

Meetings with Remarkable Men is a great book, though I doubt much of it is true it paints a really colorful picture of the time period.

In Search of the Miraculous is also a great book, but I think the author was jaded and a bit cynical about Gurdjieff so should also be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#35

Post by itchyouch »

tgv wrote: post #24
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like MBTI and enneagram and such are frameworks to talk about cognitive functions and all that. Holding them to the same standards as physics is a bit silly.

They don't talk about cognitive functions. Those would be things like vision and memory. And I'm not holding them to the same standards, but that doesn't mean that any old balony is fine. People attach a certain value to psychological tests, and they should realize that the whole thing is rather arbitrary.

You're right that they don't talk about cognitive functions. That's only when looking at these personality traits as a categorization of the outputs, which would feel like arbitrary curve fitting.

To be more nuanced, the underlying basis for MBTI on cognitive functions is about describing the input processing of various personality types, which isn't obvious (and completely obfuscated) if one is reading descriptions on a site like 16personalities.com.

It's a subtle but nuanced difference, but provides an avenue for therapists to understand how inputs in a client's life may affect them and their responses to situations. This is a more valid dive into the input-processing aspects of MBTI: https://www.typeinmind.com/type-theory

If you read the type descriptions on the typeinmind.com website, you'll see that the approach is very different. It may seem arbitrary and foo foo, but I'd challenge you to look deeper before completely writing it off as bologna.

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#36

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Gormo wrote: post #30
knallfrosch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should rely on your intuition directly instead of distrorting it through pseudoscience such as MBTI > The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a pseudoscientific self-report questionnaire that claims to indicate differing "psychological types" (often commonly called "personality types"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

Where did pseudoscience come into the conversation? Depending on your approach, MBTI is either a reasonable heuristic for concepts that have been validated scientifically (i.e. correlation to Big Five), or is not attempting to be a scientific model at all.

I believe I-E is pretty strongly correlated, the rest not so much. And there is nothing like Neuroticism in MBTI.

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#37

Post by evolve2k »

prewett wrote: post #33
bitwize wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Big Five and HEXACO models have proven pretty statistically reliable. But yeah, most any predecessors to those were complete ass pulls, often by people not really versed in the field (like Myers and Briggs).

> were complete ass pulls Boy is that a dismissive overstatement. Briggs began thinking about personality in 1917, intentionally read biographies to get more data on personalty, and incorporated Jung's ideas in 1923 when his book was published, albeit with her own interpretation. Meyers did an apprenticeship with a test developer to learn how to make tests. So both Meyers and Briggs were, in fact, reasonably well ver…

More recently I’ve been considering neuro-divergence in the context of these personality types. Specially ADHD and Autism. ADHD by example has a whole system effect for someone, with resultant strengths and challenges very much informing part someone’s personality.

Folks with Autism often have traits of being: direct, seek deep details, are able to stick with a few topics to deep excellence, can sometimes struggle reading people’s emotions.

And yes while generalisations, I wonder on how different neurodivergence’s may be hiding in plain sight within some of these personality systems.

I’ve def seen jokes online that notice that certain MBTI profiles are commonly gateway diagnosis for say ADHD/Autism.

Interested in others thoughts and takes on this.

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#38

Post by sandspar »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #36
Gormo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did pseudoscience come into the conversation? Depending on your approach, MBTI is either a reasonable heuristic for concepts that have been validated scientifically (i.e. correlation to Big Five), or is not attempting to be a scientific model at all.

I believe I-E is pretty strongly correlated, the rest not so much. And there is nothing like Neuroticism in MBTI.

16Personalities, a Myers Briggs website, includes neuroticism on their test. They refer to it as Turbulence and Assertiveness, as in high neuroticism and low neuroticism.

Re: The Nine Ways: On the Enneagram

#39

Post by tgv »

knallfrosch wrote: post #29
tgv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically reliable, in what sense? That they frequently produce the same outcome on repeated application of the test? That's not a surprise. As a wise man said: the gold standard for repeatable outcome is astrology. Suppose I make a test and ask questions like "Do you like coffee?" and "Is your favorite color blue?". That would get a very high test-retest reliability. If I then score e.g. +coffee -blue as "intell…

> Statistically reliable, in what sense? Let's just say that if astrology was reliable, people would follow their horoscopes.

Astrology has a great test-retest reliability. Every time someone tests your sign, the same answer comes out. That's what it means. Same for personality inventories: people's replies don't vary much over time. As astrology shows, that doesn't mean you can draw conclusions.
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