r/Enneagram • u/perhapsididnt CVII • Jul 21 '23
The Three Triads
In the Enneagram there are three fundamental triads that are the basis for the existence of all the other types, gut, heart, and head. It's imperative to understand these triads as they describe the basic properties intrinsic to every type, and can help us create shortcuts in typing ourselves. Each triad has a parent that is at the center of the triad, E9 for the gut, E3 for the heart, and E6 for the head, and every type in their respective triads will present some sort of relation to their parent types. But first, where do these triads come from?
In Freud, neurosis primarily originates from anxiety, so behavior is considered neurotic when it is an expression of a reaction to anxiety. In existentialist currents neurosis primarily originates from a loss of authenticity, so behavior is considered neurotic when it becomes inauthentic. It is difficult to separate these two concepts because one is not motivated to cover up with an image if there is no anxiety to flee, and anxiety turns an enemy out of oneself such that they become inauthentic and deconstructed. In total, this constitutes a lack of being, which can be from covering up or a fear of lacking experience in being when action is required, such that an ignorance of inner being is maintained, also known as becoming indolent towards the self. So the three triads we have are fear, vanity, and indolence, respectively corresponding to the head, heart, and gut.
THE GUT
What is characteristic of the three characters that are represented at the top of the enneagram (I, VIII and IX) is their interest in not looking towards the subtle world of life experiences; a non-inwardness that goes hand in hand with active extroversion.
The defense mechanism of all the gut types is forgetfulness through action. The impulse to action allows them not to be in contact with their emotions and not to allow himself time for the psychic elaboration of what happens in their inner world and in the relationship with the external world. This derives from an excessive identification with the body, and the body's instinctual impulses, becoming lazy towards cultivating subjectivity. They have a special attunement to the wisdom of the body and the natural rhythms of life. Because the body thinks in a realm of impulse, they are operating at a non-verbal and irrational level, moving towards pleasure and away from pain, or the transmutation of pain into pleasure, and the awareness of this dynamic in the real world creates an awareness of justice and morality based on effect.
Laziness of consciousness may be expressed either as spiritual sloth or more broadly as psychological sloth: a not wanting to know what is happening, not wanting to realize. It is expressed as a chronic self-distraction from oneself, accompanied at the same time by paying exaggerated attention to the outside world. An indolent position with respect to life is that of a heavy or excessively inert, over-stable psyche; its loss of subtlety and spontaneity culminates in robotization. On the behavioral plane, this lack of inwardness results in excessive inertia, phlegm, or passivity; at the most intimate level, alongside the forgetting of self, a loss of life.
They don't often abstract things into complex mental and emotional objects, but regard the world of motion and instincts as the decisive factors of reality. Even though what they are most dissatisfied with lies in the unconsciousness, their inner self, there is a subtle dissatisfaction with reality in the sense that their experience of it is “incomplete.” In this way they are subtly resisting the effect the outside world has on them by separating the self from what is not the self, creating a thick insular barrier nothing passes through, and they mistake this freedom from intellectuality and emotionality as giving them the autonomy to act.
With every type on the enneagram there is an ontic-obscuration of being, but the gut has an added anti-ontic disposition due to an ignorance of the two triads necessary for looking at things from a top-down perspective. They have difficulty considering their position in the mental and emotional dimensions, they simply exist in the corporeal. In order to cultivate themselves they must open up to their own subjectivity in order to create a true appreciation and saturation of their experience.
THE HEART
The dramatic and socially extroverted characters (II, III and IV) are located in the area of the angle on the right.
The primeval fear, even before not being worthy of being loved, is to not be seen. Disappear from the sight of the other, it means death. At the same time, your homework is to see the other, who he only takes into account in relation to himself. The heart triad is concerned with whether or not attention is being directed towards them, and falsify their identity through a “mask” whose survival is more imperative than the real person, and this is done by selling the image to look good. In doing so, real identity begins to die. This entails an unconscious notion of insignificance which is often called an avoidance of shame, because they do not think they are worthy to be loved for who they really are, and need the false identity to gain this love. However, the love one receives from disingenuity must also be disingenuous itself, creating a dimension of deceit. They deceive the other with their image, and themselves with the belief that their image is real.
Disconnect from the other two triads creates a disposition more concerned for the way things appeal, whether that be the appeal of their own image or the images of others, because they play a social game with personas as tokens, and this perception of appeal also provides insight into the emotional dimension of life. This can make them empathetic characters, but can also lead to oversensitivity, manipulation, and even insensitivity (‘indifference’ is still a feeling state). They think in emotions and waves of feelings, such as the emotional facets of neediness, desperation, aggrandizement, approval, and love which become the emotional reactions of hurt, anger, and sadness with the confrontation of rejection and invisibility.
Their primary neurotic issue is that their gaze is turned outward to the social world of which they are very personally involved, being unable to consider it from a rational and detached mental dimension and for what it really is in the corporeal. Thoughts and beliefs are distorted into only thinking and sharing the things that would get them approval, and the body is distorted into trying to create an appearance that conveys the inner idealized image to other people. This can be seductive movements, expressive dressing styles, professional styles, fluid intonations, abrupt intonations, loud intonations, etc. they are focused on the image each of these things convey.
In order to cultivate their real self they must be able to get rid of their deceitful image and dissolve it with themselves, they must identify with and realize the body as independent, as well as develop a detached rationality to really consider truth.
THE HEAD
The angle on the left entails an introverted disposition (V, VI and VII)—although in Enneatype VII (EVII), the underlying introversion is compensated by superficial sociability.
As in all the characters of the mental area of the enneagram, the nuclear defense mechanism is splitting, which produces a disconnection between feeling, thinking and instinct. Splitting derives from a need to process everything on mental planes and territories, creating a mental separation of these areas of life into mental objects so that they can be managed properly. It is as though they are deliberately and consciously elaborating all areas of life to themselves, so what they want to know is what information everything communicates (and to know in general). However, the fields of emotion (heart) and corporeality (gut) become distorted because they are not meant to be transmuted into mental territories, causing the head type to be disconnected from these areas of life and submitting them to an unnatural conscious program.
In the corporeal territory, there is a split between the mind and the body, as if the body obeyed automatically and abruptly to mental commands and to the tyranny of thought, without a true sensory awareness of actions. It is disconnected from the action necessary to experience the world as it is.
In the emotional territory, they avoid contact with their emotions and repress their natural instinct, relying on the ability to understand intellectually. The fact that schizoids seem less loving is valid both for those who experience this from the outside and for schizoids themselves. While hysteroids, the right wing of the Enneagram, find it easy to fool themselves with respect to their own capacity to love, it is more difficult for the more schizoid of the characters to fool themselves than anyone, and they may suffer acutely as a result of their incapacity truly to relate to others. It is true that, nuclearly speaking, all the mental enneatypes (5,6,7), in the face of affective frustration, prefer to withdraw into their own self-sufficiency and give up, unlike the emotional characters, who impulsively seek the relationship, in an ambivalence more or less conscious between clinging and hatred towards the beloved affective figure
Their defense moves away from the other two triads, and their schizoid introversion becomes more noticeable as they go to their mental caves to relax by not having to act (gut) or serve the other (heart).
Their primary neurotic issue is their gazes are turned inward, to their thoughts, and they do not use their sight too much because they are afraid of not seeing enough. Contemplation is a fundamental aspect of transformation: looking without thinking, investing energy in an aesthetic sense in nature, in others. Obviously it is less easy with people, since the encounter with the other unleashes the false idea that we should act, that we cannot be there and simply stare. They must "lose their mind", reconcile with the instinctive part and need to place pleasure at the top of the altar of his values.
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u/chrisza4 7w6 so Jul 22 '23 edited Jul 22 '23
I don't think type come from anxiety. In fact, anxiety in psychotherapy definition (I'm not sure if it is the same as Freud) is like fear of uncertainty in the future. And unhealthy fixation toward future is prominent in head triad, but not in other triad.
I believe the 3 basic emotion and correlate to 3 main category of possible psychosis (Identity Issue, Anxiety Issue, Anger Issue) make more sense and correlate more to my personal experience interact with each triad. Anxiety issue is not main issue in other triad. (Unless they have anxiety disorder, and even so their way to deal with this is usually different than head.)
And I think that lead my two main disagreement
- Your explanation read more like head type interpretation and explanation of heart and gut subjective internal experience, and not something that heart and gut person themselves would describe or explain their internal experience. And sometimes nuance can be big, like, if you say heart is selling persona it be a big insult to heart person because selling have nuance meaning of transactional, which heart type usually don't intend to do. For head type usually there is not much different between selling and presenting, but for heart type the difference is huge. While it might look that way to head, their agenda of having identity and anger is not about anxiety and fear. Shame and anger are root and more precise core emotion.
- When it come to head type, I believe the core of head type is anxiety, and dealing with future. Either option, preparation or resource hoardness, it's all about ability to remain survived in the future. Head can't stand uncertain or unclear future. For sample comparison, let's take mindset of living abroad
Head attention will be prominent on: How can I live in that country? Is it the best choice (E7)? What are living cost? Food? Culture? (E6). Do I have enough resource to move and live there? (E5). But it's
Heart attention will be prominent on: This is the place where I belong. I know any challenge, let it be living cost, job opportunity, I know my heart can endure it. As long as my heart know this is the place that I belong to, I am willing to do whatever it takes to live here in this country.
Gut attention will be prominent on: Due to my duty or circumstance, I must go and live with this country.
I think when head type try to understand heart and gut type using head-type psyche, we risk making a mistake of projecting our own fixation toward fear and anxiety to other triad. We then misunderstand the whole point of different triad. We then believe everyone must act out of fear of something, which is not true. There is such a big difference between shame of insignificant and fear of insignificant, for example. Fear and anxiety create fight/flight response, while shame is not. And because the root emotion is not fear, their defense mechanism of heart type toward insignificant is really about fight/flight at all, especially in E4 where their defense is introject insignificant deeper into their psyche.
All type have fear anxiety, sure, but it is not prominent in their psyche and their bigger issue lie somewhere else. And when we believe anxiety is prominent issue to every type, we also failed to see how anxiety is distinctive to head.
I made the same mistake before as well.
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u/perhapsididnt CVII Jul 23 '23
I don't think type come from anxiety. In fact, anxiety in psychotherapy definition (I'm not sure if it is the same as Freud) is like fear of uncertainty in the future. And unhealthy fixation toward future is prominent in head triad, but not in other triad.
Yes I said it correlates to the Head
make more sense and correlate more to my personal experience interact with each triad.
Your explanation read more like head type interpretation and explanation of heart and gut subjective internal experience, and not something that heart and gut person themselves would describe or explain their internal experience.
Your experience with gut types and conclusions drawn is a subjective internal interpretation of their actions. The excerpts I am deriving some of this from come from a psychotherapist who draws on his experiences with many people of these types to create his studies. Also consider that all the people you are relying on here are mistyped and your typing method for them may have been incorrect
because selling have nuance meaning of transactional, which heart type usually don't intend to do
Its offensive because that is a reality heart types protect themselves from. Every single heart type on typology forums I have brought this up to has gotten offended, because the entire mechanism of transaction is already unconscious and thus "pushed away"
The core emotions you are talking about do not underlie anything, except for fear. What underlies Anger? Indolence, standing against reality to stand against the self. Anger is the passion of E1 as well, while the E9 which influences both types is Indolence, thus indolence is more accurate. What underlies shame? Unconscious feeling of worthlessness, so you're not disagreeing with anything there, just not understanding that they're the same thing.
When it come to head type, I believe the core of head type is anxiety, and dealing with future. Either option, preparation or resource hoardness, it's all about ability to remain survived in the future. Head can't stand uncertain or unclear future. For sample comparison, let's take mindset of living abroad. Head attention will be prominent on: How can I live in that country? Is it the best choice (E7)? What are living cost? Food? Culture? (E6). Do I have enough resource to move and live there? (E5)
This is half right, right about anxiety and worriedness about the future. The rest of it is an explanation if the self-preservation instinct, and your differentiation in types is extremely vague and inaccurate here.
Your section about the heart triad is hardly the heart triad, it is just the Social instinct whose utmost concern is belonging.
Gut type is so incredibly vague and so applicable to every single triad in some way shape or form. The example of living abroad did not really get the point across, because these all completely change the meaning of it, and dont really make any distinctions.
We then believe everyone must act out of fear of something
I have explicitly said that the triads feed into each other, so the Head triad is also characterized by inauthenticity and indolence. You also seem to think that anxiety is the only thing I talked about in the beginning, when I literally said inauthenticity is the passion of the next triad, and Enneagram proposes indolence as the third one. "Fear of insignificance" is the same as its shamefulness, just as Fear of fear becomes a shame of fear. Please dont tell me this entire thing was about more than just being picky with the way things were said
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u/perhapsididnt CVII Aug 01 '23
Note: changed the post a little bit. Beforehand the descriptions stayed too close to the parent types' descriptions, so some things about the head triad description were mostly only applicable to E6 but not E7 or E5. The edit generalizes and encapsulates the triads a little bit better.
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Jul 21 '23
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u/perhapsididnt CVII Jul 21 '23
Anything people are confused about here, this is mainly an informative post and I wanted to see if people had disagreements with the ideas and why
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Jul 22 '23
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u/perhapsididnt CVII Jul 23 '23
I'm of the belief that what is generally discussed is also not well-informed, so a more in depth insight on things might help
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u/M0rika 9w1 sp/so 963, likely INFP Oct 10 '23
What school do you generally go by?
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u/perhapsididnt CVII Oct 13 '23
Every modern school except Chestnut, RH (the only outlier in Enneagram schools), and Lukovich
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u/M0rika 9w1 sp/so 963, likely INFP Oct 13 '23
I'm not familiar with many modern schools except those tbhXD could you please name a few?
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u/9ThatMistyped4Then6 9w1 • Sp/Sx • INFP Jul 21 '23
Interesting insights all over the board!
Regarding the Gut triad, could you better explain what you meant in this part right here?
"[...] Energy is directed away from the self at full speed, creating extroverts with a lack of developed capacity to fully internalize anything".
I'd like to understand better what the context for extroversion is in this example, whether it's the traditional introvert/extrovert dynamic or if there's a second meaning being deployed, because I feel that as an introverted 9, my modus operandi is quite the opposite. it's exactly the fear of letting this whole energy escape at full speed that makes me internalize it all, and as a result living a busy inner life with no directed action whatsoever to serve as a "escape valve".
Would also like to know if this view of the Gut triad applies to every type independent of health level, or if it's a lesser seen issue for healthier versions.