The Fine Art of Inference
Even
though the instructions I sent with the handout emphasized the
importance of looking for core motivations instead of external
characteristics, Tammy did what many people do – she looked at
the descriptions of each type’s observable behaviors instead of
isolating the central tendency that distinguishes one from
another.
When
helping clients determine their Enneagram style, look for their
compulsion or driving force. The Seven’s driving force is
gluttony, a seeking of pleasure in order to avoid pain;
typically Sevens only want to hear the “good” news. As Tammy
talked I listened for clues to confirm or disconfirm her
assumption she might be a Seven.
She
did have the lively, aggressive energy characteristic of Sevens,
but there’s a similar energy in
Threes and in
Eights. I didn’t hear
the loud voice typical of Eights, or the Eight’s bluntness. I
didn’t hear much evidence for the Seven’s charm, storytelling,
or focus on the positive. I paid attention to whether or not
Tammy’s behavior with me matched her self-description.
She
said, for example, she gets bored with details and likes to have
people around her to do the follow-through, which she’d read
about Sevens. But she was head of a large agency and had major
decision-making responsibilities – so it was to be expected
she’d delegate the details. Most important, she volunteered lots
of details as we talked.
I
observed clues that led me to think Tammy might be a Three in
spite of her initial self-assessment. The driving force of the
Three is vanity, with a tendency toward self-promotion. I
had asked her to tell me about her youth, so I could listen for
her patterns of speech, what she tended to highlight, how she
talked. Her speech was fast-paced, which could have been true of
a Seven, but she focused on measures of success, instead of on
long-term perspective and possibilities the way a Seven might.
She
described her family’s stature in the community based on their
achievements, which suggested the importance of image found in
the 2-3-4 triad. Some of her comments that are characteristic of
Threes: “You always have to work harder to be an honor student.”
“I have a strong work ethic.” “When you’re a leader your life is
on stage for everybody to see.” “People have told me I was a
model for them.”
After
Tammy had reviewed the reasons why she thought she might be a
Seven, I said, “I’m surprised. From reading your biography, I
thought you might be a Three because you’ve accomplished so much
at a relatively young age and you’ve won a number of awards.”
Her
response: “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think my type
is.” This answer alone was another clue she was more likely to
be a Three than a Seven. Sevens are self-referential, whereas
Threes – sometimes unconsciously – tend to seek approval from
others. In the course of thirty minutes, both Tammy and I became
clear she’s a Three, not a Seven.
All That Jazz
I’ve
been drawn to jazz from the first note I ever heard and was
happy to discover a book by Nat Hentoff, Listen to the
Stories, based on his essays over the years about jazz and
country musicians. Because I’d read in Condon’s Enneagram
Movie & Video Guide that Thelonious Monk is a
Five, I looked for
evidence in Hentoff’s essay, “Memories of Thelonious Monk,” and
found it:
…That
day Monk, for a while, was more talkative than usual. At other
times his silences could last an hour or two or longer. A
brilliant young musician, Gigi Gryce, came rushing in during one
of the silences and said to Monk with great delight, “I got in!
I got in! I’m going to Julliard!” After about ten minutes, Monk
looked at the still radiant Gigi and said, “Well, I hope you
don’t lose it there”…
Although there is plenty of room for improvisation by Monk and
his colleagues, each piece is precisely structured. Monk not
only knew what he wanted from his musicians, he refused to
accept anything less. Gigi Gryce once told me: “I had a part
Monk wrote for me that was impossible. I had to play melody
while simultaneously playing harmony with him. In addition, the
intervals were very wide. I told him I couldn’t do it. ‘You have
an instrument, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Either play it or throw it
away.’ And he walked away. Finally I was able to play it”…
For a
long time, Monk… was treated by many jazz critics as a
semi-comic eccentric rather than as an original. And that
diminished his chances to work…Eventually, he made many
recordings and played a growing number of festivals and clubs.
But Monk began to stay more and more within his own mind. The
silences grew much longer…
Monk
knew his own stature. At a recording session, when Coleman
Hawkins asked Monk to explain some of his music to him and to
John Coltrane, who was also on the date, Monk looked at the
magisterial Hawkins: “You’re the great Coleman Hawkins, right?
You’re the guy who invented the tenor saxophone, right?” Monk
turned to Coltrane: “You’re the great John Coltrane, right?
Well, the music is on the horn. Between the two of you, you
should be able to find it.”
In the
above excerpt, note the Five’s tendency to withdraw into
silence, his long pauses, his disdain for emotions, his
minimalism, his certainty about his own carefully thought-out
views and expertise, and his tendency to expect others to learn
the way he did – to figure it out for themselves.
A Lick and a Promise
From Marge Piercy’s poem, “For
Strong Women,” I’d guessed she’s an Enneagram Eight. But her
autobiography Sleeping with Cats shows Piercy clearly as
style Two. She has
taken care of people surrounding her much of her life –
including earning a living for herself and the rest of the
people in the
ménage à quatre
typical of her second marriage. This level of responsibility
could also be true of an Eight, but the group marriage
arrangement is more typical of a Two’s murky sexual boundaries
(as is her attraction to the writer Colette described in the
passage below). Also, Piercy bemoans – in a way that conveys a
sense of betrayal – the fact that people have abandoned
her
when
she
needed them.
(Her third and apparently final husband, Woody, is much younger
than she.) This passage about replacing a Siamese cat that died
cinched it for me:
“Woody and I pursued an ad in the
Boston Globe.
There we found heaps of Burmese... in piles of rich dark brown
fur cuddling one another, except for two exiles: two big sable
cats she said were three months old, but I could tell they were
six or eight at least... A male at stud had escaped from his
cage and impregnated his daughter... Woody had fallen in love
with them at once. I knew something was fishy, but they needed
us... Woody named the male Jim Beam, and I named the female
Colette. I have always loved Colette’s writing. Jim Beam was
immediately interested and friendly, but Colette hid under a
chair... I captured her, held her and licked her like a mother
cat. She was astonished and began to purr. From then on, except
when she was angry with me, she was my cat. She fell in love
that night. It was hardly sanitary, but it conveyed affection
and trust in a language she understood.”
Licking a kitten, the way a mother cat
would, captures much we need to know about Twos. It is the kind
of metaphorical behavior you can observe to help clients
determine their Enneagram style. (Though we often think of
metaphors as spoken, a metaphor is one thing expressed in terms
of another, in
any
way that throws new light on the nature of what is being
described.)
