• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Multiple Enneagram Subtypes/Instincts Can enneagram variants be developed like cognitive functions?

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
I've found that with most people it is very easy to distinguish their variants. I can almost instantly determine a person's enneagram variants through vibe alone, and if that doesn't work they usually will clearly have one variant that is neglected. However it's almost as though none of my variants are neglected. My variants are very strange. In the past I didn't feel like I was concerned with self-pres needs at all. I was never that concerned with my health, nor money, nor survival. However, something very bad happened to me in 2007, and every since then I am very concerned with self pres needs. In 2007 I lost all of my parents financial backing, I lost my health insurance, and my car as well. I've seen how awful it is to be without money now and how poor the medical care is especially for people with no money. I am now extremely concerned with self pres issues. Could my variant stacking have changed?
 

Entropic

New member
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
1,200
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Good question. I think looking back over the course of my life I can clearly see sx frustration shining through in all of my actions and desires to the point where I was entirely blind of anything so in particular. I am still pretty blind to so, but it is only recently as I began learning and understand so to a degree. Changing motivations though... no idea. It's like suggesting you can change enneagram type. I am not sure you can change enneatype personally, but if you experience such an overhaul in your life that everything becomes upside down, sure, I guess I can buy that logic. So if that's true for enneatype, why not instincts?
 

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
Good question. I think looking back over the course of my life I can clearly see sx frustration shining through in all of my actions and desires to the point where I was entirely blind of anything so in particular. I am still pretty blind to so, but it is only recently as I began learning and understand so to a degree. Changing motivations though... no idea. It's like suggesting you can change enneagram type. I am not sure you can change enneatype personally, but if you experience such an overhaul in your life that everything becomes upside down, sure, I guess I can buy that logic. So if that's true for enneatype, why not instincts?

I just hate how everything with the enneagram is so set in stone, and isn't more plastic? Ya know?
 

Entropic

New member
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
1,200
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I just hate how everything with the enneagram is so set in stone, and isn't more plastic? Ya know?

Well, that's a problem with typology in general though. On the other hand it kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of human cognitive development. When we are children our brains have a greater level of plasticity and are overall more adaptable so when young we pick up on various survival strategies/cognitive thinking styles/what have you to help us orient ourselves within our environment. Over time as it turns out this adaptive lifestyle is successful and our brains lose their natural plasticity that we possess as children, we as people as a whole are also less likely to change. Which is why I agree with that it's harder to type children and teenagers because their development is not yet set in stone and a serious traumatic event could potentially overhaul their way of being over a night.

Then there's the argument about nature versus nurture and how much typology or the more proper name, temperaments, are biologically innate or not and how this plays into type development. The question is - would I still be a 5 if my temperament would not be of the hypersensitive kind (Naranjo for example highly stresses the hypersensitivity of the 5) which is also strongly linked to traits of introversion which is another defining characteristic of the schizoid personality type and thus also the 5?
 

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
Well, that's a problem with typology in general though. On the other hand it kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of human cognitive development. When we are children our brains have a greater level of plasticity and are overall more adaptable so when young we pick up on various survival strategies/cognitive thinking styles/what have you to help us orient ourselves within our environment. Over time as it turns out this adaptive lifestyle is successful and our brains lose their natural plasticity that we possess as children, we as people as a whole are also less likely to change. Which is why I agree with that it's harder to type children and teenagers because their development is not yet set in stone and a serious traumatic event could potentially overhaul their way of being over a night.

Then there's the argument about nature versus nurture and how much typology or the more proper name, temperaments, are biologically innate or not and how this plays into type development. The question is - would I still be a 5 if my temperament would not be of the hypersensitive kind (Naranjo for example highly stresses the hypersensitivity of the 5) which is also strongly linked to traits of introversion which is another defining characteristic of the schizoid personality type and thus also the 5?

You make very good points.
 

Faceless Beauty

Transient
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
177
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
9w8
Well, that's a problem with typology in general though. On the other hand it kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of human cognitive development. When we are children our brains have a greater level of plasticity and are overall more adaptable so when young we pick up on various survival strategies/cognitive thinking styles/what have you to help us orient ourselves within our environment. Over time as it turns out this adaptive lifestyle is successful and our brains lose their natural plasticity that we possess as children, we as people as a whole are also less likely to change. Which is why I agree with that it's harder to type children and teenagers because their development is not yet set in stone and a serious traumatic event could potentially overhaul their way of being over a night.

Then there's the argument about nature versus nurture and how much typology or the more proper name, temperaments, are biologically innate or not and how this plays into type development. The question is - would I still be a 5 if my temperament would not be of the hypersensitive kind (Naranjo for example highly stresses the hypersensitivity of the 5) which is also strongly linked to traits of introversion which is another defining characteristic of the schizoid personality type and thus also the 5?

I don't think that adults are less plastic than children per say as far as having different influences being more prominent at different periods of time, rather the range of influences that appear in their psyches becomes more limited with age and experience.
 

Entropic

New member
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
1,200
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I don't think that adults are less plastic than children per say as far as having different influences being more prominent at different periods of time, rather the range of influences that appear in their psyches becomes more limited with age and experience.

The brain actually becomes less plastic. The plasticity I am referring to is the ability for the brain to build and recreate new neurological connections and blood vessels to feed them. This is why you do not perform major brain surgery on epileptic adults because if you remove such a major portion of the brain which can be required e.g. severing the sides, chances are that they will never recover from it and it will lead to permanent brain damage. In contrast, you can remove an entire brain half of a child and the child will recover with time thanks to the brain's innate plasticity in children.
 

Faceless Beauty

Transient
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
177
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
9w8
The brain actually becomes less plastic. The plasticity I am referring to is the ability for the brain to build and recreate new neurological connections and blood vessels to feed them. This is why you do not perform major brain surgery on adults because if you remove such a major portion of the brain which can be required e.g. severing the sides, chances are that they will never recover from it and it will lead to permanent brain damage. In contrast, you can remove an entire brain half of a child and the child will recover with time thanks to the brain's innate plasticity in children.

I'm not talking in terms of neuroscience and physiology. I'm quite aware of all of that. I think what you're also referring to is plastic memory, which children tend to have more of anyway, whereas adults have stronger suits in crystalized memory. That's where much of adult cognitive development happens anyway, even though people confuse a lack in plasticity in older people as adults not developing but remaining constant or stagnant in mental growth.
 

Entropic

New member
Joined
Aug 20, 2012
Messages
1,200
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8w9
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I'm not talking in terms of neuroscience and physiology. I'm quite aware of all of that. I think what you're also referring to is plastic memory, which children tend to have more of anyway, whereas adults have stronger suits in crystalized memory. That's where much of adult cognitive development happens anyway, even though people confuse a lack in plasticity in older people as adults not developing but remaining constant or stagnant in mental growth.

But I was referring neuroscience and psychology because it would be difficult to otherwise argue for why the view that type is static. If we believe that type is all determined by culture then one would expect different types or patterns in different parts of world as a result. I am not sure this is true either although it is true to a degree when it comes to mental illness. Anorexia as we define it in the DSM-IV and more specifically the cause of it as a result of, I guess what we could in enneagram terms refer to unhealthy image focus, did not exist in countries such as China until after China became more capitalized as a country and started getting exposed to Western culture and thus also Western standards of beauty.

Medical anthropology ftw.
 

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
I don't think that adults are less plastic than children per say as far as having different influences being more prominent at different periods of time, rather the range of influences that appear in their psyches becomes more limited with age and experience.

Well bare in mind I am almost destitutely poor right now. Almost anyone that was as poor as me right now would look self pres. I'm wondering if I truly am a social/sexual variant that is just going through a financial patch in life, and it makes me seem self pres.
 
Top