It hits from a number of different angles, so you get more specificity, and thus more accuracy.
Part of the issue I've seen with the enneagram is that the descriptions tend to be more general, when your actual type is more specific.
I must disagree. The main archetypes are anything but general, they start off too specific. The tritypes are
differently specific. (And actually kind of short and vague, from my readings so far ... they don't try to psychoanalyze me to death.)
You'll see a description of a type 5 or a type 9, but that description isn't of a 5w4 or 5w6, or a 9w8 or 9w1.
Then, if you do actually find a description of a type+wing, it doesn't include your health level or instinctual variant.
Sometimes (rarely) you find descriptions that include type + wing + instinctual stacking, and those can be really insightful.
You know this reads like confirmation bias, right? "Oh, it only sounds wrong because it was incomplete."
No, it sounds wrong because it is incorrect.
I don't think it's the fault of enneagram, per se, but that so many different parties have taken the initial system and run with it, and it collects cruft, e.g., there are so many FP 9s, well, gee, all the 9 descriptions start sounding like FPs, thus excluding all 9s who don't match up with that. The wings tend to take pieces of the main type, and delete/replace with select aspects of the wing. I respect the instinctual aspect, but that appears to be more its own typing system, and not really an extension/clarification of ennegram (it's cruft, but moderately useful).
Have you read through the health levels of 5s and 9s?
The long detailed ones, in 'Personality Types', not the short versions.
Yeah. The problem with those is that the neurotic ones aren't me, and the non-neurotic ones start sounding too much alike.
My two favorite 9 links:
Here
and
Here
Read, digest, cogitate, Ni-them and report back.
Some first impressions:
The more I read the 9 descriptions, the more they sound like neurotic Fi, the 5 descriptions sound like neurotic Ti, and the 6 descriptions sound like neurotic Ni/Si.
And as I noted to Z, the non-neurotic descriptions all seem to blend into mush. So the one thing that differentiates the types, the stories of how they overcome their primary fears and evolve (or succumb to them and devolve), are the main thing I don't identify with. There's 9 stories, or 27 stories if you include wings. None of those is my story.
When I first started school (we're talking pre-k through 2nd grade), no one would have typed me as a brainy 5. I just wanted to play and have fun, or do interesting things with grown-ups. Instead, I was stuck in rooms full of other kids, and the grown-ups treated me like the other kids. My reaction was to withdraw into my inner world: not because I was frightened of anything, but I was bored stiff. Being an Ni dom explains this, but nothing of enneagram does, because enneagram requires that I'm reacting to a fear.
Did I have fears? Yeah, sure, but they were more along the lines of stupid imaginary kid fears (monsters in the closet, which Ni can make seem very real ...) to quite real fears (bullies wanting to pick on me). Academically, I was never afraid of not being smart or competent enough. Initially, I didn't care: my report cards would fret about my "daydreaming." I didn't at all ever think of myself as "smart" or "intellectual" until grade 3: I took some standardized test (not SAT, but sort of like it) that I didn't give a crap about, and the results came back and said I was in the top 2% of whatever. Heck, I had to ask what percentages mean. That's when I first knew I was "smart", and started falling into that "smart kid" stereotype.
But I wasn't ever chasing eagerly after knowledge like a 5: I just learned fast, it was all easy for me. I remember for one science quiz in 5th grade, we were supposed to draw where the sun, moon and earth were for a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse. The teacher, asking why the some of the class still needed time, pointed out that not only had I already answered the two questions, I had correctly drawn in the continents on the earth, and was gradually doodling in more detail, waiting for the test to be over, and for school to be over: I wanted to go home and play, or read, or whatever - to do something INTERESTING. (The eclipse thing was interesting to me back in the 3rd grade, where the teacher couldn't figure out how to answer my question of why the moon was full when it was opposite the earth from the sun, after all, wouldn't it be in the shadow of the earth, then?)
So I have this 5 bent because I'm smart, and I'm good at technical things, and not so good at people things, and I'm mostly a loner. But the 5 describes as being eager and chasing after knowledge as if I won't ever have enough. Um, no.
This is why I tend to feel the 9 fits more, except for the Fi-ish losing of myself over the concerns for others. No, I'm 9 because I treasure the alone time to enjoy myself, and a subset of how I enjoy myself is figuring things out (5), and a subset of that is figuring out how to use all this stuff I know to do something productive (3).
It's why I'm a physics Ph.D., but ended up not taking a career in physics. Seeing the graduate school serfdom system in full clarity pointed out to me that being a physicist in this environment would not only be no fun, but remarkably unproductive by my own standards.
Being a 9 is why the Tao Te Ching resonates with me. There's an interesting and thoughtful criticism of Taoism which basically says it encourages people to be passive and accept things as they are, no matter how bad they are. I totally understand and agree with that criticism as it is intended, and at the same time, I totally understand why it is wrong. I don't see the Tao as describing how to tolerate evil, but rather as noting that "evil" is a really bad description in the first place. You need to see the world as it is, and fix what is fixable, to fight all those things that others regard as "evil". If you don't pay attention to the balance points, you end up doing the opposite of what you intend: make rules to keep people from hurting themselves, and you prevent them from defending themselves; make rules to share the wealth, and then there's no wealth to share; and so on. And you can't see those balance points if you aren't at peace with yourself: your own lack of balance gets in the way.
I don't see most 5's thinking this way. 9's are closer, but they don't intellectualize it the way I do.
Anyway, enough rambling ... intuition is still grinding through all this. It helps to write it down and see what sticks and what doesn't ...