SolitaryWalker
Tenured roisterer
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2007
- Messages
- 3,504
- MBTI Type
- INTP
- Enneagram
- 5w6
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
The Wisdom of the Enneagram said:As we learn to become more present, the positive qualities of the type in our Direction of Integration naturally begins to arise. When this happens, the limitations of the average range of our own type become painfully apparent. This gives us more incentive to stay with our practice and to recognize when we are slipping into the automatic compulsions of our type. Thus, we could say that the Direction of Integration represents the antidote to the fixated states of our type.
One of the central tenets of the Enneagram is that people of all nine types have different health levels, 1 is that of optimal psychological well-being or integration, and conversely 9 represents a pathological or a disintegrated condition. The main implication of the principle of Enneagram Health-levels is that an individual who is healthy has the freedom to utilize all nine aspects of their personality and he/she is generally not confined to the main repertoire of the type that most accurately portrays the personality of that individual. Conversely, just the opposite holds true for an extremely unhealthy individual.
As we all are aware, MBTI is more than a personality theory to many members here, quite a few in our community regard it as a religious faith that they adhere to with the zealous scrupulosity of a fundamentalist. These individuals interpret even the slightest insinuation that their type is deficient as a personal insult, clearly, there is no doubt that these people's profound attachment to their four-letter code plays a cardinal role in their self-concept.
That leaves us with one obvious question, if these people apparently lack the freedom to use the myriad of facets of their personality, does it imply that they may be in the thrall of profoundly self-destructive condition? If we accept the central tenet of the Enneagram regarding health-levels and the key characteristics of the most unhealthy levels of each type, the answer to that question becomes self-explanatory.
Should we really go so far as to suspect that well over a quarter of the users on this forum are pathological?