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The Enneagram: a model, an approach, a tool ...

A personality model, one of the very first, and which emerged from a number of traditions of spiritual development that existed before psychology. Transmitted orally from trainer to coach, from guru to spiritual teacher, during the 1970s it was studied at universities and compared with the discoveries of scientific psychology. It subsequently spread throughout all the continents and was used in numerous contexts and with multiple purposes, for good and for ill. It has proven to be especially precise and powerful in terms of understanding human functioning.

An approach, since the long, oral tradition as we know it today did not only transmit the content of the model. The Enneagram is firstly a symbol (a circle with 9 points around its circumference and arrows running through it) which invites us to move around inside ourselves, at our own pace. The Enneagram is not to concerned with getting trapped (or trapping others) in a box; on the contrary, it allows us to discover the numerous possibilities for responsiveness and change that are within us. It is a progression that we ourselves develop, through self-observation and experiment, slowly, over several years. It is an ethic of self-discovery, with support or otherwise. It respects totally the uniqueness of each person. Nobody can know us better than we know ourselves.

A tool ... In the same way as a road map or Sat Nav tells us the way but without being able to replace the experience of visiting and seeing an area with our own eyes, a personality model is neither true nor false, but useful or otherwise. In order to be useful, the Enneagram needs professional tools that enable those who use it to achieve their objectives. It is in this respect, as clinical psychologists, professional coaches and trainers, that we stand out most distinctly from a number of other Enneagram approaches.