The Enneagram in Personality,
Psychopathology and Psychotherapy
It was Dr. Naranjo who in the early seventies spelt out Ichazo's Protoanalysis, formulated the first description of character types and went on to elaborate a systematic "Psychology of Enneatypes" - an integrative view of personality that brings together the consideration of personality traits, motives, cognitive styles and an existential dimension. Yet in Dr. Naranjo's work with groups and in his books, description has always gone hand in hand with a view of enlightenment and endarkment: a theory of consciousness-degradation and an understanding of the process of healing and transformation.
At the core of Dr. Naranjo's formulation of neurosis is the systematic exploration of the idea of an "existential psychodynamics" - in virtue of which all forms of deficiency motivation stem from the lack of a perception of Being. Correspondingly, he emphasizes - beyond insight into one's relations, feelings and motives, and also beyond the attempt to inhibit the expression of the destructive emotions - awareness of ontic obscuration, and also the pertinent discipline of accepting and appreciating ongoing experience.
The title of Character and Neurosis, written in response to the publication of his ego-type descriptions by others, indicates that it purports to be not only a book about the enneagram or about the typology associated with its application to personality; also, its subtitle, "an integrative view" announces its intent of presenting a 'multi layered' theory of neurosis. His second book on the subject - Transformation Through Insight - emphasizes psychotherapy, and also illustrates the expression of the personality types in history and in literature. A third book - The Enneagram of Society - is devoted to the disturbances of love and more broadly to the "Capital sins of society" that result from the extension of personal pathologies to social life. He has also edited and contributed to the book entitled The Enneatypes in Psychotherapy, which contains some of the papers presented at the "First International Conference on the Personality Enneagrams" in Pueblo Acantilado, Spain, some months before the "First International Enneagram Conference" in Palo Alto.
