Enneagram Types

The enneagram of personality sorts people into nine types arranged around a nine-pointed figure inscribed in a circle, with connecting lines indicating how each type moves toward another under stress and under security. Each type is defined by a core motivation, fear and desire (the Reformer, the Helper, the Achiever, the Individualist, and so on), and the lines and "wings" add nuance to the basic nine.

The figure itself was introduced to the West by G. I. Gurdjieff in the early twentieth century as a symbol of process, without the personality typology; the application to character was developed later, chiefly by Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo from the 1960s and 1970s.

The atlas distinguishes the two strands: the nine-pointed figure of Gurdjieff, a symbol of cosmic process, and the personality system built onto it in the later twentieth century, which is what most people now mean by "the enneagram". The typology has become popular in coaching, spirituality and business, while remaining outside mainstream academic personality psychology.

The atlas gives each type its motivation, fear and desire, and its movements along the lines. The three triads the nine types fall into are treated in their own category, within Divination Systems.