Enneagram of Personality
typology of human personality, based on the teachings of Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo and popularized in the 1970s in the U.S.
The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram, is a pseudoscientific model of the human psyche primarily understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.
The historical origins of the ideas underlying the Enneagram of Personality remain a subject of debate. Contemporary approaches heavily derive from the teachings of Bolivian psycho-spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo in the 1950s and Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo in the 1970s. Naranjo's theories were also shaped by earlier personality teachings developed by George Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way tradition during the first half of the 20th century.
As a typology, the Enneagram outlines nine distinct personality types (sometimes also referred to as "enneatypes"). These types are mapped onto the points of a geometric figure known as an enneagram, which illustrates the principal connections between them. Various schools of thought exist among Enneagram educators, leading to many different interpretations of the system.
The Enneagram of Personality is widely marketed in both business management and spirituality contexts across various media, including seminars, conferences, books, magazines, and DVDs. In the corporate world, it is often used as a tool for gaining insight into workplace interpersonal dynamics. In spiritual settings, it is commonly presented as a pathway to higher states of enlightenment and essence.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q273047. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Enneagram of Personality” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.