The Importance of the Enneagram in Personality Development

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The one single thing from Enneagram for me is that the personality is constructed around core fears, and it is basically just like an artificial construction of defenses. I often recommend the Enneagram not as a personality test or sort of personality essentialism, but simply as a map of blind spots that you could have. And so when you have amap of blind spots and fears and things that are difficult for your mind to engage with...you can understand how people are different from you. It's been really helpful in being able to chart where it would be good for someone to develop and why they seem to be presenting a certain defense structure.

Tee has a spirited chat with Lulie Tanett, an independent researcher, Twitter celeb and teacher trainee of the Alexander Technique.

We follow the narrative arc of Lulie’s own self-development journey, somewhat intentionally falling into rabbit holes of all varieties, including:

(12:35) The Taking Children Seriously (TCS) parenting movement and educational philosophy – “My first words were ‘that’s coercive!’”
(29:50) Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing “changed her life forever” and is the “foundation of all inner work.”
(33:10) The surprising (to us) usefulness of the Enneagram – blindspot prediction, character construction, and healthy & degenerative expressions
(47:25) Enheartened philosophical exploration and debate versus ‘grabby’ intellectualism
(1:00:45) The Alexander Technique and VIEW (Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, Wonder)

Spicier parts of the episode include spotting hallmarks of the pretense of vulnerability often found within Authentic Relating circles (1:19:52), Tee’s pushback of Alexander Technique-isms (1:18:30), skepticisms about emphasizing a single type of personal development tradition (1:39:28), Lulie disabuses Tee of his bias against ‘mindsets’ (1:41:00)and what Lulie would now say to the previous “floating brain” version of herself regarding bodily processing and energy (2:02:44).