Enneagram 9 personality types - best book?

[melatonin]

Hi there...how important is it to research “enneagram”? If the ego is just a reactionary machine, what benefit is it to research this? Apologies if this is a very novice question? Which book would you recommend ? Thank you Edited to add “personality types” in the title.

 

[Renaissance]

It's discussed in the most recent session:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,44933.0.html

There's a lot of info in the big threads, and it's worth trying to keep up with them. If you're not aware of it, the 'recent threads' link next to your profile avatar at the top left of your screen shows you the active threads for the past day or so and can help keep you updated.

 

[Laura]

If you've been following the Gurdjieff/Collingwood thread, you should easily figure out that it is irrelevant. Best get to the recommended reading; your life may depend on it. See the "Hyperdimensional politics" thread.

 

[Jacques]

If you've been following the Gurdjieff/Collingwood thread, you should easily figure out that it is irrelevant. Best get to the recommended reading; your life may depend on it. See the "Hyperdimensional politics" thread.

Here's the link:

https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,45067.msg740362.html#msg740362

 

[SocietyoftheSpectacle]

An Interesting Book on this subject was Cited by Rodney Collin in
the Theory of celestial Influence.
"The glands regulating personality; a study of the glands of internal secretion in relation to the types of human nature"

It is Claimed that each of these essential Glands has a Corresponding resonance with the Sun, Moon , and 5 major Planets.
So 7 Types not 9.

The enneagram either represents the Law of 3 or the Law of Seven.
1 of the nine numbers Being present in both.
https://archive.org/details/glandsregulating00bermuoft

 

[John G]

An Interesting Book on this subject was Cited by Rodney Collin in
the Theory of celestial Influence.
"The glands regulating personality; a study of the glands of internal secretion in relation to the types of human nature"

It is Claimed that each of these essential Glands has a Corresponding resonance with the Sun, Moon , and 5 major Planets.
So 7 Types not 9.

The enneagram either represents the Law of 3 or the Law of Seven.
1 of the nine numbers Being present in both.
https://archive.org/details/glandsregulating00bermuoft

The Cs did mention that the hydrogens are related to neurochemicals and hormones. Collin for his gland ideas references Louis Berman's 'The Glands of Personality'. This causes Collin to say things like:

In endocrinology the thyroid type is described as lean and clearcut, with thick hair, bright eyes and even teeth; rapid of perception and volition, impulsive, with a tendency to explosive crises; restless, insomniac and inexhaustible. In other words, the old airy, sanguine or mercurial type, to which this modern description closely corresponds.

So the planet thing seems to be related to personality theory. The Enneagram is a modern personality theory. You could say that the hydrogens are binary coordinates for the vertices of the Enneagram. You could say that the elements are binary coordinates for the vertices of the Zodiac (used as a personality model too). In more academic terms, you could say that the factor models (Jungian MBTI, Jordan Peterson's Big Five) are binary coordinates for the vertices of Circumplex models (RIASEC, OCI). Modern researchers like Helen Fisher do relate temperament to neurochemicals.

For someone who has already spent thousands of hours researching personality theory, it's probably an OK use of the mind to keep doing so like Laura with history or Ark with physics but for good reasons, you aren't going to see Laura spending as much time on physics as Ark or Ark spending as much time on history as Laura. The research Laura is recommending is something for all that doesn't require thousands of hours researching a niche.

The research Laura had to do to get there is a thousands of hours in a niche kind of thing but we don't have to recreate it (which is kind of a point Collingwood makes related to ideas maturing over time). Gurdjieff and Collin represent kind of an immature way to do things in a lot of ways. They are clever in a lot of ways for their time/situation but the planet kind of doesn't have time for Gurdjieff-like immature cleverness in the present (though compared to say the Cs, we are still quite immature ourselves).