Therpo said:
Today I stumbled /rolled on to personality typology according to the enneagram.
The source of using the enneagram for personality study is Oscar Ichazo followed by Claudio Naranjo, Riso, Hudson and others. This did not come from Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff distinguished between personality which is a product of culture, education and imitation of others with essence which is what a person is born with. Essence is largely suppressed in modern civilization while the formation of personality is governed by accidental factors. This perhaps makes such typology not very useful in the context of the Work.
There are some interesting discussion on types in ISOTM.
[quote author=ISOTM]
"Each of you," he [Gurdjieff] said, "has probably met in life people of one and the same type. Such people often even look like one another, and their inner reactions to things are exactly the same. What one likes the other will like. What one does not like the other will not like. You must remember such occasions because you can study the
science of types only by meeting types. There is no other method. Everything else is imagination. You must understand that in the conditions in which you live you cannot meet with more than six or seven types although there are in life a greater number of fundamental types. The rest are all combinations of these fundamental types."
"How many fundamental types are there in all?" asked someone.
"Some people say twelve," said G. "According to the legend the twelve apostles represented the twelve types. Others say more."
He paused.
"May we know these twelve types, that is, their definitions and characteristics?" asked one of those present.
"I was expecting this question," said G. "There has never been an occasion when I have spoken of types when some clever person has not asked this question. How is it you do not understand that if it could be explained it would have been explained long ago. But the whole thing is that types and their differences cannot be defined in ordinary language, and the language in which they could be defined you do not as yet know and will not know for a long time. It is exactly the same as with the 'forty-eight laws.' Someone invariably asks whether he may not know these forty-eight laws. As if it were possible. Understand that you are being given everything that can be given. With the help of what is given to you, you must find the rest. But I know that I am wasting time now in saying this. You still do not understand me and will not understand for a long time yet. Think of the difference between knowledge and being. There are things for the understanding of which a different being is necessary."
"But if there are no more than seven types around us, why can we not know them, that is, know what is the chief difference between them, and, when meeting them, be able to recognize and distinguish them?" said one of us.
"You must begin with yourself and with the observations of which I have already spoken," said G., "otherwise it would be knowledge of which you would be able to make no use.
Some of you think you can see types but they are not types at all that you see. In order to see types one must know one's own type and be able to 'depart' from it. In order to know one's own type one must make a good study of one's life, one's whole life from the very beginning; one must know why, and how, things have happened.
................................................
When speaking of "types" G. once said:
"Have you noticed what a tremendous part 'type' plays in the relationship between man and woman?"
"I have noticed," I said, "that throughout his whole life every man comes into contact with women of a definite type and every woman comes into contact with men of a definite type. As though .the type of woman for every man had been predetermined and the type of man predetermined for every woman."
"There is a good deal of truth in that," said G. "But in that form it is, of course, much too general. Actually you did not see types of men and women but types of events.
What I speak of refers to the real type, that is to say, to essence. If people were to live in essence one type would always find the other type and wrong types would never come together. But people live in personality. Personality has its own interests and its own tastes which have nothing in common with the interests and the tastes of essence. Personality in our case is the result of the wrong work of centers. For this reason personality can dislike precisely what essence likes—and like what essence does not like. Here is where the struggle between essence and personality begins. Essence knows what it wants but cannot explain it. Personality does not want to hear of it and takes no account of it. It has its own desires. And it acts in its own way. But its power does not continue beyond that moment. After that, in some way or other, the two essences have to live together. And they hate one another. No sort of acting can help here. In one way or another essence or type gains the upper hand and decides.
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G also tied astrological influences to one's type or essence.
[quote author=ISOTM]
Astrology deals with only one part of man, with his type, his essence—it does not deal with personality, with acquired qualities. If you understand this you understand what is of value in astrology."
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