On Mis(sub)typing and the Origin of Subtypes

 “… man brings with him at birth the ground-plan of his nature…”
 
 --C. G. Jung

 

Part I: Mis(sub)typing

     Recently, I had the humbling and truly life-changing experience of realizing that I have been mis(sub)typing myself for almost twenty years.  To my great surprise and shock, I have discovered that I am not a Self-Preservation Seven after all.  This process began when I first met Kathy, my wife-to-be, about five years ago (after I had finished the Enneagram Professional Training Program of Helen Palmer and David Daniels, M.D.) and she questioned this self-attribution, believing instead that I was almost certainly a Social Subtype. Interestingly, I resisted this rather vehemently. I gave numerous reasons and rationalizations why she was wrong, and then clenched down even harder onto my beloved gourmandian, epicurean subtype. But then, fatefully, this past December 2009 I participated in another Diamond Approach/Enneagram group with Sandra Maitri in San Rafael, CA and, through inquiry and being open to feedback and appreciation, began to get new insights into my own character structure.
     It was a particularly rugged, challenging week, one in which we closely examined hatred, love, and the Mystery, and how these connected to what Almaas and the Sufis call the Black Essence or Lataifa. My psyche was wrenched open and rendered more receptive than usual to feedback, both positive and negative. At the end of the week I noticed that I had organized and led two outings, partied almost every night in the Pillow Room, and was given positive feedback by several retreatants about my enriching contributions to the large group, my own small group, and even dinner table conversations. When I returned home to Mt. Shasta Kathy and I immediately went out for Mexican food, and when I related these events to her she only laughed and said something like: “When will you get that you are a Social Subtype, and organizing these sorts of activities and contributing to groups in various ways are some of your greatest gifts.” Suddenly, I had an “aha experience” around the Enneagram in a way that I hadn’t for an exceedingly long time. How could I have been so blind?
     After all, my 85 yr. old Jewish father has often called me, dating back to my teenage years, his “impresario son.” My first graduate degree was in Social and Cultural Anthropology. In the 1980s I lived for three years at the Findhorn Community in Scotland, and I have visited and lived in numerous other intentional communities in the West, and ashrams and monasteries in the East. I host satsangs in our living room the first Saturday of every month, sometimes drawing more than thirty people, have held large Peace Pole gatherings in our backyard on Sept. 21st, and have even organized by-donation concerts on our property, drawing 100-200 people. I used to say that I have several “lost careers,” including as a concert promoter, tour guide, and ethnographic fieldworker.
     In addition, I have been a local Hospice volunteer, and currently sit on the board of directors of the Mt. Shasta Bio-Regional Ecology Center. When I was young I was always playing in small groups of children, and when I was a teenager looked forward to weekly poker games with adults in my neighborhood. My home in Mt. Shasta has a separate guest space above the garage, where I welcome friends from all over the world, and I even shocked Kathy once by saying that “The Guest is God.” Social burnout is not unfamiliar to me, and as I have gotten older I have tried to place reasonable limits on the amounts of time and energy I expend in group situations, especially parties (not always successfully!). I treat our home as “an extension of social space,” and maintain numerous friendships at a distance--and for many years. In my orbit are childhood and teenage friends, college and graduate school friends, Findhorn friends, Ammachi friends, EPTP and Sandra Maitri friends, etc. Whew!
     And, how embarrassing to have sat on all those Seven panels disagreeing and arguing with the teachers, partially because I couldn’t relate to the description of the Self-Preservation subtype (“Family of Like-minded Defenders”) anywhere near as much as a real Self-Pres probably would have. On the other hand, feelings of sacrifice and martyrdom, not only for social causes but also for simply having to be in a body and suffer like the rest of humanity, have always been tangible and troubling.  So again, how could I have missed this aspect of myself?.
     One reason may be that I was painfully self-conscious as a child, teenager, and even young adult. For example, in high school and college I was generally too shy to even raise my hand in class. It wasn’t until age 23, when I went to live in the New Age community of Findhorn in Scotland, that I began to develop some social skills and real confidence in public speaking. So, even though I have been leading different kinds of groups for many years, my self-image still contains mental representations of being small, bookish, shy, and more of a wallflower than I actually am (which is not very much these days!).
     In retrospect, I have been searching for family and community my whole life. I was born in Houston in 1960. The following year my mother took me to NYC for the Summer, and when she returned in August found my father with another woman. She then took me back to Brooklyn, where I was raised by her and my grandparents until I was nearly four.  We moved to Los Angeles so that she could finish her graduate education, but a few months later she was date-raped, subsequently had a nervous breakdown, and lost custody of me forever. I was flown back to Texas to join my father and his new wife, who was pregnant with my first half-sibling. Then a year later he got a job teaching history at UCSB and we moved to Santa Barbara, where I remained until I went off to college in 1978.  With all of this moving and shuttling back and forth, I could never figure out to which family I actually belonged. Of course, this doesn’t really explain how and why I turned out the way I did. However, I am finding it useful these days to read my life backwards, to try to make sense of the flow of events--not in a linear, positivist way, but more in terms of Jungian individuation, archetypal patterns and synchronicities, and as literature I can learn from.
     This new-found awareness on my part has dramatically impacted my marriage, mostly in positive ways. Kathy feels vindicated and validated, and I have considerably more compassion for her as someone struggling to handle the large and expansive energies of a Social 7 with 8 wing. My Inner Observer is watching how I resist being fully present in many situations, especially painful ones (my “stacking” is almost certainly Social, Self-Pres, and finally Sexual as a distant third).  I can use the cell phone, Internet, travel, parties, almost anything to distract myself away from difficult or simply intimate one-on-one interactions. In addition, I am becoming increasingly aware of what Peter O’Hanrahan terms “counter-instinctual issues.” How many times and ways do I “bite myself in the butt” socially, by not thinking before I speak, by not putting a brake on my actions, by avoiding healthy social situations and becoming over-involved in unhealthy ones?  As I write these words, what I find most interesting and amazing is how many insights and behavioral changes have already emerged out of the discovery of my actual subtype.  To quote a friend: “Who would have thunk it?”

Part 2: The Origin of Subtypes
 

“In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”
 
--C. G. Jung

 
     To continue, I want to share a little about my deepening and very personal understanding that type and subtype may very well be with us from birth, be innate in other words, and thus transpersonal and archetypal in origin. Peter alludes to this when he says in his handbook Instinctual Subtypes in Relationship that “Each subtype has a special intuitive ability, and the potential to excel in a particular area of instinctual life” (p. 52). But it is Susan Rhodes, in her articles entitled “On the Nature of Enneagram Subtypes: An Alternative View” (Enneagram Monthly, Oct. and Nov. 2009) who has been pointing us towards this theory most recently and passionately.
     Susan begins by noting that, “If we look at each point of view as an area of specialization, then the Enneagram subtypes become key to understanding the many faces of type. They also give clues we can use to discover our dharma or purpose in life” (Oct., p. 15). She goes on to say that, “If type is innate, then the motivation it provides is not really personal, but comes from the deeper (or higher) psyche. This is a bit scary to contemplate, but it’s exciting too” (Oct., p. 16). Later she remarks that, “From a transpersonal point of view, each enneagram point can be said to represent an archetypal energy source. The energy of the point provides us with the energy we need to operate in the physical world; we in turn provide it with a physical vehicle that’s able to ground its energy on the physical plane” (Nov., p. 9). Finally, she writes that, “I think of both type and subtype as basically innate. I think that the basic structure of our subtype exists at birth, although it’s initially undeveloped. We could think of it as an energy potential waiting to be developed or envision it as an empty vessel, waiting to be filled. How we ‘grow into’ our subtype depends on many things, including the kind of experiences we have when we have when we are very young” (Nov., p. 13).
     So then, I have recently been doing much self-reflection and writing on what it means to have the dharma to incarnate with and as a Social Seven, as a “Utopian Visionary,” or “Visionary Idealist,” or "Social Philosopher."  And what sorts of responsibilities come with this new-found knowledge? It has been quite challenging trying to find a balance between honoring this archetypal destiny, and at the same time balancing my wings and centers of intelligence, and in general using the Enneagram and other tools to become a more whole and evolved person in daily life.
     Finally, I think it is important to consider the possibility that whereas from a bio-psychological perspective the subtypes may seem to be “instinctual” in origin and function, from transpersonal and mythic perspectives they may be archetypal, and perhaps should not really be labeled instinctual at all. My intuition agrees with Susan when she states that “Subtypes exist as relatively stable but non-physical energy patterns. They exert a powerful but unseen effect on our behavior. What we call subtype behaviors are a direct reflection of these unseen archetypal patterns.”  In fact, she generally doesn’t find it useful to talk about instinctual subtypes, “… because this places too much emphasis on the physical end product, and not enough on the motivational process underlying it” (Nov., p. 11).  My own take on this is that, although I understand why teachers often speak of instinctual variants or subtypes, I believe we need to be careful not to overemphasize the biological and behavioral, at the expense of metaphysical insights about the Soul’s origin and destiny.  In other words, we need to integrate the understanding of how subtypes embody and express instinctual and passional energies, with Susan's ideas about the possible origin of type and subtype.
     Personally, I don’t think we have to choose between these two ways of looking at our sources of motivation and libidinal energy. From the human world looking upward we can speak of instincts and drives, and from the spiritual dimension looking downward we can speak of myths and archetypes, of fate and destiny and Divine Will. But I do think we in the Enneagram community will have to be careful not to overly or consistently privilege one theory over the other. As others have noted, we now require a holistic, integral approach, one which prevents both spiritual and psychological bypassing. After all, in the 21st century we can be Platonists and Aristotelians, theologians and scientists, mystics and rationalists.  So in this spirit, and by way of balance, I will end by quoting Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus, who was certainly expressing a transpersonal view when he wrote in the Enneads (II.3.15): “Coming into this particular body, and being born of these particular parents, and in such a place, and in general what we call external circumstances. That all happenings form a unity and are spun together, is signified by the Fates.”



Carl Marsak
www.shastaenneagram.com
(530) 926-5750 hm.
(415) 297-3174 cell