How do we become our Enneagram type? Is it in our nature (heredity) or nurture (environment)? The answers to these questions contain huge implications for parenting, education, and healthy development in general.
Modern behavioral genetics, the study of the relationship between heredity and environment, and developmental psychology shed considerable light on this matter of nature and nurture. These fields of psychology refer to our characteristic behavior and emotional nature as temperament. Their studies repeatedly demonstrate that temperament is largely the result of heredity (although their studies do not account for intra-uterine environmental influences) and what is called "the non-shared family environment." Non-shared family environment means each child in a family experiences a different micro environment. He or she perceives the "same" environment differently. The family as a singular influence is simply myth. The family does not offer the same environment to each child. It consists of as many micro environments as there are children.
I believe that what the behavioral geneticists and developmental psychologists call inherited temperament traits are the result of inborn propensities to develop an attentional style or habit of attention. These styles are the lenses with which we view or perceive the world, literally from birth. For instance, observations on neonates show differences in activity and reactivity from day one. I call attention the molecular level of the way we organize the world with our bodies, hearts, and minds. As children we experience the environment differently depending upon the way attention gets organized. And we are largely unconscious of our habits of attending until we develop our self observer or inner witness. Furthermore, these perceptual or attentional style differences likely account for many of the ways parents and others respond to and nurture children.
While preparing for "The Childhood Origins Section" of the IEA's Chicago Special Event in the Summer of 1996, I came across the work of Drs. Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, reported in their book Temperament and Development (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1977). In their longitudinal studies, which date from the early 1960's, they observed children beginning in their second and third months of life.
I was struck by their findings of "Nine Categories of Temperament" which are recognizable in infants and very young children.These are: Activity Level The motor activity component in a child's behavior as in reaching, crawling, walking. Rhythmicity (regularity) The predictability of any function over time. Approach Positive responses to new stimuli (for Thomas and Chess withdrawal or negative responses represented the other end of the continuum). Adaptability The ease with which responses are modified in desired directions. Threshold of responsiveness The intensity level of stimulation necessary to evoke a discernible response, in other words, the sensitivity level. Intensity of reaction The energy level of response irrespective of its quality or direction. Quality of Mood The amount of emotional behavior whether positive and negative. Distractibility Responsiveness to extraneous environmental stimuli altering the direction of on-going behavior. Attention Span/Persistence The sticking with attending even in the face of obstacles (roughly vigilance).
Oversimplifying, I took each of these temperaments when strongly present as a predominant way of organizing attention, e.g., for activity level, high activity or effort at doing. Then I placed each category on the Enneagram star (see figure). Without much stretching the correspondence is remarkable. Here is a synopsis of how children of the nine temperaments correspond to the fundamental attentional styles on the Enneagram:
• Ones attend to correcting error making life regular and predictable (Rhythmicity/regularity). • Twos reach out to fulfill needs, responding by approaching others in positive ways (Approach). • Threes focus on task or goals with high activity and go-ahead energy (Activity). • Fours long for heartfelt connection with intense feeling and fluctuating moods (Quality of Mood). • Fives, being highly sensitive to stimuli, detach to observe (Threshold of Responsiveness). • Sixes are alert and vigilant to potential harm or danger, vigilance requiring persistence in attending over time (Attention Span). • Sevens attend to multiple, positive options and possibilities showing changeability or ease in shifting to desired directions (Adaptability). • Eights attend to power and control and come from a high instinctual energy or intensity (Intensity of Response). • Nine's attention is pulled by many environmental claims such as opinions of others, showing an ease of accommodating to environmental stimuli (Distractibility).
Of course, we all have all of these ways of attending, but habitually our attention is organized in a specific pattern. Thomas and Chess actually factored the nine categories of temperament (attention) into three clusters of behavior for which they are known: the Difficult Child, the Easy Child, and the Slow-to-Warm-Up Child. None of these temperaments are meant to be more or less positive or negative than any other, just different. In fact, Thomas and Chess said, "In no case did a given pattern of temperament, as such, result in behavioral disturbance." What is remarkable is that behavioral observations in very young children could discern nine ways of organizing the world or nine dominant temperaments with a 90% level of inter-rater reliability! And as far as I know, Thomas and Chess performed their studies without the benefit of any Enneagram knowledge. This kind of independent work supports the truth of the Enneagram.
What then is the contribution of environment to type? There are mountains of data supporting parental and environmental influences on children's level of function, health, and well-being. Our level of development is strongly related to maternal or parental warmth, responsiveness, and flexibility. Without contact and emotional nurturance, development in infants at all levels can be severely delayed and/or damaged. Children's self esteem correlates strongly with parents' ability to sustain appropriate boundaries that enlarge as children grow. So, put in the extreme, it can be said that nature causes our type and nurture our level of development or health.*
For parents and educators all this means that one size does not fit all and that there are, in Enneagram terms, nine different styles of learning. Thus, care givers need to appreciate and respect differences in children by showing flexibility and responsiveness just as many studies from developmental psychology have demonstrated is fundamental to healthy development. We all need to learn how to work with children's type dependent differences in attentional styles and corresponding energies.
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* Footnote: It may also be true that type influences the aspect of essential self that is most vulnerable to damage, e.g., alertness/vigilance to danger makes faith vulnerable. Or it may be that a particular aspect of our essential being such as faith is especially sensitive to damage. Acknowledgments: I wish to thank Denise Daniels, Carolyn Dawn, Helen Palmer, and all our students in the oral tradition for their contribution to this work and my understandings of childhood origins.
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David Daniels, M.D. is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford University and in private practice in Palo Alto. He has co-taught the Enneagram Professional Training Program in the Oral Tradition with Helen Palmer since its inception in 1988. He currently is co-authoring a book on the uses of the Enneagram for personal development with Helen Palmer to be published by Harmony/Crown.