Читать книгу Enneagram For Dummies - Jeanette van Stijn - Страница 115

The monk Evagrius Ponticus (345-399 AD) was a scientist before the fact: He described how he explored the interior of the human mind. He regularly questioned other monks about their progress in the area of meditation and the obstacles they encountered. Using this qualitative study, he discovered the eight obstacles to peaceful meditation and labeled them vices, or emotionally charged thoughts. He observed that one monk was often disturbed by feelings of lust during his prayer, and another monk, more by pride. These vices are still differentiated in the Enneagram; they can even be considered cornerstones of the personality structure. The method used by Evagrius to acquire knowledge — namely, via interviews — is still practiced today when working with the Enneagram.

Helen Palmer primarily opts for this method (also in her seminars), and she calls it the narrative tradition: It’s based on seeing people as experts for their own type. They themselves are best able to tell what they’re like on the inside, how they see and experience things, and why they react the way they do. This is the most important source of knowledge about the types. Since the 1970s, when Palmer started her study groups, she has made audio recordings of panel interviews, and thousands of hours of material form the basis of her book The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. The same is true, by the way, of the examples I use in this book: The names are fictitious, but the stories are true.