Читать книгу Enneagram For Dummies - Jeanette van Stijn - Страница 55

One of the ways in which you can see that the Enneagram makes no judgment about types is that the types themselves were originally designated by numbers. When I talk about Type 3, for example, you probably have no idea what this term means and thus you have no judgment about it. It’s a name, nothing more or less. But how would you see it if I talked about the Enneagram Boss/Protector type or the Perfectionist type? You’ll likely instantly form an image of this person, and probably a judgment. As soon as people wrap an item inside a word, they call up a mental image of that item, often — unnoticed and unintentionally — along with a judgment. They consider the item good or bad, nice or not nice, and so on. Words have a positive or negative charge, whereas numbers are neutral. Some people, however, think that using numbers as names is annoying, precisely because the numbers are neutral and meaningless. No image appears, which makes it harder at first to remember the names. That’s why various trainers have named the types. Once these names call up images, they’re easier to remember when starting out with the Enneagram.

Every name is a drastic abbreviation of a type’s nature and complexity. Each name refers to only a limited characteristic of a personality structure. Just like people themselves, the personality structures are complex and multilayered, which is why they can’t be easily captured in a name. Furthermore, you'll never come across two of the same people, not even two who recognize themselves in the mechanisms of the same Enneagram type. The Enneagram is only a map of the personality; the landscape itself is always unique and different from the map. Maybe you and I recognize ourselves in the Perfectionist type, for example, but that doesn’t mean we’re the same person. The name Perfectionist indicates that both of us probably value perfection, but there can be a world of difference in how we fulfill our perfectionism and where we aim our desire for it. Billions of people live in this world, and each one is unique, after all.