Blog post image

Relationships between the Enneagram and Neojungian Typology

  • Published: 08-05-2015 Edited: 08-05-2015
  • The key benefit of Neojungian Typology is to learn to recognize your passions, what gives you energy, what motivates you. We, just as a tool called the enneagram, take on and discuss emotional health. And we, just as the enneagram, account for behavioral variations. Because of this, to some extent, people can find relationships between each neojungian function, and certain enneagram types.

    The Enneagrams system of 9 emotional instincts and 3 instinctual variations shares a theoretical relationship with the NJT. Every neojungian function has an emotional function and emotional consequences. Abstract association (A) is related to fear-instincts, while Concrete association (C) is related to anger instincts. VA has a self-reflective response to fear, a desire to explain what they are afraid of, and what they are curious about, before they can move forward. This is similar to the Sp-type in the Enneagram.

    XA on the other hand, have a daring, opposing relationship to fear, a desire to make instinctive decisions and to move based on where their fear or curiosity leads them. (Sx in the enneagram!) Organic and Mechanic Encoding functions also relate to emotions. Mechanic Encoding (M) makes you experience anxiety (over your performance, over your work, or your overall score) while Organic Encoding (O) relates to shame (disgust) and appreciation (thinking someone is pleasant or unpleasant in some way).

    OE-types are proactive about their disgust and appreciation, and driven to express and articulate it to others. Their closest match is the shame driven three-type. OP types are reactive about their disgust and appreciation, and driven to adapt and to experiment with what they like and dislike. They closely resemble the type four in the enneagram.

    Correlations:
    OP-types: Enneagram four.
    OE-types: Enneagram three.
    ME-types: Enneagram seven.
    MP-types: Enneagram five.
    XC-types: Enneagram eight.
    VC-types: Enneagram nine.
    VA-types: Self-preservatory instincts.
    XA-types: Sexual instincts.

    Types SO, 2, 6, 1 can however not be correlated to any one of the neojungian functions, but they can be explained: A type two in the enneagram exhibits submissive (inferior or tertiary) organic encoding. A type 6 indicates submissive (inferior or tertiary) mechanic encoding, and a type 1 indicates submissive (inferior or tertiary) concrete association, which would explain why a type two tends to rely on people in their external environment to reward them for helping and being good to others.

    An XAOGP-VCMFE type would therefore have Sx (XA) 4 (OP) 7 (ME) 9 (VC) but as the enneagram does not define their traits exactly the same way as Neojungian Typology and as there are many variations of the enneagram, the correlations are not perfect. Still, if you don't know what your enneagram type is, feel free to explore how well you can see yourself in your NJT-enneacode. :)