Enneagram Epicycles

Gordon Seidoh Worley
Mon, 04 May 2026 03:00:49 GMT

The core insights of Enneagram theory appear to me to be useful, but people have laden that core theory with epicycles. They’ve done it in an attempt to explain everything about personality, and I think this does a disservice to the strength of core Enneagram theory. But, I want to be fair. These epicycles are not completely useless. They often point to real patterns in the data, and it can sometimes be useful to identify these patterns to make sense of the core theory. The problems arise when those patterns are treated as causes, which leads to rationalization.

The most famous rationalizer among these epicycle theorists is Claudio Naranjo, who popularized the Enneagram in the 1970s and melded the original, more mystical formulation into a psychology theory. Alas, he didn’t stop at framing the Enneagram in psychological terms. He and his students layered on more and more theory until it was able to explain everything, and thereby predict nothing.

One of those layers of explanation is instinctual subtypes. The idea of subtypes predates Naranjo, but he expanded the theory to explain more. He saw each Enneagram type as split into three subtypes based on whether self-preservation, social, or sexual concerns dominated. Why these three? As best I can tell, they were picked because, on the one hand, Enneagram theorists love the number three, and on the other, these specific subtypes added enough complexity to explain away inconvenient wrong predictions the base theory can make when an individual doesn’t fit the pattern of their type closely.

Rather than admit the base theory describes a complex, multi-dimensional space where the types are attractor states and sometimes individual behavior will not be accurately predicted by those attractors, he instead attempted to “fix” the theory by adding more attractor states. In theory there’s nothing wrong with that, but he did it top down, adding theory to split up the types rather than building up from observations of where the attractors actually were. He tried to make reality fit the theory instead of vice-versa, and in doing so opened the door to adding ever more epicycles to make the theory fit observation.

Countertypes are one such epicycle. The countertype theory claims that some people behave exactly opposite to their type. So it lets someone type as, say, a 1, and if they behave opposite to what the theory predicts due to trauma, then the theory can say they’re expressing the countertype. Which, maybe? Trauma could change how each type’s essence and core wound affect behavior, but if we introduce countertypes, what does being of a particular type even mean? The addition of countertypes moves the theory down the path to unfalsifiability by wiping out most of the evidentiary power of observing someone’s behavior.

Another source of epicycles are type groups, the most popular of which are triadic groupings. These groupings aren’t without precedent. The core theory splits the types into three groups of three: head (5-6-7), heart (2-3-4), and gut (8-9-1). There’s some theorycraft behind why it does this, but for our purposes we can ignore it. What we can’t ignore is that it set the stage for people to create other triadic groupings.

The most popular of these are probably the Hornevian groups, named because they are based on the social stance theories of Karen Horney. They say that types 1, 2, and 6 are compliant, types 4, 5, and 9 are withdrawn, and 3, 7, and 8 are aggressive. And to this I say, fair enough, there is something of a pattern here, but it seems weak, since it depends a lot on how we interpret each of “compliant”, “withdrawn”, and “aggressive” and what behaviors we focus on when applying those labels. I can think of 1s and 2s I’d call aggressive, 4s and 9s that are compliant, and 3s and 8s that have become withdrawn. So if the Hornevian groups are picking up on a pattern, it’s not as strong as the triadic grouping might suggest.

Other triadic groupings have similar issues. There are harmonic groups, object relations triads, and more. All point to patterns that kinda sorta feel real, but also dissolve if pressed hard. I even managed to stumble on a novel one while learning about the Enneagram by asking “is there a pattern between Enneagram type and attachment theory?”. The answer is, a little, yes, we could say the 2-4-6 group tends towards anxious attachment because they want to seek connection with another’s authentic self, the 3-5-8 group tends towards avoidant attachment because they fear authentic connection, and the 1-7-9 group tends towards disorganized attachment because they don’t want to relate so much as use people to cope with the pain of their core wound, leading to a mixed, push-and-pull approach towards relationships. Sounds compelling and coherent on the surface, but it’s also a just-so story, and we can find any number of people who don’t fit this grouping.

I suspect what’s going on is that the space of personality is complex. There’s many dimensions, and you can always find a pattern no matter what grouping you create. There’s 280 possible triadic groupings, even more if we allow all possible groupings. This is like the way you can always fit a polynomial to any dataset: there’s a pattern there, sure, but it’s not necessarily meaningful. We see the same problem with Enneagram groupings.

At the extreme, the Enneagram risks becoming personality astrology, because it can have enough epicycles to explain all of human behavior, which is a problem, because a theory that explains everything can’t be proven wrong, and so it explains nothing. So if I’m so down on the Enneagram here, why do I think it’s useful and I’m excited about it?

Because not all of Enneagram theory is like this. I’ve found real value in reasoning about the core types and the wings. I’ve found it predictive of the behavior of others. And, like all good psychological theories, sometimes it fails, because humans are more complex than 9 or 27 types can capture. But the epicycles put the core theory’s value at risk by diluting its predictive power. Studying these epicycles can be useful to better understand the core theory, but only if held lightly. If taken too seriously, the epicycles turn the Enneagram into a theory of everything, and at that point it ceases to be useful.

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