A Lick and a Promise

From Marge Piercy’s poem, “For Strong Women,” I’d guessed she might be Enneagram style Eight. But her autobiography Sleeping with Cats suggests she's more likely to be style Two. 

Piercy describes herself as having taken care of people surrounding her much of her life – including earning a living for herself and the rest of the people in a ménage à quatre in her second marriage. This level of responsibility could also be true of style Eight, but the group marriage arrangement might be a better fit for style Two’s murky sexual boundaries (as would her attraction to the writer Colette). 

Also, Piercy bemoans – in a way that conveys a sense of betrayal – the fact that people have abandoned her when she needed them, which is less likely to be style Eights' complaint. Here's a fascinating passage about adopting two cats after her Siamese died:

“Woody [her third husband, Ira Wood] and I pursued an ad in the Boston Globe. There we found heaps of Burmese... in piles of rich dark brown fur cuddling one another, except for two exiles: two big sable cats she said were three months old, but I could tell they were six or eight at least... A male at stud had escaped from his cage and impregnated his daughter... Woody had fallen in love with them at once... Woody named the male Jim Beam, and I named the female Colette. I have always loved Colette’s writing. Jim Beam was immediately interested and friendly, but Colette hid under a chair... I captured her, held her and licked her like a mother cat. She was astonished and began to purr. From then on, except when she was angry with me, she was my cat. She fell in love that night. It was hardly sanitary, but it conveyed affection and trust in a language she understood.”

Licking a kitten, the way a mother cat would, captures much we need to know about style Two, and is the kind of metaphorical behavior that helps identify core Enneagram patterns. 

But I don't know Marge Piercy, and don't intend this to be a definition of her personality, only to provide examples of how we begin to make good guesses about someone's Enneagram motivations.

The Fine Art of Inference

Prior to my scheduled phone call with Tammy, who was going to be a panelist in one of my workshops, I sent her a handout summarizing all nine Enneagram styles and asked her to come to the call with her best guess about her own. She said, “I think I’m a Seven because I’m definitely the cheerleader for this organization.”

Even though the instructions I sent with the handout emphasized the importance of looking for core motivations instead of external characteristics, Tammy did what many people do – she looked at the descriptions of each Enneagram style’s observable behaviors instead of isolating the central tendency that distinguishes one from another.

For style Sevens the driving force is gluttony, seeking pleasure to avoid pain, a tendency to focus only on the good news. As Tammy talked I listened for clues that reflect underlying motivation – level and quality of energy, symbolic language and behaviors, reactions under stress, communication style, and focus of attention – observing whether or not her behavior with me matched her self-description.

She did have a lively, aggressive energy that could be true to style Seven, but there’s a similar energy in styles Three and Eight. I didn’t hear the louder voice typical of style Eights, or any bluntness. I didn’t hear much evidence for style Seven’s charm, storytelling, or focus on the positive.

Tammy said, for example, she gets bored with details and likes to have people around her to do the follow-through, which she’d read about style Seven. But she had major decision-making responsibilities as head of a large agency, so it was to be expected she’d delegate as much as she could. Most important, she volunteered lots of details as we talked.

I observed clues that led me to think she might be style Three, whose driving force is vanity, with a tendency toward self-promotion. I'd asked her to tell me about her youth so I could listen for her patterns of speech and what she tended to highlight. Her speech was fast-paced, which could have been true of style Seven, but she focused on measures of success instead of on long-term perspective and possibilities.

She described her family’s stature in the community based on their achievements, which suggested the importance of image found in the 2-3-4 triad. Some of her comments that are characteristic of style Three: “You always have to work harder to be an honor student.” “I have a strong work ethic.” “When you’re a leader your life is on stage for everybody to see.” “People have told me I was a model for them.”

After Tammy had reviewed the reasons why she thought she might be style Seven, I said, “I’m surprised. From reading your biography, I thought you might be style Three because you’ve accomplished so much at a relatively young age and you’ve won a number of awards.”

Her response: “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think my type is.” This answer alone was another clue she was more likely to be style Three than Seven. Enneagram Sevens tend to be self-referential, whereas style Threes – sometimes unconsciously – tend to seek approval from others. In the course of thirty minutes, both Tammy and I became clear her Enneagram style was Three, not Seven.