About the Library

Why This Library Exists

The Enneagram is often studied through books that “explain” the types. But personality types are not intellectual abstractions — they are living expressions of how people feel, think, walk, talk, and create. This library shows celebrities, fictional characters, books, art, movies, poetry, music, quotes, and more by Enneagram type, so you can see the types “in real life.”

How we Curate
TL;DR

For humans — real and fictional — we type them using Enneagrammer’s experiential typing process.

For art (and poetry, music, etc) we consider the art separately from its creator. We select works that express something poignant about a type’s passion, fixation, virtue, essence, or spiritual journey.

Long Version

Celebrities & Fictional Characters

Some schools of Enneagram thought maintain that “You are the expert on yourself” and are therefore the final authority on your type. Teachers of such schools recommend that you take a test, read about the types, and “see what resonates.” Even in typing interviews, they refrain from telling you what type you are, recognizing that they could be wrong and taking care not to over-direct or disrupt the typee’s inner journey of self-discovery.

We understand this approach and appreciate the way it emphasizes the importance of introspection. And, we disagree with it.

The problem is that this approach is developmentally blind. It assumes that, prior to working with the Enneagram, a person has already developed the introspective finesse that the Enneagram is meant to awaken.

To introspect literally means to “see inside oneself,” and while everyone can develop this ability, no one has it as a default. This is but one reason that Enneagram mistypings are so common, and so touchy. Telling someone they are mistyped calls their introspective competence into question: “You don’t see yourself accurately.”

We believe that the Enneagram points to aspects of the unconscious. By definition, this means we are not aware of them. And there’s the rub. The axiom “You are the expert on yourself” is false. Others can sometimes see us better than we see ourselves. Becoming aware requires effort, the willingness to endure feelings of humiliation, and the help of others who see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

We believe that our type “spills out of us” moment to moment in ways that can be detected with the right way of seeing. Enneagrammer’s team of typing experts has developed remarkable proficiency in this, and we arrived at this library’s list of celebrities and fictional characters via this ethos. We invite you to learn about Enneagrammer’s typing process at Dark Arts Acadmy.

Art, Music, Poetry, etc

We categorize artwork based on what it expresses, irrespective of its creators’ type(s). For example, Mary Oliver might be a 9, but a given poem of hers might capture the Essence of 5.

Library Values
Pragmatic

To stay streamlined, we do not include all possible resources. We only include resources that we believe usefully illustrate something about the Enneagram. It is inevitable that some excellent resources will not be included.

Inclusive

The Enneagram is for everyone, and we aim to present resources from as diverse a set of creators as we can.

Non-Attached
"The sacred truth of science is that there are no sacred truths." ~ Carl Sagan

There are no sacred resources, and we aspire to evolve this library over time, pruning and changing resources to reflect our best understanding.

Suggestions? / See something wrong?

📤 enneagramexpressions@gmail.com

Submit a resource

📤 enneagramexpressions@gmail.com

Librarians