Entries by Jerry Wagner

Enneagram Styles and Cyclical Psychodynamics: Irony of Ironies

By Jerome Wagner, Ph.D.

Each Enneagram style has its spots – sweet spots, blind spots, hot spots, and desired spots.

  • The sweet spot is what each style sees clearly, the intuitive edge, the values and visions that we move towards.
  • The blind spot is what we avoid.  Our shadow.    This is what we move away from.
  • The hot spot represents those sensitivities and vulnerabilities that we experienced early on in our life that hurt us, embarrassed us, terrorized us, made us angry, etc.  These are the early wounding’s that we move against when they make us angry or move away from when they make us afraid, or sometimes move towards to make friends with our enemy.
  • The desired spot is what we really want and value, our genuine needs and aspirations.  This is our actualizing self.

Enneagram Styles And The Cognitive Theory Of George Kelly

By Jerome Wagner, Ph.D.

George Kelly (1963) has been called the father of cognitive psychotherapy.  Kelly’s metaphor is we are all junior scientists trying to figure out our world so we can predict and control our environment and the reactions our behavior will elicit from the environment (mostly our social environment.)  We look for repetitions around us and then formulate constructs or representations to map our world.  The mind looks for order and then imposes that order in the form of templates on our experiences and the world. Like scientists we develop theories and hypotheses that will help predict future events, thus reducing uncertainty.  

Narcissism and Enneagram Styles

There is some debate about which Enneagram styles display narcissistic tendencies.  Some put Sevens in the narcissistic category; some put Threes in that basket; some say any Enneagram type can manifest narcissistic leanings.  I propose to completely unresolve this issue by presenting some theories about the origins or etiology of narcissism, quoting some theories about which Enneagram styles might express narcissistic tendencies, and in conclusion drawing some inconclusions.

History of the Enneagram

by Jerome Wagner, Ph.D. A recently popularized typology which is moving into the mainstream in personal growth, therapy, spirituality, education and business arenas is the ENNEAGRAM (Any-a-gram). In Greek Ennea […]

Values and Visions

by Jerome Wagner, Ph.D. At the heart of each person’s style lie certain strengths and capabilities that enable us to survive and thrive. We experience these energizers as values or […]

Values and Proficiencies

by Jerome Wagner, Ph.D. Our values and visions give us an intuitive perceptual and behavioral edge. Each of the nine styles possesses an intuitive capacity to see certain realities very […]