Michael Jackson's personality can easily be understood by two themes traced back to his childhood: a childhood that demanded focus on performance excellence and a childhood lost because of it. Together they help describe his personality as an Enneagram type 4 with a 3 wing (4w3).

The Enneatype 6 is most often described as the "fearful" type. Some people identifying as type 6 don't necessarily identify with this fearful aspect. Seems the adjustment to the label was to describe a "counter-phobic" type vs. a "phobic" type. Perhaps the label of this as a "fearful" type is missing the mark.

Although there is the question of the Enneagram symbol and types misleading christians in their search for spiritual direction, misuse of the enneatypes in other ways is a trap that can easily be wandered into. I'd like to explore a few of those dangers I've seen over the years.

The trifix, or tritype as it's now called, emphasizes a wholeness to our personality by showing how each individual contains all three centers of intelligence in their personality. The inner lines show additional connections from one type to two other types (stress and security points). By adjusting the inner lines so that all three points are in different centers, you end up with what I'm calling tricenters.

Generally, a person is identified as body-based, heart-based or head-based depending on their enneatype and which center that enneatype is in. Are we just body, heart or head or are we all three? The answer seems obvious to me.

There are three instincts described in the Enneagram personality types. What's interesting to me is that they really have no mandatory connection to the personality types themselves and can be understood separately from the enneatypes.

Enneatype 9 is often described as "going with the flow", "not rocking the boat", "going along to get along." It's said that when pushed too far they can become stubborn and "dig their heels in." What could possibly underlie this sort of behavior?

It may be true that most, if not all, type 4's have been depressed at sometime in their life. That may also be true of many Enneagram types. With type 4, depression, sadness or melancholy can arise as a byproduct of other processes or triggers.

While the Enneagram symbol limits the number of different enneatypes to nine, a variety of enhancements have been introduced over the years to explain the differences within each type (i.e., why two people of the same type can present so differently). Some of the enhancements to the system are widely accepted and some are more author specific.

It's unfortunate that the enneatype writers have seemingly limited themselves to the concepts of aggressive, compliant and detached types within Karen Horney's work. Opportunities for applying other insightful aspects of her work to the enneatypes are missed. In discussing the idealized image in her book Our Inner Conflicts, she offers what can be seen as an interesting comparison between enneatypes 7, 4 and 1.