Transcript Document

Attitudes
and the Spiritual Life-033
09-23-07
The Enneagram and The HAM’s:
Religious HAM Strategies The 8, 9 and 1
The 8-9-1 Strategies
• The HAM (Happiness Attainment Motivator)
in the lives of the 8. 9 and 1 is Religion.
• This religion might be a named religious
belief system, an alternative to traditional
religions, such as Atheism or Philosophy, or
something they would never identify as
“Religion”, such as Psychology or Science,
• No matter what it is, it is these people, the 8,
9, and 1, who are motivated by their beliefs.
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• Center 8-9-1 is referred to as the instinctive or gut
center.
• The predominant motive in the lives of these
numbers is Religion, and Anger is the primary
Emotional Sin.
• The anger is expressed differently in all three cases,
but anger it is.
• An angry Eight blocks out thinking, or thinks in
caricatures; a compulsive One tends to see black
and white only; and Nines tend to get fuzzy or have
long rambling introductions to a point easily
overlooked.
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• They have a different approach than thinkers,
they have an intuitive "gut feeling" way of
making their way through life.
• They can have "writer's block", or have
trouble expressing themselves verbally.
• Their processing of verbal or written
information can be slow, but they also are
often highly intuitive - making correct
concrete decisions quickly and easily.
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• They tend to be preoccupied, positively or
negatively with the physical aspects of life.
• Eights, for example, prefer direct, outward
solutions to problems.
• Nines tend to express emotions physically.
• They would say "my flesh crawls" instead of
"I get uneasy," and their flesh might well
goosebump.
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• Ones tend to be polarized against their own
sensuality, having strong sensual urges, but
denying them and getting critical of people or
places that encourage sensual expression
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• The Eight's Religious attention goes to issues
of power and control, to making things
happen, to protecting the weak, and to
fighting Injustice.
• With an intense, authoritative, and sometimes
explosive energy, they are usually ready to
face any challenge.
• They “know” what is right and wrong, fair and
unfair (Justice).
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• The Nine's Religious attention goes to
connecting with others, maintaining harmony,
peace, and comfort, and avoiding conflict.
• They typically enjoy the feeling of ease,
harmony, and peace that they experience in
nature.
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The 8-9-1 Strategies
• The
One's
Religious
attention
is
Righteousness/Perfection and goes to
appreciating the excellence and elegance in
anything such as a shape, musical score, a
piece of art or a speech; to noticing and
correcting errors; to identifying and adhering
to standards of perfection in thought, feeling
and behavior; to acting according to what is
right or wrong; and to judging and criticizing
oneself and others.
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The Eight
• People of enneatype Eight are essentially unwilling
to be controlled, either by others or by their
circumstances; they fully intend to be masters of
their fate, to "take charge," to do whatever needs to
be done.
• Eights are competitive, strong willed, decisive,
expansive, practical, and tough minded.
• They want to be the “hand of God”, or God himself,
of their Religious belief system.
• Remember that the 6, 7 and 8 group was
concerned with Power, so the 8 is the transition
from Power to Religion and combines the two.
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The Eight
• Eights typically have an enormous amount of
energy and frequently have powerful physical
appetites. There is an unapologetically expansive
quality to the physical presence of the type Eight
personality. Eights generally don't have to announce
their presence for others to know they are there.
The central problem for individuals of enneatype
Eight is that the need to avoid being controlled can
manifest in the need to control, the need to be "in
charge," the compulsion to dominate.
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The Eight
• This can lead to all sorts of practical
difficulties, as the world is not always liable to
conform to the dictates of the Eight's will, but
the deeper problem for the Eight is that the
need to avoid any semblance of being
controlled can rob the Eight of the fluidity,
receptivity and acceptance that is generally
necessary to live a full, balanced and truly
happy life.
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The Eight
• Eights often experience life as a struggle for
existence in which only the fittest survive.
• Life thus dictates competition from the point
of view of the Eight, and Eights naturally
intend to be the ones who survive.
• They typically adopt a survival strategy that
involves either a rise to the top of the existing
hierarchy, or an "opting out" altogether of the
current system and its structures of power.
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The Eight
• Eights of the former sort are typically found in
positions of leadership, whether it be of their
own family, company or political party.
• Eights of the latter sort tend to be
independent contractors, free-lancers of all
sorts, and even outlaws - those who, in other
words, exist outside of the accepted
framework of civil society and its often
artificial system of rules and obligations.
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The Eight
• Eights of both basic tendencies need to feel
financially independent, and while most
Eights do manage to find some means of
making peace with their society, they always
retain an uneasy association with any
hierarchical relationship which does not
position the Eight at the top.
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The Eight
• While some Eights adopt something of the "lone
wolf" persona, most Eights have quite a number of
social connections, whether to family members,
friends or business connections.
• Eights are very much present in the world and are
frequently extroverts.
• True intimacy however does not come easily or
naturally to Eights.
• Soft and tender emotions tend to make Eights feel
"weak," and, more to the point, intimacy requires
Eights to lower their defenses and thereby become
vulnerable.
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The Eight
• Vulnerability, in turn, triggers the Eight's fear of
being controlled.
• Thus, intimate relations are often the arena in which
the Eight's control issues are most obviously played
out.
• Questions of trust assume a pivotal position.
• Eights tend to test their intimates to see if they are
worthy, to see if they can be trusted not to betray
the Eight's confidence.
• Betrayal is absolutely intolerable to Eights and any
hint of it can provoke a powerful retaliatory
response.
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The Eight
• Type Eight exemplifies the desire to be
independent and to take care of oneself.
• Eights are assertive and passionate about
life, meeting it head on with self-confidence
and strength.
• They have learned to stand up for themselves
and have a resourceful, "can-do" attitude.
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The Eight
• Eights are looking, ideally, both for someone
they can respect and someone they can
protect, a paradoxical combination to be sure,
but, while the Eight's loneliness can only be
assuaged by finding an equal, the Eight's
feelings of vulnerability can best be assuaged
if they know that their intimates depend on
them.
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The Eight
• While Eights do not trust easily, if they do
admit someone into the inner sanctum, they
generally prove to be stalwart friends and
steadfast allies.
• Not all Eights do form truly intimate
relationships however, as some Eights are
simply unwilling or unable to compromise
their sense of self-sufficiency.
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The Eight
• Eights are often prone to anger, one of the few
feelings they allow themselves to feel in its pure
form.
• As mentioned, the experience of tender emotions
such as compassion, love, sorrow, melancholy and
pity can cause the Eight to feel vulnerable.
• Anger, on the other hand, embodies a feeling of
being in opposition to the world and, at least as the
Eight experiences it, a sense of the importance of
overcoming that opposition.
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The Eight
• In the Eight's experience of anger, ego
boundaries are consolidated, the world kept
in opposition, and the Eight focused on
domination.
• Some Eights consider "morality" to be just
one more means by which society attempts to
exert illegitimate control over them.
• (It’s not “Fair” (Justice) that you dictate
(Power) what is “right and wrong” for me, they
think.)
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The Eight
• It is, they reason, the weapon that the
constitutionally weak use to keep the
naturally strong "in line."
• Eights, like counterphobic Sixes, are
suspicious of rules, and often take an
oppositional stance to authority.
• But, as Eights are generally strategic, they
seldom take on a battle they know they
cannot win.
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The Eight
• Their rebellion and lack of respect for "the rules"
therefore, is often camouflaged.
• While Eights tend not to respect external systems of
rules, they often have their own internal sense of
right and wrong, which consists of personal loyalties
and freely chosen commitments.
• These the Eight will fight to protect.
• Eights are often said to have an internal sense of
"justice," and it is true that Eights are acutely aware
of the ways in which power is used and abused.
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The Eight
• When unhealthy, they are perfectly willing to misuse
power however.
• Only the strong survive, and whoever gets in the
Eight's way might have to be sacrificed to the
Eight's ambition.
• Healthy Eights however develop a generosity of
character which is almost the direct opposite of the
unhealthy Eight's selfish self-assertion.
• Healthy Eights, those Eights who have developed
the capacity to love, are among the most generous
character types in the Enneagram.
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The Eight
• Martin Luther King should be considered in this
regard.
• He found power in restraint and strength in humility.
• Unhealthy Eights, on the other hand, are the most
brutal of the enneatypes.
• Unhealthy Eights are bullies who enjoy intimidating
those whom they see as weak and who feel little
compunction about walking over anyone who
crosses their path.
• They are crude, brutal, dangerous and grotesquely
insensitive to the feelings of others.
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The Eight
• An element of sadism frequently enters the
picture, sadism being a clear and obvious
manifestation of the attempt to attain power
by means of domination and humiliation; a
weakness posing as strength.
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The Eight
• In the traditional Enneagram, the passion of type
Eight is said to be "lust."
• This should not be confused with the insistent
desire to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, sexual
or otherwise, which is more characteristic of the
gluttony of type Seven.
• The lust of type Eight has an expansive quality to it rather than the need to "take in," the lust of type
Eight manifests in the need to push outwards- to
assert the self in order to attain the objects of
desire.
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The Eight
• As with the passions of all the enneatypes, the term
should not be read in its narrow or conventional
sense, and the lust of type Eight need not manifest
sexually.
• When it does, the Eight often finds it difficult to
marry the often enormous desire for purely physical
gratification with the more tender emotions of love
and compassion, and herein lies one of the keys to
understanding why the passion of type Eight might
be considered a vice or sin.
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The Eight
• Whether the passion of lust manifests
sexually or not, it involves a quality of selfassertion, a tightening of the ego boundaries,
a stance that is often oppositional between
the Eight and the other.
• What the Eight primarily desires is
power...power sufficient to insulate the Eight
from ever being vulnerable or weak.
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The Eight
• Eights with a Seven wing tend to be more
expansive extroverted and openly aggressive
than those with the Nine wing.
• They are more likely to be sensation seekers
and are generally more overtly ambitious than
those with a Nine wing.
• Eights with a Seven wing especially tend to
relish intensity of experience.
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The Eight
• Conversely, Eights with a Nine wing hold
more of their energy in reserve and exhibit
more of a grounded, even stubborn quality.
• They are generally less obviously volatile
than Eights with a Seven wing but can slip
just as radically into open aggression when
pushed.
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The Eight
• The ancient world seems to have provided a
fitting stage for type Eight energy and many
of the key military figures of antiquity have
been Eights - Alexander, Julius Caesar,
Hannibal, Attila and Emperor Chin to name
just a few notable examples.
• They murdered millions.
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The Eight
• Naturally, given the nature of the type Eight
fixation, many of the world's most influential
modern leaders have also been Eights:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel
Castro, Martin Luther King Jr., Golda Meir,
Indira Ghandi and Lyndon Johnson.
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The Eight
• "While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two
assistants knew, a reader of books, he was,
they knew, a reader of men--a great reader of
men. He had a genius for studying a man and
learning his strengths and weaknesses and
hopes and fears, his deepest strengths and
weaknesses: what it was that the man
wanted--not what he said he wanted but what
he really wanted--and what it was that the
man feared, really feared.”
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The Eight
• "He tried to teach his young assistants to
read men--“Watch their hands, watch their
eyes” he told them. “Read eyes. No matter
what a man is saying to you, it’s not as
important as what you can read in his eyes”-and to read between the lines: more
interested in men’s weaknesses than in their
strengths because it was weakness that
could be exploited, he tried to teach his
assistants how to learn a man’s weakness.
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The Eight
• "The most important thing a man has to tell
you is what he isn’t telling you,” he said. "The
most important thing a man has to say is
what he’s trying not to say.” For that reason,
he told them, it was important to keep the
man talking; the longer he talked, the more
likely he was to let slip a hint of that
vulnerability he was so anxious to conceal.
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The Eight
• “That’s why he wouldn’t let a conversation
end." Busby explains. “If he saw the other
fellow was trying not to say something, he
wouldn’t let it (the conversation) end until he
got it out of him.” And Lyndon Johnson
himself read with a genius that couldn’t be
taught, with a gift that was so instinctive that
a close observer of his reading habits, Robert
G. (Bobby) Baker, calls it a “sense”;
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The Eight
• "He seemed to sense each man’s individual
price and the commodity he preferred as
coin.” He read with a novelist’s sensitivity,
with an insight that was unerring, with an
ability, shocking in the depth of its penetration
and perception, to look into a man’s heart and
know his innermost worries and desires.
(From Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson.)
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The Eight
• General George Patton and George C. Scott,
the actor who famously played him, were also
Eights. Other actors include Shelley Winters,
Bette Davis, Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra,
Siney Poitier and John Wayne.
• On the American scene more recently, Eights
include Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
Senator John McCain is also an Eight. Also
the former senator, Ann Richards.
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The Eight
• Also: television "personalities" Dr.Phil, Nancy
Grace and Paula Dean. And, of course, "The
Donald."
• Fictional Examples include Star War's Darth
Vader and Lucy from the comic strip Peanuts.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Eights and Ones can both be dominating and
self-assertive.
• Both are drawn to leadership roles.
• Typically it is the more passionate and
visceral type One who is mistaken for the
Eight - Rudi Giuliani being a case in point, or
Osama bin Laden.
• But Ones dominate in service to an ideal and
are more rule bound than is the Eight, who is
typically a law unto himself.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Twos are more likely to be mistyped as Eights than
the converse, and even that mistype is likely to
occur under a narrow set of circumstances.
• While it is true that Twos can be quite bossy, Twos
are primarily emotionally centered whereas
• Eights repress the more tender emotions.
• Twos are needy; Eights self-sufficient to a fault.
• Twos are manipulative; Eights are direct.
• Twos are soft; Eights are hard etc.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Eights and Threes are both competitive, and both
can be dominating and drawn to leadership roles,
but Threes are fundamentally concerned with
receiving external validation, something which is
almost entirely foreign to enneatype Eight's
mindset.
• Threes want to be admired; Eights want respect,
even if it is grudging.
• Threes are much smoother and conciliatory than
Eights, something which seems compromising from
the standpoint of type Eight.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• A mistype between Eight and Four is generally
unlikely, but a Four with Three, especially one with a
sexual/social instinctual stacking could conceivably
be mistaken for an Eight.
• Eights, on the other hand, should not be mistaken
for Fours.
• Fours are generally far more comfortable
expressing their emotions than are Eights, and are
especially more comfortable with expressing
vulnerability, even if they do sometimes do it an a
paradoxically aggressive fashion.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Eights can be mistyped as Fives when they
are especially intellectual.
• Fives can be mistaken for Eights when they
are especially self-confident, as they
sometimes are in their own areas of
expertise.
• Both types are independent and place a
premium on the avoidance of displays of
vulnerability.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• But an examination of the fundamental
themes of their lives should reveal the stark
underlying differences.
• Fives are sensitive and are susceptible to
overwhelm and energy depletion; Eights have
an expansive physical presence, are
frequently insensitive, and are more likely to
overwhelm others than to be overwhelmed
themselves.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Eights and counterphobic Sixes can quite easily be
mistyped, and it is not uncommon for counterphobic
Sixes to mistype themselves as Eights.
• Both types can be ambitious, competitive and even
dominating.
• In addition, both types tend to have issues with
authority.
• But there is a much more reactive, volatile,
unpredictable quality to the aggression of
counterphobic Sixes than there is to the generally
more strategic aggression of type Eight.
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The Eight - Mistypes
• Moreover, there is generally a more personal
quality to the aggression of type Six than
there is to the more goal oriented aggression
of type Eight.
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The Eight
• Eights and Sevens can be mistyped, especially if
the wing is especially strong.
• Both types can be sensation seekers who love
adventure.
• Both types can be competitive and overwhelming.
• But as a general rule, Sevens find focusing to be
quite challenging whereas focus comes naturally to
Eights.
• Sevens have a lighter approach to life and generally
have a quick nervous, mental energy which
contrasts with the more grounded instinctual energy
of type Eight.
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The Eight
• Eights and Nines might possibly be mistyped,
especially, once again, if the wing is particularly
strong.
• But Nines are generally conflict avoidant, especially
in close personal relationships, whereas Eights
often enjoy a good fight.
• Nines struggle with self-assertion whereas selfassertion comes naturally to Eights.
• Nines have to avoid being overwhelmed by others;
Eights have to avoid being overwhelming.
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The Eight
• 8’s are determined to be self-reliant and free
to pursue their own destiny.
• Thus, Eights are natural leaders: honorable,
authoritative, and decisive, with a solid,
commanding presence.
• They take initiative and make things happen,
protecting and providing for the people in
their lives while empowering others to stand
on their own.
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The Eight
• They embody solidity and courage, using
their talents and vision to construct a better
world for everyone depending on the range of
the influence.
• Most of all, Eights are people of vision and
action.
• They can take what looks like a useless,
broken-down shell of a building and turn it
into a beautiful home or office or hospital.
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The Eight
• Likewise, they see possibilities in people, and they
like to offer incentives and challenges to bring out
people's strengths.
• Eights agree with the saying "Give a person a fish
and they eat for a day. But teach them how to fish,
and they can feed themselves for life." Eights know
this is true because they have often taught
themselves "how to fish."
• They are self-starters and enjoy constructive
activity—building up themselves, others, and their
world.
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The Eight
• Eights occasionally take on big challenges to see if
they can pull off the impossible or turn a hopeless
cause into a great success.
• But they generally do not do so unless they are
fairly sure that the odds are on their side and that
they will have the resources to pull off a "long shot"
and make it look easy.
• Others look to them in times of crisis because they
know that Eights are willing to make tough decisions
and to take the heat if things go wrong.
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The Eight
• Honor is also important to Eights because their
word is their bond.
• When they say "You have my word on this," they
mean it.
• Eights want to be respected, and healthy Eights
also extend respect to others, affirming the dignity
of whomever they encounter.
• They react strongly when they see someone being
taken advantage of or treated in a demeaning or
degrading manner.
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The Eight
• They will step in and stop a fight to protect
the weak or disadvantaged or to "even the
score" for those who they feel have been
wronged.
• Similarly, Eights would not hesitate to give up
their seat on the train to an old or sick person,
but they would have to be dragged away
bodily if anyone tried to make them give it up
without their consent.
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The Eight
• Nothing much about Eights is half-hearted.
• They have powerful feelings and drives and often
have a major impact on the people around them—
for good or for ill.
• Eights are more intense and direct than most, and
they expect others to meet these qualities as well.
• Indirectness of any kind drives them crazy, and they
will keep pushing and raising their energy level until
they feel that others have sufficiently responded to
them.
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The Eight
• Many Eights have some kind of a dream for
themselves and their "inner circle," and being the
practical-minded people that they are, this often
involves money-making projects, business
ventures, philanthropy, and the like.
• They may start and run their own business or set
someone else up in a situation or simply play the
state lottery on a regular basis.
• Not all Eights have a lot of money, but most are
looking for some kind of "big break" that would give
them the independence, respect, and sense of
power that they typically want.
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The Eight
• They can also be highly competitive, enjoying
the challenges and risks of their own
enterprises.
• They are hard-working and pragmatic—
"rugged individualists," and wheeler-dealers
who are always thinking of a new angle and
constantly have a new project underway.
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The Eight
• Less healthy Eights can become extremely
controlling, self-important, confrontational, and
highly territorial.
• They may respond to others by swaggering and
being willful, bluffing and "throwing their weight
around" in various ways.
• Average Eights are full of bluster and bravado to get
people to fall in line with their plans, desires, and
although if they encounter resistance, they will try to
control and dominate people more openly and
aggressively.
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The Eight
• Whether they are running a multinational
corporation or a family of two, they want it
understood that they are firmly and clearly in
charge.
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The Eight
• In brief, Eights want to be self-reliant, to prove their
strength and independence, to be important in their
world, to have an impact on their environment, to
have the unquestioned loyalty of their inner circle,
and to stay in control of their situation.
• Eights do not want to feel weak or vulnerable, to
feel out of control, to be dependent on others, to
have their decisions or authority questioned, to lose
others' backing, or to be surprised by others'
unexpected actions.
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The Eight
• Their Hidden Side
• Eights present a tough, independent image to the
world, but under their bravado and layers of armor,
there is vulnerability and fear.
• Eights are affected by the reactions of those closest
to them far more than they want to let on.
• They often expect that others will dislike or reject
them, and so they are profoundly touched, even
sentimental, when they feel that someone they care
about truly understands them and loves them.
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The Eight
• Eights may learn to harden themselves
against wanting or expecting tenderness, but
they are never entirely successful.
• No matter how tough, even belligerent, they
may become, their desire for nurturance and
connection can never be put entirely out of
consciousness.
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The Eight
• Coping strategy:
• As children, Eights often lived in combative
environments where weakness was punished
and they had to be strong to survive.
• As a result, Eights tend to lead with a strong
and potent self-presentation and to hide or
deny their own vulnerability.
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The Eight
• Major traits:
• Eights can be impulsive, excessive,
dominant, and protective of others.
• They often move into action before thinking
things through, express their anger more
easily than the other types, and confront
situations more readily than others.
• They seek the truth, but may confuse
objective reality or truth with their own
personal reality or beliefs.
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The Eight
• Strengths: Eights tend to be strong, powerful,
commanding, energetic, and intense.
• Challenges: They can also have difficulty containing
their own energy and anger, be controlling, and be
unaware of their own vulnerabilities.
• Generally, Eights are strong, assertive, resourceful,
independent, determined, action-oriented,
pragmatic, competitive, straight-talking, shrewd, and
insistent.
Attitudes 2007
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68
The Eight
• Eights get into conflicts by being blunt, willful,
domineering, forceful, defiant, confrontational,
bad-tempered, rageful, cynical, and vengeful.
• At their best, Eights are honorable, heroic,
empowering, generous, gentle, constructive,
initiating, decisive, and inspiring.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
69
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• On Super Bowl Sunday America celebrates
eightness.
• Football is an eight paradigm.
• To begin with, each team wears matching
jerseys, so the field is recognizably divided
into good guys and bad guys.
• This kind of emotional clarity resembles the
mind of an entranced eight.
Attitudes 2007
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70
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Eights live in a hostile world and eights are
fiercely loyal to those they love and want to
protect.
• Secondly, eightishness is about power.
• "Smash-mouth football," as it is referred to, is
an eight trademark.
• Eights look for power in all situations.
• In a hostile world you have to know who is
powerful and who isn't.
Attitudes 2007
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71
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Many eights will start fights, verbal or
physical, just to find out the strength of their
partner.
• If you stand strong in one way or another, you
earn an eight's respect.
• If you are weak, no amount of goodness or
placating or appeal to authority will endear
you to them.
• Eights are fiercely loyal, especially in combat,
so they make fine teammates.
Attitudes 2007
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72
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• You can count on them to give it their all.
• And in combat, another characteristic shows
up: they frequently have extremely high pain
thresholds.
• Nobody can play injured like an eight.
• They pride themselves on not showing or
Attitudes 2007
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73
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Eights, unless they have an unusually strong
connection to five, focus their attention outwardly.
• They like their power physical, not mental or artistic,
so football suits them well.
• Football teams often develop fierce rivalries.
• Eights do, too.
• People who oppose them can become objects of
obsessive hatred. (Think of Rush Limbaugh's
obsession with the Clintons, especially Hilary).
Attitudes 2007
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74
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• This obsession reduces the enemy to nothing but
evil, without nuance, differentiation or redeeming
feature.
• The high side of the obsession, of course, is the
fanatic loyalty to the team.
• In times of trial, you want an eight on your side!
• Eights have an inner need to be strong.
• Regardless of the situation, an eight feels an inner
responsibility to be strong enough to handle the
situation.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
75
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• This quality makes them ultra-responsible at times,
and can become unreasonable.
• They can make exorbitant demands on their body,
for example, driving themselves to get control of a
situation, a business or a relationship.
• All enneagram styles are control strategies, and an
Eight prefers the tactic of getting you to surrender.
• Football is pleasing to them because there is no
doubt about who won.
• Whoever has the most points is stronger and is in
control.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
76
Football is an Eight Paradigm
•
•
•
•
•
Sportsmanship trophies are not awarded or wanted.
Just answer this: "Who is number one?"
Eights inflate their presence.
They can fill up a room with their expansive energy.
This expansion is in service of protecting the soft
inner self within.
• As with a 280 pound lineman, approach an eight
with gentleness.
• Many women with type Eight husbands describe
them as pussy-cats; beneath that bluff exterior is a
child in need of protection.
Attitudes 2007
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77
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• An Eight friend of one of the Enneagram
authors broke into tears several times while
reading about eights in an enneagram book.
At first he was shocked, but it makes sense-the author didn't attack, he appealed to their
inner sense of justice.
• Which leads us back to the Superbrawl.
• It is not a brawl.
• They play by strict rules and eights like it that
way.
Attitudes 2007
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78
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• They want fairness.
• One reason they are hostile is that they see
the world as hostile and unfair.
• When eights are entranced they seek
vengeance instead of justice, but when
healthy they appreciate justice a great deal.
• The referees know all the players want a fair
game when the atmosphere is this eightish.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
79
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• The Sicilian defense department, or mob as it
is usually called, came into being precisely
because the immigrants were not getting
justice from the police and juridical system.
• Most gangs are eightish in their energy and
they see themselves as having to defend
themselves against a system rigged against
them.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
80
Football is an Eight Paradigm
• Teamwork is healthy for eights. When eights are
entranced, they turn their power to protect their selfinterest.
• The glory hog who doesn't help the team doesn't
last long in football and everyone connected with
the game admires modesty, especially among the
talented who could play more for themselves.
• Giving up one's body for the team is considered a
highly virtuous act.
Attitudes 2007
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81
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• The Angry Eight
• Ty Cobb was an eight. (Self-preservation
subtype)
• In the movie he has all the degenerate
characteristics of an unhealthy eight and only
several of the redeeming virtues.
• Cobb played baseball as thought it were war.
• That's a hallmark of an eight.
Attitudes 2007
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82
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Eights live in a world in which hostility is to be
expected and is to be dealt with forthrightly.
• In Cobb's life that meant hurting whomever
he could on the base paths, pistol-whipping a
man to death, amassing wealth and probably
shooting his own father.
• The movie has consistent psychological and
physical violence and is vulgar throughout.
• Many eights are vulgar.
Attitudes 2007
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83
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• One author said, “I'll never forget the fine
Christian woman married to a minister who
asked me if she were an eight.
• I asked if she, although sweet and proper as
a minister's wife must be, ever used profanity.
• She burst out laughing and told me several
stories of her bursts of profanity.
• Profanity and vulgarity are the kinds of
language we all use when we're angry.”
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
84
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Unhealthy Eights are always angry so they use the
vocabulary of rage.
• Eights' anger is in defense of an unacknowledged
inner softness.
• They feel they can't share their inner softness, so
they frequently take care of the small and helpless
among us.
• Even Cobb, who is portrayed as systematically
unashamedly vicious, took care of one of his old
baseball buddies who had a drinking problem.
Attitudes 2007
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85
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• You'll notice how Cobb didn't like any
acknowledgment of his weaknesses.
• He was furious that he had become impotent,
he hated walking with a cane and when he
went to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame
induction, he accepted help surreptitiously so
as not to be noticed as having any need.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
86
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb tried, feebly, to make friends the way
unhealthy eights do.
• They put pressure on the person, and if the
person fights back, then the eight can trust.
• If the person does not fight back, then they
are not to be trusted.
• In the movie, whenever the wimpy
sportswriter would muster his courage and
fight back, Cobb would be appreciative.
That's in character for an eight.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
87
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• In a really hostile world, you want strong
people with you -- that's the thinking of an
eight.
• When eights are angry, they reduce enemies
to a cartoon caricature.
• When desiring sex, Cobb wanted sex and
conquest, not intimacy.
• When he wants sex, he wants it for proof of
his sexual power, so he reduces the women
to certain vulgar terms.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
88
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• In contemporary times, Rush Limbaugh, an
eight, referred to Hilary Clinton (on the David
Letterman show) as looking "like a hood
ornament on a Pontiac."
• Rush doesn't disguise his wholehearted
dislike, perhaps even hatred, for Hilary, so he
sees her as a cartoon, in two dimensions.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
89
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Rage is blind, and eights often cannot see
when they get angry.
• Some eights cannot hear when they get
angry.
• They seem to be physically deaf.
• This prevents them from getting feedback in a
relationship if anger occurs.
• But after all, one doesn't dialogue with an
enemy, one attacks.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
90
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• If this relationship is intellectual or social, one
tries mightily to convince while not listening to
the other side at all.
• However, a display of force, either physical or
mental, will get the eight's attention.
• Then you can talk to them.
• They can listen if force accompanies your
words.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
91
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb hated everyone who was different: Jews,
Catholics, Blacks, Italians (always referred to as
dagos) - the list was rather comprehensive.
• Unhealthy eights have lot of enemies and make no
bones about it.
• Eights have no time for sham.
• Cobb put it this way: "Life is too short for
diplomacy."
• They prefer confrontation.
• Their approach is "Don't talk them into it, just force
them."
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
92
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• When you listen to Limbaugh, you get that same
clarity
produced
by
selectivity
and
oversimplification.
• Things must be changed ("The Way Things Ought
to Be.") and the bad people are in control, let's
throw the bums out. Part of the reason eights
appear to be so honest is that they tend to be
simple.
• They reduce all grays to black and white.
• You're an enemy or you're a friend.
• There are no middle areas.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
93
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Eights would like to issue uniforms to
everyone so it is clear who is on their side
and who is on the other side!
• John Wayne is a famous eight and his
movies were never complex psychological
teasers.
• It was bad vs good and John was not about
to endure bad guys surviving.
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
94
Strategy 8 - Confrontational
• Cobb is a drastically unhealthy eight. Healthy
eights are wonderful friends --they are loyal
and protective.
• Eights populate a lot of social action
community work.
• They do not allow injustice and will work
endlessly to see justice done.
• They are also expansive, generous and
energetic and make wonderful party friends!
Attitudes 2007
LWBC 09-23-2007
95