Type 1 Initial Self-Belief: “I am unacceptable as I am.”

Type 1 Compensation: "I must monitor, correct, and improve myself in order to be acceptable and remain above criticism."

Type 1 Core Focus: Acceptability comes from doing things right and acting appropriately according to internalized standards for what that is. This requires I discern what’s right and monitor, correct, and improve my behavior so I don’t fall short of these standards. Others should do the same.

Personality characteristics that might arise from the type 1 core focus include:

• Monitors and corrects self-behavior by way of an Inner Critic
• Avoids making mistakes that can be criticized by others
• Compares the world to standards for how things should be
• Tends to look for one right way of doing things
• Strives toward an ideal of perfection
• Attention goes to what needs to be corrected or improved
• Critical of others when they disregard implied rules of behavior
• Tries to be good by modeling appropriate behavior
• Feels responsible for getting things right

The Reformer, The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic¹

Basic Fear: Of being "bad," defective, evil, corrupt¹

Basic Desire: To be good, virtuous, in balance--to have integrity¹

How Ones Pay Attention: Perfectionism is supported by the habit of making mental comparisons. It is a way of paying attention in which thoughts and actions are automatically judged against an ideal standard of how perfect the situation could be.²

Basic Proposition: You must be good and right to be worthy.²

Strengths: Honest, responsible, conscientious, hard-working, dependable, practical, self-reliant²

Challenges: Resentful, rigid, judgmental, non-adaptable, overly critical²

Energy goes into: Getting things right. Issues about integrity. Maintaining standards judged to be important. Being responsible and self-reliant. Suppressing personal needs and natural desires.³

The Perfectionist: Ethical, dedicated and reliable, they are motivated by a desire to live the right way, improve the world, and avoid fault and blame.⁴

Perfectionists are realistic, conscientious, and principled. They strive to live up to their high ideals.⁵

Focus of Attention: Like the “superego” function of Freud’s model, Ones focus on noticing error (in the form of deviations from an internally generated ideal), discerning right and wrong, and displaying a reliance on rules and structure.⁶

¹Book: The Wisdom of the Enneagram; Website: The Enneagram Institute

²Book: The Enneagram; Website: The Narrative Enneagram

³Book: The Essential Enneagram; Website: Dr. David Daniels

⁴Book: The Road Back to You

⁵Book: The Enneagram Made Easy

⁶Book: The Complete Enneagram; Website: Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy

Type 1 Fixation and Trap

Fixation: Resentment comes from trying to live up to standards for what's acceptable and right while others aren't.

Trap: Perfection comes from striving to attain or model an ideal that is free from flaws or criticism.

The fixation of resentment points to the mental preoccupation of the type 1 ego. The trap of perfection keeps an individual stuck in the fixation.

Type 1 Holy Idea

Holy Idea: Holy perfection is about discovering the perfection of the world as it is instead of trying to impose your own set of standards upon it.

The fixation of resentment and trap of perfection keep an individual stuck in the type 1 fixation. The way out of that fixation is through holy perfection.

Type 1 Passion

Passion: Anger is an energy that corrects and improves what's unacceptable. "It's primarily directed at myself and secondarily at others and the world at large."

The passion of anger is the emotional energy that serves the fixation of resentment and trap of perfection.

Type 1 Virtue

Virtue: Serenity appears when you become more accepting of things as they are instead of demanding that they meet your standards for how things should be.

The virtue of serenity is what appears when the passion of anger subsides.

• Anger
• Criticality
• Demandingness
• Dominance
• Perfectionism
• Over-Control
• Self-Criticism
• Discipline

One method used to bring the types to life when teaching the Enneagram types involves interviewing people of a given type about how that type plays out in their life. This may be done through panels and one-on-one interviews.

Self-revelatory videos can also be useful where a person simply describes their type to a camera without the prompting of an interviewer.

Note that sometimes a person in a video may have been mistyped and may not offer an accurate representation of type when that happens.

Once their Enneagram type is known, celebrities or famous people can also offer interesting examples of and insights into Enneagram type as revealed through interviews, lectures, writings, and the person's work.

However, it's not like the Enneagram panels, interviews, and self-revelations where people are specifically describing how they experience Enneagram type in their lives. It's more a matter of looking for glimpses into how Enneagram type is operating in the person.

It can be difficult to type someone at a distance. Look for a consensus of opinion on a person's type from multiple sources and hold it loosely. Celebrities and famous people are often typed differently by different Enneagram authors, teachers, and enthusiasts.

It needs to be made clear that fictional characters are not real people, even when they are based on real people. There can be a temptation to assign Enneagram type to every character in a story, but many characters don't have that kind of consistency or depth.

Not only might there be a number of different people, usually of different types, influencing the creation or portrayal of a character but often the character is nothing more than a vehicle for telling the story and moving it along.

While once in a while a character appears that you can attribute an Enneagram type to, generally it's more accurate to look at specific scenes as examples of a type rather than the character as a whole.

Tom Condon wrote a book called The Enneagram Movie & Video Guide that you may find useful for seeing type in fictional characters.

Although they do exist, there are few song lyrics that can be attributed to one particular Enneagram type. Most songs have both lyrical and musical elements that can be attributed to a number of different Enneagram types.

Songs are extremely subjective. There are many songs that listeners, and even performers, interpret in a very different way than the song writer intended. A number of songs also emphasize the sounds of words rather than their meaning.

As such, different people hearing the same song often will experience it as representing different Enneagram types.

Enneagram type 1 wings (1w9 and 1w2)

Enneagram type 1 subtypes (sp 1, sx 1, so 1)

Enneagram type 1 tri-center (gut, heart, head)

• 1 vs 2
• 1 vs 3
• 1 vs 4
• 1 vs 5
• 1 vs 6
• 1 vs 7
• 1 vs 8
• 1 vs 9

Enneagram Type Preference Test
This test produces a scored list of all nine types.
Questions are forced-choice, similar to the method used by the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indictor (RHETI).
Use to determine type, wings, gut/heart/head types, and tri-center.

Enneagram Type Comparison Test
This test compares any two types. The preferred type will have the higher score.
Use when you've narrowed your type down to two or three possibilities you'd like to compare.