Type 9 Initial Self-Belief: “I am not in unity as I am.”

Type 9 Compensation: "I must accommodate others' agenda and opinions in order to feel at ease and in harmony with them."

Type 9 Core Focus: Harmony comes from getting along with others and falling into comfortable routines. This requires that I accommodate others by finding common ground and minimizing my own agenda when around others as well as finding comfort and peace of mind for myself.

Personality characteristics that might arise from the type 9 core focus include:

• Loses sight of own agenda in favor of the agenda of others
• Smooths over conflict in order to keep the peace and feel more at ease
• Has difficulty establishing goals and following through on them
• Struggles with inertia: getting going or changing course once underway
• Gets lost in peripheral activities that don't serve the primary objective
• Avoids creating separation from people by going along to get along
• Supresses anger which may surface as stubbornness or passive-aggressiveness
• Finds it difficult to prioritize because everything can seem equally important
• Numbs themself through comfort seeking and getting lost in routine

The Peacemaker, The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent¹

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation, of annihilation¹

Basic Desire: To maintain their inner stability and peace of mind¹

How Nines Pay Attention: When Nines “go on automatic,” they can complete complicated tasks without paying conscious attention to what their hands and bodies are doing.²

Basic Proposition: You gain belonging by merging with others, and comfort by dispersing your energy into objects and activities.²

Strengths: Excellent mediators, caring, supportive, adaptive, steady, receptive, non-judgmental²

Challenges: Stubborn, ambivalent, self-forgetful, indecisive, conflict-avoidant²

Energy goes into: Being sensitive to others and trying to please them instead of myself. Keeping life comfortable and familiar. Maintaining harmony, structure, and routine to make life predictable. Containing anger. Doing the less essential and comforting activities rather than the more important and more disturbing ones.³

The Peacemaker: Pleasant, laid back and accommodating, they are motivated by a need to keep the peace, merge with others and avoid conflict.⁴

Peacemakers are receptive, good-natured, and supportive. They seek union with others and the world around them.⁵

Focus of Attention: Nines focus attention on others, on what is going on in the environment, and on avoiding conflict and achieving harmony. Nines typically tune into what other people want, but do not have a clear sense of their own agendas.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 9 Fixation and Trap

Fixation: Indolence is about resisting demands and expectations that disrupt a feeling of harmony and continuity.

Trap: A seeker of harmony and belonging that accommodates by going along with others and not rocking the boat.

The fixation of indolence points to the mental preoccupation of the type 9 ego. The trap of seeker keeps an individual stuck in the fixation.

Type 9 Holy Idea

Holy Idea: Holy Love is realizing that love comes to you not by negating yourself for the sake of others but by discovering and pursuing your own path.

The fixation of indolence and trap of seeker keep an individual stuck in the type 9 fixation. The way out of that fixation is through holy love.

Type 9 Passion

Passion: Laziness is a difficulty with defining and accomplishing goals. "I tend to go along with what others are doing and lose myself in routine and comfort."

The passion of laziness is the emotional energy that serves the fixation of indolence and trap of seeker.

Type 9 Virtue

Virtue: Action appears when you pursue what's meaningful to you instead of simply going along to get along or falling into habitual routines and comfort.

The virtue of action is what appears when the passion of laziness subsides.

• Psychological Inertia
• Over-Adaptation
• Resignation
• Generosity
• Ordinariness
• Robotic Habit-Boundedness
• Distractibility

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 9 wings (9w8 and 9w1)

Enneagram type 9 subtypes (sp 9, sx 9, so 9)

Enneagram type 9 tri-center (gut, heart, head)

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

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.