Discovering Your Personality Type: The Essential Introduction to the Enneagram, Revised and Expanded [Paperback]

Having read widely in the fascinating Enneagram literature, I find this test indispensable in accomplishing the actual typing of a person. People and their friends often wish for one Enneagram label or another to apply to them, and Enneagram typing from general reading is susceptible to this *major* distortion. Containing dozens of questions, this thought provoking, multiple choice test -- which forces a choice between the answers presented for each question, often including either *no* answers appealing to the examinee, or *too many* appealing answers -- gives the examinee less opportunity to answer by prior self-stereotyping, and less of a hint of what Enneagram types correspond to which answers. "Forced-choice" testing, widely respected in psychological testing circles, can be uncomfortable when no answers seem a happy fit, but they are a good testing format. Even in other excellent books by Riso and Hudson -- also my favorite Enneagram writers -- the shorter quizzes don't compare in clarity to this. Don't skip this in your efforts to type yourself or a friend.

This book also contains a short exposition of the Enneagram approach and types. This part is cursory, and reading one of Riso and Hudson's lengthier books will be far more satisfying for this information and analysis. Helen Palmer's work is also excellent, but she takes a darker, more pessimistic view of human beings. Hudson and Riso, while recognizing each type's darker sides, present a far more balanced analysis.

This interesting book featuring the updated Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator is useful and worth reading. I took time time to answer the 144 questions and what I discovered confirmed the test I have already carried out online with the simple personality test. To improve on your person and on your relationship with others, you must have to know your fundamental compression and the sub-compressions. These 144 questions are well selected, realistic, and sensible. If you can, just read the book and carry out the test and I assure you, you will never regret it.

As I learn more about the enneagram, I have gotten a little more adept at seeing some of the depth in that typology system. Of course, when someone (who had worked more extensively at understanding the enneagram than I have) told me that she was a 5 awhile back, I was able to focus immediately, and realize that what she said fit: It introduced an element of "reality" beyond the simple ego caricatures that we are ordinarily operating with, in our ego constructs of social behavior. On the other hand, there is a vast difference between someone "giving one a fish" and "being able to fish".
Each new book I read, and each time I am able to "catch a fish", I see my understanding inch forward. The merit of "Discovering Your Personality Type" is the personality inventory called the RHETI, which supplies one with a broad spectral portrait over the nine types, based on responses to 144 questions that are formulated very sharply to contrast one type with another, and the effectiveness of which is enhanced from that perspective by being a "forced response", i.e. one has only two options related to the specific two types. I find, coming as I do from the world of science, that such a test is quite interesting. Naturally, since there are 45 pairwise type comparisons possible, this works out to a little over 3 questions dedicated to each pair, which does not have a high degree of statistical significance, even when as cleverly formulated as this test clearly is. Improving on such a spectral decomposition would be quite difficult, as we know with the resources, expense and research that must go into the development of spectrometers in chemistry and physics to extend our senses.
I appreciated the very intelligent perspective that Riso and Hudson supplied in discussing the test and the enneagram. It is clear that their knowledge is deep and incisive. On the other hand, with so much complexity (and when one comes just to the next level of instinctual variants where 27 types must be considered, or 351 pairwise comparisons one starts to realize that 144 questions, consisting of two choices per question, is way too limited just to cover that territory), only a kind of kaleidoscopic summary can be presented in 200 or so pages.
I found their writing to be clear and the theoretical perspective to be painted well in broad outline. The advantage of a spectral display is that one can learn from consideration of groupings of types. For example, if the sum of scores for types 5, 1 and 3 were much higher than the sum for the other six types, one is being presented with fairly significant information (which might be, unfortunately, difficult to interpret).
I find this assessment to be about as effective as that in the "Essential Enneagram" by D. Daniels and V. Price. One can narrow down or corroborate one's type fairly well with either assessment.
I can recommend the Riso and Hudson book, both from this viewpoint of assessment and also as a good theoretical overview of numerous important facets of the enneagram system. However, it must be emphasized that the system, while useful even if one understands it only superficially as I do, is a very complex, deep system that provides an important intellectual framework that one is simply not going to acquire by reading a few books and making some progress in understanding on one's own.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews  4.4 out of 5 stars