Selected Enneagram Profiles
George Orwell - An Enneagram profile
The following was first published in the International Enneagram Association's bulletin, "Nine Points", June 2011
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.
Novelist, essayist and journalist, George Orwell (1903- 1950) is, for many, an icon of integrity, moral courage and objective candour, and embodies most of the key defining characteristics of the Enneagram type One (The Judge, The Moral Crusader, The Truth Seeker).
His works of fiction, journalism and criticism are distinguished by a concern with injustice, oppression and the manipulation of language, and by his commitment to succinct, lucid writing, with prose “as clear as a window pane”.
The term Orwellian has entered the lexicon of everyday speech, conjuring images of an impersonal, sinister surveillance culture where impartial truth has no meaning, dissent impossible, and one is denied a private life, ever conscious of being watched by “Big Brother”. His liking for clear, concise language reflects the type One’s desire to plainly articulate and share ideas without ambiguity or fear of misreading. Indeed, Orwell was keenly aware of how language and meaning were subject to manipulation, with meanings inverted (“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery”), near- brutish simplification rendering nuance impossible, and hectoring sloganeering replacing reasoned argument.
The assault on factual reality represented by the Totalitarian regime of “1984”, where 2 + 2= 5 and Oceania’s enemy changes to an ally in mid- sentence, represents perhaps the gravest insult to the type One sensibility, which is concerned primarily with truth, integrity and reason, and constitutes an assault on their most cherished commitment to unprejudiced, dispassionate objectivity.
Not toeing the Party Line
In “Homage To Catalonia”, an account of his experiences during the Spanish Civil war, Orwell recounts his arrival in Barcelona, and the almost festive atmosphere of post- revolutionary egalitarianism. Displaying the One’s occasionally discomfiting frankness, Orwell confesses that he isn’t entirely at ease with lack of servitude (being, after all, an old Etonian intensely aware of his class), but recognizes at once that it is worth fighting for. This is a perfect illustration of the healthy Objective One’s ability to identify and serve a greater good, as well as experience and record events with a refreshing honesty; Orwell isn’t trying to endear himself to the reader but acknowledges the class- consciousness he has inherited and still, to an extent, shares. In voicing his less “charming” atavisms Orwell presents himself as a writer who values unflattering (of himself and others) integrity over false piety and can, consequently, be relied on to provide a fairly accurate testament of events.
Having volunteered his services to the idealistic, if simplistic, end of fighting Fascism, Orwell was assigned to the POUM worker’s militia, where he had first hand experience of authentic collectivism, the incompetence and naivety of which he records with the cool, judicial eyes of a One, the implicating being (as is usual with this Enneagram type), that he knows better and is evidently disposed to leadership. Here Orwell displays one of the difficulties idealistic Ones have; that of reconciling their desire for equality with their belief in, or recognition of, their own suitability for governance. Impartial, realistic troubleshooters, type Ones are utterly dismayed when confronted with ineptitude, wastefulness and the kind of impractical Romanticism Orwell encountered amongst the militias and collectives of revolutionary Spain.
This, however, was a trifle when compared to the horror of his being confronted with the brutality of the “official” ideology for, or with whom, he was ostensibly fighting, when the Communist party viciously suppressed their supposed comrades in arms in the collectivist militias. Recognizing Communism (in the especially grotesque form of Stalinism) as being every bit as totalitarian, oppressive and unjust as Fascism, Orwell was faced with the choice of “toeing the Party line”, accepting that the threat of Fascism demanded a somewhat compromised unity from the Left (a “united front”), or confronting the deceit and “doublethink” head on. Orwell’s commitment to objective truth and justice meant his recognizing and acknowledging “our” (Socialism) evil as being every bit as damnable as “theirs” (Fascism); worse in fact, insofar as the former purported to protect the interests of all, and was, with the tyranny of Stalinist oppression, betraying the good faith and allegiance of many decent, sincere people.
In choosing to go where his conscience dictated, Orwell displays the healthy type Ones courageous commitment to often discomfiting truths, eschewing compromise and convenient falsities, and prepared to put themselves outside the general consensus to the end of fairness, honesty and decency. Ones may often feel like Prophets howling unheard in the wilderness, and Orwell was undoubtedly exasperated by the moral cowardice of many former fellow travellers. Indeed, the Gollancz publishing house rejected the book as it went against the official political party line and, to this day, many on the Left regard Orwell as something of a counterrevolutionary.
The Judgemental Critic
For all his impartiality, Orwell wasn’t above a certain amount of sniping and prejudice himself. In “The Road To Wigan Pier”, during a discourse on some of the issues confronting the Leftwing movement, Orwell makes derisory comments about supposed single- issue Socialists (what we would now perhaps refer to as proponents of “Identity Politics”). Referring to Feminists and Vegetarians as cranks and weirdoes (“out of touch with common humanity”), Orwell accuses these individuals of being guilty of alienating potential supporters, in this case, “the average working man”. Here Orwell makes a common type One error; that of assuming their view as being not only correct, but Universal and, in that Orwell himself finds these individuals somewhat repulsive, it is assumed that the mass generality would too.
Here also is a certain impersonal hauteur that is common in average to unhealthy Ones, in that they are inclined to make decisions and draw conclusions on behalf of people they neglect to consult, and about whom they know nothing. The “ordinary man” and the “cranks” are mere abstractions, and with scathing comments about “bearded fruit juice drinker(s)”, Orwell descends into the downright bigotry of the punitive, unhealthy One. Who, also, was/is the “average working man” about whom Orwell freely makes assumptions, in this case that of a monolithic entity incapable of seeing beyond “crankishness” in order to make a reasoned judgement for himself?
Orwell displays a certain superciliousness, considering himself, as the educated social superior, as all the better to judge, and the working man as being a rather unreflective drudge, one who is, as in the case of Boxer from “Animal Farm”, ennobled whilst at the same time treated with condescension.
The Social Reformer
In “Down And Out In Paris And London” Orwell relates his experiences as a near- starving Scullion, of rough sleeping and the degradation of lowest doss- houses in those cities; as a conscientious, authoritative One, Orwell believed it wasn’t enough to pontificate about the horrors of poverty from the relative comfort of a literary milieu, and to provide a rock solid case against inequity, the voice of experience was also that of inarguable authority. Orwell censors little, and recounts a catalogue of destitution, poverty, overwork, flea- infested mattresses, pawn shop humiliations, scant food, hopeless and desperate trudging (in search of work or a bed), the trials of which were etched into his face, which had aged dramatically in this relatively short (if experientially long) period. Indeed, in his going down and out, Orwell exhibited the One’s commitment and ideological integrity that also lead to both the battlefields of Spain and the Colonial Police force in Burma (where he was exposed to the hypocrisy, mendacity and injustice of the Colonial system). Simply put, the type One will “put their money where their mouth is”, and Orwell exhibits the “Moral Crusader” characteristics of this type, in that his life seemed to comprise of a search for a cause to which he could commit. However, unlike, say, the type Six who wishes to identify with a group/cause to alleviate anxiety and primarily to belong, the type One is compelled by an ideological drive to set wrongs to right, to apply their considerable gifts of impartiality and reason to the cause of improvement and balance, and is guided by a moral compass that renders them unable to countenance corruption, falsity and injustice. To this end, the morally impelled type One is prepared to denounce and dismiss former comrades and ideological allegiances regardless of how it may alienate them or put them in a sort of political limbo; this Orwell was to do with his last and greatest masterpieces, “Animal Farm” and “1984”.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." (“Animal Farm”)
There has seldom been a more bitter and tragic conclusion to a story as that of “Animal Farm”. The pigs prove to be every bit as exploitative and unjust as the despotic farmer had been, and the guiding commandments are amended to insure that whilst “all animals are equal” some are now “more equal than others”. Watching the pigs (Soviet leaders) totter on two legs like the men (Capitalists) they seek to imitate, some of the animals recall a time when the liberated creatures of animal farm recited something about “four legs good, two legs bad”, but are now so inured to lies, slogans and reversals that they can no longer be sure.
In this most anguishing allegory, Orwell eviscerates the grotesque corruption, brutality and betrayal of the Soviet regime (caricaturing Stalin as the pig Napoleon) and the tragic consequences this had upon the mass of citizens, supposedly now living in a “people’s” utopia.
The emotional reserve of the One often masks an intense and profound passion, and this is here given voice in the form of a children’s fable, allowing the author a certain amount of distance whilst at the same time providing an engaging narrative setting for righteous outrage, disgust and despair.
In “Animal Farm” Orwell explored not only the corruptibility of absolute power, but also the employment of slogans to shout down dissent (the sheep repetitively bleating Squealer’s mantras), as well as the manipulation of language to distort reality.
This latter theme formed the ideological backbone of “1984”, where “Ignorance Is Strength” and the subtleties of language are jettisoned to usher in an era of “Newspeak” and correspondingly corralled consciousness. Winston Smith represents the last man, clinging to the notion of individual free consciousness and objective truth, holding out hope that the “proles”, like the livestock of “Animal Farm” (once again Orwell’s ennobled, if condescending view of the Working Class) recognize their power and rise up, and that dissent is possible in the face of a brutal and all- encompassing regime of tyranny.
However, through betrayal, torture and brainwashing, Smith denounces his lover Julia (personal, private relations), learns to see five fingers where there are four (loss of objective reality), and loves “Big Brother” (abdication and abjection of sense of self), pathetically and placidly awaiting execution. It isn’t enough for the party to simply kill Smith (described by O’Brien as “a flaw in the pattern”), but that he must be psychically and morally destroyed, with no sense of reality other than that dictated to by the party.
The annihilation of free will, conscience, objective truth and personal authority are to Orwell as they are to most One’s, the most profoundly evil and morally reprehensible of crimes, in that they the rob the individual of what in essence makes them creatures of reason and moral awareness.
Orwell’s life as much as his writing provide us with a symbol of the many admirable traits of the type One, conscientiousness, impartiality and a commitment to justice and, minor and petty prejudices aside, give us an insight into the motivations of this most morally compelled, objective and unflinchingly honest Enneagram type.
Pablo Picasso; An Enneagram Profile
The following was first published in the International Enneagram Association's bulletin, "Nine Points", September 2011
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”.
Born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, 25th of October 1881, Picasso is considered one of the figureheads of Modern Art and perhaps the towering Artistic personalities of the 20th century. His ferocious creative energy, single- minded determination and all- encompassing passion bear the hallmarks of the Enneagram type Eight (The Boss, The Dominator, The Powerhouse), as indeed does his impulsiveness and occasional cruelty and destructiveness.
“My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso”.
From an early age, Picasso exhibited a notable combination of talent and self- belief and, throughout his life, was to leave an indelible impression upon all that he encountered. His Art teacher father recognised that, barely out of boyhood, his son was already a greater artist than he himself could ever hope to be, and thus devoted his attention to the tutoring and encouragement of Pablo’s nascent genius. At the behest of his father, the thirteen-year-old Picasso was allowed to take the entrance exam for the advanced class in Barcelona’s School of Fine Arts. The examination process usually lasted a month but Picasso was admitted after just one week and, whilst some of the staff had misgivings about the youth’s lack of discipline, they recognized that his exceptional talent demanded that exceptions be made in his favour.
This seeming ability to bend the world in accordance with his own purpose tallies with the Eight- like dictum that “the squeaky wheel gets the oil”, and this was perhaps the first of many instances of Picasso’s being assured of his authority and special ness, of being governed only by his talent, vision and willpower, and being exempt from the standards and limitations of ordinary men.
Another early example of Picasso’s sense of omnipotence is illustrated by his response to his little sister Conchita’s illness and subsequent death; On Conchita’s falling sick with diphtheria, Picasso made “a deal with God”, promising to forsake his great passion, painting, if his little sister was spared (the Eight’s autonomy lending this son of Catholic Spain the belief in his ability to bare- facedly bargain with the Deity). After her apparent recovery, Picasso resumed painting, only for Conchita to suffer a relapse and die. Thereafter Picasso felt himself somewhat cursed by God and, to a degree, culpable for Conchita’s death. However, rather than seeking divine forgiveness for this transgression, any potential remorse quickly modulated into righteous wrath, with Picasso displaying the Eight’s customary combativeness and sense of defiance, taking up the gauntlet with an ever stronger determination to play purely by his own rules and a refusal to recognize any authority other than his own. It may have also fostered in Picasso a dread of human vulnerability that, in later life, often manifested as cruel disdain for what he perceived as “weakness”, as well as a conviction that all human relations were touched by tragedy and loss, and from which he would have to protect himself, even if at the expense of others.
“I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is inherent in a human condition”
The death of his sister, and its attendant suffering was expressed, often with remarkable tenderness, in Picasso’s first great paintings. The former is observable in “The First Communion”, a technical tour de force that exhibited both Picasso’s remarkable draughtsmanship and mastery of “academic” oil painting (at the enviable age of fifteen), but also a natural gift for symbolism (with an extinguished candle commemorating the late Conchita). Likewise, much of the work of the “Blue” and “Rose” periods (notably 1901’s “la Vie” and 1905’s “La Famille de Saltimbanques” respectively) is infused with humanity, sadness and sympathy for the dispossessed (represented, in the latter, by nomadic Circus performers) and the transience and fragility of life. This stands in stark contrast to the bustling confidence and verve of much of Picasso’s work, and illustrates the Eight’s immense capacity for compassion. Though often concealed, healthy Eights are amongst the most heroic individuals, their solidity, strength and courage making them formidable champions of the defenceless and powerless. Like fellow Eight Martin Luther King Jnr (though markedly without the consistency, selflessness and religiously- ordained conviction), Picasso was deeply moved by injustice and suffering, and sought redress, albeit through the medium of Art.
“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has nothing but eyes if he is a painter….? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly aware of what goes on in the world, whether it be harrowing, bitter, or sweet, and he cannot help being shaped by it. How would it be possible not to take an interest in other people, and to withdraw into an ivory tower from participation in their existence? No, painting is not interior decoration. It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy”.
This sentiment informs 1937’s “Guernica”, painted as a response to the carpet- bombing of the Basque village by Spanish National and Nazi German forces. “Guernica” is one of the most viscerally terrifying works of art, resplendent with agonized images of fear and violence, demonstrating, in a complex and demanding composition, (reminiscent of Monet’s massive curved canvases which encompass and overwhelm the viewer) the technical virtuosity and aesthetic grandeur of Picasso’s vision. Here, the suffering of anonymous innocents is elevated to the majestic tragedy of religious iconography, such as The Crucifixion or Pieta, a connection that is suggested by the stigmata shown on the hands of the fallen soldier. Picasso’s imaginative vitality and gifts for cultural synthesis (famously exhibited in 1907’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, which utilized African- style masks) are here exercised on a grand scale, with the use of newsprint and a light bulb (as the sun) contemporizing the work, a hint of the Corrida in the Bull’s goring of a horse, and the bold frieze format suggestive of the partisan, political murals found in war torn, divided communities.
“God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things”.
If, as an artist, Picasso is distinguished by any particular trait, it is arguably his tireless inventiveness and experimentation. Whereas most of his predecessors and contemporaries tended towards a process of apprenticeship, exploration and, on finding their natural metier, consolidation within a particular style, Picasso, as an unfettered Eight, took a less restricted approach, often venturing beyond the aesthetic, formal and material confines of what was generally considered to be Art, and generating seismic shock waves that can still be felt today. 1907’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” did for the art of painting what Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre Du Printemps” (1915) did for that of music; both revolutionary works were greeted with as much disgust and dismay as they were with enthusiasm and favour and created massive schisms (between the “traditional” and the “innovative”) that remain unresolved. Indeed, like his fellow diminutive firebrand, Picasso delighted in baffling his supporters as much as his critics, many of whom were perturbed by his seeming unfaithfulness to any aesthetic school. No sooner had Picasso, along with Georges Braque, devised Cubism, than the former started producing work of a neo- Classical nature (as, indeed, did Stravinsky, following the highly complex “primitivisms” of “Le Sacre”). Neo- Classicism was generally considered a sort of “return to order” following the myriad upheavals of the early 20th Century, but for Picasso was simply a stop on a path of perpetual revolution and creation. The driven impulsiveness of the Eight is evident in Picasso’s “impatience” and hunger for new artistic outlets (collage, sculpture, printmaking), as well as his voracious consumption of any available objects and free surfaces to the end of artistic creation; in a fascinatingly imaginative display of the Eight’s desire to co-opt and posses their environment, Picasso would sculpturally convert a discarded bicycle seat into a Steer’s head and an upended toy Volkswagen into that of a Gorilla, scribble on napkins and table cloths and, charmingly, assemble a ladder for a visiting frog.
Such relentless adventurousness and creation reflect both the Eight’s God- like dominance of their surroundings, and their occasional inconsistency and sense of unassailability. To maintain impeccable standards throughout such impetuous experimentation would test the talent of any artist, even one as gifted as Picasso, who occasionally appeared to be issuing a challenge in presenting work that appeared substandard, exhibiting not so much technical mastery as the masterful strut of the assured tyrant. Such mischief undoubtedly reflects a Harlequinesque aspect of Picasso’s personality (he famously had a playful, even clownish, quality), but more credibly indicate the confrontational side of the Eight, daring anyone to criticize his work and bullishly spoiling for a fight.
“If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur”.
Picasso often likened himself to (and portrayed himself as) the Minotaur, a figure from Greek mythology endowed with the head of a bull and the body of a man, who is imprisoned in the Cretan Labyrinth and appears in Dante’s “Inferno”, dwelling amongst “men of blood”, those condemned for violent natures. The marriage of mythology, the bestial and superhuman, provide an interesting insight into Picasso’s self- appraisal, that of being an elemental force of (super) nature, given to intense and even savage appetites, a God- like sense of limitless potency, remarkable willpower, and disregard for conventional morality, all of which are recognisable, if extreme, manifestations of the type Eights’ personal power, dominance, fearlessness and limitless determination; indeed, Eights are oft likely to regard any attempted dissent or curbing of their appetites as the proverbial “red rag to a bull”, inviting brutal counterattack and an unforgiving hostility. The creative and destructive fervour of Picasso’s work was reflected in his personal relationships, with his contemptuously discarding (after goring) those who refused to stand up to him, and leaving countless “casualties” in his wake.
“There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats”.
“After Picasso, God”. Thus spoke Dora Maar, the beautiful, gifted and much admired muse who Picasso had reduced to “The Weeping Woman”, both in Art and life. Why would an intelligent and talented woman remain so infatuatedly devoted to someone who had treated her with such wanton cruelty and contempt? At least two of his lovers (Marie-Thérèse Walter and Jacqueline Roque) committed suicide and his children, especially his alcoholic eldest son Paul, had traumatic relations with him, all of which are harrowing manifestations of the unhealthy Eight. Devoid of compassion and utterly destructive, Eights at this point will trample upon anyone in their path and can only respond favourably to a show of strength. That so few of Picasso’s friends, family and lovers were willing to stand their ground and face him down, proved to be as tragic for him as it was for them, with the artist destined to die an angry, embittered old man, raging against waning potency and power, apparently once telling his son Paul that, as he was young and Picasso himself old, he hated him.
Picasso’s descent, from energized creator to enervated destroyer warns of the pitfalls that await the unhealthy Eight, destined to repeat the fate of the God Cronus who, having overpowered his father Uranus, devoured his children in a fruitless attempt to maintain power. Nobody welcomes obsolescence, especially not a potent powerhouse like Picasso, but old age and the attendant ascent of new kings make withdrawal from the arena inevitable. It is wretched that, for Picasso, this was done under duress and with little dignified acceptance, and that he ended his life a broken, if still brutal, old bull, beset with resentment and unquenchable fury, rather than with the fulfilment and grace that such an immense talent deserved.
John Lennon; An Enneagram Profile
The following was first published in the International Enneagram Association's bulletin, "Nine Points", January 2012
John Lennon is one of the great icons of rock music and popular culture. As a member of the Beatles he played a key role in transforming pop music from simple bubblegum entertainment into an increasingly complex medium, and as a campaigner for peace he stood at the foreground of rock's ascent as a force for social, political and cultural change.
Yet Lennon himself was a mass of contradictions; a man of peace with an infamous violent streak who was involved in several high profile aggressive episodes, who sang "imagine no possessions" to accompanying footage of himself strolling through his vast Surrey mansion, and a man who castigated authorities and yet spent his life searching for an ideology or father figure to believe in. These traits reveal Lennon as an Enneagram type Six (The Partisan, The Loyalist, The Questioner).
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"
John Lennon was always the wild card in The Beatles pack, less predictable or professionally tactful than his fellows, and as likely to summon a storm of controversy than to launch a charm offensive. Where Paul McCartney was cute and diplomatic, Lennon was controversial, infamously comparing the Beatles popularity to that of Jesus. Where George Harrison was taciturn and subdued, Lennon was animated and expressive. Where Ringo Starr was sweet and straightforward, Lennon was caustic and complicated, baffling friends and associates with rapid changes of temper, ideology and interests.
Yet, as a Six, Lennon was a paragon of paradox (once describing himself as ("part monk, part performing flea"), displaying diplomacy and wit when fired by a deep conviction, (such as World Peace), tireless spiritual and intellectual inquisitiveness, and a great empathy that allowed him to engage his audience on a profound level.
"As soon as you're born, they make you feel small"
Sixes are commonly defined by their relationship to authority, either trying to win it's approval or defiantly tilting against it. In the latter case, the Sixes rebelliousness often sources from a sense of distrust which, in turn, might have its roots in the distress they experience at discovering the fallibility of the father/authority figure. The Six might, early in life, have been confronted with painful and even impossible decisions, or found themselves in an unstable environment. However, rather than developing a sense of self reliance, the Six often goes through life as a somewhat wounded child in search of assurance, boundaries and belonging.
For John Lennon, the die was cast by his parents' separation when he was a small child, a painful scenario that culminated in a harrowing episode whereby he was asked to choose between his father, Fred, and mother, Julia. Facing both expectant parents and a devastating dilemma, little John initially chose Fred, upon which Julia fled in tears. John then ran after his mother, crying that he now chose her. In what turned out to be a cruel twist, Julia then placed the already traumatized boy in the care of her childless sister. John's aunt Mimi was undoubtedly a decent and goodhearted woman who did her best as a responsible guardian. However, her conventional and somewhat uptight manner was in stark contrast to that of John's jovial and playful parents (who were musical, theatrical and generally considered "characters") and was to invite antagonism from her deeply insecure and damaged nephew.
Lennon retained a deep hurt and sense of abandonment from these experiences, feeling himself to have been deceived (committing himself to his mother, but getting his aunt instead) and rejected (why, he wondered, didn't his father fight for him?) by those he loved and needed the most, and a cauldron of rage and sense of injustice burned in him, infusing many of his songs with an incendiary passion, pain and visceral fury.
His 1970 album, "Plastic Ono Band", frankly confronts these painful issues. Recorded after a period of Primal Therapy (whose founder, Arthur Janov, proved to be another in a line of idealized and then rejected father figures) with Lennon reeling from the Beatles break up, a failed marriage and heroin addiction, this was the artist laid bare, free of audience expectations. The album opens with "Mother" (to the sound of tolling bells for Julia, who died when Lennon was fifteen) with an accusatory Lennon excoriating his parents for not wanting/needing him before, at the songs climax, devolving into a terrified little boy screaming for his parents ("mamma don't go, daddy come home"). Here is archetypal Six ambivalence; the authority figure is condemned for their failures, yet masochistically cried out for. Where another personality type might be inclined, on being disappointed or hurt, to cut their losses and move on, the Six finds it exceptionally difficult to let go of both the pain of being let down and the ongoing need for the protection and approval of the authority figure.
The Self- Defeating Masochist
As with many Sixes, Lennon's life was spent in search for an ideal person or belief behind which he could place his considerable zeal, and followed a pattern of child- like enthusiasm followed by disillusion, and culminating in bitter and childishly petulant recrimination. Lennon was like the little boy who, despite discovering that Santa Claus is actually his father, never quite relinquishes belief that the "real" Santa Claus is out there somewhere, and is thus set on a path of masochistic disappointment as the flesh and blood mortal or abstract ideology fails to meet the lofty demands of the Six's ideal. Lennon's parents, business managers (Brian Epstien, Alan Klein), gurus (The Maharishi, Arthur Janov) and ideological allegiances (Flower Power, Radical politics) were all initially championed, before being found flawed, and finally discarded and lacerated, with Lennon using the medium of song to vent spleen (The aforementioned "Mother" for his parents, "Steel And Glass" and "Baby Your A Rich Man" for Klein and Epstien respectively and "Sexy Sadie" for the Maharishi).
Two songs from "Plastic Ono Band", "I Found Out" and "God" offer a revealing insight into the disillusioned Six's psyche. In "I Found Out", a venomous Lennon rejects his Hippie High Priest status ("Don't give me that "brother, brother"") and castigates his former need to believe in saviours, spitting out the lines "There ain't no jesus gonna come from the sky, now that I found out I know I can cry. ..Old Hari Krishna's got nothing on you....There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes". He also points to his desire for recognition as sourcing from parental rejection ( "I heard something about my Ma and Pa, they didn't want me so they made me a star") as well as a determination to fully realize himself and accept his individualism and experience ("No one can harm you, Feel your own pain"). In "God" Lennon asserts that the Deity is "a concept by which we measure our pain", before knocking down the figureheads of his age, Buddha, Gita, Jesus, Kennedy, "Zimmerman" (Dylan), Elvis and finally Beatles, thus symbolically discarding his own past and achievements. Lennon concludes by stating that he now believes only in himself, adding Yoko as if in afterthought, before lamenting "the dream is over".
The Rebel; "You Say You Want A Revolution"?
However, as a Six "the dream" (of acceptance, belonging and cultural relevance) couldn't remain dormant for long, and so it was that Lennon followed the most emotionally brutal and uncompromising work of his career with the commercial, comparatively tame "Imagine" album. Despite featuring swipes at both his former bandmate Paul McCartney ("How Do You Sleep") and manager Allen Klein ("Steel And Glass"), "Imagine" was clearly intended for a mass audience (Lennon described it as being "chocolate- coated for public consumption"), and the simple idealistic sentiment of the title track, with Lennon's singing "you may say I'm a dreamer" is something of a volte face negation of the disenchantment of "God" ("The Dream Is Over") and "I Found Out". As in so many areas, success was a cause of ambivalence for Lennon, and whilst he may have been willing to "imagine no possessions", it was apparently a principle he wasn't prepared to put into practice. Indeed, his wealth, and the distance it placed between him and his audience, was perhaps a motivating factor in his immersion in radical politics, leading to his most overtly political album "Some Time In New York City". Once again Lennon exhibited classic Six changeability; the gentle, melodic flower power sentiment of "Imagine" is superseded by decidedly unpretty sloganeering ("Woman Is The N***** Of The World", "Luck Of The Irish") and a musical language that seemed one- dimensional and artless. Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden wrote "The tunes are shallow and derivative and the words little more than sloppy nursery-rhymes that patronize the issues and individuals they seek to exalt". Indeed, Lennon seems to be less an artist than a rebel (with no cause left unattended) desperate to display his "Right On" credentials, reduced to the reactive partisanship of the counterphobic Six famously embodied by Marlon Brando's "The Wild One" character Johnny Strabler who, when asked what he is rebelling against, replies "Whaddaya got?"?
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see"
Arguably this album's gravest flaw is less it's politics than it's absence of the wit, melodicism and artful synthesis that distinguishes much of Lennon's best work. In "Strawberry Fields Forever", hesitant lyrical assertions ("That is, I think it's not too bad") are merged with a haunting melody and instrumentation to suggest a state of dispossession where "nothing is real". The annual garden party at the Strawberry Field Salvation army children's home was a treasured treat for the young Lennon, and it's spirit is captured in the song's brass band- like arrangement. Here, the question of belonging, so crucial to Sixes, is imaginatively explored, with Lennon, abandoned by his parents and thus of spiritual kinship to the orphans of Strawberry Field, appearing traumatized ("Always, no sometimes, think it's me") and conveying the indecision and uncertainty of his Enneagram type; "I think I know I mean a 'Yes' but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree." "Strawberry Fields Forever" exhibits Lennon's melancholy apartness and ability to marry lyric sentiment to an evocative musical setting, as well as his verbal inventiveness. This latter trait, evidenced by his love of puns and "jabberwocky" (given full reign in his book of verse "In His Own Write"), relates to one of the most endearing characteristics of the healthy Six; a child- like openness and sense of wonder. Keenly aware of their own vulnerability, healthy Sixes often display strong nurturing instincts, sympathy with the marginalized (consider Lennon's sincere if naive political pursuits) and a deep love of innocence that allows them to, when secure, reveal great tenderness and trust.
In his beautiful song "Julia", written in the first flush of his relationship with Yoko Ono, Lennon is able to face the devastating loss of his mother as well as acknowledge his love for her. Accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, Lennon sounds as blissful and unguarded as an infant in the arms of his mother. Lennon refers to Julia as "silent cloud" and, tellingly, as "ocean child", the English translation of Yoko's name. Evidently Lennon felt himself to once again be in the safe and secure place of the nurtured and protected child, a fact bore out by his referring affectionately to Ono as "Mother".
In recent years there has been a backlash against Lennon's somewhat saintly status. However, those who blindly revere him as a blameless apostle for peace do as grave a disservice as those who pillory him as a fatuous hypocrite, in that both are simplistic and lack nuance. Lennon, as a Six, was a mass of contradictions. However, these very contradictions, his public disputes with himself (as a violent man of peace, a rich revolutionary, a bruised and broken- hearted tough guy,) invite ongoing examination and debate, thus ensuring that Lennon remains one of the most enduring and humanly engaging of public figures.
David Bowie; An Enneagram Profile
The following was first published in the International Enneagram Association's bulletin, "Nine Points", December 2011
David Bowie (born David Robert Jones, 1947) is amongst the most charismatic, individualistic and influential figures in popular music, with a back catalogue spanning some five decades and comprising a dizzying array of musical genres and changes of image. He embodies many of the key characteristics of the type Four (The Artist, The Tragic Romantic, The Outsider), in that his personae and lyrical subject matters explore and celebrate the marginal, unconventional and (often quite literally) the alien.
“So I turned myself to face me, but I never caught a glimpse…” (“Changes” 1971)
Bowie is sometimes simplistically termed “Rock’s Chameleon”, owing to his aesthetic malleability and tendency to move from one style to the next and, in terms of the Enneagram, is commonly misidentified as a type Three.
However, whereas the type Three is capable of identifying what works, objectively utilizing their abilities to the end of succeeding swiftly, and usually in a proven field, Bowie’s career appears as that of one who doesn’t recognise or is indifferent to what works (indicated by his long pre- stardom apprenticeship and abandonment of commercially successful formulas) and, in embracing the unusual, synthesizing seemingly incompatible aesthetics and mediums, and risking alienating his audience in pursuit of a very personal vision, he exhibits the essence of the Four, standing apart, exempt from conventional rules and expectations, ever in the process of “becoming”, in search of the true, authentic self.
The latter is evidenced by the recurrent lyric themes of Bowie’s songs; for all his changes, the dominant tenor of his oeuvre is that of the brooding and often disquieting Romanticism of the type Four, with an emphasis on self- immersion (“I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thoughts” – “Quicksand 1971), alienation, transgression, madness and loneliness.
This tendency to explore and indeed revel in his own vulnerability and insecurity is quite distinct from the Three’s desire to at all times present themselves in the most suitable, flattering manner, usually as confident and “perfect” winners, exhibiting a deft ability to filter what they reveal about themselves. Bowie, in his life as well as work, has been consistently self- revealing, perhaps never more so than when he is playing a role; in “The Mask”, a mime written and performed in 1969, Bowie’s protagonist finds fame as an entertainer after donning a mask. His success is dependant upon this “smiley” facade and, in one telling scene, Bowie’s character removes the mask to reveal a look of scowling disdain, an expression of the unhealthy Four’s contempt for what they perceive to be the unimaginative, amorphous and easily manipulated masses (from whom they feel excluded but nonetheless may wish to woo). In the final scene, Bowie’s performer finds himself unable to remove the mask and chokes to death on stage, with the voiceover commenting that newspapers mentioned nothing about a mask. Bowie’s “mask” is a metaphor for public perception and the gulf between performance and real life, a theme that is further explored in 1971’s “Life On Mars?” where “the girl with the mousey hair” walks “through her sunken dream”, to a cinema, where she’s ”hooked on the silver screen”. At this point the focus shifts, emphasized by a key change and orchestral swell, where the film (“a saddening bore”) is revealed to be the girl’s real life (“she’s wrote in ten times or more”), with her dissatisfaction expressed by her wishing to “spit in the eye’s of fools”. Therein follows another change of key with a lyrical montage of filmic imagery (“sailors fighting on the dancefloor…lawman beating up the wrong guy”) and the suggestion that the “fantasy” (“the best selling show") and the “real” worlds are one in the same.
"I think rock should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium." (David Bowie, April 1971)
This ability, to put himself and his point of observation at a distance from his subject, has led to charges of Bowie’s being inauthentic, a mere magpie flitting from one style to another. What is singularly overlooked is that, rather than being a Rock musician per se, Bowie is an Artist whose primary medium is Rock music. Because Rock, especially at the time of Bowie’s ascendance in the late 60’s (the era of protest songs and counter culture agitation), was generally regarded as a sincere antidote to a manufactured “pop” ethos and celebrated for it’s genuineness, “keeping it real” has often meant sticking to clichés and remaining aesthetically static in the name of being “down to earth”, “relevant” or “in touch with the ordinary man” etc.
As a Four, Bowie identified that Art (as a creative, generative form, rather than a monolithic way of being) entailed a certain amount of what might superficially appear to be artifice, where sensitivity could be both shielded and expressed through the adoption of personae (“I’ve no defence, I’ve got to keep my veil on my face” – “Janine” 1969). This allowed the intensely personal to be elevated to the Superhuman and iconic and, in that the Universal often resided in the strange and hitherto unexplored, Bowie, as a truly creative pop musician, would inevitably run against the grain.
Released in June 1967, Bowie’s debut album could hardly have been further from the then prevailing “Summer Of Love” ethic of groovy free-love and hippiedom. Consisting largely of orchestrated vignettes dedicated to odd, unglamorous characters and sung in a wry ironic cockney manner that owed a certain amount to Anthony Newley, Bowie had already, at the age of nineteen, a highly developed and uncommon melodic and linguistic sense, and was exhibiting classic Four traits of identification and sympathy with the socially excluded (such as, in “Little Bombardier”, a shell –shocked lonely veteran befriending two small children, before being accused of paedophilia and consequently run out of town) , gender distortion (“She’s Got Medals”- “her mother called her Mary, but she changed her name to Tommy, she’s a one!”), an aching nostalgia (“Come & Buy My Toys” and “There Is A Happy Land” –“.. where only children live, they have no time to learn the ways of you sir, Mr. Grownup”), and a taste for rather macabre humour (“Please Mr. Gravedigger”). This was, in all, a far darker and more complex vision, albeit masked by the vaguely unhinged cheeriness of the music, than that offered by his contemporaries and, unsurprisingly, a resounding commercial failure. Though this album contains the kernel of many of the themes that were to dominate Bowie’s Golden Years of the 1970’s (alienation, gender- mutation, war, nostalgia and Romanticism) it is still somewhat overlooked and dismissed as a misguided lurch into vaudeville, a view that in many ways reflects it’s stark variance to the surrounding psychedelic rock milieu from whence it came. However, Bowie’s preparedness to eschew the then dominant musical, lyrical and ideological mode in favour of a more individualistic, personally resonant aesthetic, illustrates the Fours admirable commitment to the dictates of the muse, willingness to go it alone and observe the “common consensus” with unique sensitivity and perceptiveness, as well as evidence of his being commendably authentic to himself, which, in Art, is arguably where it really counts.
Indeed, it is precisely the deficit in personal authenticity (and free thought) displayed by many celebrants of the Summer Of Love that Bowie was to lacerate in 1969’s “The Cygnet Committee”, an examination of the contradictions and latent violence of the Hippy movement. This prescient piece, written some time before the Manson slayings and Altamont disaster that closed and tarnished that era, sees Bowie, as the “outsider” Four, offering reportage on a conformist mob-think imbued with unquestioning self- righteousness (“our weapons were the tongues of crying rage”), capable of creation (“where money stood we planted seeds of rebirth”), but equally of destruction (“ploughing down man, woman, listening to it’s command, but not hearing anymore”). In “not hearing”, the mob replaces discussion with simplistic slogans, starting benignly enough with “love is all we need”, but soon devolving into “Kick out the jams”, before descending into destructive generation- revolt (“kick out your mother”), and paranoia (“cut up your friends, screw your brother, or they’ll get you in the end”).
“A Leper Messiah”; The Artist as Visionary
As the type Four is highly concerned with the broad potency of Art, Bowie was especially aware of the Messianic properties of the rock medium, with the crowd being dictated to by the machinations of the idol on the podium (leading Bowie to controversially claim Hitler as the first rock star) and where, in the case of 1972’s “Rock n Roll Suicide”, the Four’s desire to reveal (“I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain”) and invite identification (“oh no, love, you’re not alone”) is expressed through the media of performance, with the line “just give me your hands” evoking the image of the rock star reaching out to a sea of supplicants, whereby the experience of shared humanity can, for the socially maladroit and sensitive Four, best be attained through Art and Idealization.
The role of “Leper Messiah” (“Ziggy Stardust” 1972) has been a recurrent theme of Bowie’s; from the “Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud” (whose idyllic mountaintop life ends with his being hanged by uncomprehending villagers), to “All The Madmen” (with whom Bowie wishes to stay, as “they’re all as sane as me”) and perhaps most notably with the alien rock star “Ziggy Stardust”, all of which reflects the Four’s feelings of being apart from their fellows, (with the mountaintop visionary and alien superstar being idealized manifestations of the Four’s sense of not belonging). Here, we find the Four’s alienation being sublimated to a sense of Artistic mission, one that invites and, in true Tragic Romantic manner, expects castigation, rejection and misunderstanding.
“I cannot breathe in the atmosphere of convention” “I find freedom only in the realms of my own eccentricity” (David Bowie 1971)
Like fellow Fours Oscar Wilde (“I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality”) and Prince (“Am I black or white, am I straight or gay”), Bowie delighted in eschewing conventional morality and definitions, taking a Puckish delight in transgressing boundaries of gender (being one of the first rock Artists to “come out” as being gay, in 1972) as well as genre (with his frequent stylistic shifts bewildering both fans and critics alike). Fours tend to abhor rules and, ever in the process of discovering themselves, regard definition as unacceptable restriction. Thus, following the long sought- after global success he finally attained with space- age superman Ziggy Stardust, Bowie felt capable of retiring this immensely lucrative character at the height of its popularity. He then embarked on a Broadway- style musical based on Orwell’s “1984” (“Diamond Dogs”), the tour of which involved an elaborate and costly set that ensured minimum profits, and played to a largely confused audience of Ziggy clones. No sooner was this new guise established than once again Bowie moved on, this time to soul music. Consequently, the vast “1984” set was abandoned, and the audience confronted by a baggy- suited Bowie, flanked by a plethora of gospel singers and backed by a funk band.
A more career- minded artist would perhaps “play it safe” and temper creative demands to the expectations of audience and critics alike, especially in the high- stake rock arena, where reputation and revenue are, once lost, seldom recovered. However, as a Four, Bowie was primarily driven by the need to follow his Artistic vision; that this decision was vindicated by longevity and ongoing success is testament both to his instincts and the individualistic commitment of the Four, a type who often suffer incomprehension and failure for furrowing new paths through unknown terrain.
In a pop culture that seeks to produce simplified, saleable artists, ever in pursuit of the predictable over the creative, Bowie serves as an example of the imaginativeness, courage and tireless self- discovery of the Four, and as an inspirational model of Artistic vision, commitment and perseverance.