Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
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2 star:		(1)
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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.

Riso's introduction to the enneagram is a fascinating look into what makes us tick. The Enneagram is method of determining a person's basic personality type. Once you determine your type ( after answering questions and reflecting on core traits of each of nine types) the book explains ways in which to optimize your particularly useful tendencies and what to look out for concerning areas of your personality that make your life difficult. It's not a fortune cookie type of prediction; rather if you take the time to really consider the different types you can learn a lot about why you do things the way you do and how to change your behavior if you wish. I found that understanding the nature of my "type" helped me to get a clearer understanding of what it is that leads me to behave or think in certain ways. That awareness allows me the freedom to act differently if I want to change. Beside all the great insight, it's fun to read. (And you can come to understand your partner or friends better, too).

The book is a quick read and easy to understand. The insights are mostly good and the system an interesting one. Take the test and see how accurate you think it is. It does provide a tool for understanding your own and others behavior.

When you buy this book, make sure you also get the companion text "Personality Types" from the same author. The companion text is worth its weight in gold as it contains the real depth of your personality analysis.

this is a great enneagramm book, both for beginner and advanced students. There are so many important concepts that I plan on reading this book again. Kept my interest and I highly reccomend this book.

In order to develop a personality typing method, you have to make it fairly complicated, taking more patience than the average pop psych afficionado. Thus, the enneagram method is just as complicated as the 16 personality types found in Myers Briggs method. You can't get around that. That being said, the book fails for a number of reasons.

First, it spends so much time explaining the method that it never spends a great deal of time justifying it. Thus, it was not a very good introduction to the subject. Since it is a scientific method, the author should assume that the person reading it is a skeptic, like most scientists.

Second, the book argues that this method leads to a spiritual awareness of the contingency of personality, where you understand that you are not your personality, you are in fact a soul (put simplistically). Well, the author should express an interest in his own subject, I would think. People are trying to understand their personalities, and yet the author is essentially arguing that the personality types are just window dressing to your true identity. I expect psychology, and I get the Dalai Lama!

I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying it is morally questionable to place all that spiritual extra baggage on what could possibly be a scientific method. The author is essentially saying that everyone will come to the same conclusions about spirituality once they take a hard look at their personality type. This is wishful thinking. For someone who purports to understand differences among people, I think it is ridiculous for the author to suggest that everyone's reaction to this process would be so uniform; people may formulate their own spiritual conclusions, or they may not see it as having a spiritual component at all.

This is a great bookthat serves as an introduction to personality type and the Enneagram. First of all, it includes the test. This is a forced-choice, thorough test which took me almost a week to complete (the reason being the questions are hard! After 20 or so questions I felt exhausted). After that there is a small section on each of the types.

The info of your type is short but amazing. There are diamonds of information and I read it over and over again, each time finding something new.

You can, also, "try to type" the people in your life, although this is not really accurate.

My only negative would be that after finishing it I felt it could have contained more information on each of the types, and thus making this a more complete book. My advice would be: yes, buy this book if you are an Enneagram novice, but be prepared to want to buy a second more advanced book to learn more.

This author writes an excellent discussion of all the nine Enneagram types.

One of the best.