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![The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by [Beatrice Chestnut]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fAAj7YB9L._SY346_.jpg)
The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge Kindle Edition
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- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherShe Writes Press
- Publication dateJuly 31, 2013
- File size2047 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Helen Palmer, author of The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life and The Enneagram in Love and Work
“The Complete Enneagram title befits this work beautifully. This work is clear, thoughtful, comprehensive, and compelling. Examples of the types speaking for themselves, along with the historical roots of the Enneagram, further enrich Chestnut’s work. She artfully interweaves theoretical and practical information and enhances this work with her insightful psychology background. This book is a must-read.”
—David Daniels, MD, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, and Enneagram pioneer in the Narrative Tradition
“With the best subtype information currently available in print and an exquisite intermixing of the psychological, spiritual, and developmental, The Complete Enneagram more than deserves its title. Pleasurable to read and with abundant theory and practice for both the personal and professional arenas, I will encourage all of my clients to read it, even those who are already Enneagram-savvy. It is solid, classic, bold, even-handed, and original!”
—Ginger Lapid-Bogda, PhD, Founder, The Enneagram in Business Network, and author of Bringing Out the Best in Yourself at Work
About the Author
--This text refers to the paperback edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00FL1HSTY
- Publisher : She Writes Press; Illustrated edition (July 31, 2013)
- Publication date : July 31, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 2047 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 495 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #86,050 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #53 in Psychology of Personalities
- #111 in Spiritual Growth Self-Help
- #243 in Popular Psychology Personality Study
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Beatrice Chestnut grew up in Palo Alto, California, went to college in Los Angeles, and attended graduate school in Chicago and San Francisco. A licensed psychotherapist, coach, and business consultant based in San Francisco, she has graduate degrees in communication and clinical psychology. Her PhD dissertation describes how Reagan and Bush got away with their Iran-Contra crimes in the 1980s by managing public opinion (and Congress) through the story they created for a lazy press corps. She has taught at Northwestern University and facilitated interpersonal learning groups at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and University of San Francisco’s School of Law. She has been studying and working with the Enneagam for 23 years. She was certified to teach the Enneagram in 1997 through the Helen Palmer/David Daniels Enneagram Professional Training Program. She served as president of the International Enneagram Association in 2006 and 2007 and was founding co-editor of the IEA’s Enneagram Journal in 2008.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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The only critique I have about this book is that the author doesn’t discuss wings at all.
But if you want to confirm your type or if you are having difficulty figuring out your Enneagram type, get this book. It is by far the best book on the Enneagram. Highly recommend for both beginners and people who are more advanced.
This is full of real insight but also actionable growth recommendations. Truly informative and useful.
As to how to actually go about improving our lives using this timeless truth, she writes on page 34:
By first remembering to observe the things we do;
then inquiring more deeply into why and how we do the things we do;
and ... actively working against our old habits and toward our higher aspects,
we initiate an ongoing learning process focused on knowing ourselves better
to the point where we can make more conscious choices more regularly.
Chestnut seems to be suggesting that authentic transformation consists of remembering, inquiring, working, learning, and choosing.
And, these five suggestions can't help but be remind me of Bernard Lonergan's "trancendental precepts" which are "habits that give direction to the psyche," page 54 of Enneatypes, Method & Spirit, by Lonergan scholar Tad Dunne. (Lonergan was a Canadian philosopher and theologan who Wikipedia refers to as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century.)
It seems that Chestnut is very much writing in the Western Wisdom Tradition as is Aquinas scholar Bernard Lonergan's whose five suggestions for authentically living parallel Chestnut's suggestions regarding individual transformation which she indicates are approached by "dis-identifying from (one's) personality." (Chestnut, page 34)
Tad Dunne, who sees great affinity in the writings of Bernard Lonergan and Claudio Naranjo, has a chapter written for teenagers in his book Enneatypes, Method & Spirit wherein he presents Lonergan's precepts with a brief suggestion as to what each precept is suggesting:
1. Be attentive--That is, pay attention to what people say.
2. Be intelligent--That is, ask yourself why and how.
3. Be reasonable--That is, don't settle for good stories or fanciful dreams.
4. Be resposible--That is, do what you believe is right.
5. Be in love--That is, stay connected to the people who love you and to the people whom you love.
Taken together, Tad Dunne and Beatrice Chestnut (who cites Dante and Homer regarding each enneatype) have both written books that compliment one another. Both books clearly support the notion that the Enneagram grew out of what Gurdjieff scholar Cynthia Bourgeault writes of in her book entitled--The Wisdom Way of Knowing, Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart.
Top reviews from other countries

If you've never heard of the Enneagram before, and want an understandable introduction, stay well clear of this book. The author has taken the writing of the mystic Navarro and tried to make sense of them, and after struggling through the entire book, I doubt whether she understands much of what she herself is writing. The nine different Enneagram types can be hard work in themselves, and it takes a while for a novice to grasp the concept and take it all in. Here she adds three subtypes to each types, in which at least one of them will go against its mother type, and if you lost me there, you'll definitely throw this book out the window before you're halfway through.
27 types is simply too much. I'm sure old Navarro had the best of intentions, but no sane human being can tell this mishmash of personalities apart, and it doesn't get better when she peppers her narrative with expressions such as "your child heart arrow" and "be an oak tree instead of an acorn".
Read Riso and Hudson. Those are the only books you'll ever need on this topic. And do read them. It's fascinating stuff.



Beatrice Chestnut's descriptions of the 27 subtypes are thorough and can benefit the reader in several ways.
Firstly, if a student is unsure of their type but has narrowed down to their top two or three, reading the subtypes descriptions gives a much higher probability in correctly determining type.
Secondly, each type has a countertype that 'goes against' the passion. The countertypes look and feel quite different to the way the type is usually expressed. Again this is really important for typing. I am a countertype. After 6 years I finally discovered my true type (having mistyped several times before). I learned an awful lot about my defensive patterns along the way but it has been in seeing my core type that I have been able to complete the picture. Without this book I would very unlikely have ever recognised my true type because it is a counterrtype.
Some say knowing your type isn't that important and I feel in part that's true because it's the inner work that is key. However, in my experience knowing my true type has taken me to the deepest level of self understanding and helped me see what childhood experiences shaped my personality. There was a key aspect of my true type that I needed to let go of to find peace and fulfillment but until I saw it I had no chance to that.
Lastly, as well as giving information for each type for growth work, the author includes work specific to subtype.
I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Chestnut's work is more recent, and I can feel the threads of it's various threads and strengths of the sources she draws upon. When learning about my type, I found it incredibly accurate and was in tears of realization at various points.
I also find that Chestnut's work here tends to pathologize the Enneagram less than other writers, as there's a feeling of a more positive psychology running through her words. The tendency in some circles can be the notion of relaxing the type pattern as a means to return to "essence" or
"source", which starts to run dangerously close to committing the pre/trans fallacy of conflating pre-rational states with trans-rational states.