Enneagram Glossary

• Basic Desire

  The core good each type pursues — the legitimate human need the pattern chases in a fixated way.

• Basic Fear

  The core threat each type's personality is organized to avoid — the enneagram's deepest sorting key. Every type guide opens with it.

• Centers (Triads)

  The three groups of types: gut/body (8-9-1, anger), heart (2-3-4, shame), head (5-6-7, fear).

• Counterphobic

  The SX Six's strategy of attacking what frightens it instead of avoiding it — the most famous countertype.

• Countertype

  In each type, the one subtype that runs against the passion's usual current — the great cause of mistyping.

• Disintegration (Stress Direction)

  The type whose average-to-unhealthy behaviors you borrow under sustained stress. Information, not doom.

• Instinctual Variants

  Self-preservation (SP), social (SO) and sexual/one-to-one (SX) — the three survival drives; the dominant one shapes how your type spends its energy.

• Integration (Growth Direction)

  The type whose healthy qualities you gain as you grow — the forward arrow on the symbol.

• Levels of Development

  The nine-step vertical scale (healthy → average → unhealthy) each type moves along — why one type can look like two different people.

• Mistype

  Landing on the wrong type — usually via surface behavior, self-image, stress arrows or countertypes. Fixed by reading core fears, not trait lists.

• Passion

  The type's habitual emotional imbalance: anger, pride, deceit, envy, avarice, fear, gluttony, lust, sloth. The engine of the pattern, not a moral verd

• Subtype

  Your type expressed through your dominant instinct — 27 in all. The highest-resolution enneagram lens.

• Virtue

  The passion's released form — the quality that emerges when the pattern relaxes: serenity, humility, truthfulness, equanimity, non-attachment, courage

• Wing

  The neighbor type that colors how your core type expresses itself. Written 1w9, 4w5 etc. Some people have balanced wings.