The Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs and the Brain

Where does personality come from? Is it hard-wired in the brain? Can modern science help us understand what’s going on in our heads?

Saleh Vallander, MD, has written a fascinating book to discuss these questions: The Enneagram, the Myers-Briggs and the Brain. It’s a learned but accessible look at the author’s unique approach to understanding personality. He (I think Saleh is a he) combines the Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs system “within a neuroscientific framework.” I’ve never heard of the theory he lays out, and I think it’s both ingenious and plausible. Let’s take a look!

Vallander draws on Jaak Panksepp’s identification of seven primary instinctual-emotional brain systems, I’ll list them here, along with how they correspond to the Enneagram model:

FEAR corresponds to the Fear types (5,6,7)

RAGE corresponds to the Anger types (8,9,1)

GRIEF corresponds to the Heart types (2,3,4); Vallander explains that shame is a secondary emotion whose primary emotion is grief, and that rings true to me.

SEEKING corresponds to the Self-Preservation instinct

LUST corresponds to the Sexual instinct

CARE and PLAY correspond to the Social instinct

That’s already cool to think about, but there’s more! He calls the Enneagram a map of instincts and emotions, and he refers to the three primary emotions – fear, rage and grief (usually shame, but he says that’s a secondary emotion) – as “three ways of saying no” to an experience. He then refers to the three instinctual drives – Self-Preservation, Sexual and Social – as three ways of saying yes” to an experience. I find it poetic and apt to think about our personalities in this way: a constant tussle between no and yes.

Then Vallander discusses how the Passions (sources of suffering or “cardinal sin”) form. We experience negative emotions as children, and we react against them. This brings the dominant Instinctual Drive online, but the drive and the emotion become entangled rather than the intended goal of the drive getting rid of the emotion. The author describes it this way:

“1. The natural functioning of the Instinctual Drive becomes distorted by the Specific Negative Emotion. One way to picture this is that the Instinctual Drive is refracted through the Specific Negative Emotion and is colored by it.

2. The Specific Negative Emotion is infused with the energy of the Instinctual Drive, causing it to become exaggerated.”

So then, this combination is what creates the Passion of each type.

The neuroscience of Myers-Briggs

That’s a quick overview of the Enneagram section. There’s much more, and I encourage you to read the rest for yourselves. Now let’s look at what Vallander says about the Myers-Briggs system:

“Each of the eight MB-functions would be expected to have a characteristic neocortical activation pattern. Accordingly, one’s MB-Type would be determined by the most dominant of these activation patterns. And indeed, this has been indicated in the brain studies of Dario Nardi.”

Nardi studied the brain activity patterns of the different Myers-Briggs types. He found that the MB-functions are a “pattern of holistic neurological tendencies,” meaning there is scientific legitimacy to this model. “There are observable differences in…brain activation patterns between different MB-Types.” Based on the research, it looks like these types are “mainly due to environmental influences,” not genetic or other factors.

Contrasting and correlating Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram

Vallander’s contrast of these two models isn’t about which one is better at describing personality. In fact, that’s a comparison that doesn’t make sense, he says, because they originate from different parts of the brain and do different things.

He created a helpful chart to show this:

These models describe the “why” we do something (Enneagram) and the “how” we do it (Myers-Briggs). That’s why I think both of these models are valuable. Each contributes a greater understanding of who we are as humans. Knowing my MB-Type (INFJ, if you’re curious) has helped explain some things that the Enneagram does not.

However, because I am a person focused on destiny, purpose and meaning (INFJ), I am more interested in the “why” of what we do. So, it’s a bit of an irony that my MB-Type is what compels me to be more interested in the Enneagram!

Vallander goes on to discuss the relationship between the two models. For instance, the Enneagram passions guide the formation of the dominant M-B function, and the M-B functions regulate how the passions get expressed. He then gives specific examples of how the two model interact in the brain.

He also discusses possible correlations between the two models, exploring whether any Enneagram type or Instinct can co-exist with any MB-Type. The short answer is that there isn’t enough research yet, but that some combinations are quite unlikely. He offers the example of an Enneagram 5 almost never being an Extroverted Feeling type.

Overall, this book is a gem of a resource for those who want to look under the hood, as it were, to get a deeper understanding of what’s going on in our brains and how these two models of personality are and are not connected. And in my world, anything that can lead us toward a better understanding of self and others is worth considering.

If you’re new to the Enneagram or just need to keep all those details straight, I’ve got a free resource for you called the Enneagram Quick-Reference Guide. You can get it here.

And if you’d like to dig deeper into the “why” of your personality and your life, you can  check out my book, Becoming Your True You: God, the Enneagram and Your Unique Purpose.

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