Thursday, July 24, 2025

Enneagram Bibliography

 

Sunday, July 14, 2019

All Things Enneagram

I have included books, studies, DVD’s, tapes and other materials that deal primarily with the Enneagram as it is presented in the West plus materials from the Gurdjieff sources which contain information of interest to the Enneagram enthusiast and have provided links to these materials whenever possible so that readers can check price, availability, reviews and information about the authors as well as purchase them.

Addison, Howard, The Enneagram and Kabbalah: Reading Your Soul(Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998)
Almaas, A. H, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, Berkeley CA: Diamond Books, 1998; Shambhala (2000)
Bakhtiar, Laleh, andSotillos, Samuel Bendeck,Rumi's Original Sufi Enneagram, Kazi Publications (2013)
Bast, Mary & Clarence Thomson, Out of the Box: Coaching with the Enneagram(Portland, OR: Stellar Attractions, Inc., 2003)
Bast, Mary, Into the Winds: Enneagram Poems(Cincinnati, OH: Riverside Books, 1995)
Beesing, Maria, Nogosek, Robert J.,O'Leary, Patrick H.,The Enneagram: A Journey of Self Discovery, New Jersey, Dimension Books (1984)
Bennett, J. G., The Enneagram (Occasional Papers in Survey Research)Weiser Books; Revised and expanded edition (1983)
Bennett, J.G., Enneagram Studies(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1990; 3rdprinting)
Bergin, Eilis and Eddie Fitzgerald, An Enneagram Guide: A Spirituality of Love in Brokenness(Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1992)
Blake, A G E, The Intelligent Enneagram, Shambhala; 1st edition (1996)
Bodnarczuk, Mark, Diving in: Discovering Who You Are in the Second Half of Life(Seattle, WA: Elton-Wolf Publishing, 2003)
Brady, Loretta, Beginning Your Enneagram Journey Through Self-Observation(Allen, TX: Thomas More Association; Reissue edition, 1994)
Brady, Loretta, Finding Yourself on the Enneagram(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1997)
Calhoun, Adele Ahlberg, Calhoun, Doug, Loughrige, Clare, Spiritual Rhythms for the Enneagram: A Handbook for Harmony and Transformation
Callahan, William J., The Enneagram for Youth: Student Editor and Counselor's Manual(Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1992)
Carmody, Leie and Cathy Conheim, So Who Is a 10 in a World of 1 to 9?(San Diego, CA: Ventures International, 1985)
Condon, Tom, The Enneagram Movie and Video Guide(Revised Edition) (Portland, OR: Metamorphous Press; revised 1999)
Cron, Ian Morgan and Stabile, Suzanne, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery(2016)
Daniels, David N. and Virginia Price, The Essential Enneagram: The Definitive Personality Test and Self-Discovery Guide, Revised & Updated Paperback, HarperSanFrancisco (2009)
David, Oscar, The Enneagram for Managers: Nine Different Perspectives on Managing People(Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2001)
Empereur, James, The Enneagram and Spiritual Direction: Nine Paths to Spiritual Guidance(New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1997)
Fauvre, Katherine Chernick, David W. Fauvre, The 27 Tritypes Revealed: Discover Your Life Purpose and Blind Spot.Enneagram Explorations (2010)
Fauvre, Katherine Chernick, Enneagram Instinctual Subtypes.Enneagram Explorations (1995)
Fensin, Alan, God Says Yes: Your Guide to Prayers that Work(Metairie, LA: Way Publishing, 1997)
Fensin, Alan, Spiritual Truth Using the Enneagram(Metairie, LA: Way Publishing, 1995)
Friedlander, Joel, Body Types: The Enneagram of Essence Types(San Rafael, CA: Inner Journey Books, 1986; 2nd edition, 1993)
Gilbert, Eleonora,Conversations on the Enneagram.(Cherry Red Books 2015)
Gotch, Carol Ann and David Walsh, Soul Stuff: Reflections on Inner Work with the Enneagram(Vermette, Manitoba, Canada: Inscapes Publications, 1994)
Gurdjieff, G. I., Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: All And Everything: 1st Series (All and Everything Series 1), 1950, Penguin (Non-Classics); New edition (1999)
Gurdjieff, G. I., de Hartmann, Thomas, Gurdjieff-De Hartmann: Dervishes trembleurs(DVD)
Heap, Jane, Jane Heap/Notes, Two Rivers Press; 1st edition (1999)
Henry, Kathleen M., The Book of Enneagram Prayers(Boulder, CO: Woven WordPress, 1991)
Hurley, Kathleen and Theodore Dobson, My Best Self: Using the Enneagram to Free the Soul(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993)
Hurley, Kathleen and Theodore Dobson, What's My Type? Use the Enneagram System of Nine Personality Types to Discover Your Best Self(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992)
Hurley, Kathy and Theodore Donson, Discover Your Soul Potential: Using the Enneagram to Awaken Spiritual Vitality(Lakewood, CO: WindWalker Press, 2000)
Hurley, Kathy, Theodore Donson, and Alyce Parsons, Essential Self, Essential Style(Lakewood, CO: WindWalker Press, 2002)
Ichazo, Oscar, Between Metaphysics and Proto Analysis: A Theory for Analyzing the Human Psyche(New York, NY: Arica Institute Press, 1982)
Ichazo, Oscar, Interviews with Oscar Ichazo(New York, NY: Arica Institute Press, 1982)
Ichazo, Oscar, Letters to the School(New York, NY: Arica Institute Press, 1988)
Jaxon-Bear, Eli, Healing the Heart of Suffering: Using the Enneagram for Spiritual Growth(Kula, HI: Pacific Center for Sacred Studies, 1987)
Jaxon-Bear, Eli, Self-Realization and The Enneagram, DVD Release date: 2005
Jaxon-Bear, Eli, The Enneagram of Liberation - from fixation to freedom(Leela Foundation Press, 2001)
Keyes, Margaret Frings, Emotions and the Enneagram: Working Through Your Shadow Life Script, Revised Edition(Muir Beach, CA: Molysdatur Publications, 1992)
Keyes, Margaret Frings, Enneagram Personalities At-A-Glance(Muir Beach, CA: Molysdatur Publications, 1992)
Keyes, Margaret Frings, The Enneagram Cats of Muir Beach(Muir Beach, CA: Molysdatur Publications, 1990)
Keyes, Margaret Frings, The Enneagram Relationship Workbook: A Self and Partnership Assessment Guide(Molysdatur Publications, 1992)
Levine, Janet, Know Your Parenting Personality(New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2003)
Linden, Anne, The Enneagram and NLP: A Journey of Evolution(Portland, OR: Metamorphous Press, 1994)
Maitri, Sandra, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul(New York, NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 2000)
Metz, Barbara, Enneagram and Prayer: Discovering Our True Selves Before God(Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1987)
Mullan, Usha, Graphology and the Enneagram: Personality in Light and Shadow(London: Scriptor Books, The Academy of Graphology, 1994)
Naranjo, Claudio, “Enneagram Of Patriarchal Society,”Big Sur Tapes, 34202
Naranjo, Claudio, “Report from Chile: Oscar Ichazo and the School,”Big Sur Tapes, 04204
Naranjo, Claudio, Character and Neurosis: An Integrative View, Gateways/IDHHB, Inc. (1994)
Naranjo, Claudio, EnneaType Structures: Self-Analysis for the Seeker(Nevada City, CA: Gateway Publications, 1990)
Naranjo, Claudio, Enneatypes in Psychotherapy: Selected Transcripts of the First International Symposium on the Personality Enneagramsby International Symposium on the Personality Enneagrams 1993 Pueblo aca, Hohm Press (1993)
Naranjo, Claudio, Neurosis and Character in the Light of the Enneagram, Gateways Books & Tapes (1994)
Naranjo, Claudio, The Enneagram of Society: Healing the Soul to Heal the World(Nevada City, CA: Gateways Books and Tapes, 2004)
Naranjo, Claudio, The unfolding of man(Educational Policy Research Center, Research note EPRC-6747-3)
Nathans, Hannah, The Enneagram at Work: Towards Personal Mastery And Social Intelligence(The Netherlands: Scriptum, Schiedam, 2003)
Nogosek, Robert, Nine Portraits of Jesus: Discovering Jesus Through the Enneagram(Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1987)
Nogosek, Robert, The Enneagram Journey to New Life: Who Am I? What Do I Stand For?(Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, Inc., 1995)
Olson, Robert W., Stepping Out Within: The Enneagram as a Guide to Relationships and Transformation(San Juan Capistrano, CA: Awakened Press, 1993)
Ouspensky, P. D., In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, (Harvest Book), Harcourt Brace & World (1st Edition, 1949)
Ouspensky, P. D., The Fourth Way(Vintage, copyright 1957)
Palmer, Helen, and Paul B. Brown, The Enneagram Advantage: Putting the 9 Personality Types to Work in the Office(New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 1998)
Palmer, Helen, Enneagram: Practice of Compassion, Credence Cassettes (1994)
Palmer, Helen, Inner Knowing (New Consciousness Reader, Tarcher (1998)
Palmer, Helen, Introduction to the Enneagram, Audio (1991)
Palmer, Helen, Intuition Training, Audio, Shambhala (1990)
Palmer, Helen, Quieting the Mind, Credence Cassettes (1994)
Palmer, Helen, The Enneagram and Inner States, Credence Cassettes (1994)
Palmer, Helen, The Enneagram and Placement of Attention, Audio (1991)
Palmer, Helen, The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and Others in Your Life, HarperSanFrancisco (1991)
Palmer, Helen, The Pocket Enneagram: Understanding the 9 Types of People(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995)
Prayer Journal, 30 Day Prayer Journal: A Christian's Guide to Prayer. An 84 Page, Modern Design, Creative Journal for Men & Women. Paperback, (2019)
Putnoi, Johanna, Senses Wide Open(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2000)
Ranaghan, Dorothy Garrity, A Closer Look at the Enneagram(South Bend, IN: Greenlawn Press, 1989)
Renee, and Wagele, Elizabeth, Are You My Type, Am I Yours?: Relationships Made Easy Through The Enneagram, HarperSanFrancisco; 1st edition (1995)
Richards, John, The Illustrated Enneagram: An Animated Look at the Nine EnneaType Personalities(Huntington Beach, CA: Horizon Nine Keys Publishing, 1994)
Riso, Don Richard and Russ Hudson, Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000)
Riso, Don Richard with Russ Hudson, Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987; revised 1996)
Riso, Don Richard, Discovering Your Personality Type(New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992; revised 1995)
Riso, Don Richard, Enneagram Transformations: Releases and Affirmations for Healing Your Personality Type(Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993)
Riso, Don Richard, Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990)
Rohr, Richard, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective(with Andreas Ebert) (Crossroad Publishing Co, U.S., 2002)
Searle, Judith, The Literary Enneagram: Characters from the Inside Out, (Metamorphous Press, 2001)
Segal, William, Voice At The Borders Of Silence, (Overlook Hardcover, 2003)
Sheppard, Lynette, The Everyday Enneagram(Nine Points Press, 2000)
Tallon, Robert, and Mario Sikora, From Awareness to Action: Emotional Intelligence, the Enneagram, and Change: A Guide to Improving Performance(Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2004)
Tamdgidi, Mohammad H., Gurdjieff and Hypnosis: A Hermeneutic Study(November 24, 2009)
Thomson, Clarence and Thomas Condon, Enneagram Applications: Personality Styles in Business, Therapy, Medicine, Spirituality and Daily Life(Portland, OR: Metamorphous Press, 2001)
Thomson, Clarence, Parables and the Enneagram(Portland, OR: Metamorphosis Press, 2002)
Tickerhoof, Bernard,Conversion and the Enneagram(Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, Inc., 1991)
Tolomeo, Diane, Pearl Gervais, and Remi J. De Roo, Biblical Characters and the Enneagram: Images of Transformation(Newport Bay Publishing Limited, 2001)
Tomasino, Justin, and Inga Tomasino, What's the Point? The Enneagram of Life(Specific Solutions, Inc. 2002)
Wagele, Elizabeth,The Enneagram of Parenting: The 9 Types of Children and How to Raise Them Successfully, HarperSanFrancisco; 1st edition (1997)
Wagner, Jerome, The Enneagram Spectrum of Personality Styles: An Introductory Guide(Portland, OR: Radius Press, 1996)
Webb, Karen, Principles of the Enneagram(Glasgow, UK: Thorsons Publishing, 1996)
Wilson, Julie Ann and Vimala Rodgers, The Enneagram and Handwriting Patterns(Nine Points Publishing, 1996)
Wright, Dick, The Enneagram Triads: A Key to Personal and Professional Growth(Muir Beach, CA: Molysdatur Publications, 1997)
Zannos, Susan, Human Types: Essence and the Enneagram(Boston, MA: Weiser Books, 1997)
Zuercher, Suzanne, Enneagram Companions: Growing in Relationships and Spiritual Direction(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1993)
Zuercher, Suzanne, Enneagram Spirituality: From Compulsion to Contemplation(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1993)
Zuercher, Suzanne, Thomas Merton: An Enneagram Profile(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1996)

© Kenneth Ireland, 2019

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Sister Mary John Marshall and Maylie Scott (Kushin Seisho)

 


Sister Mary John Marshall and<br> Maylie Scott (Kushin Seisho)

Sister Mary John Marshall and

Maylie Scott (Kushin Seisho)



I met Maylie Scott at the Center for AIDS Services, where she came twice a week under the guise of leading a writing group. I say "guise" not to ascribe any hidden motivation as if she were trying to convert the people she worked with to some Buddhist straight and narrow or any other hidden aim, but she was doing much more than teaching a creative writing course. She was a talented Zen teacher who had also been trained as a social worker. She was masterful. Our clients at the Center were drug addicts, some in recovery, some actively using; male, female and transexual sex workers; 50 or 60 gay men, pretty evenly split between middle-class white men and African American ghetto smart street kids. The glue that held the community together was that everyone was dealing with a disease that in the mid-90s, was still a death sentence. They had a lot of their plates. In Maylie’s group, they opened up and began to talk about themselves to a very sympathetic ear without a shred of judgment. 


Maylie was a divorced single mom with three adult kids. Her big California brown shingled house on Ashby Avenue was part of the divorce settlement with her ex-husband, a Canadian English professor at UC. After her kids moved out, there were several empty rooms. Her mother had just moved from a Manhattan apartment where she’d lived since divorcing Maylie’s father. It had been many years of living alone. Mary was close to 90. She could still take care of herself and was mentally very alert, but obviously, living alone in a New York apartment was not a good situation.

..

Maylie was one of Mel Weitzman’s senior students. She was looking to form a loosely knit community, not organized around a practice schedule. She asked if I would consider moving in; she also invited me to join her and her mother for dinner so that I could meet her and her mother could give me her seal of approval.


Mary was bright and curious to meet a potential new housemate. I’m sure that she wanted me to feel entirely at home as well as understand the level of manners expected. When we sat down to dinner, there was a silver napkin ring at my place. It was engraved in a lovely antique script with the initials LBC. In thanking her, I asked who LBC was. Oh, she said, Lawrence Baine Crandon. I said how lovely my grandfather was Lawrence, and one couple among my parents' friends in Nichols, where we grew up, was Phil and Phyllis Crandon. Maylie was serving, but put down the spoon and looked at me with an impish grin, “We call him Uncle Phil, but he is really my mother’s first cousin. He is quite a character, don’t you think?”  I tried not to act as surprised as I was. I said that all the kids loved to go to visit Randy, their son, where we snuck down into the basement, where Phil had a very elaborate and expensive HO2 model train collection with tracks that wound around almost every available space. 


This was the beginning of three very important years in my life. I finally began to allow myself to heal from the hidden personal costs of my work at Maitri Hospice, and I really began working with the koans which enriched my Zen practice. All the while Maylie with her steady practice was just there. She was lovely and so kind.
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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

My path to the Enneagram and Gurdjieff has a sidebar of synchronicity. In 1966, I entered Shadowbrook, the Jesuit novitiate in Lenox, Massachusetts. The huge, half-empty Spartan novitiate was built on the grounds of a vast Berkshire “summer cottage” that the Carnegies, among other robber barons, had owned before becoming a Jesuit seminary and then burning to the ground in a tragic fire. Lenox was still a weekend retreat for wealthy New Yorkers. We were right across the street from Tanglewood. The old New England town center was very much like Hanover, New Hampshire, where I’d spent the best part of the last four years. 

Thursdays were our day off, and I quickly found a small bookstore that had everything except all the assistant professors’ first book. I managed to hide a few dollars so that if some title caught my attention, I could sneak it back to the novitiate like illegal contraband. “In Search of the Miraculous” had just been published in paperback in 1965, and the clerk decided that a young seminarian in pressed white shirt and black pants should expand his parochial reading list. Ouspensky’s title fit right next to the 16th-century spiritual manual, “The Practice of Perfection,” in my novitiate cubicle without a hint of suspicion.


I supplemented my lectio divina. I learned that Mr. Gurdjieff taught that humankind’s default state was sleepwalking through life, unaware of who they were or what they were doing. Ouspensky said G promised that waking up was possible, but it required paying an awake person to wake you up and then continuing to pay real money to that awake person to keep you awake because going back to sleep was inevitable. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I did understand the concept of having a person monitor your being asleep or awake in a rudimentary way. In the novitiate, our sleeping, waking, praying, and reading were carefully monitored. Life was punctuated by a bell that sounded like a fire alarm. 


I read about the Law of Three and the Law of Octaves, also known as the Law of Seven. Then Ouspensky laid the Law of Three on top of the Law of Seven on the nine-pointed Enneagram figure that he claimed unlocked the deepest secret of the Universe. But, alas, Ouspensky didn’t provide the key.


I returned to Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, but only five years later, I would find myself sitting on the floor of a ramshackle fraternity house in Berkeley, California, learning about a psychological version of this Enneagram from Claudio Naranjo. I recognized the nine-pointed figure, and now I had something to attach it to. 

 

Naranjo was obsessed with tracing an esoteric link between Ichazo’s Enneagon and the references to an Enneagram in Gurdjieff's teachings. I brought all my Jesuit training to reexamine everything Gurdjieff wrote, as well as a good deal of what his students had written. Nothing. From his fictitious “Meetings with Remarkable Men” to the very strange ”Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson,” there was no mention of a “psychological” Enneagram. Among the other writings by people who had known and worked with G directly, nothing, except perhaps John G. Bennett, but even with Bennett, there was no clear connection to what Ichazo had unearthed. 


Taking the next step in the cultist’s playbook, people suggested that the Enneagram was a secret oral teaching, akin to a Tibetan Terma* that had ripened and whose time had finally arrived, like the dusty esoteric volume that fell off a shelf into Ichazo’s lap. In that case, perhaps one of the people who had worked directly with Gurdjieff could help. 


I had a connection to Lord John Pentland, the President of the Gurdjieff Foundation. Lord Pentland had worked directly with Gurdjieff and had been changed to carry on the work. My friend, the Jesuit Tom Charbeneau, arranged for me to meet Pentland at the Foundation's headquarters in Saint Francis Wood. He spent a full hour with me. There was something about the man that was inspiring. He seemed genuinely interested in me, what I was about, and saw to the root of my questions. He did not condemn Ischazo or Naranjo’s teaching, but he was adamant that there was no trace of their use or interpretation of the Enneagram in Gurdjieff’s work. 


Another friend, Daniel Terrango, had worked for several years in Mr. W.A. Nyland's group, another of Gurdjieff’s trusted disciples. He told me that they had never used anything like Icahzo’s Enneagon or Narranjo’s Enneagram. None of the recognized Fourth Way teachers in the Bay Area were even interested in Ichazo/Naranjo’s work.


Naranjo always talked about Gurdjieff as if Naranjo stood in that teaching lineage. He did not. All the blabber about the Trickster was anecdotal. The alleged Gurdjieff teachers that Naranjo introduced to SAT, with the exception of Pamela Travers, were bullies and frauds, and none of them showed much interest in the Enneagram either. Three names come up, E.J.Gold. Alex Horn and Henry Korman. I met them all, even if briefly, though I was Korman’s student for several years. 


Lesson: Just saying that you were a teacher in the line of Mr. G might be a clue that your teaching methods will be overreaching and abusive. Oh, by the way, Oscar Ichazo, who was the origin of the modern iteration of this teaching, thought that the obsession with Gurdjieff was ludicrous.


*Terma: In Tibetan Buddhism and Bon traditions, a terma, meaning "hidden treasure," refers to esoteric teachings or objects concealed by adepts like Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal, to be rediscovered at a later, more appropriate time by tertöns (treasure revealers). 


https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-jesuit-transmission-of-enneagram.html
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Friday, July 18, 2025

Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley

I asked AI: Did Helen Palmer attend a series of panels on the Enneagram of Fixations with Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley?


Yes, Helen Palmer, a renowned Enneagram teacher and author, was a student of Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley and part of his circle. Palmer is known for developing the "panel method," also known as the Narrative Tradition, where individuals share their experiences related to their Enneagram type. While the results don't explicitly mention panels specifically focusing on "fixations" with Naranjo, they do highlight the close relationship between Palmer and Naranjo in the development and dissemination of the Enneagram in Berkeley during the 1970s.


AI is “garbage in/garbage out.” This information is factually 100% wrong. Somebody’s lying or just doesn’t know. But it suggests that this story has been repeated frequently enough to poison AI’s search engine. 


Palmer was never a member of Naranjo’s circle. They were civil, I suppose, if they did talk. She was never a student in one of Naranjo’s SAT groups, but she attended several semi-public lectures and presentations. She might have asked him a few questions. Most of Naranjo’s students viewed Palmer as an interloper who pilfered and distorted the Enneagram for her enrichment. Naranjo did not correct our opinion. She knew several of Naranjo’s early students quite well: Kathy Speeth, Father Bob Ochs, and CD. She also knew several other people in SAT; she did her famous and expensive psychic readings on many of us. I paid about $100 in 1973 dollars for about 50 minutes, with no clergy discount. 


In the Fall of 1973, Kathy Speeth organized a series of presentations about the Nine Types at the home of Gay Luce on the Arlington Circle, on the Berkeley-Arlington border. It was Speeth’s idea. She was the producer, but Naranjo agreed that it was time to introduce the system to mental health professionals. Palmer paid the fee and attended all the sessions. 


The format consisted of panels for each of the Fixations. I participated in a Panel for Ego-Plan. There were nine presentations and perhaps a tenth; I can’t recall if there was an introductory session. Ochs asked me to participate. He warned that the presentation would be quite different from the way we usually did in SAT. Almost all of our work in the first SAT years was “ego-grinding”: when the memory of a painful incident came to the surface, you were directed to dig deeper, and the conversation was soon littered with unfulfilled dreams. During these panels, however, after Naranjo described a few key structures of a Fixation’s psychology in clinical language, we were asked to share our experiences. He said, for example, that for Ego-Plan, the idealization of the future was not based on experience, and that tasks were often left undone. However, the compensatory defense was that “life would turn out,” and it would be “all OK.” Naranjo at one point said to me, “See, you can even hear it in Ken’s voice, the confidence that everything will be OK.”


I was in the room where it happened; this sounds like what I’ve heard about the “Narrative Tradition.” Imagine, at 28, I was part of founding a “Tradition!” The word suggests centuries of Sufi practice. I suspect there is minimal confrontation in Palmer’s groups. She aimed to present a gentler and milder version of the Enneagram. The name changes of the Fixations align with this teaching style. More students are attracted by honey.


Naranjo had issues with some of her interpretations of various points, but, more importantly, he also asserted that Palmer stole his material. She attended all the presentations, kept the handouts, and took notes. With an outline in hand, she further detailed each Fixation with other confidential information. Ochs told me that he had also spoken with her, and despite his own agreement not to disclose what he had learned. He said, "She has all the information about the points anyway; let’s at least try to make it more complete, accurate, and useful." 


I know the woman was the registrar very well. I asked her about the confidentiality agreement. She said, “Yes, Palmer violated her confidentiality agreement. I don’t have a copy of it, but I’m sure it said the same thing we were all asked to agree to, which is not to discuss these things outside of the group. I have been furious with her ever since then and have completely lost respect for her. She seems to have been able to justify it to herself, but I know she promised not to do this, and she did.”


Palmer also states publicly and in court documents that she never saw nor used Ichazo’s confidential and, I presume, copyrighted notes. This is almost Jesuitical. Of course, she saw them. The only possibility for her equivocation was that the authorship of the texts might have been unclear, although knowing a few quirky terms that Ichazo would have used should have been a good clue.


But both Naranjo and Icnazo’s “holier-than-thou” shtick gets a bit heavy. He made a big deal in the “Jesuit Transmission” interviews that his notes and Ichazo’s Arica file had escaped without his permission, and their use was unethical, even immoral, because we had all pledged not to use any material without explicit permission. When I say that Naranjo permitted me to use the material as I saw fit, that was a significant gesture. He delivered the statement of release or commission in a very formal, flat tone. He was incensed that Palmer had access to his more detailed notes and those of Oscar. He blamed Ochs.


I will now address the thorny issue of the written materials available to the first SAT groups, including the missing folder that Ichazo did not retrieve upon completion of the 10-month Arica training. 


The Three Levels of Documentation


It is a myth that the Enneagram was an oral teaching and that SAT, the Jesuits in Ochs’s classes, and Helen Palmer’s groups marked the point at which it was written down. That is false. What I am about to write is based on my memories of the early SAT groups, my recollection of the controversy, which was discussed during the court cases, and reports from Ochs’s other Jesuit students who were never asked to sign confidentiality agreements. 


During the Berkeley rollout, there were three Levels of written documentation about the Enneagram.


  1. A single page for each Fixation was the first written documentation. 


For each fixation, there was a rough mimeograph on cheap 8.5 by 11-inch paper with the name of the fixation at the top. Plan, Venge, Flat, Go, etc.; some general information; a few pointers for self-examination, maybe the virtue, the trap, even the color; plus some quick psychological notes from Naranjo. They were like cheat sheets for personal use as you began the typing process. A senior student, in my case Ochs, said, “Take a look at Ego-Plan and see if it makes sense to you. Take a look at your dreams and fantasy life.”


This is close to the Enneagram being an oral tradition. We all kept notes; we shared and compared them with each other. Detailed notes with complete sentences were highly regarded, and there were several meticulous recorders. But these pages had two sources.


  1. Naranjo’s Complete Binder


Naranjo's more detailed notes for each of the nine fixations, including the subtypes, were written, edited, and printed using a word processing program, but were only available to a few people in Group 1’s inner circle. They were usually kept in Naranjo’s study house in the backyard on Allston Way. It was a rickety shack overhanging the creek that ran down the backside of the property, complete with raccoons!


  1. The Arica Enneagon Workbook


In addition to Naranjo’s presentations, people also circulated Ichazo’s proto-analysis from people who’d traveled to Arica.


Ichazo’s notes on the Enneagon were in a thick binder, which had been distributed to everyone in Arica. It was somewhat akin to Q in New Testament studies and very closely guarded. Ichazo states in a deposition that he distributed 73 copies to the group in Arica and then collected 72. I may have the exact numbers wrong, but I’m in the ballpark; Naranjo left Arica after about five months. I am almost certain he kept his. Initially, few students saw it, much less used it.


Another copy or duplicates of some of Ichazo’s Arica pages existed. CD claims that this copy was from another participant in Arica and, therefore, not the material she had promised to keep secret. Palmer claimed in a deposition related to the lawsuit with Ichazo that she had never seen Ichazo’s Arica materials. I do not know what she knew about the papers she saw, or even if CD’s description is entirely accurate. 


SAT was a quirky group. There was a hierarchy with levels. Naranjo and later Kathy Speeth determined where you were in the pecking order. Naranjo’s inner circle, including Ochs, CT, MM, HA, and AD, were eventually granted access to the Ichazo/Arica binder (although I believe it was initially granted under supervision). I’m not quite sure how this worked out. I never asked to see it as I was much more involved in the process of self-observation than “Proto-typing,” and remain so to this day.


We also promised not to speak about the Enneagram outside the group because, we were told, confidentiality was integral to self-discovery. We promised not to use specific ‘teachings’ until we’d received permission from Naranjo. This was mainly intended  for work that we would do with others, although, in some instances, that promise included our private conversations with group members. The initial intent was not to protect materials and income as intellectual property, but it did set the stage for later lawsuits.


It would be another 10 years before Enneagram literature started flooding the market.

 

Now that both Naranjo and Ochs have died, and so much material is already public, I feel no obligation to remain silent.
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