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Abstract
This study examined the validity of an integrated typology that combines the nine Enneagram types with the four attachment styles. Attachment styles are derived from research on attachment theory, a theory of human development that focuses on how infants and adults establish, monitor and repair close emotional relationships. Support was found for a conceptualization of the Enneagram types as attachment strategies that organize attention in order to facilitate the establishment, monitoring, and repair of close emotional relationships throughout life. The results are discussed in terms of implications for understanding the development and maintenance of the passions, and implications for further study of the developmental process of spiritual transformation of the types.
The distinguishing characteristic of the theory of attachment that we have developed is that it is an ethological approach to personality development (Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, 1991).
Over the past several years, there has been increasing interest in understanding Enneagram type development in the context of already existing theories of human development. Chestnut's (2008) article addressed this interest by integrating the Enneagram typology with three object relations theories of development. In Chestnut's integration, the developmental challenges children face at different stages of growth are matched with the core emotions of the three Enneagram centers (anger, fear, and sadness). Killen's (2009) article sketches a developmental model of how the basic mammalian emotions might give rise to the nine Enneagram types, suggesting that, ". . .the structure of each of the nine Enneagram types is built around a particular pattern of emotion regulation relating to innate mammalian emotion systems regulating fear, anger, and social distress" (p. 40).
Taken together, Chestnut's and Killen's models of type development describe a process in which the basic mammalian emotions of fear, anger and social distress are transformed in the context of early relationships with caregivers into the nine distinct Enneagram passions. However, the details of this transformation have still not been articulated. In particular, the evolving model of type development lacks a satisfying explanation of how one particular emotion becomes fixed as the passion for each type. Understanding this transformation of emotion into passion would contribute to the project of developing a sound, scientifically based theory of development of the Enneagram types. Perhaps even more importantly,...