DAS²-Theory of Personality: A Cognitive Approach to the Enneagram

Abstract

The Enneagram is a typology of personality that scopes at the level of ego-personality. Despite the vast amount of attention, it has accumulated since its modern emergence in the 20th century from the Sufi tradition, it is still in need of grounding into current scientific work to disperse some of its much criticized mystical language. The DAS²-theory aims at reconstructing the Enneagram based on cognitive concepts by first establishing the Dynamic Social Field Theory (DSoFT) that expands the Bourdieusian concept of social fields (Bourdieu, 1984), and then proposing the ethological trilogy of Dominance, Aversion, Submission (the DAS-triad)-three distinct stances towards power that have evolved under the pressure of violence, as described by Lorenz (1998). DSoFT posits that the mind is constantly challenged to find the social field that most appeals to the ego in order to react to people and events. To this end-described by using the Buddhist concept of Monkey Mind-the mind jumps from scenario to scenario (field to field) creating micro-contests until it finds a proper reframing of the challenge where it can have a strategy that appeals to the ego. To understand how a DAS-type is formed, three iterative levels have to be built. At the bottom is the DAS-triad, or stances. Because each stance can be applied from a position of superiority or inferiority-that the mind evaluates from the field's rules-, each of the three stances can branch into two styles, yielding six potential DAS-styles. DAS-styles explain behaviors clearly, distinctly, and ethologically, and form the basis for the application of the DAS²-theory. Lastly, a DAS-type is the selection of a style from the superior triad, as well as one from the inferior triad. Therefore nine types are possible, which correspond to the nine Enneatypes. The DAS²-theory typology can be applied to interpret not only the individuals but also the supra-individual entities' behaviors without having to resort to metaphors that vaguely describe intentions and actions. It offers new innovative ways to analyze political events, power scenarios, market perception of brands, and other

Fear of (COVID-19) and its relationship to Enneagram patterns among a sample of Yemeni community members

“…Personality among individuals is affected by the nature of societies, so a certain pattern may prevail in a certain society without the prevalence of another. This is due to factors related to the dynamic interaction of all the formative and environmental components and the socialization of this society that reinforce the rule of a certain type without the other eight patterns (Schwarz & Zarrabi, 2017). This result also con rms the ndings of the Enneagram theories that there is no pure personality type, but rather the pattern is a composite of the two main personality types, and one of the two adjacent patterns has (wings) in the ninth dimension diagram (Gaventa, 2003).…”

“…To achieve this objective, the researcher used frequencies and relative weights of the total study sample of (360) objects and then arranging them in descending order from the highest to the lowest, and the results were as shown in (2) that the Yemeni community members are not afraid of (COVID- 19), and that fearlessness is the common pattern, despite the di cult living conditions of the Yemeni people who are suffering from poverty and armed con icts under pandemic . This indicates the kindness and simplicity of these people, and their expectations that the coming days will be better, or the unrealistic optimism may be taken as one of their strategies for compatibility with life.…”

“…( Kumar, Nayar,2021) The (COVID-19 has been considered a highly contagious virus (Sheivandi, et al, 2020), and the possibility of infection will generate negative psychological reactions that make everyone behave in an unpredictable way (Amin, 2020). As a result of the international community concern about (COVID- 19) and its consequences on the lives of people and life in general, the world's countries and organizations are trying to control this epidemic and to decrease the side effect of it, but so far, the picture has not yet been clear about the direction of this epidemic (Cao, et al, 2020). It has been noted from the results of some related studies that a pandemic (COVID-19) caused fear, persistent depression, anxiety, panic attacks, psychomotor agitation, psychotic symptoms, delirium, and even suicide until it reached the point of thinking about the end of the world.…”

An Enneagram Approach to Strategy

“…The remainder of the paper focuses on practical issues (Cusack 2020;Petsche 2016). According to (Edwards 1992;Moore 1992;Schwarz and Zarrabi 2017) the rationale for the Enneagram methodology is as follows.…”

“…This leads to a third observation (Matthews 1996): Strategy and decisions do not take place at a single point in an organisation. They are distributed, by many decisions and decision-makers (Navabifar et al 2020;Schwarz and Zarrabi 2017;Dooley and Van de Ven 1999). The research questions are: (1) How can the enneagram approach be adopted systematically to strategic management disciplines?…”