Primary Instincts

All 9 enneagram types are further divided by their primary instinct of fixation.

These instincts are like our source of stability and dopamine surges. A material and visceral way to grip on to your core fixation.

Sexual, Self-Preservation, and Social.

Three impulses that hold us to certain pleasures.

As Primary Instincts:

  • Sexual: an exaggerated need for competence at effective psychosexual demonstrations aimed at inciting excitement and polarization between masculine and feminine qualities, or other means of polarity that show the self as a sexually desirable partner.

  • Self-Preservation: an exaggerated need for creation of comfort and feelings of luxury in one's experience. Aiming to optimize resources toward continuous benefits to one's psychophysiological state.

  • Social: an exaggerated need for creation of strong bonds with increasing consistency in shared motivations for the accomplishment of goals or interpersonal connection and intimacy.

The 27 Types

The enneagram is more accurately represented by the combination of ones primary core type and instinct fixations. The core type representing the more internal aspects of the type, and the instinct representing the way this person projects their fixation into the world and builds relationships.

Instinct Flows

[More information provided in Consultation]

Self-Preservation

The reality of resources, needs, abilities, psycho-physiological harmony, and steady growth

Expressed through the exaggeration of survival needs which results in working towards an excess of the luxuries that support comfort and stability

Key Words:

Cooled down, removing charge, maintenance of body and mind, resources, energy regulation

Responsibility, Capability, Stability, Convenience, Skill, Reliability, Resources, Groundedness

Visual Signals:

Narrow/detached gaze, closed-off gait, restricted or self-separating movements, intense about objects and events

  • Awareness to changes that occur in body, emotions, and mind (environment, satisfaction, and direction) 

  • Maintenance of body and being 

  • Needing to perfect the state of mind and body before changes can be made

  • Interest and concern for the fulfillment of tasks, and the building of skills

  • Aware of the complexities in the domain of basic animal needs.

  • Optimization toward smoothness and convenience

  • The responsibility toward providing for needs

  • The observation of what is necessary

  • Awareness of longevity and decay  

  • Preparation for growing needs or assumed changes

  • Physicality of the body

Expressed through the exaggerated need for orgasmic experiences, which results in them seeking ego annihilation in union with a person or experience. This is much like the reality of mating rituals, where a fantasy is created between partners.

Key Words:

Ecstasy seeking, warming, adding charge, arousal, chemistry seeking leading to direct ego/psyche shifts, Hot/Cold, Desirability, Masculinity/Femininity, Pushing boundaries within the self and others, amplification of softness in otherwise assertive individuals and assertiveness in otherwise soft individual.

Visual Signals:

Integration of the poison and the baby in the eyes, presentation of gender polarities and the blending of them, strong and immediate non-verbal reactions of attraction/repulsion to stimuli 

  • Acute  awareness and creation of arousal and temptation 

  • Motivated by pheromones. Chasing a scent to replace a feeling of lack.

  • Sexual displays and mating rituals. 

  • Inclination to follow through with urges and desires in an uninterrupted way. Can lean toward fetishistic or sexually polarizing interests without any idea of judgment or moralizing.

  • Urge to penetrate and be penetrated 

  • The exciting taboo and strangeness that creates differentiation and tension — the flavor of pollution that makes dying exciting

  • Chemical chasing (transformation through chemical being changes)

  • Extremes of (+) and (-) / masculinity and femininity — and the movement toward blending the two; androgyny

  • Intense perception of specific points of attraction and repulsion 

Sexual

The reality of desirability, non-verbal attraction/repulsion, intense chemical excitement, sexual demonstrations, and mating rituals, fantasies and taboos

Social

The reality of connection and relations, connection and distance, similarities and differences, development of consistent frameworks and demarcations for various types of people, ideologies, and perspectives.

Expressed through exaggerated need to form bonds/families, intimate connection, and familiarity

Individuals of this dominant instinct tend to either favor the personal intimacy or the collective influence side of the Social Instinct - however they will be using the same means of perception.

Key Words:

Character analysis, emotional engagement, mutual understanding, maintaining bonds,  understanding of how things are received socially

Visual Signals

Expansive eyes, range of openness/closed-off-ness to ideas/people/experiences seen through the glimmer in the eye, intimate/antagonizing, everything feels personal

  • Connection or distance between people, perspectives, roles, opinions, views

  • Depth and full embrace in bonds as a desire

  • Alignment and misalignment 

  • Qualities and lineage — associations that contextualize people and things

  • Feelings of kinship, closeness, or intimacy as definite markers for trust and connection

  • The building of valued aspects

  • Observation and influence over culture and narratives

  • Hierarchy

  • Tracking the origins 

  • Paying attention to involvement

Instinct Flow

Your biological primer for how your core identity needs are going to be met.

  • Which aspect of phenomenological reality do you fixate on.

  • Instincts exist as the reality/context in which your core type fixations play out. 

  • The blind instinct is not a separated reality, it is just always behind you because you want to look the other way toward your main instinct.

Imagine this:

→  Your focal view is your dominant instinct.

→ Your peripheral vision is your secondary instinct.

→ The area behind you is your blind instinct.

→ Obstacles in your dominant instincts call you to turn your head and notice the issue that is in the direction of your blind instinct.  

→ Once you turn your head, you decide that your dominant instinct is more important/necessary and turn your head back. 

→ This is the behavior that creates the neglect that builds the void in your blind instinct.