Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Seven

Healthy: Highly responsive, excitable, enthusiastic about sensation and experience. Most extroverted type: stimuli bring immediate responses — they find everything invigorating. Lively, vivacious, eager, spontaneous, resilient, cheerful. / Easily become accomplished achievers, generalists who do many different things well: multi-talented. Practical, productive, usually prolific, cross-fertilizing areas of interest. At Their Best: Assimilate experiences in depth, making them deeply grateful and appreciative for what they have. Become awed by the simple wonders of life: joyous and ecstatic. Intimations of spiritual reality, of the boundless goodness of life.

Average: As restlessness increases, want to have more options and choices available to them. Become adventurous and “worldly wise,” but less focused, constantly seeking new things and experiences: the sophisticate, connoisseur, and consumer. Money, variety, keeping up with the latest trends important. / Unable to discriminate what they really need, become hyperactive, unable to say “no” to themselves, throwing self into constant activity. Uninhibited, doing and saying whatever comes to mind: storytelling, flamboyant exaggerations, witty wise-cracking, performing. Fear being bored: in perpetual motion, but do too many things — many ideas but little follow through. / Get into conspicuous consumption and all forms of excess. Self-centered, materialistic, and greedy, never feeling that they have enough. Demanding and pushy, yet unsatisfied and jaded. Addictive, hardened, and insensitive.

Unhealthy: Desperate to quell their anxieties, can be impulsive and infantile: do not know when to stop. Addictions and excess take their toll: debauched, depraved, dissipated escapists, offensive and abusive. / In flight from self, acting out impulses rather than dealing with anxiety or frustrations: go out of control, into erratic mood swings, and compulsive actions (manias). / Finally, their energy and health is completely spent: become claustrophobic and panic-stricken. Often give up on themselves and life: deep depression and despair, self-destructive overdoses, impulsive suicide. Generally corresponds to the Manic-Depressive and Histrionic personality disorders.

Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.

Addictions:
Type 7 The Enthusiast

The type most prone to addictions: stimulants (caffeine, cocaine, and amphetamines), Ecstasy, psychotropics, narcotics, and alcohol but tend to avoid other depressants. Wear body out with effort to stay “up.” Excessive cosmetic surgery, pain killers.

Type 1w9
Focuses more on attracting love + acquiring power.
Primary Behavior: perfectionism
Secondary Behavior: calm and peacefulness

[below 3 Vmean]
instinctual
attached
practical
settled
conservative
traditional
past oriented

[above 5 Hmean]
coercive
antagonistic
assertive
domineering
pleasure seeking
insensitive
materialistic

The Enneagram is a system which divides all human behavior into nine personality divisions. Your conscious type (main type) is whichever of those nine behaviors you use most, in your case Type 1w9. Your unconscious type (mean type), Type 8w9, is who you are unconsciously, based on the sum influence of all nine behaviors.

Most Enneagram books and tests focus on main type and use an additional “variant” classification (instead of mean type) to account for the influence of all nine behavior types. This is the same thing as mean typing, except instead of 9 delineations, there are only three. Based on your test results your variant is Sexual. So when reading other Enneagram books or websites refer to the Type 1w9, Sexual variant descriptions.

1,2,3 behaviors are attention/acceptance seeking behaviors (social security). 7,8,9 behaviors are pleasure seeking behaviors (physical security). 4,5,6 are knowledge seeking behaviors (intellectual security). However, type 4 behavior is about seeking the knowledge of how to get attention and type 6 behavior is about seeking the knowledge of how to get pleasure. Now, no test or test taker is perfect but if your score is accurate then your results reflect two things. Who you try to be consciously (Type 1w9) and who you are unconciously (Type 8w9). Each of those reflects an orientation towards acceptance (1-3), pleasure (7-9), or knowledge (4-6). Only Type 5 is directly focused on gaining knowledge, all other types (main or mean) have some level of bias towards prioritizing acceptance or pleasure. At the heart of acceptance seeking behaviors is the belief that if I am attractive in some way, I will be taken care of. This results in superficial development. The problem with a pleasure bias is that it makes you more likely to be selfish and destructive because your short term pleasure is all you are tuned in on. You don’t notice or care about the displeasure you might cause others or the long term pain you might be setting yourself up for. Acceptance and pleasure seeking behaviors keep people dependent. Knowledge seeking behaviors are about increasing independence, learning new and better ways to survive in life without conforming or taking advantage of others.