ANGER AND PERFECTIONISM ENNEA-TYPE I

ENNEA-TYPE I

1. Core Theory, Nomenclature, and Place in the Enneagram

"We may consider wrath in three ways," says Saint Thomas in Questiones Disputatae: "Firstly, a wrath which resides in the heart (Ira Cordis); also, inasmuch as it flows into words (Ira Locutionis), and thirdly, in that it becomes actions (Ira Actiones)." The survey scarcely brings to mind the characteristics of the perfectionistic type as we will be portraying it here. Yes, there is anger in the heart, mostly in the form of resentment, yet not so prominently as anger may be experienced by the lusty, the envious, or the cowardly. As for verbal behavior, it is most characteristic of the anger type to be controlled in the expression of anger, in any of its explicit forms: we are in the presence of a well-behaved, civilized type, not a spontaneous one. In regard to action, ennea-type I individuals do express anger, yet mostlyunconsciously, not only to themselves but to others, for they do so in a way that is typically rationalized; in fact, much of this personality may be understood as a reaction formation against anger; a denial of destructiveness through a deliberate, well-intentioned attitude.

Oscar Ichazo's definition of anger as a "standing against reality" has the merit of addressing a more basic issue than the feeling or expression of emotion. Still, it may be useful to point out at the outset that the label "anger type" is scarcely evocative of the typical psychological characteristics of the personality style in question — which is critical and demanding rather than consciously hateful or rude. Ichazo called the ennea-type "ego-resent," which seems a psychologically more exact portrayal of the emotional disposition involved: one of protest and assertive claims rather than mere irritability. In my own teaching experience, I started out calling the character's fixation "intentional goodness"; later I shifted to labeling it "perfectionism." This seems appropriate to designate a rejection of what is in terms of what is felt and believed should be.

Christian writers who shared an awareness of anger as a capital sin, that is to say, as one of the basic psychological obstacles to true virtue, mostly seem to have failed to realize that it is precisely under the guise of virtue that unconscious anger finds its most characteristic form of expression. An exception is St. John of the Cross, who in his Dark Night of the Soul writes with characterological exactitude as he describes the sin of wrath in spiritual beginners:

"There are other of these spiritual persons, again, who fall into another kind of spiritual wrath: this happens when they become irritated at the sins of others, and keep watch on those others with a sort of uneasy zeal. At times the impulse comes to them to reprove them angrily, and occasionally they go so far as to indulge it and set themselves up as masters of virtue. All this is contrary to spiritual meekness." And he adds: "There are others who are vexed with themselves when they observe their own imperfection, and display an impatience that is not humility; so impatient are they about this that they would fain be saints in a day. Many of these persons purport to accomplish a great deal and make grand resolutions; yet, as they are not humble and have no misgivings about themselves, the moreresolutions they make, the greater is the fall and the greater their annoyance, since they have not the patience to wait for that which God will give them when it pleases Him."

On the whole, this is a well-intentioned and overly virtuous character arisen as a defense against anger and destructiveness. It would be a mistake, however, to conceive of it as a violent character — for it is on the contrary, an over-controlled and over-civilized interpersonal style. Striking in this style is also an oppositional quality, both in regard to others and to experience in general. While every form of character may be regarded as an interference with instinct, the anti-instinctive orientation of this "puritanical" style is the most striking. A good name for the character (and one applicable beyond the explicitly sick region of the mental health spectrum) is perfectionism — for in spite of the fact that people in some other characterological styles may appropriately refer to themselves as "perfectionistic," this is definitely the orientation in which perfectionism is most prominent. This involves an obsession with improving things that result in making their lives and those of others worse and a narrow-minded concept of perfection in terms of a matching of experience or events with a pre-established code of values, standards, ideas, tastes, rules, and so on.

Perfectionism not only illustrates the fact that the better is the enemy of the best (and the search for the best is the enemy of the better) but may be said to involve a cognitive bias, an imbalance between the allegiances to duty and to pleasure; to gravity and to levity; to work and to play, mature deliberateness and child-like spontaneity.

As a sequel to the word perfectionist — more colloquially — I have caricatured the character as one of "angry virtue," a label that has the advantage of including both the emotional (anger) and the cognitive (perfectionistic) aspects.

Though I personally appreciate Erikson's re-statement of anality as an issue of autonomy that arises at the time of learning sphincter control and walking, I think Abraham and Freud deserve the homage of having for the first time drawn attention to the connection between the prohibition of soiling oneself and obsessive cleanliness.

The position of the anger type in the enneagram is neither at the schizoid nor at the hysteroid corners, but in the group of the upper three characters pervaded by "psychological laziness." It is my experience that, contrary to the fact that many obsessives declare themselves extroverts, this very statement reveals their lack of psychological mindedness, for they are, rather, sensory-motor extroverts with an introverted self-ideal that is part of their refinement and intellectual values. The position of ennea-type I between ennea-types IX and II in the enneagram invites a consideration of how perfectionistic character is not only "anti-intraceptive" but also proud. Indeed the word pride is sometimes used specifically to describe the aristocratic and haughty attitude of the perfectionist rather than the attitude of the type here designated as "proud," whose...