The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram

"John Luckovich does not beat around the bush and lets us know right away that the material in this book is explicitly for inner work and soul development. And with great eloquence and patience, he unpacks this potentially complex material in a way that makes it understandable and relevant. While there are a number of teachers working in this area who have my love and respect, I dare say there is no one in the world who has spent more time contemplating the meaning and context of this material than John."




- from the foreword, written by Russ Hudson, author, The Wisdom of the Enneagram




The Enneagram is a profound tool for self-observation and inner work. While there are plenty of resources on the topic, most Enneagram literature is largely limited to entry-level descriptions of the Nine Types. The Instinctual Drives and the Enneagram focuses on a crucial but misunderstood facet of the Enneagram Typology--our "animal" Instinctual Drives and how they are related to our spiritual nature.




While nearly every school of thought on the Enneagram acknowledges the importance and role of the Instinctual Drives, there's a deep lack of understanding what they actually are, the role they play in personality, and most importantly, their implications for inner work. This book achieves, for the first time, a coherent theory of the instinctual drives based in biology, evolution, and developmental psychology, and it paves the way toward a more accurate view of inner work that directly addresses our animal nature. In so doing, it turns our current understanding of the Enneagram on its head by showing that the personality does not exist in parallel with our instinctual drives, but in reaction to them. In other words, instinct comes first - and one's Enneagram type is nothing more or less than a strategy to fulfill instinctual needs.




This clarified orientation has important implications for our spiritual development, self-remembrance, and the transformation of our personhood into a conduit of Essence.