The following is meant to be a metaphorical or symbolic representation of the types. This series is called the dramaturgical enneagram (referring to dramaturgy in the sociological sense, which studies people from the lens of being actors in a drama) because it gives a perspective on how the enneagram types view themselves as a discrete set of characters which shift in preeminence to perform different necessary functions. That is, depending on the situation, the type structure will move one of these characters to take “center stage.”
If you are not of the heart type persuasion, perhaps think of these characters as tools, mechanisms, “powers”, or methods to get your needs met in a particular situation.
My opinions on the growth portions of the other type descriptions (originally comprised under the reddit username u/MessidorLC) have recently shifted, to the point where I think it should be a separate post entirely from the symbolic representations. This is because in those posts I incorporated a one-size-fits-all approach to growth which I believe is somewhat ineffective.
Now, I think the real benefit of this series is the capacity it has to get people to make more detached and objective observations of themselves, as if they were watching a performance rather than taking place in one. Although it may seem gimmicky at first, if you try to imagine yourself as occupying these characters when it makes logical sense to do so, it can be an extremely helpful tool for observing your personality patterns in real time.
I encourage you to think of these characters as having unique strengths and weaknesses, and your objective after observing these characters in real-time is to mitigate the downsides while leaning into the advantages.
The question remains, how do I learn to observe these characters?
Firstly, there are five characters, two settings, and two processes. Begin by learning about the settings: they are useful tools for understanding two of the characters, namely, the inner role and the outer role.
The inner setting is your personalized perspective on concepts which are detached from the real world. For some types, it may be an emotional landscape; for other types, it may be a conviction. In the dramaturgy analogy, the inner setting is your “backstage”.
The inner setting or “backstage” is where your inner role, or “true self” resides. Of course, your true self is more than this character representation / puppet mockery of it, but it partially explains the tension you may feel between your inner and outer selves (or, your true self and your persona).
The outer setting is your “frontstage”, where you go to give performances or interact with the outside world. It is also home to your outer role, or persona.
Thus, the outer role is your persona, costume and mask. It’s also the lines you learned and the choreography expected of you.
That’s where the processes come in. There’s both an internalization process, which communicates information from your frontstage self to your backstage self, and an externalization pattern, which does the opposite. The point of these processes is to create a feedback loop which allows you to improve your characters.
For instance, if your frontstage self gives a bad performance, your emotions will be filtered through your internalization pattern to your backstage self. Your backstage self will reflect on the information and then will “rehearse” in the form of your externalization pattern. Your frontstage self will remember the things you rehearsed as mental/emotional/physical shorthand, as dictated by your externalization pattern. In other words, the rehearsed content is remembered and then expressed as part of a type-specific communication pattern.
The remaining three characters are all time orientations, which is to say that they are characters which represent how each type perceives their past, present, and future selves. For the present self, it is a combination of the inner and outer roles into a holistic character. You can thus attempt either a top-down or bottom-up approach to seeing your type structure in real-time. So, you can start by trying to observe your time orientations, then work your way to the roles and settings, or you can go in the opposite direction.