Gurdjieff
The Enneagram moves into the 19th century
Gurjieff’s Typology: Three Kinds of Humans
The next chapter in the story of the Enneagram centers is about Gurdjieff’s model of human structure and development.
George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866? - 1949) is credited with introducing the Enneagram symbol to the western world during the early 1900s. Not unlike Evagrius, Gurdjieff worked with inherited spiritual theory and practices to devise a new philosophy of the human condition and new ways to improve that condition. Gurdjieff’s philosophy relied heavily on the Enneagram symbol as a source of knowledge and understanding.
Gurdjieff observed that historically there had been three different pathways available to people who were attempting to progress spiritually. Gurdjieff described the way of the fakir, who works with the physical body; the monk, who works with emotions; and the yogi, who works with thoughts. Building on this typology of three different developmental paths, Gurdjieff described a pattern of spiritual progression in which a person begins as “Man 1” who experiences themself in terms of the physical world; “Man 2”, who experiences themself as existing in the emotional world; and “Man 3”, who experiences themself as existing in the world of thoughts.1
From a Tripartite Soul to a Three Brained Human
Where Evagrius’s model of the human structure, and by extension, the human condition, was organized around the construct of a tripartite soul, Gurdjieff’s model of the human structure was organized around the construct of a three-brained human.
Describing Gurdjieff’s typology of three different kinds of humans Riordan writes, “One person may depend more on his head than on his heart, for example, while another may allow emotion to sway him where logic fails. Everyone is born with one ‘brain’ predisposed to predominant over the other two… Man Number One has his center of gravity in moving and instinctive functions, Man Number Two gives more weight to feelings, and Man Number Three bases his actions on his knowledge or theoretical perspective” (p 297)2.
Ouspensky (1949) quotes Gurdjieff as explaining, “… people differ very much in the way they feel their functions… some perceive chiefly through their mind, others through their feeling, and others through sensation” (p 107).3
A Three Storied Factory
Gurdjieff conceived of this three-brain structure as analogous to a factory, with each brain corresponding to a story in the factory:
“These three brains correspond, like stories in a building (and in particular, a food factory), to three distinct levels of function. The upper story is the intellectual center, the middle story contains the emotional center, and the lower story is the locus of control for three functions which sometimes work independently but often do not. These are the moving center, the instinct center and the sexual center. In addition to these five centers, which are operative in every normal person, there are two more centers which, although they are perfectly formed and always functioning, have no connection to the others unless one is intentionally and skillfully made. These are the higher intellectual center in the top story and the higher emotional center in the middle story” (p 297).4
The diagram below is adapted from Riordan (p 298):5
Mapping Gurdjieff’s three-brain model onto the contemporary Enneagram
The diagram below represents my own mapping of Gurdjieff’s model of the human structure onto the inner triangle of the contemporary Enneagram. As with the work of Evagrius, I am not aware of any research showing that Gurdjieff depicted his typology of three types of man in terms of the inner triangle of the Enneagram.
Sense of Movement Among the Centers in Gurdjieff’s model
As we saw with Evagrius’s model, there is also a sense of movement among the centers in Gurdjieff’s description of interactions among the three brains.
For example, Ouspensky quotes Gurdjieff as saying:
“At the same time as we watch the work of the centers we shall observe, side by side with their right working, their wrong working, that is, the working of one center for another: the attempts of the thinking center to feel or to pretend that it feels, the attempts of the emotional center to think, the attempts of the moving center to think and feel…Each center strives… to pass its work on to another and, at the same time, it strives to do the work of another center for which it is not fitted” (p 109).6
Comparing the Evagrian and Gurdjieffian Models
For Evagrius, all people have the same tripartite soul consisting of thumos, epithumia, and nous. Rather than categorizing people, Evagrius's typology categorized logisimoi - the external, generic thoughts that plagued humans and kept them from following through on their heartfelt intentions.
For Gurdjieff, the external world is the same for all humans in that the same forces affect all people equally but the internal world is different for each person depending on which of the three brains dominates their structure.
With Gurdjieff's typology, we see a move from an emphasis on interpersonal struggle (between humans and logisimoi) to an intrapersonal struggle (among the three brains). Evagrius’s model envisioned a tripartite human soul engaging with external logisimoi. Gurdjieff’s model envisioned a three-brained human in struggle with itself. This shift in orientation from inter-relational conflicts to intra-relational conflicts sets the stage for the next model of the Enneagram we will consider, that of Oscar Ichazo.
“Gurdjieff” by Kathleen Riordan, in Transpersonal Psychologies, edited by Charles T. Tart, Harper & Row, NY, 1975, pp 281 – 328.
K. Riordan, ibid, 1.
P.D. Ouspensky (1949). In search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an unknown teaching. Harcourt, Inc.
K. Riordan, ibid, 1.
K. Riordan, ibid, 1.
P.D. Ouspenskky, ibid, 3.