Searching for the perfect mate? Want to understand your loved ones and yourself better? Need some parenting help?
ENTER >> The Enneagram.
An “Enneagram” is a model of the human psyche, which is taught and understood as a classification of nine interconnected personality types. If you have always been intrigued and fascinated by the psychology of personality, this book will amaze you and quickly become one of your favorites.
If you explore the nine personality types, you can become more self-aware and understand family members, co-workers, friends, and others you encounter more completely.
Are You My Type, Am I Yours is a psychology book that details each personality type’s best and worst attributes and discusses social and relational characteristics and an in-depth personality description of each.
This fun and interesting book takes a witty approach to relationships using the Enneagram types and how they relate to one another. This personality typing system has become extremely popular by explaining why we act as we do while providing an essential tool for insight and self-discovery.
Are You My Type, Am I Yours discusses the nine personality types and how they interact in work, love, friendships, and family. Each chapter is filled with intriguing facts, witty cartoons, easy personality tests, and famous couples of each type to aid in discovering and appreciating your own personality type and those of people you are involved with — or would like to be.
Take one of the personality tests to determine the number and wing you are on the Enneagram to understand better what motivates you. Knowing both the healthy and unhealthy sides of your “type” can be a clear path for emotional growth.
Shadow number in personal development refers to the opposite side of our highest or core values, or those things that are of the greatest importance to us. When we choose to do an activity that is fulfilling to us, our core values and shadow values are being fulfilled.
Most people are unaware of what their shadow values are and how they are influencing their behavior.
Here are the shadow values that everyone possesses on some level.
- Attention
- Being unique, special, or different
- Belonging
- Being accepted by, connected to, or feeling a part of something
- Control
- Being able to influence your situation, surroundings, yourself, and others
- Money
- Being wealthy and having the power to do or have whatever you desire
- Sexuality
- Being able to express your sexual desires or preferences without shame
- Superiority
- Being right, being better than yourself and others
- Validation
- Being important, worthy, or good enough
Many books discussing the Enneagram personality types focus on personal growth and self-understanding, but few focus on how the Enneagram helps people with different personality types get along.
This easy-to-read, illustrated book goes into detail about the likes and dislikes of each personality type, which types are most likely to pair up romantically, how partners, friends, and co-workers can best support people with different personality types.
Let’s discuss the nine different personality types — see if you can pick out the one that most closely resembles you!
- The Achiever
- Motivated by the need to achieve success, be productive, and avoid failure.
- These personalities are driven, success-oriented, pragmatic, and image-conscious.
- Their major goal is to feel worthwhile and valuable.
- Achievers believe in themselves and strive to become “somebody” by developing their capabilities and talents.
- The Adventurer
- Motivated by the desire to be happy, engage in fun things, contribute to the world, and avoid suffering and pain.
- This person is introverted, observant, and feeling.
- They tend to have open minds and approach life, new experiences, and people with grounded warmth.
- The Asserter
- Motivated by the desire to be strong and self-reliant, make an impact on the world, avoid appearing weak.
- Powerful, protective, and resourceful
- Their temperament is inspiring to others.
- Their personal strengths definitely improve others’ lives.
- The Helper
- Motivated by a need to be appreciated and loved and expresses positive feelings towards others.
- Kind, generous, warm-hearted, and loving
- In times of unhealth, can be codependent, manipulative, or people-pleasing.
- The Observer
- Motivated by the need to know everything, understand the universe, be self-sufficient and left alone, avoid not answering or looking foolish.
- Insightful, independent, and innovative
- Typically ahead of their time, they see things in new and unique ways, concentrate on complex issues with laser-like focus.
- The Peacemaker
- Motivated by the wish to keep the peace, avoid conflict and merge with others
- People-pleaser, friendly, agreeable, cooperative, adaptable, trusting, empathetic, and easy-going
- They go with the flow and desire peace and harmony
- Are afraid of chaos, separation, and conflict.
- The Perfectionist
- This type is driven to live life the correct way, to improve himself/herself and others, and avoids anger.
- They are rational and principled, purposeful, and self-controlled, often to the point of being overly critical of others and themselves.
- Advocates of change, have a desire to be useful and strive to improve.
- The Questioner
- Motivated by the desire for security, to feel taken care of, and confront their fears
- Hard-working, reliable, committed, yet haunted by self-doubt
- Very faithful to people who matter
- Excellent at troubleshooting and anticipating challenges
- Fanatically loyal to their ideas, systems, and beliefs.
- The Romantic
- Motivated by the need to understand the feelings of others and the meaning of life and avoid being ordinary.
- They believe they can find the love or situation that is special, unique, and fulfilling.
- Idealistic, feels things deeply, empathetic, and authentic.
- Dramatic, moody, occasionally self-absorbed
Some of my best memes on the enneagram:
If you want a greater understanding of yourself and your relationships, this book can help. It teaches how to communicate with others and helps to build an effective system to build or enhance your business or personal relationships.
A discussion of what each personality type is looking for in a relationship and how they interact together. Also, there is a discussion on how the Enneagram correlates to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is a questionnaire designed to make psychological types useful and understandable.
The authors of this terrific book are experts in the Enneagram.
For over 25 years, Renee Baron has been in private practice. She has taught countless seminars and workshops on the value of understanding your personality type. She uses the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs Indicator personality assessments to give readers a practical yet powerful tool to understand their own behavior and the behavior of others. Her books have been published in 17 countries.
Elizabeth Wagele is a leading expert and one of the most popular authors on the Enneagram. She is a graduate of Berkeley at the University of California and continuously blogs about personalities and other interesting subjects.
Enneagram psychology is both a fascinating and accurate view of human behavior, personality, and motivation. This book discusses these things with knowledge, humor, and insight. Become more self-aware, build self-esteem, and learn to accept yourself by gaining insight into your personality type this book will provide.
I recommend this book to all my friends and family to help improve current relationships with loved ones, friends, and co-workers while providing knowledge about relationships yet to be developed.
You can take the Enneagram Test online here.
There are many fascinating elements of the Enneagram to consider that can affect the expression of a person’s personality. Start with questions like: Who is this person? What do they want? What will they do to get it? What will they do if they don’t get it? How do they see the world? And most importantly: who will this person become through the journey?
Below is the best video I found on the enneagram, enjoy:
I see a problem with the whole theory as I know my daughter fits into 7 of the 9, How do you deal with something like that. I know that we all have personality quirks and sometimes it is better not to deal with someone that is so different from you. I just am not sure that people can be defined so easily. We are after all complex and can change where on this chart we fall within the blink of an eye. Or as rapid as a brainwave can put out a signal to react.
Robert, in a worst case scenario, if you get nothing from the enneagram, I think a result of self inquiry, and introspection like this, leads to becoming a more compassionate person. The enneagram is another tool, like astrology, which helps people to become more aware of their subtle tendencies. Instead of having a “my way or the highway” approach, etc. Being able to “relate” to people is a great skill to have in business because you can make some educated guesses with regards to getting along with others. You can consider the needs of all parties involved, and be polite with certain types of personalities. I don’t think this is about changing yourself to fit in with someone else’s personality, but rather, looking at a situation from a compassionate viewpoint, in which you can consider everyone’s needs.
As much as I love personality tests (and believe that they can be incredibly useful), I think that we should try to refrain from putting ourselves and others into such strict boxes. People are really complex creatures, and oftentimes contradicting, so most fit into more than one category. Additionally, people evolve over time, shifting between labels and types. That being said, there’s no harm in having a little bit of fun! Personality quizzes are a great way to get to know ourselves, to analyze our habits, behaviors, likes, and wants. Out of curiosity, what’s your personality type?
I love information on personalities. I have heard of the Enneagram personality types before. I have done many different personality tests, more for fun, curiously, and seeing how accurate they are. While most of us can fit into multiple categories, I believe it does help us to know ourselves better. I liked reading the different shadow values; I can see myself in both superiority and validation. I believe the more we know about ourselves, the easier it is to work on ourselves. I am going to look for this book so that I can read it.
I have never heard of the Enneagram prior to reading your post, but I do find it to be very intriguing. I’ve enjoyed learning about the aspects of the psyche in high school and found that getting to know people helped me to better understand and learn about different personalities. Prior to taking the test through the link provided, I felt I most resembled an adventurer with a piece of each personality type. The test resulted in type 2 personality, or the helper, which is not at all surprising. I took both tests to see if they would yield the same result and they did: Type 2 with 2w1.
After reading your post and exploring the tests and websites, I am very interested in reading this book and learning more about the personality types. I think it would help me with my husband, my children when they are older, and customers at work.
There are a lot of different types of personality quizzes and psychological type tests out there. I find myself being very skeptical of anything that tries to categorize humans into neat little boxes. Everyone is unique and complicated in their own way. The one thing I like about the Enneagram test is that it takes this into account. This test will show you how you are spread across each personality type. This makes a lot more sense to me as not one person is exactly one type of way in every situation. We may have more prevalent behaviors and thought patterns that are more influential than others, but that doesn’t mean that is who we are. I appreciate that the Enneagram test paints an all-encompassing picture rather than shoving people into neat little boxes.
I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it’s great to see a self-help book that finally addresses the “shadow side” of personality. Most mainstream books on the topic would sooner ignore the less desirable traits in favour of building up already established positive ones. They don’t take into account that true improvement comes from integrating both sides of ourselves. It’s also great to see a self-help book that discusses how the reader’s personality relates to the wider world around them. Self-improvement doesn’t mean much if it can’t effectively be used in practical day to day interactions with others.
On the flip-side, the descriptions listed in the post sound very generic; like something you would read in a newspaper “horoscope.” Like another commenter noted, I easily fit into five different categories based off their descriptions. It almost feels like traditional personality categories, for example: Types A-D, have been broken into new main classifications instead of exploring them as sub-categories within a larger context. I’m curious if the book goes into overlapping groups, or if it tries to focus solely on trying to pin the reader to just one personality type.
This book sounds like an interesting read, however, and seems like a worth-while addition to a home library.
~Cory S.
Hello, Taylor,
I have always been a fan of Carl Jung and the innovative work he has done with personality types. As a writer, studying the archetypes is extremely beneficial beyond understanding my own personal psychology as it is vital to character development. One of my favorite books is “Man with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. I think this book is right up my alley, and I find it interesting that it discusses the “shadow” aspects of the different personality types. This is the first book I’ve heard of that analyzes how the different personalities interact, and I can see how valuable that would be not only for parenting and romantic partnerships but networking in general.
I’m interested in the theories behind the Enneagram personality types. I consider myself to fall under the perfectionist, but ideally, I think that most people can have multiple traits that put them in different categories. I’m going to see if I can find ‘Are You My Type, Am I Yours’ on audiobook since I have a hard time focusing when reading, which also puts me in another category!
I can also use this to evaluate my spouse and friends to see what communication skills can be used to enhance our relationships.
Books like these are great, I love any time something can get people more into The Enneagram. However, it may overlook the fact that there is no “perfect” or “bad” match between Enneagrams. In reality any pairing can work, but what truly matters is not which type you are but whether you are a healthy version of that type. Furthermore, personalities are complex and people are usually a summary of at least two to three different Enneagrams. In fact, Enneagrams can shift. My top Enneagram recently changed and I have friends who have also had their Enneagram change. So it’s important to look closer than surface level, even when reading and just starting to get into the Enneagram. I also think the triads (shame, anger, and fear) are important to look into though they are not mentioned in this book it seems. It’s also intriguing how many different names I’ve seen for each Enneagram. For example here one is named “The Adventurer” but I’ve seen it called “The Enthusiast.” I believe that whether one gets along with another can also be more complicated than a book can really capture since wings can also be taken into account. It’s also important to include how challenging facing your Enneagram can be.
I definitely just ordered this book on Amazon! You are correct that most books just go into the growth issues of personalities where as this will address interpersonal growth and communication. I plan to start my Masters soon in psychology so this book is a great introduction of many I’m sure. I definitely am the perfectionists with a sprinkle of the helper. It’s been an ongoing process trying to get better being overly critical of myself and others to a fault. This was a great book review and I’m excited to dive into this read. Hope to come back to this article after I finish the read to discuss my thoughts in depth mor with you Taylor!
Hey Taylor. The Enneagram is an interesting concept, considering it’s supposed to solidify your character down to the core. It’s a test that’s centuries old, and it still holds up.
I’ve found as a Romantic (or a 4w3) that the deep emotional connection can both be a strength and a downfall. A personal connection has always been important to me, so it’s cool to see this book take all of this and make it connect. I’m going to share this with friends of the Enneagram. They will love it.
This theory sounds like it could go hand in hand with the 5 languages of love, having a deeper understanding of another you care about or the people you are around often, is essential. If possible, adding in a dash of various methods that can create a solid relationship of any kind, professional or personal and knowing yourself when striving for growth is essential. Exploring this Enneagram has already taught me multiple things, one is, there are sub categories (personalities) that each type falls under. There are multiple different books out there on this topic and the research appears to be never-ending, which is why I am intrigued by it. I have always been into various forms of psychology, personality types is a subject I haven’t really researched yet. I will definitely be looking into this book along with others on the Enneagram theory and other personality types. Thanks for this review!
The book does have a kind of “pop-psychology” feel to it, but I like how it dumbs down the complex language of the enneagram and makes it simple for people to understand. If you like the Enneagram and want to learn more about how your number relates to other types, definitely get this book! It doesn’t have a ton of in-depth information about the different types, so I would recommend this as a book #2. But this is one of my favorite books because it helps you understand your type in relationship with others. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s at all about being the “right type” for someone, but rather, becoming a well rounded individual who is “everyone’s type” because you can relate to people on so many different levels. I’ve taken the enneagram test a dozen times, and it always says I am type 9, the peacekeeper. 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing your review on this book! After reading this post, I would say that I would lean more towards The Adventurer. I am someone who is motivated by happiness and I have a very open mind! I can definitely see what category some of my family members and coworkers may fall in. This has helped me to identify how to approach those types of personalities and I would love to read more!
I bought this book because I find Enneagram psychology a fascinating and accurate perspective on human behavior, motivation and personality, and thus far my collection has been limited to works that provide an introduction to the Enneagram and a general analysis of each of the nine types. I like how the book is centered around ideas like; what other types have to say about a type, the types each type is most likely to choose/be chosen by, and what each type is/is not looking for in a relationship.
p.s. rather than guessing at what type you are, you can take the test here: https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/dotest 🙂
I’ve read books about Enneagram and many other books that help you identify your personality type and self-reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. What sounds really interesting about this book is how you can you use your personality type to get along with others who may have the same of different personality types.
I also think any sort of Enneagram book can very helpful for any sort of creative writer or artist in crafting characters or ideas, and how their creative work will relate to different types of audiences.
I’ve spent years studying the Enneagram and taking it very seriously. In its straightforward way of illustrating forms on a surface level, this book is charming and adorable. Even for serious scholars, the cartoons catch the nature of the nine states and make learning the Enneagram enjoyable and simple!