Enneagram Tritype: One Type From Each Center

New to the three centers? The enneagram triads article explains them first, and the enneagram of personality overview covers the nine types.

What is an enneagram tritype?

The Enneagram groups its nine types into three centers of intelligence: the gut center (types 8, 9 and 1), the heart center (types 2, 3 and 4) and the head center (types 5, 6 and 7). The tritype model says that everyone uses one type from each center, not only their core type.^[1] Your core type is one of the three; the other two are the types you reach for when you work through the other two centers.

So a person whose core type is Type 4 might, for example, meet anger and boundaries the way a Type 9 does and approach thinking and fear the way a Type 5 does. That combination is written as a tritype.

Where the tritype idea comes from

The concept was coined by Katherine Chernick Fauvre and grew out of her qualitative research in 1994.^[1] She describes 27 tritypes and uses the name Tritype as a registered trademark, so this article uses the word only descriptively. Tritype is her extension of the Enneagram; it is not part of every teacher’s system, and many introductions to the enneagram of personality do not mention it.^[2]

How tritype notation works

A tritype is written as three numbers, one per center, with the core type first and the other two in the order you use them most.^[1] A tritype of 4-5-9 means core Type 4, then Type 5 from the head center, then Type 9 from the gut center. Many people write it without hyphens, as 459.

Because the order matters, 4-5-9 and 5-4-9 describe different people: the first has a core Four, the second a core Five. The set of three types is the same, the lead type is not.

How many tritypes are there?

There are 27 tritypes if you only count which type a person has in each center: three possible types in the gut center, times three in the heart center, times three in the head center.^[1] Each of those 27 sets can be ordered in different ways, which is how the same three types can show up as quite different people.

How do I find my tritype?

Start with your core type, then look at the two centers it does not belong to. In each of them, ask which of the three types you recognize most in yourself, not which one you admire. The three type profiles for each center are the best place to compare.

A tritype test can speed this up. The free Ninelings test scores all nine types, so it can show a suggested tritype with your result: the strongest type in each center, core first. If two types in one center score exactly the same, the test shows no tritype rather than picking one at random.

Tritype, wings and arrows

The tritype is easy to confuse with other parts of the system. Wings are the two types next to your core type on the circle. Arrows describe the types you move toward in growth and under stress. The tritype is a third idea: one type from each center, used together. A person can talk about all three at once, for example a 4w5 with a 4-5-9 tritype.

What the tritype can and cannot tell you

The tritype meaning most people find useful is practical: it explains why two people with the same core type can handle anger, image or fear so differently. It is still a newer and less widely taught layer than the core types, and like the rest of the Enneagram it is a framework for reflection, not a scientifically validated measure.^[3] The enneagram criticism article looks at what the evidence does and does not support.