About & FAQ

Official Enneagram is an independent educational guide to the enneagram — the nine types, their wings, arrows, instincts and subtypes — built around one conviction: honest typing beats flattering typing. That's why the tests screen for clinical look-alikes, warn you when your answers look idealized, and tell you when your result is a close call instead of pretending the number settled it.

Where the content comes from

Type descriptions synthesize the common ground of the major enneagram traditions — the Riso–Hudson levels-of-development work, Helen Palmer's narrative tradition, and Beatrice Chestnut's 27-subtype model — favoring motivation-first framing where traditions disagree. The mislabeling guide draws on published clinical descriptions of ADHD, anxiety, mood, autism-spectrum, and trauma-related conditions, written for self-observation rather than diagnosis.

What the tests can and can't do

The tests are serious self-report instruments — motivation-first items, reverse-keyed questions, validity checks, look-alike screening — but they are not normed or clinically validated, and no personality test diagnoses anything. Results are hypotheses to test against sustained self-observation. Details on the tests page.

Frequently asked questions