PERSONALITY DYNAMICS

TO ADVANCE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF YOURSELF AND THOSE VERY CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS, EVEN YOUR CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN, AND YOUR SPOUSE, THIS IS MIGHTY GOOD STUFF.

We are a father-son team.  We play well together, and we know each other well.  Our knowledge is somewhat intuitive, mostly experiential, and all built around our grasp of personality issues.  Though Matt is a trained and experienced therapist, we owe most of our savvy to our mutual understanding of the Enneagram and our consistent application of its insights.  It applies to our family even in assessing those random and sometimes challenging encounters with an earth full of bent humans.

The Enneagram (enne = 9 in Greek, the number of categories that motivate behaviors) is easily understood and with a little study and practice can be applied by otherwise untrained laypersons.   It began as a biblically based personality structuring by desert monastic fathers of Egypt in the very early Church.  It migrated over the centuries through religious variations around the world and has been refined in recent years by secular psychiatrists who have popularized it.  We deal with this here in limited but useful detail.  We have made exciting discoveries about how our Sovereign God-Creator designed both spiritual gifts and fruits of the Spirit in executing His carefully crafted personal design on our lives.  These discoveries are truly amazing.

Until we develop this further here, we offer two resources.  No, let's make it three.  First is the simplest and shortest (cheapest, too) book.  It is perfect as a basic yet thorough text.  Be warned: This can be wonderfully addictive (odd advice for a therapist, eh?).  Understanding who you are, then accepting that person, are the first steps to becoming the healthy you.  Healthy relationships at all levels bud from there.  If you care to go to the "Readin'" section you can link to Amazon.  Used, they're $3 to $8.  Gary and Matt order them in quantity:  The Essential Enneagram (Daniels and Price).  Google it or go to Half.com.

Second is a simple online site.  Several can be Googled.  We post on our internal link, below, the most recognized site.  It provides a test and an explanation.  Note the disclaimers.  The limitations here are same as living in the fast food lane.  Seems filling, but it's not all that good for you.  Use this as your primer and then order from among the dozen good laymen books or delve further in to the Russo site.

Then, you can take it more seriously and, well,  "more better."  Gary and wife, Carolyn, invited Marilyn Vancil of Seattle down to their church for a weekend.  She provided an astounding integration of the fundamentals of faith and the application of the Enneagram in a half dozen presentations reinforced by her own guide, Guide to a Biblical Application of the Enneagram. Gary and Carolyn followed with six weekly couples' studies of both The Essential Enneagam, above, and John Eldredge's Sacred Romance. The results were absolutely transformed couples, Carolyn and Gary included.

So, okay, what does this have to do with being a good father, generational fathering at that.  Understanding which of the basic motivations dominate yourself, your father or son, and your grandchildren--and don't forget spouses--is an absolutely essential tool in virtually all relationship; the more significant the relationship, the more vital to use all assets available.  It's like discovering the "ranch tool".  You can repair a fence without it, but once you use it, you'll not leave the barn without it.

Head over to Ranch Tool if you'd like to take the basic test.  It gives you the option of taking the full test at a small cost if the concept grabs you.  You'll like it.