10 Neurotic Needs

The Original Enneagram (but with a less mystical number involving no infinitely-repeating digits or Sufism):

1. The neurotic need for affection and approval (see The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Chapter 6, on the need for affection):

• Indiscriminate need to please others and to be liked and approved of by others;
• Automatic living up to the expectations of others;
• Center of gravity in others and not in self, with their wishes and opinions the only thing that counts;
• Dread of self-assertion;
• Dread of hostility on the part of others or of hostile feelings within self.

2. The neurotic need for a "partner" who will take over one's life (see New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Chapter 15, on masochism, and Fromm's Escape from Freedom, Chapter 5, on authoritarianism; also the example given below in Chapter 8):

• Center of gravity entirely in the "partner," who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil, his successful manipulation becoming the predominant task;
• Overvaluation of "love" because "love" is supposed to solve all problems;
• Dread of desertion;
• Dread of being alone.

3. The neurotic need to restrict one's life within narrow borders:

• Necessity to be undemanding and contented with little, and to restrict ambitions and wishes for material things;
• Necessity to remain inconspicuous and to take second place;
• Belittling of existing faculties and potentialities, with modesty the supreme value;
• Urge to save rather than to spend;
• Dread of making any demands;
• Dread of having or asserting expansive wishes.

4. The neurotic need for power (see The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Chapter 10, on the need for power, prestige, and possession):

• Domination over others craved for its own sake;
• Devotion to cause, duty, responsibility, though playing some part, not the driving force;
• Essential disrespect for others, their individuality, their dignity, their feelings, the only concern being their subordination;
• Great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved;
• Indiscriminate adoration of strength and contempt for weakness;
• Dread of uncontrollable situations;
• Dread of helplessness.

5. The neurotic need to exploit others and by hook or crook get the better of them:

• Others evaluated primarily according to whether or not they can be exploited or made use of;
• Various foci of exploitation--money (bargaining amounts to a passion), ideas, sexuality, feelings;
• Pride in exploitative skill;
• Dread of being exploited and thus of being "stupid."

6. The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige (may or may not be combined with a craving for power):

• All things--inanimate objects, money, persons, one's own qualities, activities, and feelings--evaluated only according to their prestige value;
• Self-evaluation entirely dependent on nature of public acceptance;
• Differences as to use of traditional or rebellious ways of inciting envy or admiration;
• Dread of losing caste ("humiliation"), whether through external circumstances or through factors from within.

7. The neurotic need for personal admiration:

• Inflated image of self (narcissism);
• Need to be admired not for what one possesses or presents in the public eye but for the imagined self;
• Self-evaluation dependent on living up to this image and on admiration of it by others;
• Dread of losing admiration ("humiliation").

8. The neurotic ambition for personal achievement:

• Need to surpass others not through what one presents or is but through one's activities;
• Self-evaluation dependent on being the very best--lover, sportsman, writer, worker--particularly in one's own mind, recognition by others being vital too, however, and its absence resented;
• Admixture of destructive tendencies (toward the defeat of others) never lacking but varying in intensity;
• Relentless driving of self to greater achievements, though with pervasive anxiety;
• Dread of failure ("humiliation").

9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence:

• Necessity never to need anybody, or to yield to any influence, or to be tied down to anything, any closeness involving the danger of enslavement;
• Distance and separateness the only source of security;
• Dread of needing others, of ties, of closeness, of love.

10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability (see New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Chapter 13, on the super-ego, and Escape from Freedom, Chapter 5, on automaton conformity):

• Relentless driving for perfection;
• Rumination and self-recriminations regarding possible flaws;
• Feelings of superiority over others because of being perfect;
• Dread of finding flaws within self or of making mistakes;
• Dread of criticism or reproaches.

http://www.ptypes.com/neurotic_needs.html


Correlations (N = Neurotic Need, E = Enneagram):

N1 - 9w1, So/Sx
N2 - Sx/Sp, Sx 6w7, Sx 4w3
N3 - Sp/So, Sp 6w5, Sp 1
N4 - E8, So 5 (4a), So 4w5 (4b)
N5 - Sp 7w8, Sp 8, Sp/Sx 3
N6 - 3w4, So 4
N7 - 3w4 and Sp-last or So/Sp
N8 - So/Sp, So 1, 3, 4 ("fantasy self")
N9 - Sp/Sx 5, Sp/Sx 9
N10 - E1


Notice this also explains the tritypes and instincts you just don't see (like how I've never seen anyone self-type or be typed by others as 2-7-1 tritype, even though 2-6-1 is extremely common).