Problem Solving, the Brain, and the Enneagram [Matt Schlegel]

On the topic of problem solving and the brain, I want to bring to your attention a fascinating book called Personality and the Brain written by a local computer scientist and entrepreneur, Peter Savich. Peter became interested in the Enneagram and realized that there must be a link between how the brain operates and the core modality described by the Enneagram. His book makes a very compelling case for this link.

Peter asserts that there are two parts of the brain that drive personality, an old brain component, the amygdala, and a new brain component, the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The amygdala is in essence the fear processor, and the PFC is the optimism/pessimism processor. He goes on to describe how each of these brain components has a right side and a left side, corresponding with the right side and left side of your brain. And, each half invokes dominant characteristics. For instance, one side of your amygdala is your fear-aware processor (the flight processor) and the other is your fear-unaware processor (the fight processor). Likewise, one side of the PFC is your optimism processor (glass half full) and one side is your pessimism processor (glass half empty).

Just like there are 3 states of handedness, right-handed, left-handed or ambidextrous, Peter asserts that both the amygdala and the PFC have three dominant modal states, and it is the combination of these states that give us the 9 states of the Enneagram. How cool is that! He goes on to examine studies from the body of neuroscience literature to show how pathologies in these brain components accentuate or diminish the behaviors that map to the behaviors described by the Enneagram, thereby making a very compelling case for connecting the dots between the brain and the Enneagram. I cannot thank Peter enough for developing and publishing this fascinating thesis.

With the help of this understanding, we are able to connect the dots from 1) a problem-solving process described by the Enneagram, to 2) the behaviors and capabilities important for each phase of that problem-solving process, to 3) our own unique set of behaviors and capabilities and, finally, to 4) our brain which governs those behaviors and capabilities. Just like the brain determines whether we end up being right-handed or left-handed, it also plays an important role in how we contribute to the problem-solving process.
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According to Peter Savich’s framework, Matt Schlegel has an amygdala that is fear-aware dominant and a prefrontal cortex that is pessimistic processor dominant. This makes Matt uniquely suited for that part of the problem-solving process he characterizes as “finding the path of least danger.”
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