Where is the proof?

Personality typology systems are often criticised along the lines of 'where is the scientific proof?' but, wait a minute, how do you scientifically test personality? It is believed that we are born with a temperament and that this temperament dictates how we deal with the circumstances of our early lives and how our personality (or ego) develops, but as we cannot ask babies what their temperament is, we have to use observation and collect those findings. One example of this is the New York Longitudinal Study by Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess who studied the temperaments of babies from the 1950's through to the mid 1970's.

In addition, any personality typology system is, if you think about it, only as accurate as the self-awareness of the people who are doing it. We like to think that we are self-aware and yet we all know, for example, that what people say and what they actually do can be two quite different things. We are all born with no idea of who we are. No-one can tell us as who we are as they don't know either and as no-one else is me, we have to find out for ourselves. We pick up clues as we go along but those clues are viewed through the lens of our own personality.

The Enneagram helps us to understand the nature of our own lens and how it expresses itself. It is the result of years of observation of human behaviour and discussion with people willing to open up about their fears, their desires, how they feel, think and act as well as through the constant refining of questionnaires about attitudes, preferences etc. and the feedback that they generate. The Enneagram teaches us how we perceive ourselves and how we approach life - which amounts to a sort of world view and affects the way we react to everything that happens to us. Personality is scientific, in a way, because - as the Enneagram teaches us - it has a structure to it. But how do you scientifically prove personality?