Gunnerkrigg Court and the Enneagram

[andante]

As far as I know, nobody's made a thread about this before; correct me if I'm wrong...
Have you all heard about the Enneagram? (Knowing this fanbase, some of you probably have )
It's a model of human personality that categorizes people into one of nine personality 'types,' each of which is characterized by a key motivation in life. If you've heard about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, people sometimes use the Enneagram in tandem with that. I wasn't too sure what to make of it when I first heard about it, but it's proven to be startlingly good at explaining people's personalities in-depth. A person's individual enneagram has many parts, including 'wings,' something called an instinctual variant, and a tritype (the three main enneagram types that work together to create your personality.)

Here's some info about the Enneagram:
www.enneagraminstitute.com/intro.asp#.UhATdBa_KZY
www.enneagram.net/tritype.html

Anyway, for those of you who know about/ are interested in the Enneagram (or the Myers-Briggs, I guess), I was wondering how you guys would type the Gunnerkrigg court characters.

This is all I have so far:
Annie: 4-8-7 tritype. Or 4-8-6.
Kat: 5-4-1

Some info on what that means (feel free to disagree! )
www.the16types.info/vbulletin/content.php/246-Tritype-Descriptions-and-Archetypes

[Deleted]

The first problem with archetypal Jungian psychology is that any kind of sliding-scale classification tends to produce the Gaussian distribution. In other words, you may just as well flip 100 pennies, count the number of heads, and assign the result to an arbitrary scale. This is linked to the Barnum effect: self-examination based on vague statements, rather than your proven response to real-life situations, will usually lead to a normative assessment, undermining the entire point.

The second problem will be demonstrated with special thanks / apologies to Eversist and lordofpotatoes, whose avatars I shamefully snatched, and rehosted with the power of Imgur:


This is the same person before and during puberty.

[lordofpotatoes]

Aug 18, 2013 5:51:31 GMT @korba said:

The first problem with archetypal Jungian psychology is that any kind of sliding-scale classification tends to produce the Gaussian distribution. In other words, you may just as well flip 100 pennies, count the number of heads, and assign the result to an arbitrary scale. This is linked to the Barnum effect: self-examination based on vague statements, rather than your proven response to real-life situations, will usually lead to a normative assessment, undermining the entire point.

The second problem will be demonstrated with special thanks / apologies to Eversist and lordofpotatoes, whose avatars I shamefully snatched, and rehosted with the power of Imgur:


This is the same person before and during puberty.

I feel flattered. I got recognized by somebody and they put my av into practical use.

[Per]

The ravages of puberty have made chipper Annie a reality.

[andante]

You have a point. Determining people's personality based on these kinds of tests depends on 1) how well they know themselves and 2) whether or not they are able to tell the truth about themselves. You do have to keep your everyday behavior in mind when self-typing yourself. I've heard of people taking years to self-determine their enneagram type because it was difficult for them to analyze the reasons behind their actions... Whereas a few deeply introspective people I know took the enneagram test once, got a certain result and even I thought it described them pretty well.
The goal of the enneagram, at least by what I understand, is that it isn't meant to imply that one's personality fits neatly into a certain type; rather, it determines what one's prevailing motivation is in life. This may change during the childhood-adolescent years, but it may not. The idea of having a 'tritype' (and the notion that a person's enneagram can change over time) leaves room for mutability.
Wow, small Annie sure looks stoic 
It might just be a matter of Annie having improved her social skills... And the fact that in those two images, she's facing two entirely different situations that would elicit a different response/reaction from her.

[Deleted]

You know what, I tried my hand at this as well:

Parley: 683, the Justice Fighter
Smitty: 925, the Problem Solver
Renard: 146, the Philosopher
Ysengrin: 528, the Strategist
Anja: 741, the Visionary
Donald: 359, the Thinker

They appear to fit them well at first glance, until you show these labels to someone not familiar with Gunnerkrigg Court and ask them to describe these characters — or even better, draw them.

Taking a closer look, can you do Parley justice by calling her a justice fighter? We can't know her mind, but she has expressed that she wants to fight for Smitty and herself, and their shared love, more than anything. Couldn't we call Donald a problem solver, Renard a thinker, and the Headmaster a strategist like Ysengrin? Or is Ysengrin a Justice Fighter, betrayed by his pride? What if two people with different motivations show the same response to different situations? What if two people with identical motivations (say, love and knowledge) carve out different ways to satisfy their desires, like Annie and Kat? What if the incredible psychological insight I demonstrated above can be traced back to this rather laughable Laplace experiment:

SPOILER: Click to show

1) Flip two coins and count the number of heads, then add two.
2) Flip two coins and count the number of heads, then add five.
3) Flip two coins and count the number of heads, then add eight. If the result is ten, make it one.
4) Arrange these three numbers arbitrarily, and look the result up on The16Types.info.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that you have an interest in psychology, and in analyzing your favourite works of art! But this paint-by-random-numbers label generator must fall short of the truth, by exaggerating the differences between like-minded people, and even worse, treating the development of a human being as predetermined, stereotypical and self-contained.

(I've also realized that Justice Fighter Ysengrin would make for a pretty good spin-off comic, starring the Big Bad Wolf as a disgruntled private eye returning for one last mission. Coyote could be his wacky sidekick, and Jones the no-nonsense rival investigator who always beats him to the crime scene by a minute.)

[GK Sierra]

Aug 18, 2013 13:50:54 GMT Per said:

The ravages of puberty have made chipper Annie a reality.

Or maybe she's just gotten tired of moping. It sounds harsh, with her mother dying and her dad being a douche, but at some point you just have to move on.