Anyone have experience with Enneagrams?

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Stagg737

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Have a patient who recently started seeing a therapist and they had him fill out an Enneagram. He asked me if I wanted it sent to us and I said sure. I haven't heard of it before and with a quick google seems like it's basically another Meyers-Briggs-like conceptualization with more basis in pop-psychology than actual therapy. Was curious if anyone had seen any utility for this or even had any knowledge of it at all.
 
I did one. I felt very known. It cost $19 to get the full report and my first thought was, "I am never a person who pays for online quizzes let alone one who would have done an online quiz, but what they wrote already resonated so much more than anything I have felt in therapy which costs (well I don't want to say how much mine costs, but more than 150) that why wouldn't I pay for something valuable to me?"

Still ended up not paying the $19 because i thought I got enough of the gist from the preview part of the results. Just being asked questions is certainly much more structured than anything I have done in years and was very focusing.

I don't really care if it's bogus or whatever. I've done so many bogus things that have costs thousands through doctors (well thousands for my insurance).

"It doesn't matter if it's true. It only matters if it's useful."

I'm not going to hold an online quiz to a higher standard than a lot of medicine holds itself to, so I embraced it. Even though I was still too cheap to shell out the $19.
 
Have a patient who recently started seeing a therapist and they had him fill out an Enneagram. He asked me if I wanted it sent to us and I said sure. I haven't heard of it before and with a quick google seems like it's basically another Meyers-Briggs-like conceptualization with more basis in pop-psychology than actual therapy. Was curious if anyone had seen any utility for this or even had any knowledge of it at all.

Question is if it’s any more useful than the big 5
 
No personal experience, but if you listen to podcasts, Jimmy Turner of Physician Philosopher and Money Meets Medicine fame has spoken about his results on his shows. Apparently, he was first exposed to it when he went to see a career/life coach.
 
It’s just another way to understand oneself. Is it helpful? For some. Is it valid? Who cares.
 
It helps someone understand themself the same way that astrology helps someone understand themself. We care because it is marketing itself as a psychologically based, empirical measure, when it is far from it. We should always care when someone tries to practice in our field using pseudoscience. It'd be like you guys being all proud of Daniel Amen, and not caring about what hes doing.
 
I'm not completely dismissive of stuff like the Myers Briggs. I think an issue is whether the person taking the test can accurately look at themselves and answer the questions appropriately. I think the actual types delineated aren't bogus or over generalized to where anyone reading them would think they apply to them (like a horoscope).

Personally, finding out my MB type was actually super insightful and a useful endeavor.

I find it hard to get too hung up on validity when a lot of our specialty is based on the DSM.
 
I'm not completely dismissive of stuff like the Myers Briggs. I think an issue is whether the person taking the test can accurately look at themselves and answer the questions appropriately. I think the actual types delineated aren't bogus or over generalized to where anyone reading them would think they apply to them (like a horoscope).

Personally, finding out my MB type was actually super insightful and a useful endeavor.

I find it hard to get too hung up on validity when a lot of our specialty is based on the DSM.

The DSM is its own bag of worms, but we shouldn't use its empirical shortcomings to excuse the empirical shortcomings of other measures which purport to be psychological in nature. As far as the MBTI, it's only loosely based on its literature base, and even then, the psychometric properties are terrible. Notwithstanding the issues with test-retest reliability, it also attempts to dichotomize continuous variables, and even then reports them in such a vague way as to be interpretable by all. It literally relies on the same mind tricks that astrology and psychics rely on to fool people.
 
Do you feel the same way about astrology then? Either how Scorpios are doing any given day or making decisions based on just how retrograde Venus is.
Is astrology any more valid than psychoanalytic theory? If someone gets their tarot cards read and it helps them, great.
 
The DSM is its own bag of worms, but we shouldn't use its empirical shortcomings to excuse the empirical shortcomings of other measures which purport to be psychological in nature. As far as the MBTI, it's only loosely based on its literature base, and even then, the psychometric properties are terrible. Notwithstanding the issues with test-retest reliability, it also attempts to dichotomize continuous variables, and even then reports them in such a vague way as to be interpretable by all. It literally relies on the same mind tricks that astrology and psychics rely on to fool people.
Yeah, you're right. I lost the overall context: we are talking about a professional using this in a therapeutic setting. So I agree with your take on the potential damage to the field.
 
In the teens, the Rorschach was a parlor game, In the 40s, 50s and 60s...it was the "bees-nees." We are 70 years later and no-one is for the better, so far as I can tell?

Maybe we could all use a good dose of scientific thinking to figure this one out? It is/should be utterly embarrassing that this would come out on a professional Psychiatry practice forum/board in 2021.
 
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In the teens, the Rorschach was a parlor game, In the 40s, 50s and 60s...it was the "bees-nees." We are 70 years later and no-one is for the better, so far as I can tell?

Maybe we could all use a good dose of scientific thinking to figure this one out? It is/should be utterly embarrassing that this would come out on a professional Psychiatry practice forum/board in 2021.

Why? Identifying and educating people on pseudo-scientific tests or treatments should be a part of all higher education, especially those directly treating people. I'm more comforted than annoyed that I hadn't heard of this before this week and the fact that this forum is relatively unfamiliar with it seems like a good thing.
 
Is astrology any more valid than psychoanalytic theory? If someone gets their tarot cards read and it helps them, great.
Well I'm certainly not suggesting we outlaw tarot cards and drive business into backalley readings. There is, however, a huge difference between people who present themselves as diviners and those who are licensed clinicians, usually with doctorate degrees, offering up pseudoscience. I get a little sick to my stomach thinking of how many lives have been harmed or lost by the Dr. Oz's of the world and I assure you if his credentials were based out of a tiki hut instead of being a surgeon, his trajectory would have been very different.
 
Well I'm certainly not suggesting we outlaw tarot cards and drive business into backalley readings. There is, however, a huge difference between people who present themselves as diviners and those who are licensed clinicians, usually with doctorate degrees, offering up pseudoscience. I get a little sick to my stomach thinking of how many lives have been harmed or lost by the Dr. Oz's of the world and I assure you if his credentials were based out of a tiki hut instead of being a surgeon, his trajectory would have been very different.

Exactly. I don't care if people want to waste money and time on MBTI or enneagrams. But, I do get riled up when someone is claiming to be a mental healthcare practitioner using it in a treatment context. That looks bad on the field as a whole. We don't need to be rushing to the bottom of integrity here, otherwise we'll all be "life coaches" soon, peddling whatever the hot new buzzword filled piece of snakeoil is prominent.
 
Well I'm certainly not suggesting we outlaw tarot cards and drive business into backalley readings. There is, however, a huge difference between people who present themselves as diviners and those who are licensed clinicians, usually with doctorate degrees, offering up pseudoscience. I get a little sick to my stomach thinking of how many lives have been harmed or lost by the Dr. Oz's of the world and I assure you if his credentials were based out of a tiki hut instead of being a surgeon, his trajectory would have been very different.
I listened to a Congressional hearing with him where he was being asked about promoting misleading health solutions. It was mostly uninteresting.

There was one interesting point he made, though. He said (paraphrasing), "There are only so many ways and times I can tell people to eat better and exercise. These other things are to nudge them to do that, not things that necessarily cause better health directly."

It's kind of like those magazines they have for both young men and women where each month they have new tricks to gain muscle/lose weight etc. It's all the same stuff, but they have to dress it up differently each time. There are only so many ways not to be a fat slob, and people would rather stay the same but pretend they want to change.

I guess he could go on TV each day and just stare into the camera and yell, "Stop eating so much! Stop it! Stop it!"

I even recall reading once that doctors counseling people to lose weight was an ineffective intervention and therefore shouldn't be used. I can't remember where I read that.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be factual/helpful and entertaining. But I don't know if a lot of people have that skill. I'm trying to think if there has been some successful TV show that did promote health, and I'm not coming up with one. I mean Dr. Oz (though I don't really like him or watch him) does at least ask the TV audience to stand up and do exercise on the show, so that's something. I'm not sure whether anyone actually follows along.
 
The problem with Oz is not that he is "dressing things up differently" in order for people to get healthier. The issue is that a good portion of what he says is simply baseless, and a not insignificant portion of what he recommends is actually contrary to medical recommendation. It just so happens that he is usually selling something along with these baseless or contrary recs. So no, it's not simply that he's trying to find engaging ways to get people to eat better and exercise, it's that he is knowingly lying to them to sell a product. And he is using his credential as a doctoral provider to bolster those lies.
 
The problem with Oz is not that he is "dressing things up differently" in order for people to get healthier. The issue is that a good portion of what he says is simply baseless, and a not insignificant portion of what he recommends is actually contrary to medical recommendation. It just so happens that he is usually selling something along with these baseless or contrary recs. So no, it's not simply that he's trying to find engaging ways to get people to eat better and exercise, it's that he is knowingly lying to them to sell a product. And he is using his credential as a doctoral provider to bolster those lies.
I am not aware of him ever having sold anything other than books, which have fairly standard advice regarding health.

His name and image are used to sell supplements fraudulently, but he has fought to be disassociated with them. It's not actually him selling them.

He has promoted supplements with exaggerated claims or claims where there is only very minimal evidence and then scammers have sold those supplements with his name/image, but he has not actually made any supplements.

"The Doctors" TV show is worse where the dermatologist sells his skincare products. The Doctors also promoted something I won't discuss because it's so controversial I'd be accused of derailing the thread, but they presented a study on their show once I happened to be familiar with and completely misinterpreted it. Dr. Phil also used to sell weight loss bars.

What I have seen from Dr. Oz (and it was a long time ago that I saw his show) was that he would do pseudoscience stuff like body types for example and what would be best for each body type to eat. The bottomline was that all the people he brought on stage were fat, and any improvement in their diet regardless of which body type diet it was would have helped. That's the type of scammy stuff I saw.

The supplement industry was already having a field day before he came along. He did help legitimize some of their claims, but he didn't personally profit from selling supplements.

Some of the pseudoscience I've seen in actual medicine that gets approved by the FDA is just as bad. Like Vayarin for ADD for example. I know people don't like me to talk about personal experiences so I won't go into details, but you can find a lot of supplements being sold in doctor's offices that are given a level of prestige because they are only available directly through that doctor's office, even though they're GRAS products.

I don't know how I ended up defending Dr. Oz. I guess I just see him as a scapegoat for an entire industry based on inefficiencies and corruption that needs an overhaul. He's not great, but he's not anything different than what I would expect. Like I think to myself, how many Nuedexta prescriptions are legit. Why are doctors opening up vitamin IV infusion centers, etc (which is a thing that just happened connected to my primary care practice—which is understaffed). It makes me think of how Jenny McCarthy became the poster child for people to hate over vaccinations. If the outrage were proportionate, it would have gone to the doctor she believed in. It would go to the number of children dying from child abuse which at the time far exceeded the number dying from measles, etc. I think these people just become punching bags.

I don't like Dr. Oz. I just dislike a lot of other things more.
 
He's making money off of advertising revenue, which he drives up with his false claims, and invites these quack supplement manufacturers to advertise in his time slot. Oz isn't stupid, he knows how to make money off his lies without overtly engaging in misconduct. But to claim that he does not financially benefit from his hucksterism is simply willful ignorance.

Dr. Oz is not a scapegoat, he is someone with a gigantic platform. A platform that he uses for his financial benefit, that actively financially exploits those with lower levels of medical literacy who look to him as a trusting figure. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that doctoral level providers have an obligation to people.
 
He's making money off of advertising revenue, which he drives up with his false claims, and invites these quack supplement manufacturers to advertise in his time slot. Oz isn't stupid, he knows how to make money off his lies without overtly engaging in misconduct. But to claim that he does not financially benefit from his hucksterism is simply willful ignorance.

Dr. Oz is not a scapegoat, he is someone with a gigantic platform. A platform that he uses for his financial benefit, that actively financially exploits those with lower levels of medical literacy who look to him as a trusting figure. Call me old fashioned, but I believe that doctoral level providers have an obligation to people.

Honestly, I don't care all that much if he's making money off of ad revenues or even if he's making claims that something is helpful as long as he's not promoting BS research to support it. Where I have a problem is when he goes beyond statements like "X can have Y benefits", and makes claims by citing a single BS study or using anecdotal evidence concretely. Even worse, if he promotes things that have evidence of harm without directly bringing that up those risks.

I don't support Dr. Oz in any way, but people are consumers and are responsible for their own lives and decisions. Just because we're health professionals, doesn't mean patients should inherently trust every word that comes out of our mouths. I'm not saying that being disingenuous is okay, but when people swallow some of his garbage without doing their own research or even directly asking questions, that's just as much on them as it is him.
 
Honestly, I don't care all that much if he's making money off of ad revenues or even if he's making claims that something is helpful as long as he's not promoting BS research to support it. Where I have a problem is when he goes beyond statements like "X can have Y benefits", and makes claims by citing a single BS study or using anecdotal evidence concretely. Even worse, if he promotes things that have evidence of harm without directly bringing that up those risks.

I don't support Dr. Oz in any way, but people are consumers and are responsible for their own lives and decisions. Just because we're health professionals, doesn't mean patients should inherently trust every word that comes out of our mouths. I'm not saying that being disingenuous is okay, but when people swallow some of his garbage without doing their own research or even directly asking questions, that's just as much on them as it is him.

I agree in principle, but disagree somewhat on what we know the reality to be. There are a good portion of Drs who have a poor grasp of statistics, biostatistics, or how to evaluate study methodology and rigor. There is a lot of data on the health literacy of the population at large. Quite simply, many people do not have the knowledge base to adequately do their own research. Being a doctoral level expert should mean something, and there should be a standard adhered to when you enter a profession at that level.
 
Have never heard of Enneagrams either – honestly thought it was some obscure Easter related term in place of something else!

From what I’ve just read on Enneagrams, it sounds very religion based, incorporating things like “holy ideas” and most think that it is discredited or unreliable as a way of assessing personality.

On the subject of questionable personality analyses, I was reminded of my last year of training where I had to pay to attend a compulsory leadership seminar, and when the facilitator made us all do Myers-Brigg tests, there was a tremendous amount of eye rolling from the (mainly psych) group.

I think these are more popular with those trying to sell to business management types, as there is probably some attraction in having many different categories and specific solutions. The same appeal probably applies to the zodiac signs and enneagrams, in that there is enough variety without necessarily having to take into account an individual’s unique situation.

In contrast, we know that one usually needs 5/9 clinical features to diagnose a personality disorder, there are many permutations and sometimes there are other explanations that may account for things – it’s a lot messier and lacks the above cookie-cutter approach. There’s also the small issue that some corporate types would find that they have a number of Cluster B traits, compared to the lack of “good” or “bad” types in Myers Briggs for example.
 
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