#enneagram three

Coriolanus Snow

Type Eight || 8w7 || 835

Type Eight (8w7)

Coriolanus demonstrates throughout the text an almost obsessive fear of vulnerability. It informs many of his decisions; by the end of the novel he resolves to never allow himself to experience love again, as the loss of Lucy Gray and Sejanus have left him feeling weak - and this feeling of weakness almost visibly drives him mad.

Coriolanus falls into the trap of the type 8 personality of relying on his sense of control. He tells us in no uncertain terms that he preferred Lucy Gray when she was in the arena, when he knew where she was and he was not susceptible to feel jealousy. He believes she belongs to him. He exhibits these behaviours with Sejanus and Tigris also. He is very assertive.

Coriolanus’ desire for power and control come from his belief that he is unrivalled in terms of leadership qualities, that at all times - he is the best man for the job. Everything that comes his way, he is confident that he is deserving due to both birth right, and the qualities he believes he possesses innate to him.

Type Three (3w4)

Coriolanus is deeply conscious of his image, and how that will lead to his success. He refuses to give even a hint of his poverty and hunger to his classmates at the Academy and will do whatever it takes to maintain the facade he believes will ensure his social success.

He is very charming and charismatic with his peers, having seemingly long-standing friendships with Clemensia and Lysistrata, and being among the few who don’t openly bully Sejanus during their time at school. He maintains a withdrawn and surface level friendship with all around him - and is very much bothered by the fact that Dean Highbottom does not hold him in high regard.

He is calculating in his diplomacy, withholding the true nature of Sejanus’ demise from everyone aside from Dr Gaul, and swallows his guilt immediately to turn on the charm for the Plinths, in order - once again - to ensure his own success. Sejanus describes Coriolanus as someone who watches everything and only weighs in when he deems it necessary.

Type Five (5w6)

As above, Coriolanus is highly perceptive. His ability and drive to have a comprehensive idea about his surroundings and peers are a kind of armour for him. He refuses to take anybody at their word and involves himself whenever he is spurred by the drive to be fully cognisant of events. To be in control.

He belittles Sejanus constantly for his reliance on emotion and opinion when debating the Capitol’s morality, and the value of the games. He is extremely logical in his approach to gamemaking - a trait that Dr Gaul values, and Dean Highbottom attempts to suppress.

He is isolated and secretive in both his goals and methods, needing only his own counsel and understanding to make any decision.

Thanks for reading! I intend on making more of these as the mood strikes me, Lucy Gray will likely be next.

These posts solely reflect my personal interpretation of these characters based on both the books and movies. If you would type them differently, I’d love to hear your perspective.

Type 1 thinking no partner could match their perfection standards:

Type 2 trying to find the positive aspects of others:

Type 3 justifying doing something that isn’t productive:

Type 4 finding beauty (and memes) even in the darkest of places:

Type 5...just always:

Type 6 out of their comfort zone:

Type 7 assuring everyone it’s not drugs, it’s just how they think on a normal basis:

Type 8 defending someone else (or when you irritate them lol):

Type 9 at the end of a long day:

The view from Holy Hope/Holy Law¹ is that there are no exceptions to the way things work -- the same forces apply to everyone and everything all the time, which is something you can continuously count on. The distortion of this for type 3 becomes the discovery that there's no real such thing as cheating reality, only different ways of taking advantage of the reality that's already unfolding, and then positioning yourself within it.

This leads to over-identifying with the things you've done as a way to identify with anything at all. If there's no such thing as cheating reality, and you made this thing happen all on your own, that means you are objectively the best unless someone can do it better. In a paradoxical sense, it's recognizing that the rules are the same for everyone, but those same rules built you different/made you better: it's nothing personal, you're just the best.

This is also why the burnout is so diffuse at 9 if this feeling gets snatched, because there's really no one to blame -- other people were just playing the game like you.

I don't see enough people talking about this, but these points have been crucial in my own journey of self-typing and typing others, so here we go. Before you type yourself, consider:

The degree of stress you're under right now: Stress greatly influences how you view yourself, or if you have enough objective self knowledge to have an honest assessment of your own type. While a normal amount of stress brings people into their strengths, continued stress actually pushes you into the worse parts of your personality, and this experience can last anywhere from a few hours to (in borderline-traumatic cases) decades. And it's not an objective assessment of your type if it is only decided based on how you are at your worst. your type is a mixture of your general thought process, your worse tendencies, AND your better choices.

Possible general or trauma-induced dissociation: A lot of people have a general tendency to dissociate for internal or environmental reasons. it's WAY more common than we think, and it happens in varying degrees of "this trait upsets me so i pretend i don't have it/this trait makes me happy so i own it as a defining part of my personality" to "i do things that enrage and/or surprise me, i don't know where these thoughts and behaviors come from, and i'm helpless in controlling them so in my good days i pretend that they don't exist and get shocked/upset when people point them out to me" cases, counting out DID since that one is the obvious case. People tend to have more dissociation towards the parts of their psyche that resides in the [MBTI] tertiary and inferior functions, or the [instinctual variants] blindspot, oooor [in an enneagram sense] the parts of us that keep us from achieving the ideal image we aspire to have, but this isn't always the case. And to have an honest view of yourself, you have to keep in mind that at all times you're a little, or a lot, dissociating from parts of you that is unpleasant/scary/sad to think about, and that it's not only okay, but necessary to be open to feedback, new experiences and new insights regarding yourself. Fear is an inseparable part of self discovery, so before trying to type yourself, you have to learn to be comfortable with fear and be able to sit with it and learn from it. You don't have to 'accept' whatever comes your way and whatever new thing you discover, but you have to be able to entertain possibilities and get comfortable with the uncertainty and complexity that comes with being a human.

Mental illness: this one kinda goes without saying, but mental illnesses of all kinds (or generally being stuck in fear responses) narrows your focus on a very limited number of mental tools you have learnt since childhood for dealing with a shit life. They make it very hard to be present to your whole personality, not what you constantly resort to in times of (perceived or real) crisis. It's not impossible to type yourself when you have mental illnesses, but it makes the process longer, and you need to have more patience and compassion towards yourself.

Your gender: It actually really fucking matters, how you're raised based on your actual or perceived gender, or even the gender your caretakers proffered you to be like. Your own personality and preferences are only a small part of the choices you make throughout your life, and another part of that process is how others react to you and the choices you might make. In some cases, even though your preferences are right there, you may make different choices because there's more reward and acceptance for that choice, even though it's not your actual preference. Or you may make choices because the consequences you'll face for not making them are so high and dont seem like they're worth it. A lot of women don't entertain the possibility of being a thinker because as women they're conditioned to think that they suck at rational decisionmaking and have a natural knack for emotions and dealing with them. As a byproduct of that conditioning, many thinker women have higher emotional awareness and are more in touch with their emotional side than men of the same type - simply because there is a lot of social shaming and pressure on women to be sympathetic and considerate and to be able to emote. A lot of feeler men actually have less healthy thought frameworks and tools around emotions then women of the same type, as society does not expect men or train them for emotional intelligence and thought frameworks generally associated with femininity and women stuff. SO blind women are often more accommodating and mindful of how they're perceived than SO blind men, SP blind men often have more attention to SP and develop more tools in dealing with SP-related works, etc etc, the list goes on forever. The thing to keep in mind is, toss out the stereotypes. Don't dismiss different possibilities simply because "you're not as emotional as the feeling type descriptions suggest" or "you're not as edgy as the SO blinds you've seen" or “you have some hobbies you love dearly so you must be a SX variant”. Different descriptions are written with the majority of that type in mind. They're ripe with stereotypes, and for a good reason. But you don't have to fit with stereotypes to be a type, you just have to share the thought process and the inherent preferences that create its mindset.

With all that said, what is the best approach to self-typing?

Observe yourself when you're in flow state. When you're content, happy, feel safe, and are surrounded with people who accept you and love you for who you are, no matter what it looks like. If you cannot find a context in which you feel like that, imagine yourself 5 years from now, in a context that gives you those feelings. What would you look like if you were surrounded by accepting, loving, sincere people who accept you no matter what and find you enough in and of yourself? imagine that scenario in full details and make note of the choices you would make in that context.

Make notes of what you have generally thought most of your life, before you had mental illness. Be open to any and all thoughts that might come up.

Learn to love yourself before you try to self-type. It's hard to type yourself correctly if you're consciously or subconsciously fighting against parts of you that you consider weak/unacceptable/not enough/boring/problematic/wrong. Be open to your own thoughts and other's feedback and before you try to decide what type you are, decide that whatever comes up is okay, is cool, is enough, and there's nothing wrong with it. Shame and judgement is the enemy of objectivity. consciously decide to accept and offer compassion  to yourself. If you cannot seem to do that, imagine an anxious dear friend of yours, and write down how you would treat them and what you would tell them. Now do those stuff for yourself to the best of your abilities, and tell those things to yourself.