The NPTA theory : a proposal of the enneagram and the NPA theory unification

Miloslav Grundmann, april 2006

The NPA theory developed by A.M. Benis posits three major behavioral traits underlying personality: Narcissism (N), Perfectionism (P) and Aggression (A), leading to the formulation of a limited number of easily identifiable discrete "character types". This theory proposes that the traits A and N are indispensable to human development, the trait P being independent of A,N traits. I propose to complete this theory with an additional trait T coupled to the trait P and to symmetrize the original NPA theory in this way. These traits P and T are indispensable to human development in the same way as the traits A and N. The symmetrized NPTA theory contains exactly nine independent personality types and I propose the following correspondence between enneagram types, NPTA and NPA traits, traits P and PT being equivalent for the NPA theory :

The NPTA system contains a lot of symmetries of the enneagram, the types 3,6,9 are linked together by traits PT. Neighbor enneagram types are more or less closed with the exception of enneagram types 4 and 5. However the perfect symmetry of the enneagram is somewhat broken. It is quite difficult to define wings in this topology, every type has two neighbor types at least but some types can have three or even four different neighbors. Some of these wings may have some sense but I find it quite speculative.

The unification of the NPA theory with the enneagram implies a lot of conclusions that must be verified in order to validate this unification proposal. Especially there should be a heredity relationship between parents' enneagram types and child's enneagram type as it is predicted by the NPA theory for NA and P traits. There are three important groups, A(1,3,5,6,7,8), N(1,2,3,4,7,9) and NA(1,3,7). If both parents are in the same group A,N or NA their children should be also in this group and if parents do not share any of these groups they may face some fertility problems according to the NPA theory.

The NPTA unification theory does not predict any heredity mechanism for the trait T that must be discovered if the theory is validated. This new trait may be linked to a non cooperative behavior and its strongest expression is present in 4,7 and 8 enneagram types. This trait is completely absent in 1,2 and 5 enneagram types.