Ayn Rand, sociopath

A sociopath is a person who has no moral compass, no power of empathy to feel with or for others. Moral right and wrong are simply categories they don't access and probably can't.

Ayn Rand wrote several books that are bedside reading for some powerful men in Washington. Alan Greenspan sat at her feet and absorbed her philosophy and Clarence Thomas loves her work so much he requires his clerks to read it.
Ayn Rand modeled her superhero, John Galt in Atlas Shrugged on a serial killer of the day, Edward Hickman. Hickman killed and dismembered a 12 year old girl. Rand gushes about him, "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should. He had no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman." Another hero, Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead) is described thus: "He was born without the ability to consider others."

Her philosophy is a distorted derivative of Neitsche's Superman ideas, but it is filtered through her enneagram style. She is a subtype of style One, self-preservation. Ones derive their morality from internal principles, not social norms. They are reformers and critics of social norms. Ones live by inner rules that they consider binding on everyone. Rand's philosophy is an elaboration of her unhealthy enneagram style. Ayn Rand created heroes and a "philsophy" that spelled out the bleak, heartless inner life of a sociopath.

When a One is a sociopath, as Ayn Rand is, then the internal rules are absolute and other people do not matter. Clarence Thomas, an obvious One, frightens me. He does not ask questions in the supreme court; he goes by his own vision and is largely unmoved by the opinion or information of others. I don't know that he is quite a sociopath, but seems very unhealthy. Donald Rumsfeld is probably another example of a sociopathic One.

Ones are not sociopathic more than other styles. Obama, Hilary Clinton and McCain are all healthy Ones. They are all convinced the world should operate the way they think, though. That's what reformers are all about.

March Madness

With both March Madness basketball tourney and the Olympics, all Enneagram students can see style 3 in action.
Two characteristics plague style three: competition and external rewards. Threes will work incredibly hard for trophies, salaries, credits, gold stars, applause, medals or any indication outside themselves that they have done well. Their ability to focus on a task for an extrinsic reward is remarkable. So when a medal or a championship is at stake, they really perform.
But they also do what they do and do it well best when in competition with others. When Tiger Woods was interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 minutes, he said he was competitive in everything. When Safer asked him, "So if we played a game of cards, you would try to beast me." Tiger answered, "No, I'd kick your ass." That's intense competition. And Michael Phelps was asked if he every provoked a competitor he answered with a smile, "I love the competition. It's what feeds me." Both men are style Threes.

We have an Enneagram Three culture so we believe in competition, but Alfie Kohn has a great book, "No Contest," that details all the way competition hurts us. If you are a teacher or a parent, you might check it out -- we need to be aware of cultural pressures.

Political Enneagram

Talk show hosts are "personalities" in a professional recognizable way. So here are some Enneagram styles you can study. The Keith Olbermann/Rachel Madow MSNBC combination is interesting from an Enneagram perspective. They share roughly the same values, but Keith is a One. Only a One would have as part of his program "Worst Persons in the World." Ones sort for what is wrong and Keith does so with hot vengeance. You can feel his moral outrage in his clipped speech, the anger in his voice and his penetrating look that convicts as much as convinces.

On the Enneagram diagram, Ones and Sevens are each other's shadow. This means that each celebrates those traits that the other tries to suppress. So when Rachel, a clear Seven, comes on, the mood is lighter and she applies the needle where Keith preferred the hatchet. She will smile brightly while skewering and the accusation is not so much that her opponents are evil is that they are funny in their ignorance and posturing.

On the other side of the TV set are Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. Both of them are heavier than Keith or Rachel. They are both Eights, furious that their way does not prevail. The level of anger is more pronounced, in Rush it comes out both in volume and in caricature, in O'Reilly it is more like existential outrage: the world should not be the way it is. Why doesn't it listen to me?

Enneagram styles do not gravitate to Left or Right. Obama, Hilary Clinton and McCain were all Ones with widely differing views. I can see no correlation between position and personality.

It is solved by walking

We have several ways of making any changes we want. One is by trying to change our feelings. The assumption is that if we can change our thinking, we'll change our feelings and then we will behave in new ways. This belief reigns supreme in all talking therapies; it under girds nagging, preaching and cheerleading: think better, feel better and you'll behave better.
There is another tradition. An older spiritual tradition, newly embraced by brief therapy and in some practices of NLP says that if you change the way act, your emotions will follow. The medieval principle was solvitur ambulando" it is solved by walking.
An example: if you came to me with depression, I would not try to talk you out of your misery. Instead I would ask you to change the way you sit, stand and walk. You cannot stay depressed standing up straight, breathing deeply and walking briskly. So go for a brisk walk and see what happens.
I learned this working in a high school. I was not given an office, so when students or faculty came to my office, we would discuss their problems while walking. I got a reputation for being able to help with depression. I assumed it was my brilliant conversation, but gradually came to realize it was the walk that helped, not my counsel.