"Scientific Enneagram" | Episode 1 | A Very Short History of Psychology (and Why the Enneagram Doesn’t Fit Neatly)

On this episode of Scientific Enneagram, Danielle—engineer, Type 9, and endlessly curious mind—kicks off a foundational series by tracing the (surprisingly recent) history of psychology and asking a practical question: where does the Enneagram fit when we try to study people with scientific rigor?

Starting with early introspection and its “observer problem,” Danielle walks through the major movements that shaped modern psychology: psychoanalysis (and its depth—and unfalsifiability), behaviorism (and its measurable clarity—at the cost of inner life), and cognitivism (the shift that re-centers internal processes, from CBT’s thoughts-feelings-actions triangle to schema theory and maladaptive “software” running on the brain’s “hardware”).

Along the way, she connects these frameworks to the Enneagram’s strengths and limitations—especially why the Enneagram aligns more naturally with modalities that prize inner motive and subconscious drivers, and why that makes it difficult to study quantitatively. Is the Enneagram destined to remain mostly qualitative? Maybe. But Danielle isn’t ready to stop asking better questions—or hunting for better tools.

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