“COMMUNITY”
Poster series

Horizontal type assignments on the stages

The “Spiral Dynamics®” and “Integral Theory” theories described in the introduction provide a vertical stage sequence of development.

People develop upwards from stage to stage.

However, it is also possible to assign certain horizontal types to people at each stage.

There are many such type assignments. The main feature is the number of types.

Some examples:

Two types:

Man/woman, introvert/extrovert, yin/yang

Three types:

The true/beautiful/good

Four types:

Four elements (earth, water, air, fire), shamanic medicine wheel with the four cardinal directions

Five types:

Five Chinese elements (water, wood, fire, earth, metal)

Nine types:

Enneagram (nine personality patterns)

Twelve types:

Sign of the Zodiac

Sixteen types:

Myers Briggs Type Indicator (based on C. G. Jung)

We will use aspects of the Enneagram in the following.

Above text in this version (Ver 1.0) online since 18 August 2023.

Derivation of the colours for the blue “female/male”

The above “females/males” are supposed to represent the average of a larger group of people who have reached this stage of development (stage of the spiritual development line).

The level of development is given by the colour of the body.

This group of people is not always the same from stage to stage!

The individual points within the body, the head and the body of the “female/male” represent different lines of development of Spiral Dynamics®:

Lower point in the body:

psychosexual line of development (“instinct”, will)

Upper point in the body:

emotional line of development (“feeling”, emotion)

Head above:

cognitive line of development (“thinking”, concerning thinking)

Body:

spiritual line of development (“acting”, “spirituality”)

According to the teachings of the Enneagram, every human being has three centres of intelligence:

Head (mind/ratio, thinking), Heart (emotions, feeling) and Gut (instinct, will).

One can divide the Enneagram into three areas and then speak of:

Belly types (instinct triad),

Heart types (feeling triad),

Head types (thinking triad).

Here one can see the parallels to the above development lines of Spiral Dynamics®.

It should be emphasised here that the Enneagram is a horizontal typification and Spiral Dynamics® is a vertical sequence of stages!

In every human being one of these triads listed above is said to dominate. These people are said to be fixed to one type.

The fixations and central life themes are:

Triad:

fixation - central life themes

Instinct triad:

instinctive (belly types) - power, justice, aggression

Emotional triad:

emotional (heart types) - Relationships, being for, prestige/image

Thinking triad:

mental (head types) - control, understanding, order

We are looking at the average of a larger group of people, which is why the fixations of individual people are not relevant here, or all fixations can be found in the average.

If we now look at how the central life themes correspond to the stages of Spiral Dynamics®, we get the blue “female/male” in the picture below.

Image: Blue “female/male” with blue “head” (level 4.0)

The colouring was done as follows:

Centre - theme - colour in SD*

“Belly” (instinct) - power, aggression - Red

“Heart” (feeling, emotion) - Relationships, prestige/image - Green and orange (outside)

“Head” (thinking, thoughts) - control, understanding, order - Blue

“Body” (spirituality) - following thinking** - Also blue

*) SD ... Spiral Dynamics®

**) Meaning rational and reasonable in action.

The colour of the “body” was initially equated with the colour of the “head”, which is supposed to indicate that this “female/male” (a larger group of people is meant here) directs its actions according to its thoughts and thinking.

The above “female/male” with blue head corresponds to development stage 4.0.

Furthermore, the following is now assumed:

The cognitive line (“head”; thinking, thoughts) should precede the spiritual line (“body”; spirituality) in development.

This is favourable for spiritual development, as an advancing cognitive line enables a person to ask deeper questions and take a broader perspective on the world.

The leading cognitive line of the blue “female/male” at developmental level 4.0 is represented by a dark blue head.

See the image below for this.

Image: Blue “female/male” with dark blue “head” (level 4.7)

We want to assign the developmental stage 4.7 to this blue “female/male” with a dark blue “head”.

This is to show that this “female/male” is already cognitively developed (4.7) at its level blue (4) and it is already thinking about the next level 5.0 (orange).

Image: Blue “female/male” on the spiritual development level 4.0 (“body” (blue)) with a leading cognitive line 4.7 (“head” (dark blue)), which is already thinking about the next development level 5.0 (orange)

In addition to the cognitive line (“head”, mind), the emotional line (“heart”) is also important for spiritual development.

In the case of the blue “female/male” above, this is at the green level and orange on the outside, i.e. far advanced.

This illustrates the idea that “head” and “heart” are necessary for good spiritual development. Think of the saying “One only sees well with the heart!” of the little prince in the novel “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Fittingly, the colour of the thoughts (orange) and the colour of the border of the heart (also orange) are the same above!

The colours for “belly”, “heart”, “head” and “body” for the other “females/males” in the poster above (orange and green or red) are then obtained by respectively increasing them by one (“further development” of the psychosexual, emotional, cognitive and spiritual line of development) or by decreasing them by one according to the level table of colours in the introduction.

Above text and above images in this version (Ver 1.0) online since 18 August 2023.

All of the above text has been translated from German into English (British) using DeepL ext Data Protection Notice.