Tracing the Lines: A Four-Part Explanation of the Enneagram’s Crisscrossing Movement

Part 1: No One Believes This Anymore? Why Integration and Disintegration Still Matter

This is the first of four posts exploring the crisscrossing lines within the Enneagram’s symbol. These lines have long been understood as pathways of movement between types, revealing patterns of growth and stress. Almost all of us who first encountered the Enneagram between the 1980s and early 2000s cut our teeth on the traditional "Integration" and "Disintegration" theory. And for many of us, we can attest that it works.

In the posts that follow, I’ll share how my own understanding of these theories has evolved over the years, as well as introduce newer interpretations that have deepened my appreciation for the complexity of the Enneagram.

But let me rewind a bit. In my book The Sacred Enneagram, I appealed to the basic materials on integration and disintegration, only to be shocked after publication when one of my teachers, a very prominent voice and author in the Enneagram community, sent me a direct and blunt email saying, "No one believes in integration and disintegration anymore, I can't believe you wrote that!" That little section alone caused her to dismiss the rest of the book. Kinda a bummer actually, and something I think about often.

Anyway, I can believe I wrote that because there are times when the movement of integration and disintegration still shows up in my own state of being, for example, when I get nasty emails and my ego wants to react. But as the Enneagram has evolved, so have our understandings of the movement along these lines within the symbol.

The Basics of Movement Between Types

So let’s start with the basics: one fundamental component of understanding type involves the crisscrossing lines and how they show us the movement of our type when operating in healthy or unhealthy states.

Despite the generalized notion of this theory, there are still several schools of thought about the nuances and languaging of the traversing of lines inside the Enneagram, each with diverging philosophies regarding their implications. For instance, the Enneagram Institute refers to the lines as the directions of integration and disintegration; the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition refers to them as our Security Types and Stress Types; the Chilean grandfather of the modern Enneagram, Claudio Naranjo, used the language Heart Points and Stress Points; and H. A. Almaas originated the notion of the Soul Child, which Father Richard Rohr and Sandra Maitri continued to develop.

These are all different ways of describing the dynamic of each type as it presses into growth or reverts to patterns of self-sabotage.

This is where we encounter the uniqueness of the Enneagram as a character-structure construct: it offers both a portrait of health and a portrait of unhealth for each type, and prompts us to identify honestly where we are functioning on that spectrum. This might vary from day to day or even hour to hour, but the gift presented to us is greater awareness that leads to psychological and spiritual growth.

Borrowing, Not Becoming

The theory of what these lines between the numbers symbolize in integration or security allows our dominant type to borrow the positive traits of another type. For example, a healthy person dominant in type One integrates or borrows some of the positive traits of type Seven by relaxing their inner drive for perfection and allowing themselves to become a little playful and spontaneous. Alternatively, it looks like self-confident, healthy self-assertion when people dominant in type Two integrate, taking on the favorable features of self-expression common in type Four.

Sometimes (especially in the case of those dominant in type Three, because Threes want to accomplish self-perfection as a way to maintain an inner sense of value) people will try to intentionally develop or force movement toward integration, but my sense is that true integration is an act of pure grace, an indicator of inner health and centeredness. In fact, I believe that when we spend time trying to move toward integration, we are not focusing on the real inner work of facing our dominant type. So while it is helpful to see the full picture of the type we borrow from in health, the key for all of us is to focus on health and growth in our dominant type.

Unexpected Gifts

When we integrate, it should surprise us. It should be an unexpected reward for doing what is nourishing for our soul, and that wonderful shock of observing the gifts of our integration is the validation of the astonishing grace it is.

It is important to note that we do not become the type we integrate toward; it is only as we become a healthy, centered version of our dominant type that we are simultaneously able to reach across the Enneagram and essentially “borrow” positive traits. So when someone says, for example, “As a Seven, when I integrate I move to Five,” that statement is only partially accurate, because the movement isn’t truly away from one’s dominant type.

Catching Our Fall

The converse path, however, is not exactly an inverse pattern either. Those who suggest that disintegration is merely borrowing the negative traits of the type on our path of disintegration might be somewhat mistaken. This view can also promote a sense of self-condemnation when we’re not getting it “right,” but I believe there is much more grace for us here than we might first think.

A disintegration or unhealth theory I tend to resonate with is that our path of disintegration is much like this: when we start to fall, when we aren't getting our way through our usual controlling patterns, we instinctively reach out to grab something to stop the descent. But rather than grasping a lifeline, we often reach for the lowest-level coping tactics of our stress point. This isn't a conscious choice; it's survival mode.

A fearful or anxious Four, for instance, may unconsciously grab at the manipulative people-pleasing tactics of a low-level Two, smothering others with excessive affection as an attempt to be seen and validated. A normally cerebral, detached Five might fall hard into the excessive indulgences of a Seven, numbing out with distractions rather than facing their discomfort.

This reframing of disintegration doesn’t cast it as moral failure, it’s a warning sign, an instinctual attempt to stop the fall before we hit the ground. It’s an alert system, letting us know that something within us is struggling and needs attention. The key isn’t to shame ourselves when we notice it happening, but rather to see it as an opportunity to wake up, to observe our behaviors with curiosity rather than judgment, and to gently guide ourselves back to center.

Grace in the Fall

Think back to childhood, did you ever climb a tree for the first time? Some of us scrambled to the highest branch with ease, while others took a painful tumble. I remember classmates with plaster casts on their arms, scrawled with colorful markers and graffiti-like signatures. More often than not, those casts held together the mending bones fractured by tree-climbing accidents. The lucky ones among us, though, when they slipped, had an instinctual self-preservation reflex, they reached out for a branch to catch themselves on the way down.

And in grabbing that branch, reaching to our Stress Point in disintegration, maybe we’re actually slowing down or stopping our fall into the darker, less healthy versions of our type. Sure, we’re still not in a great spot, but at least we’re conscious of the fall, conscious of losing our grasp on reality, and being forced to wake up and re-center.

The hope, then, is not to berate ourselves when we recognize these moments, but to acknowledge them with self-compassion. The moment we realize we’re reaching for unhealthy tactics is actually a moment of grace, a chance to change course, soften our grip, and climb back toward wholeness.

In the next post in this mini-series, I’ll introduce a few more modern takes on these discussions, including newer theories that challenge even these perspectives and offer fresh insights into the complexity of how we move along these lines in the Enneagram.