The Elephant in the Bedroom: Using the Enneagram of Personality to address clients’ sexuality issues (2 CEU - Cultural Competency)

This session presents the basics of the Enneagram typing system and focuses on how to apply the Enneagram system to approach sexuality in therapy practice. The Enneagram model provides tools to address “the elephant in the bedroom” - the fact that many marriage and family therapists are not talking about sexuality with their clients. Using the Enneagram helps therapists to talk about sexuality issues with clients using an easy, depersonalized map of sexual approaches and tendencies. Background: The Enneagram Model of Sexuality developed concurrently in research and sex therapy practice, supported by both scientific evidence and clinical outcomes. Sexuality researcher, Sam E. Greenberg, PhD investigated the research question What is the relationship between Enneagram type and patterns of sexual desire? in an 814 participant quantitative study published in 2023. Concurrently, Lyndsey Fraser, MA LMFT, CST implemented use of the Enneagram personality typing system with her sex therapy clients, based upon the patterns she noticed over thirteen years of clinical work. The scientific results and the clinical results demonstrated identical outcomes: distinct and discernable patterns of sexual desire and expression mapped to the nine Enneagram types. Specific sexual patterns that are predictable by the nine Enneagram types include: overall sexual desire, cues that spark sexual desire, sexual assertiveness, ability to understand and communicate sexual desires to a partner, degree of tenderness to touch, sexually explicit materials use, likelihood of participation in kink and BDSM, solo sexual desire, frequency of sexual thoughts, comfort level with sexual dry spells, and many more.