What are the Wings?
The Wings are another refinement offered by the Enneagram system. They recognize that while people are one basic type, almost no one is a “pure” type. Everyone is a mix of two types of the Enneagram, and the second type in the mix is called the Wing. However, your Wing lies on either side of your basic type on the circumference of the Enneagram. Thus, the layout of the Enneagram is remarkable in that the mixtures of type and wings that we see in real life are precisely mirrored by the Enneagram itself (as Oscar Ichazo first mapped it out). For example, in real life we see that people who are Twos have either a One-wing or a Three-wing (and sometimes both). We do not see Twos with a Five-wing, or Twos with a Seven-wing, for instance. More on the Enneagram Wings. For more information see The Wisdom of the Enneagram, pages 69-70, and Personality Types, pages 43-44, as well as the descriptions of the wings in the type chapters of both books.
