The Paradise Lost Theory of Personality
Personality's Painful Birthing Process
I recently finished my first year of training as a Jungian Analyst. I’m not consciously trying to find points of convergence between my new education in psychology and what I’ve already been taught about the Enneagram. I certainly perk up when I notice them, though.
The point of convergence that’s stuck with me the most so far is this idea that the ego and personality form in response to childhood disappointments and pain. I call this the Paradise Lost theory of personality: imperfections in our childhood holding environment (which I will define soon) cast us out from our original Garden of Eden, an innate infantile sense of oneness with the world. Once pain or frustration fractures this sense of oneness—and it always does—we develop personalities in order to help us survive the harsh reality we’ve been cast into.
On the Enneagram side, here is how Riso and Hudson put it in The Wisdom of The Enneagram1:
As newborn babies, we arrived in the world with natural, innate needs that had to be met for us to develop into mature human beings. However, even in the best of circumstances, our parents inevitably could not meet all of our developmental needs perfectly. No matter how well intentioned they were, at certain times they had difficulty coping with our needs, especially those that had not been adequately met in themselves (30).
This is what I mean by “childhood holding environment:” the totality of a child’s experience of having their needs met, or not met. Inevitably, parents play a huge role in defining and maintaining this holding environment. Helen Palmer presents a similar origin story for the personality in The Enneagram2:
Personality develops because we must survive in the physical world. A contradiction develops between the child’s essential trust of the environment and the family reality, which must be obeyed. From a point of view of a psychology that includes a concept of essence, personality develops in order to protect and defend essence from injury in the material world. What that means is that a particular aspect of the child’s undefended connection with the environment is threatened, and so the child must protect itself from any further harm. Forming defenses to protect a threatened aspect of essence could be called the loss of essential connection, or the fall from grace (19-20).
Recalling Riso and Hudson’s earlier quote, the threat of harm and injury to the child may be completely innocent and without malice. Every single one of us has imperfect parents and families trying their best in an imperfect world that will never completely meet any of our needs. Palmer defines essence as “‘what is one’s own,’ the potentials with which we were born, rather than what we have acquired through our education, our ideas, or our beliefs” (17-18). She acknowledges that the existence of our essential nature is inherently unprovable, but many traditions seeking to explore higher human potentials assert its reality and aim towards it.
My sense is many contemporary psychologies would not engage with questions of essential nature or dismiss the idea (as is their right). In the Jungian tradition, we might equate this idea of a personal’s essential nature with the transpersonal Self3. Helen Palmer also uses language flavoured with the Christian doctrine of original sin to describe the formation of personality: “the fall from grace.” In the Paradise Lost metaphor, our essential nature can be considered another facet of our original Garden of Eden that we’re cast out of.
These are complementary stories about the formation of our personalities by some of the most prominent Enneagram teachers of the last 40 years. In Ego and Archetype4 Psychiatrist and Jungian Analyst Edward Edinger tells a story with striking parallels to these Enneagram stories about the formation of the ego in infancy:
In earliest infancy, no ego or consciousness exists. All is in the unconscious. The latent ego is in complete identification with the Self. The Self is born, but the ego is made; and in the beginning all is Self. […] This is the original state of unconscious wholeness and perfection which is responsible for the nostalgia we all have toward our origins, both personal and historical (7).
Where Palmer describes of an essential nature, Edinger speaks of an original wholeness. As in the previous two stories, this original paradise is followed by the fall:
The child experiences himself quite literally as the center of the universe. The mother at first answers that demand; hence, the initial relationship tends to encourage the child’s feeling that its wish is the world’s command, and it is absolutely necessary that this be so. If the constant and total commitment of the mother to the child’s need is not experienced, the child cannot develop psychologically. However, before long, the world necessarily begins to reject the infant’s demands. At this, the original inflation [the so far unchallenged belief that the child is the center of the universe] begins to dissolve, being untenable in the face of experience. […] [The child] is exiled from paradise, and permanent wounding and separation occur (Edinger 12).
Edinger’s account uses the grimmest sounding language yet, describing permanent wounding and separation. Yet, this has to happen if we are to be relatively healthy adults:
Repeated experiences of alienation continue progressively right into adult life. One is constantly encountering a two-fold process. On the one hand we are exposed to the reality encounters which life provides, and which are constantly contradicting unconscious ego assumptions. This is how the ego grows and separates from its unconscious identity with the Self (Edinger 12).
I am skipping over the repeating nature of the phenomenon that Edinger describes here and what exactly he means by Self in order to keep this post manageable and to emphasize the parallels in the three stories so far.
And what of non-Jungian psychology, does the Paradise Lost theory of personality show up there too? Possibly. According to pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, infants in the “Relative Dependence” stage (6 months - 2-years old) can develop a false self as a defense against what Winnicott called “impingement”—the infant’s experience of not getting his or her needs met. The false self then serves to defend the infant’s true self in a world incapable of meeting every need perfectly. Starting to sound familiar? My understanding of Winnicott comes from January 2025 lecture on life stage development by Dr. Karen Evers-Fahey. I take full responsibility for any errors and misunderstandings here.
I want to be careful about making any conclusions. I find this a fascinating meeting point between psychology and spirituality, and I think potential points of disagreement between theorists and traditions need further exploration too. I alluded to one before: Enneagram practitioners are describing the formation of personality, while the psychiatrists are theorizing about the formation of the ego. What are some workable definitions of personality and ego? Are they two different words for the same parcel of psyche or, if not, what is their relationship to each other?
I also recognize this is rather dour collection of theories. If the Paradise Lost theory of personality is to be believed, yes, the world inevitably disappoints us as infants, and these initial experiences of disappointment have both a fracturing effect on us as well as kickstarting the necessary development of our egos and personalities.
The Enneagram, at least, holds out hope that we can inch our way back into paradise little by little. By exploring the intricacies of our personalities and defenses with patience and compassion for ourselves, we can gradually reconnect with our essence and original wholeness. This time, the experience of essence or wholeness will be conscious and not tied up with the mistaken sense that we are the center of the universe. I can’t say I have fully achieved this, and I’m not sure anybody ever claws all the way back into Eden. However, I have certainly experienced a developing sense of wholeness and fundamental ok-ness to the extent that I have started to work with my personality and its defenses through the lens of the Enneagram.
Don Richard Riso, and Russ Hudson. Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types. Bantam, 1999.
Palmer, Helen. The Enneagram : Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Jungians mean something very specific by the capital S “Self.” It’s beyond my capacity to summarize and explore in this post. If you scroll way down, Jungian Analyst Daryl Sharp’s concise definition of Self is available here: https://www.psychceu.com/jung/sharplexicon.html
Edinger, Edward F. Ego and Archetype : Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche. Boston, Shambhala, 1991.