For whatever reason, these three types in early childhood all felt a need to establish firm personal boundaries that either kept out external or internal aggressors or fenced them in. Eights use a frontal attack to aggressively tear down external boundaries; Ones form a punishing superego and then use strict rules and judgmental, pious attitudes to fence themselves into narrow corners and to reject others; and Nines are so afraid of conflict they wall off the outer world and ignore their inner world.

Each of the enneatypes in the physical triad erases their true self and then finds ways to compensate for it. Eights overreact in volume and energy by almost literally shouting, “I am here and I count!” When Ones realize they have surrendered huge parts of their selves, they overidentify with a tradition or principle or system and then push that system on themselves and others. Nines willingly surrender themselves and then become angry that they've done so. But rather than openly claiming their anger, they act out this anger by either passive-aggressively projecting it onto others or by turning it in on themselves through depression.