Bernadette Schmitt & Frédéric Schmitt, M.D.
Ouranos (a.k.a. Uranus in Greek or Caelus for the Romans) is a primordial deity personifying the sky and life. His wife (and mother) is Gaia, the Earth.
In a perpetual union with Gaia, Ouranos gives birth to the Titans (male) and Titanides (female), Cyclops and Hecatonchires the one-hundred-armed giants.
Ouranos fears and hates the Hecatonchires although they are his children. He imprisoned them in Tartarus, leaving the Cyclopes and the Titans in freedom. Gaia then persuades his son, the Titan Cronos to overthrow his father.
Cronos castrates Ouranos, and his genitals fall into the sea, where Aphrodite emerges from the sea foam (foam = aphros).
“There strong Zephyr’s moist breath
Through crashing waves conveyed her,
amid the soft foam, to the shore.
The Hours whose fillets are golden
gave her a welcome of joy,
And wrapped her in deathless clothes.
On her head they put a fine,
well-wrought crown of gold,
And when they had fully decked her,
they brought her to the gods,
who welcomed her when they saw her,
giving her their hands.
Each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife,
so greatly were they amazed at the beauty of violetcrowned Cytherea.”
— Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
Goddess of love, Aphrodite, renamed Venus by the Romans, has the power to make all the gods fall in love or inspire them to a deep passion.
The birth of Venus in the Enneagram.
About two years after we had started our research and had examined several hundred clinical cases according to our energy-based method, we realized that what we defined as sexual subtypes, were actually two very distinct characters, a more masculine and a more feminine one. We agreed to name them Mars and Venus in reference to the symbolism of these gods of Greek Antiquity. The sexual Mars subtype appears as an aggressive, combative, competitive, energetic, anxious and obsessive individual; the sexual Venus subtype is more charming, charismatic, compassionate, dependent and prone to feeling forsaken.
Patients of both sexual Venus and Mars subtypes responded homeopathically well to animal remedies.
It is important to make it clear here, that sexual Venus subtypes are mostly women, but can be found among men too, and that sexual Mars subtypes are not always men and can be women as well !
At this point in our research, we thought that these two aspects of the sexual subtype represented the Yin and Yang sides of the same subtype. We also inferred that it should be the same for the self-preservation and social subtypes, so we called them: self-preservation yin and yang and social yin and yang.
Working with our students on clinical and various cases of personalities, I (Frederic) once decided to work on the case of Franz Kafka, pretty sure he was a yin/introvert, but his subtype was not clear to me. But when I showed his case to Bernadette, she typed him without hesitating a single moment as a sexual subtype / Mars and Yin. This came like an electric shock to me: Mars and Yin!
It went against my classification of subtypes I had in mind at the time. Indeed for me, a sexual Mars subtype had to necessarily be the Yang aspect of the sexual subtype; but that really got my curiosity going.
In the author of The Metamorphosis, we really find two aspects cohabiting in the same person, that a priori seems contradictory (a) a Mars subtype and (b) an introverted/yin nature, which already gives us elements of insight into Kafka’s whimsical and tormented nature. But that’s enough for now; let’s not jump ahead.
I therefore had understood that the sexual Mars subtype could have a yin introverted or a yang extraverted variant; a fact that we later would correlate to the nervous and choleric characters described by the renowned French psychologist Gaston Berger2, and the psychological types of intuitive introvert and intuitive extravert of the famous Austrian psychiatrist C.G. Jung.3
So instead of dealing with two aspects (yin and yang) of three subtypes, we now are faced with a fourth subtype, each with its own Yin and Yang aspect. And this fourth subtype emerging before our eyes, we called Venus — a beautiful revolution in the Enneagram, to honor the image of that wonderful Goddess of Love.
In a perpetual union with Gaia, Ouranos gives birth to the Titans (male) and Titanides (female), Cyclops and Hecatonchires the one-hundred-armed giants.
Ouranos fears and hates the Hecatonchires although they are his children. He imprisoned them in Tartarus, leaving the Cyclopes and the Titans in freedom. Gaia then persuades his son, the Titan Cronos to overthrow his father.
Cronos castrates Ouranos, and his genitals fall into the sea, where Aphrodite emerges from the sea foam (foam = aphros).
“There strong Zephyr’s moist breath
Through crashing waves conveyed her,
amid the soft foam, to the shore.
The Hours whose fillets are golden
gave her a welcome of joy,
And wrapped her in deathless clothes.
On her head they put a fine,
well-wrought crown of gold,
And when they had fully decked her,
they brought her to the gods,
who welcomed her when they saw her,
giving her their hands.
Each one of them prayed that he might lead her home to be his wedded wife,
so greatly were they amazed at the beauty of violetcrowned Cytherea.”
— Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
Goddess of love, Aphrodite, renamed Venus by the Romans, has the power to make all the gods fall in love or inspire them to a deep passion.
The birth of Venus in the Enneagram.
About two years after we had started our research and had examined several hundred clinical cases according to our energy-based method, we realized that what we defined as sexual subtypes, were actually two very distinct characters, a more masculine and a more feminine one. We agreed to name them Mars and Venus in reference to the symbolism of these gods of Greek Antiquity. The sexual Mars subtype appears as an aggressive, combative, competitive, energetic, anxious and obsessive individual; the sexual Venus subtype is more charming, charismatic, compassionate, dependent and prone to feeling forsaken.
Patients of both sexual Venus and Mars subtypes responded homeopathically well to animal remedies.
It is important to make it clear here, that sexual Venus subtypes are mostly women, but can be found among men too, and that sexual Mars subtypes are not always men and can be women as well !
At this point in our research, we thought that these two aspects of the sexual subtype represented the Yin and Yang sides of the same subtype. We also inferred that it should be the same for the self-preservation and social subtypes, so we called them: self-preservation yin and yang and social yin and yang.
Working with our students on clinical and various cases of personalities, I (Frederic) once decided to work on the case of Franz Kafka, pretty sure he was a yin/introvert, but his subtype was not clear to me. But when I showed his case to Bernadette, she typed him without hesitating a single moment as a sexual subtype / Mars and Yin. This came like an electric shock to me: Mars and Yin!
It went against my classification of subtypes I had in mind at the time. Indeed for me, a sexual Mars subtype had to necessarily be the Yang aspect of the sexual subtype; but that really got my curiosity going.
In the author of The Metamorphosis, we really find two aspects cohabiting in the same person, that a priori seems contradictory (a) a Mars subtype and (b) an introverted/yin nature, which already gives us elements of insight into Kafka’s whimsical and tormented nature. But that’s enough for now; let’s not jump ahead.
I therefore had understood that the sexual Mars subtype could have a yin introverted or a yang extraverted variant; a fact that we later would correlate to the nervous and choleric characters described by the renowned French psychologist Gaston Berger2, and the psychological types of intuitive introvert and intuitive extravert of the famous Austrian psychiatrist C.G. Jung.3
So instead of dealing with two aspects (yin and yang) of three subtypes, we now are faced with a fourth subtype, each with its own Yin and Yang aspect. And this fourth subtype emerging before our eyes, we called Venus — a beautiful revolution in the Enneagram, to honor the image of that wonderful Goddess of Love.