Merton: An Enneagram Profile

Spiritual Life, Fall 1998 by Sneck, William J

Merton: An Enneagram Profile. By Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. Ave Maria Press: Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1996. Pp. 214. Paper. $9.95.

Ironically, Merton the monk was a world-renowned public figure both because of his voluminous writings and the near universal hunger for his profound message. Sr. Suzanne Zuercher's book is the latest of several which employ his life and works as illustrations of deep human insights. For example, Walter Conn in Christian Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and Surrender (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1986) develops a psychotheological theory of conversion and then reviews the life of Thomas Merton as a richly illustrative example of the realities of Christian conversion. Later Robert G. Waldron penned Thomas Merton in Search of His Soul: A Jungian Perspective (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1991) and shows how Merton's journey concretizes the Jungian concepts of Shadow, Persona, and Anima. Now comes Merton: an Enneagram Profile which develops Sr. Suzanne's reflections found in Enneagram Spirituality: From Compulsion to Contemplation (1992) and Enneagram Companions: Relationship and Spiritual Direction (1993). This reviewer was privileged to attend one of her workshops entitled "Prayer and the Enneagram: A Reflective Experience" in July of 1992 and can testify to her competent grasp of this approach to personal wholeness.

The present book, lavishly enriched with copious citations from many of Merton's writings, provides an insightful perspective both on the meaning of Merton's vision and Enneagram personality theory. The more one already knows about each of these two topics, of course, the more appreciation and understanding one will glean from this fresh treatment. Nevertheless, the author presents her material so skillfully that one will learn much without having known a great deal beforehand.

Very briefly, the Enneagram provides an analysis of human compulsions, grouped around nine themes. (Ennea means nine in Greek.) Zuercher argues, persuasively that Thomas Merton is a classic "four," a person whose motivation is driven by the need to see himself as special and unique, an "ego-romantic, ego-melancholic, over-dramatizer" (chap. 1). After a brief introduction to thinking along Enneagram lines, Zuercher divides her treatment into four sections: 1) Instinct, Compulsion, and Gift: Vice and Virtue in the Life of Thomas Merton; 2) The Spiritual Geography of Thomas Merton; 3) Relationship Brings Meaning: The People in Merton's Life; and 4) Merton's Spiritual Message. Each of the twenty-one chapters can be compared to a tapestry produced by the skillful weaver on her writer's loom, with Enneagram theory supplying the warp and Merton's life and writings supplying the weft. The following chapter titles suggest a hint of some of the tapestry's subjects: The Special and the Ordinary; Life as a Drama; The Search for Meaning; The Way to Hope; The Contemplative Life. Two chapters call for extended comment.

Besides the picture of the adult Merton on the front cover, one other photo appears in the book, on page 22 in the chapter "The Fundamental Sin: a Figure on His Own." In it young Merton is pictured on the far right with his grandmother, with his younger brother in the center and his father on the left. The other three figures are absorbed in each other while Merton, grasping the folds of his grandmother's full dress, has turned his back on the group and scowls out of the picture and away to his left. Zuercher quotes Mott's official biography of Merton, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (1984)-who also found this picture quite significantand uses the scene to begin her reflections on Merton's life-gesture, his enneagram stance.

Merton's ambivalence in relationships, especially with women, is portrayed in his clutching the dress while simultaneously pulling away. Zuercher sees in Merton's look and stance a sense of his unlovablenessthe basis of his own original or fundamental sin-and the beginning of his evolution into a very private person who, nevertheless, struggled all his life toward meaningful human connectedness. Merton's face captures the melancholic despair of the "four" for whom only humility and God's grace can bring release and deliverance from excessive egoism and self-preoccupation.

Chapter 18, "The Feminine," discusses his complex relationships with his mother and with Margie, a young nurse who cared for him in a Louisville hospital toward the end of his life. This latter encounter has puzzled, even scandalized, many who have all but canonized Merton. Zuercher's compassionate interpretation of this and other friendships from the viewpoint of an Enneagram "four," however, sheds new light on efforts to peer into the depths of Merton's psyche.

Zuercher's book is clearly and interestingly written, well-researched, and should delight readers who want to know more about Merton, the Enneagram, and how each topic of study can clarify the other.

William J. Sneck, S.J., Ph.D., is an associate professor of pastoral counseling at Loyola College in Maryland.