Vice to Virtue Conversion

I went to a Helen Palmer workshop some years ago on the vice to virtue transformation and it had a profound effect on me. She talked about how the vices for each type used the same energy as the virtues. Evil is only good that is not properly channelled. In NLP they say that every behaviour has a positive intention. The Enneagram takes that a bit further in that the vices and virtues for each type have the same positive intention.

When you fight your ego it's like fighting yourself, and the harder you fight the harder your other self fights back. When you face your ego and accept that it has a positive intention (even though it may not be relevant in the here and now), you take the energy back into yourself and your ego shrinks down into something managable and even lovable.