Sandra Maitri's book is useful for someone who knows a little about the enneagram (to the point at which they have narrowed down the possibilities for their type and appreciate the potential for understanding human experience provided by the enneagram). Then one wonders: Where do I go from here with this system?
S. Maitri provides a somewhat broad perspective on where she sees that people can go with the enneagram as a map into new territory. She focuses on a duality for each type, one choice seeming to lead us to an evolution our ego structures underwent when we were young, and we were filtering our experience through the lenses of the various types in order to enhance our survival and establish a distinct identity, and other visceral (or what one might call instinctive) goals of humans, and the other seeming to lead to greater and greater levels of interconnection and unity, as we probe (and possibly go beyond the sharp boundaries we established for ourselves when young) the seeming universal, within our particular experiences, and which transcend our particular filters or ennea-types.
She obviously seems convinced that this "higher" pursuit takes us in a direction beyond our materialistic orientation of science and technology, but what this might mean seems somewhat elusive (despite using capitalized words like "Being", suggestive of a supernatural orientation). She presents quite a balanced perspective, and frequently brings into the picture Freudian or Freudian-related viewpoints. This particular psychological vantage point is helpful, due to the broad interests of Freud and those who advanced the science after him.
I thought that her project in this book was very ambitious, and perhaps deviated a little into vagueness and superficiality by attempting to make so many connections. On the other hand, this large perspective is a valuable one to be exposed to as one person's vision about a direction for further investigation after assimilating some of the important ideas about the enneagram.