A Psychological Analysis of the Personality Type of King in Masnavi’s Story of ‘King and Maid’ Based on the Model of Enneagram

Abstract

Enneagram is one of the important patterns for character recognition in modern psychology that can be used for the recognition of a person’s personality type from among the nine possible personality types. Rumi, in his Masnavi, has masterfully created characters like a great artist and is aware of the hidden layers of his created characters like a great psychologist. Among a collection of more than two hundred stories in Masnavi, "The King and the Maid" is the one of the prominent literary-didactic ones where a king runs the first role. Rumi has applied different approaches for characterization that has made possible the recognition of the king’s personality type based on the Enneagram pattern. The overall atmosphere of the story, sayings, actions, behaviors and the king’s communication with other characters and his personal and social place has made possible this type of study and analysis. This study which had a descriptive-analytic research design aimed at analyzing the king’s personality type based on the eighth personality type (Boss and ruler) on the Enneagram pattern

Keywords

• enneagram
• personality types
• type ruler
• story of masnavi's king and maid