A Field Guide to Humans: Enriching Relationships through the Enneagram

Successful relationships of all kinds begin with seeing through the other person's eyes. It's a simple practice but not that easy, especially with those close to us.

A Field Guide to Humans is a practical, imaginative guide for understanding people and improving your relationships with them. Author and therapist Frank De Luca presents the Enneagram, a model of the human psyche as nine interrelated personality types, as a lens through which to see others―their strengths, their foibles, and what makes them tick.

The title, A Field Guide to Humans, is an invitation to regard people with the same wonder and openness that a wildlife biologist brings to studying the natural world. The same objectivity, curiosity, and respect are possible when we look at human beings. Seeing friends, family, coworkers, and others in this way invites curiosity and compassion rather than criticism―a reminder that whomever you are interacting with, they want the same basic things you do even if they go about seeking them differently.

The book's nine chapters present the identifying characteristics of the nine Enneagram types, their limited and evolved expressions, as well as insights and tips for relating to people of each personality type. Delightfully illustrated with Nancy Bardos's original artwork, the chapters include first-person vignettes by people of each type or by those connected to someone of a certain type. The book's approach reflects Dr. De Luca's decades of expertise with the experiential narrative tradition of teaching the Enneagram.

Open the book and open your heart to a compassionate way of living with friends, family, colleagues, and even complete strangers.

Frank De Luca, PhD, has been teaching self-awareness and interpersonal relationship workshops since 1976. For most of those years, the Enneagram has informed his work as a licensed marriage and family therapist, a leadership coach, and a corporate consultant. Over the past four decades, Dr. De Luca developed an engaging teaching style that has helped clients and students integrate diverse psychological and personality systems into their personal and professional lives.

Dr. De Luca holds a Masters' Degree in Integral Counseling Psychology as well as a doctorate in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, California and is a professional member of the International Enneagram Association.

It was photography that first drew Nancy Bardos into the visual arts world as a young adult. She was hooked. When the iPhone arrived decades later, she ditched her big-girl cameras for the miraculous camera-in-her-pocket. Hooked again.

Noticing that life was speedily passing, Nancy realized she'd better hurry and try her hand at drawing and painting―art forms she'd long yearned to do. When she added the new iPad and Apple Pencil to her toolkit, magic struck once more. Such exciting possibilities for visual, creative play! Nancy believes we should never leave our longings unattended.