Bruce Banner is NOT an enneagram 9. He is an enneagram 1 with a 9 wing! I understand why people believe he is an enneagram 9. On the surface, it does appear that way. He is HIGHLY concerned with having inner stability and tries to avoid fights wherever he can. I would argue, however, that these are not core traits of Bruce Banner as a person and are instead a response to the constant threat of hulking out. When actually looking at the traits of a 9 it is clear that he does not fit.
Bruce does not look on the bright side of things. He is really more of a pessimistic man. He does not tune out the things that are wrong with the world. Oftentimes, Bruce is the one pointing out inequalities and suffering and working to help. Repressing and avoiding problems in order to keep the peace is a core coping strategy of 9's and part of what differentiates them from the other two gut types.
Bruce does not often go along with others simply to keep the peace. He is actually a very argumentative person, especially if he thinks he's right and you're wrong. He has no issue with conflict until the hulk is involved. We are told that in his college years he often got into arguments.
There is little evidence to support the idea that his basic fear would be loss or separation. While it is possible (his mother died when he was young which may have instilled a fear of losing people) it is not as supported as other options.
Instead, I would say there is much more of an argument for his basic fear to be a fear of being evil/defective. For most of his childhood his father often called him evil and defective, and he clearly still holds on to this. He is terrified of being anything like his father. He is scared that his father was right about him after all. In the current day, he is also scared that he is a monster, that having the hulk as a part of him has corrupted him.
Bruce has clear moral values that he holds close and displays again and again. Immortal Hulk is an extremely blatant example of Bruce having strong moral values and fighting to make change in the world. Much of the plot centers around this.
The biggest reason people say Bruce is a 9 is because he pushes down his anger, but 1's can have issues with aggression and repression just like 9's can. The motives behind a 1's repression much more closely align with Bruce. 1's repress themselves in order to keep their actions aligned with their ideals and their efforts to be "good." They do not use it as a coping mechanism to avoid their problems, they simply feel they must control themselves much more than most people. This motivation is much more aligned with Bruce, especially post hulk, but even before.
We also must look at both types at their worst, as Bruce is very often at his worst. 9's at their worst are disassociated and depersonalized. They try to block everything out so that they don't have to deal with it. 1's are instead more prone to become cruel to those they see as wrong-doers, and they are prone to depressions, nervous breakdowns, and suicide attempts. The second description is clearly more aligned with Bruce.
It could be argued that Bruce's D.I.D points towards him being a 9 because it is a dissociative disorder, but this misunderstands D.I.D. as a disorder. There was no "original" Bruce, which then coped with abuse by dissociating and creating alters. D.I.D. manifests when the body fails to form a single cohesive self due to trauma disrupting the process. Bruce is simply the development of an early part of what would have potentially been "Robert Bruce Banner" had he been born into better circumstances. As such, he has his own personality and his own enneagram just as the other alters in the system do.
It is very clear to me that Bruce is a 1w9
blakekathryn
prguitarman
