Px Archetypes
The Eight Archetypes
The word archetype simply means a recurring pattern — a shape that keeps showing up. In our own Px assessments we identify eight of them, each representing a different gift people bring to the world. One is yours.
Why animals?
Animals are intuitive. You don’t need a psychology degree to picture a stag holding its ground or an otter playing in the current. Each animal captures something essential about a way of being in the world — a core drive that people recognise immediately in themselves or in the people around them.
They also travel well. Animals work across many cultures, across languages, and across the gap between formal assessment and everyday conversation (we will be refining the specific animals for international markets soon). You can tell someone you’re a Fox and they already have a picture forming. That matters when the goal is self-knowledge that you can actually use.
Where do they come from?
The eight archetypes are informed by the Enneagram — a personality framework that identifies core motivational patterns. The Enneagram traditionally describes nine types. We reduced this to eight because two of the original types (the Helper and the Peacemaker) are so psychologically similar that treating them separately didn’t add much. In Px they combine as the Dolphin — empathy, nurturing, and natural peacemaking in a single archetype.
This is our own framework, not a reproduction of the Enneagram. We draw on the same research tradition but we’ve shaped the archetypes to work within the broader Px approach — where your archetype is one dimension of who you are, part of your whole picture.
Meet the eight
Which one are you?
Take a Glimpse — it takes just a few minutes, no account needed. If you recognise yourself, there’s more to discover with the Insight assessment.