It's unfortunate that the enneatype writers have seemingly limited themselves to the concepts of aggressive, compliant and detached types within Karen Horney's work. Opportunities for applying other insightful aspects of her work to the enneatypes are missed. In discussing the idealized image in her book Our Inner Conflicts, she offers what can be seen as an interesting comparison between enneatypes 7, 4 and 1.

In 1945, long before the Enneagram personality types were taught, Karen Horney's book Our Inner Conflicts was published. In that book are introduced the aggressive, compliant and detached types. In the Enneagram personality system, these types have been used to create the three so-called Horneyvian triads: aggressive, compliant and withdrawn. Although these Horneyvian triads are a widely accepted feature of the Enneagram system, the type descriptions in Our Inner Conflicts seem to match only three of the nine enneatypes.