Beatrice Chestnut grew up in Palo Alto, California, went to college in Los Angeles, and attended graduate school in Chicago and San Francisco. A licensed psychotherapist, coach, and business consultant based in San Francisco, she has graduate degrees in communication and clinical psychology. Her PhD dissertation describes how Reagan and Bush got away with their Iran-Contra crimes in the 1980s by managing public opinion (and Congress) through the story they created for a lazy press corps. She has taught at Northwestern University and facilitated interpersonal learning groups at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and University of San Francisco's School of Law. She has been studying and working with the Enneagam for 23 years. She was certified to teach the Enneagram in 1997 through the Helen Palmer/David Daniels Enneagram Professional Training Program. She served as president of the International Enneagram Association in 2006 and 2007 and was founding co-editor of the IEA's Enneagram Journal in 2008.

The Enneagram—a universal symbol of human purpose and possibility—is an excellent tool for doing the hardest part of consciousness work: realizing, owning, and accepting your strengths and weaknesses. In this comprehensive handbook, Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, traces the development of the personality as it relates to the nine types of the Enneagram, the three different subtype forms each type can take, and the path each of us can take toward liberation. With her guidance, readers will learn to observe themselves, face their fears and disowned Shadow aspects, and work to manifest their highest potential.