One of the key points you made which I haven't seen other commenters mention is the "white washing" (great term) of the Sufi tradition by the modern enneagram enthusiasts. I've worked for years with Indian psychology. I mentioned to an academic friend years ago (one who had some sympathy with the Indian spiritual tradition) that I was tired of seeing how modern psychologists would take practices (like mindfulness) and look at them through the very flat, one dimensional lens of empirical science, and lose much which simply cannot be quantified. I wanted to do the opposite. use the "lens" of Indian psychology and look at modern psychology through that lens.

He said, "But nobody will take you seriously."

I then wrote an essay, "What If We Took Indian Psychology Seriously?". That was 20 years ago, and I see that a LOT more people are realizing what they missed in indigenous traditions in general by viewing them through a modernist lens.

One more thing: Do you know Jonathan Haidt's "Moral Foundation" theory? He claims to have run many tests that show high levels of validity and reliability. I always thought the conceptual foundations of his theory were quite weak and even confused. I managed to find a researcher at Oxford who agreed, and who has written excellent critiques of the theory

The point being - in the worlds of psychology and sociology, one has to be careful citing any research. I used the Big 5 personality test for about 5 years, in close to 500 evaluations of law enforcement officers. I carefully kept track of the research, with a paritcular emphasis on studies that refuted the Big 5.

As far as I could see, despite your correct reference ot many studies that seem to support it, there are just about as many studies that refute it.

And lastly, if you look carefully enough, you'll find the empirical support for a majority of what is in the DSM to be quite poor.

The quantitative methods developed initially to study dead things (ie physics) just don't, IMHO work that well for studying people. My sense is a radically different paradigm is needed, particularly when we still barely even comprehend what consciousness is.