Formations: The Shape of Your Inner Landscape
How Icosa identifies your personality formation and what the seventy-seven formation names mean.
When you complete an Icosa assessment, one of the first things you see is your formation: a single word like Balanced, Poised, Withdrawn, or Volatile. What does that word actually mean?
What Is a Formation?
A formation describes the overall shape of your personality profile. It’s not a type label; it’s a geometric description of how your twenty dimension scores relate to each other.
Imagine your twenty scores plotted on a map. The formation captures the pattern they create: are capacities running high or low, are domains concentrated or spread, and is the system coherent or pulling in different directions?
How Formations Are Named
The Icosa defines seventy-seven formations, organized by coherence band. Your formation is determined by three factors:
1. Your coherence band, where your overall coherence score falls (Thriving, Steady, Struggling, Overwhelmed, or Crisis).
2. Capacity and domain direction — whether your capacity means and domain means are running under, centered, or over relative to the midpoint.
3. Internal coherence type — whether the scores within your profile are internally consistent (coherent) or widely scattered (incoherent).
Thriving Formations (5)
At the Thriving level, direction matters less because the system is well-integrated overall. Thriving formations are distinguished by dynamics: Balanced (stable center), Anchored (elevated and grounded), Emerging (gaining momentum), Drifting (losing momentum), or Stalled (temporary plateau).
Other Bands (18 each)
For Steady, Struggling, Overwhelmed, and Crisis bands, each formation captures a unique combination of capacity direction, domain direction, and coherence type. Examples:
- Poised (Steady, centered/centered, coherent) — stable, well-centered, internally consistent
- Withdrawn (Struggling, under/under, coherent) — pulled inward across both axes but internally consistent
- Volatile (Struggling, over/over, incoherent) — high energy across the board but scattered
- Suspended (Overwhelmed, centered/centered, coherent) — holding position under pressure
- Frozen (Crisis, centered/centered, coherent) — locked in place, unable to move
Why Formations Matter
Your formation tells you something individual scores cannot: how the system functions as a whole. Two people with identical averages can still have very different formations and very different lived experiences.
Understanding your formation helps you:
- Recognize your characteristic strengths and challenges
- Understand why certain situations feel easier or harder
- Identify the leverage points where change would have the most impact
- Track how your profile evolves over time
Formations Change
Because the Icosa treats personality as dynamic, your formation can change. Major life transitions, therapeutic work, consistent practice, or shifts in circumstances can all reshape your profile geometry.
Retaking the assessment over time lets you track these changes and see how your inner landscape is evolving. A shift from Withdrawn to Holding to Poised, for example, traces a clear path of increasing integration.