What Is the Icosa?
An introduction to the twenty-dimension personality framework that maps how you experience and engage with the world.
Most personality assessments sort people into a type: introvert or extravert, thinker or feeler. The Icosa takes a different route. Instead of assigning a label, it maps how you engage across twenty dimensions of experience.
The Grid: Capacities and Domains
The model is built on a 4×5 grid. Four capacities describe how you engage with life:
- Open (Receiving) — how energy enters your system: sensation, feeling, ideas, connection, meaning
- Focus (Noticing) — where your attention goes and how clearly you see
- Bond (Belonging) — how you form connection and claim experience as your own
- Move (Expressing) — how your energy moves outward into the world
Five domains describe where that engagement plays out:
- Physical — your body and physical life
- Emotional — your feelings and emotional life
- Mental — your thinking and mental clarity
- Relational — your relationships and connection with others
- Spiritual — your sense of meaning, purpose, spirit, and the sacred
Each intersection produces a unique harmony with its own name: Sensitivity (Open × Physical), Belonging (Bond × Relational), Agency (Move × Mental). You get twenty data points, not one broad label.
Why Twenty Dimensions?
A single number can’t capture a person. You might have strong Empathy (Open × Emotional) but struggle with Acuity (Focus × Mental). You might express yourself easily through Voice (Move × Relational) while feeling disconnected from Devotion (Bond × Spiritual).
Twenty dimensions let the model capture those mixed patterns: strengths that support you and edges that keep repeating.
What the Assessment Reveals
When you complete an Icosa assessment, you receive:
- A formation — the overall shape of your profile in one word
- A coherence score, a measure of how well-integrated your twenty dimensions are as a system
- Gateways — nine fixed positions in the grid with high cascade potential, showing which are open, partial, or closed for you
- Detected patterns — recognized configurations with clinical or developmental meaning
- A centering plan — practical next steps based on your profile geometry
Beyond Categories
The Icosa doesn’t tell you that you are one fixed thing. It shows where you are now and where movement is possible. Your profile is a snapshot, not a sentence.
That is the core idea: personality is not fixed. It is a pattern you can understand, work with, and change.