The Arica School (also known as the Arica Institute, which is its incorporated educational organization, or simply as Arica) is a human potential movement group founded in 1968 by Bolivian-born philosopher and psychiatrist Oscar Ichazo (born in 1931). It is named for the city of Arica, Chile, where Ichazo once lived and where he led an intensive months-long training in 1970 and 1971 before settling in the United States, where the Arica Institute (incorporated in 1971) has since been headquartered.

Ichazo is considered by many to be the modern "father" of the Enneagram (which he and the Arica Institute calls the "Enneagon") as a means to understand personality types, although Ichazo has done little to popularize his understanding of the Enneagram to an audience outside of Arica. Indeed, one branch of Enneagram study traces back to Claudio Naranjo who studied with Ichazo in Chile but who was asked to leave before the intensive 1971 training had finished and who has consequently been estranged from Arica ever since. Aricans (as Ichazo's followers are often called) consider Naranjo's understanding of the Enneagram to be limited and somewhat inaccurate, although Naranjo's ideas about the Enneagram - and those of people to whom he taught the Enneagram, such as prolific author Helen Palmer - have arguably been more influential to popular understanding of the Enneagram than have any available works by Ichazo.

The Enneagram/Enneagon, however, is just one component of the Arica system. The Arica School can be considered, as Ramparts magazine put it in 1973, as "a body of techniques for cosmic consciousness-raising and an ideology to relate to the world in an awakened way." In creating Arica's system and methodology, also known as Protoanalysis, Ichazo took inspiration from the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff on consciousness, and in addition Ichazo synthesized and expanded upon methodology and concepts from traditions that include Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism, Yoga, Zen, Kabbalah, and the I Ching.

The Arica Institute offers group and individual trainings in the teachings of the Arica School at Arica centers in a number of countries.

External links

• Information about the Arica School and the Arica Institute at arica.org
• Text of a 1992 copyright case filed against Helen Palmer by the Arica Institute that contains information about the history of Arica and the Enneagram/Enneagon. (Arica lost this case).