When my daughter was around four, I considered having a 2nd child. "Would you like mommy to give you a little brother or sister?" I asked her. She thought for a few seconds and then replied solemnly, "Mommy, can I go back to your belly and let my brother or sister come out first?"—she wanted to be the little one herself.
It is a cute story of a typical 4-year-old whose world is the reality of her own perception. It would feel odd for anyone older to say it, even for an adolescent. Through different developmental stages, we all grow, including our minds. We rarely remember what happens between birth and about 3-4 years old. We then go through preschool, kindergartens, schools, colleges, and find a job to build a career. Everyone has a similar path, yet most of us have been constantly looking for the real meaning of our lives and our identities immersed in the vast society around us.
In his book The Evolving Self, American psychologist Robert Kegan establishes a theory from a development perspective to explain the personal growth of our minds and consciousness. It offers a clear framework for us to reflect upon how we become who we are, what might go out of balance among our inner selves, and what transformation we should expect or target for our future selves.
Kegan's development theory has opened up a new avenue for exploring human nature by connecting multiple disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, education, and management sciences. It helps to unify our understanding of the human mind from a process-oriented and evolutionary perspective. It also presents an integrated and holistic view of each developmental stage, including cognition, feelings, and social relating.
Today, I will focus on the theory itself, which can be abstract sometimes. In the following weeks, I will unfold it more with its applications, particularly relating to consciousness, Maslow's motivation theory, the brain's theory of mind, and perhaps more.
A Theory of Evolving Self
Based on Kegan's theory, the development process of the human mind consists of six stages, each marked by the transcendence from subjective embeddedness to objective differentiation. In Kegan's words:
"Subject refers to those elements of our knowing or organizing that we are identified with, tied to, fused with, or embedded in. We have object; we are subject. We cannot be responsible for, in control of, or reflect upon that which is subject. Subject is immediate; object is mediate. Subject is ultimate or absolute; object is relative."
In other words, each stage is a distinct transformation from "being an aspect of a self" to "being aware of the aspect of being a self." While the former is a subjective experience, the latter requires a higher level of cognitive development to be able to mentally view the experience as an object, namely an objectification of that experience. Through this transformation, human consciousness gradually matures toward a more "objective" awareness of the self with more optimal alignment with external physical and sociocultural environments.
This subject vs object happens everywhere in our daily lives. When a young man gets into a fight immediately after a hot argument, we know he has lost his temper. His anger, embedded in him, subconsciously drives him to punch his opponent without thinking. He is the subject of anger.
After Abraham Lincoln died, many of his letters were found in a locked drawer and never sent. As his biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin explained, whenever Lincoln felt angry, instead of immediately clashing with the offensive person, he would give himself time to write a letter addressing his thoughts and feelings, though he never sent it off. What Lincoln did was to make his emotion an object in his mind, and his writing. He had the emotion, and he could control it.
Kegan's theory is about transforming from the initial embedded self to the matured rationale self. It reminds us of the opposition between the subconscious, automatic System 1 and deliberate, slow System 2 described by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast, and Slow. The difference is that Kegan focused on the dynamics between the two systems at different development stages, signifying the growth of one's self throughout the entire lifetime.
The Six Development Stages
Kegan's six stages are Incorporative (stage 0), Impulsive (stage 1), Imperial (stage 2) Interpersonal (stage 3), Institutional (stage 4), and Inter-individual (stage 5). As summarized in the table below, each stage has new embedded subjects emerging, while those of the prior stage become the objects. In addition, the new subjects act on what has become the objects. Throughout the growth, each stage alternates with the tendency toward individual independence and cooperative social being (inclusion).
At stage zero, a newborn, who used to live in a "completely undifferentiated world" in the womb, starts without any distinction between her inner body and external stimuli. Everything she senses is an extension of the self — her own reflexes, sensing and moving.Anything out of her direct senses does not exist. Whenever she closes her eyes, the world disappears.
For a child of 4-5 months, she starts to be attracted to external salient objects. But if the object is covered, the child immediately stops paying attention, as if it no longer exists. In contrast, an older child (after one year old) would reach out to look for the object under the cover. The child becomes aware of the external world's existence and how her own senses and movements interact with it.
At stage one, perception emerges as the subject for a child, who is his perception. Here is an example given by Kegan. A father brought his two boys to the top of the Empire State Building. The younger boy exclaimed: "Look at the people. They're tiny ants." the older boy said, "Look at the people; they look like tiny ants." The younger one could not distinguish between how something appears and how something is — he is his perception— whereas the older one could separate from his perception. The younger one is at stage 1, and the older one stage 2.
Starting stage 3, the social self begins to grow.Young adults learn to live in a world of rules and roles where their egocentric behaviors are less tolerated. They need to stop only considering their own interests (which was expected in stage 2) but focus more on relationships, build trustworthiness, and demand mutuality.
Imagine a scene happening to a young man sitting with his father-in-law at a dinner table. The young man first claims: "For the coming election, I do not care who the candidate is; I vote for the democratic party." Democratic is his identity, and he is a Democratic. When he asks his father-in-law's opinion, the latter says, "I have not decided yet who I will vote for. I need to see each candidate's thoughts on future policies. Although I am a democratic at the core, I am not happy with their recent dealings in world affairs." He knows his political bias but can look from a distance and reason from different angles. Here is a typical difference between stage 3 (the young man) and stage 4 (his father-in-law). The former embeds his relationship with the party, while the latter can detach his identity from the relationship.
During stage 4, we realize that external sources, including ideologies, norms, and beliefs of the people, culture, and institutions around us weigh too much on ourselves and our understanding of the world. We tend to feel we have lost our own identity and self because we only live under the expectation of others and chase after prestigious job titles, fame, and status.
At the ultimate stage 5, called"inter-individuality”, our consciousness reaches an equilibrium state where we can freely walk between our individual self and social self. Every experience, whether social or individual, is appreciated consciously in a higher order. The person feels happier and more connected harmoniously with the world and others. Below are some of the capabilities at this stage:
Accept self, others, and nature;
Be comfortable with multiple self-identities and can hold multiple perspectives simultaneously;
Be independent of specific cultures and environments by being active as a self-willed agent;
Deeply and profoundly experience interpersonal relationships;
Discriminate differences between means and ends, and embrace paradoxes as the truth.
Have more transcendent experiences.
Personal Growth and Transformation
Kegan's theory emphasizes lifelong personal growth and transformation, not only for well-known child and youth development but also for adulthood. It explains where the drive comes from:
"In fact, transforming our epistemologies, liberating ourselves from that in which we were embedded, making what was subject into object so that we can "have it" rather than "be had" by it -- this is the most powerful way I know to conceptualize the growth of the mind."
The theory tells us that each stage manifests a higher-order principle than the previous one. The relationship between the stages is "transformative, qualitative, and incorporative" — each successive principle subsumes or encompasses the prior principle.
Because development is dynamic, a certain dose of feeling unbalanced is healthy and can push people out of their comfort zone. The theory emphasizes a person's constant transformation. Development should be the norm but not an exception. "Periods of dynamic stability or balance followed by periods of instability and qualitatively new balance" mark the personal growth.
As adults, the sense of losing oneself becomes most intense at stage 4. As Kegan says, "All disequilibrium is a crisis of meaning; all disequilibrium is a crisis of identity (what is the self?). But only after the institutional balance has been constructed (in stage 4) can one speak of one's crisis in terms of the "meaninglessness of life" or an "identity crisis". For the first time a "self" known to the self as a self is at risk."
However, not everyone goes through all the stages in their lifetime. Many people reach stagnation at stage 3 or 4. According to Kegan, only 1% reach stage 5, the acme state of the human mind and consciousness. Why is it so difficult to get there? How can we get there? We will continue to explore them in the following newsletter.
Thanks for reading Mosaics! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
