Maturing, Still

The work of Jean Piaget has been popularized enough today that many people are familiar with the idea of child development, where children move through successive cognitive stages of maturity. However, what is less known is that under the right circumstances cognitive development continues in the lifespan beyond adolescence and into the farther reaches of adulthood.

Robert Kegan’s constructive-developmental psychology inaugurated with The Evolving Self (1983) builds on the work of Jean Piaget. For Kegan, we are subject to such varied influences as reflexes, impulses, desires, values and identity but at successive stages of development these successively become objects for us in certain relevant senses. For example, as an infant, one could say that the baby is its reflexes, because those haven’t been integrated yet to support higher order processes. But as they mature, the remaining reflexes are merely something the child has.

This conscious integration takes an aspect of the self as something that can be abstracted, held and reflected on fostering a greater sense of autonomy. For instance, if you are conscious of an impulse you are not subject to it and are thereby freer. You thereby don’t have to act on it unless you want to or have checked it against other desires. However, if you do act on it, the act is owned.

Kegan has organized the stages of development into 5 stages called the impulsive, imperial, socialized, self-authoring and self-transforming minds respectively. There is also a hypothesized sixth stage called the self-liberating mind which is less formalized but may be associated with deep spiritual or existential insight associated with figures such as Socrates or The Buddha.

Each level of development carries certain strengths and limitations. For the imperial mind, typically associated with adolescents, there is a direct relationships between external rewards and motivation but they may struggle to consider the perspective of others.

For the socialized mind, the majority of adults, there is a strong loyalty to the group but they may feel torn when social roles come into conflict such as competing priorities between the role as an employee and role as a parent.

The self-authoring mind typically has a clear set of values that are cross contextual but may struggle if a situation clearly calls those values into question. The self-transforming mind is able to revise their own values and integrate multiple perspectives but since currently only about 1% of the adult population achieves this level, it can be very lonely for them.

When it comes to perspective taking, the imperial mind is associated with a for me/against me approach if there is a disagreement. However, at the level of the socialized mind it’s more of a with us/against us perspective. Past this point, the self-authoring mind might tend to see disagreement as an opportunity to sharpen one’s own arguments but at the level of the self-transforming mind that disagreement is seen as an opportunity to change one’s mind often integrating the insights of the other side into a richer perspective.

Some authors such as Duncan Sutherland have suggested that without a clearly formalized sixth stage of maturation it’s difficult to identify the limitations of the fifth stage. However, one limitation that presents itself from this level is that it privileges integration over differentiation in such a way that the synthetic view itself is posited as more true or real. However, for the self-liberating mind, it could be that each perspective is treated as equally real while acknowledging their unique capacities.

Stages of Human Cognitive Development

Kegan also has discussed collective development in historical periods with a special emphasis on the present day. In In Over Our Heads, his main thesis is that the contemporary world demands us to operate at a Stage 4 (self-authoring) level but the persistence of social problems can be traced to the fact that most adults only operate squarely within a Stage 3 (socialized mind). However, the extension of human lifespans presents an opportunity for more people to reach higher vistas of cognitive development that could meet these challenges.

For example, in a cosmopolitan world where, as Kwame Anthony Appiah has articulated, there are multiple conceptions of the good life. A person who is still subject to the worldview they were raised with may struggle to tolerate someone who thinks differently leading to xenophobia or other prejudices. To be self-authoring softens our in group allegiances and furthers our capacity to cope with a more and more complex world, thereby promoting tolerance and mutual respect.

The crisis of postmodernity can also be construed as the historical awareness of and relativization of worldviews. This can be exemplified by the ethical project of fashioning the self through continual redescription. The figure of the ironist described by Richard Rorty is someone who maintains doubt about ever achieving a final vocabulary and she is continually impressed by new ones. This perfectly exemplifies the self-authoring mind’s evolution into a self-transforming mind.

However, it’s not enough to recognize contingent particularity (of one’s upbringing, country of origin, gender, race etc.) and engage in a free play of signs a la deconstruction or ironism but also make the constructive move toward differentiated universality that doesn’t fall into the trap of centering a false universality (the perspective of the upper class, Western, White, male, “science” that only suits those in power etc.). Kegan notes that post-modernism itself inches toward self-transformation but has to be constructive to fully reach this level.

Throughout our self-exploration, the point is not to be without values or without views. Neither is it to take the view from nowhere. Rather the point is to consciously own one’s feelings, evaluations and views. We can ask whether these serve us, test them against reality and consider alternatives. 

At this point, one shifts more into the self-liberating mind which can be seen in certain forms of Buddhism and even today in contemporary continental philosophy such as the work of François Laruelle.

These traditions see all phenomena (perceptions, beliefs, feelings) as arisings in a field of awareness or simply “the Real” and maintain an attitude of acceptance, curiosity or “choicelessness.” They tend to think less in terms of what’s good or bad and right or wrong, but more in terms understanding how things work and their effects. Laruelle describes it as “thinking according to the Real.” However, these styles goes beyond moral relativism in retaining a capacity to make neutral evaluations about the capacities of things while acknowledging the limits of all perspectives.

Cultivating Cognitive Development

For Kegan, these different levels of relativization is what adult development entails. The importance of maturation has to do having the capacity to cope with the complexity of the world. It means is having the ability to handle a wider scope of scenarios from starting a family to managing a firm to leading a community.

Receiving an education is one major way we make a passage from children into self-possessed adults. Through activities like reading and writing, we learn to express ourselves in language. Every subject from math to history helps and social and emotional learning are just as important. 

However, there are a few things that individuals can do to help themselves reach new cognitive developmental milestones.

In the shift from socialized to self-authoring mind, the practice of cognitive journaling helps to clarify values, beliefs and goals and apply critical thinking to negotiate between competing social roles. The fundamental question is “what do I believe, separate from what others expect of me?”

In the shift from self-authoring to self-transforming mind, it’s important to step back and look at broader systems such as organizations, cultures, or society more broadly to explore interdependent relationships and clarify a coherent worldview that integrates multiple perspectives. the major question here is “how do I handle it when my framework fails?”

For the self-transforming mind to get to a self-liberating mind, the work is more about aligning oneself with a great purpose through a deep recognition of relationality and the integration of multiple forms of knowing. The question here becomes “how can I translate my understanding of interconnectedness into meaningful action in the world?”

The Evolving Self

For Kegan, these different levels of relativization is what adult development entails. The importance of maturation has to do with the capacity to cope with the complexity of the world. It means having the ability to handle a wider scope of scenarios from starting a family to managing a firm to leading a community without undue strain. By defining these stages, we raise our awareness of individual strengths and limitations and highlight a path for everyone to grow.

Further Reading

1. The Evolving Self by Robert Kegan. This is the classic text which introduces Kegan’s original framework of adult development including the first 5 stages.
2. In Over Our Heads by Robert Kegan. A more recent work, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life applies the framework introduced in his earlier work to specific trends in contemporary culture. It is written for a broad audience and elaborates on the thesis that life today requires a higher level of maturation than many are equipped for.