The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development

It's hard to exaggerate how good this book is. I am reading it as part of a Masters class in developmental psychology and it is simply brilliant. Whether reading it for personal awareness or insights into client problems, it provides an overview of developmenal theories, while proposing its own elegant understanding of the lifelong spiraling cycle of evolution which is life. It is worth any effort and deserves multiple readings. Buy it and its companion book How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work by Keegan and Layhe. It provides a step by step process that can be used for non work-related areas of growth as well as work-related.

I'd be really surprised if there were many books as brilliant as this one on the subject of human development. It not only captures its subject in its very motion, but actually manages to show what is there in common between the great variety of forms it takes on different planes: compare for instance the self-assertions of a 5 year old uncompromising "imperialist" to an adult's exercises of control at his work settings. Or the undifferentiated merger of a child with her mother to the overwhelming dependency most people experience in their interpersonal experiences at a certain period of life: what do others think of me? Kegan sees these as recurring motives, spiralling movements between inclusion and autonomy with ever-widening "horizons" for meaning-making: the same motives are played in a different key in each phase, the specifics of which are described brilliantly. These are all necessary and very normal stages in every human's development, with their complete and coherent ways of meaning-making which are to be respected in order to understand and come to contact with each other in a meaningful and supportive way. Putting the blame of egocentrism and "manipulation" on a 5 year old would not be much better than accusing animals of not feeling guilty over having caused other animal's suffering: it would reflect a similar incapacity and lack of sensitivity to others "otherness", that is to say - his different mode of making sense of the world, with its advantages in comparison to the preceding modes and shortcomings in relation to (from the point of view of) the future ones. But in addition to this at once obviously necessary and yet often difficult capability of empathy and respect for diversity summed up by "pluralistic relativism", what I found so great about Kegan's work is that it always considers another point of no less importance: not only are the different stages of meaning-making having quite their own legitimacy - which are to be respected and supported when they emerge, but the separation from which shall be equally supported when the time is ripe - but it is actually shown to be as natural a thing to be experiencing turbulent periods when there is a shift ("decentering") from one major "cognitive-emotional" stage to another. Though difficult and threatening, it might be necessary to be a little bit "sick", "out of your mind" sometimes - if one is to move on. The general framework is built on piagetian developmental notions with decreasing ego-centrism as the central axis, but modified considerably to build a picture that incorporates many of the object-relations concepts, among others. It's flexible, growth-oriented and open-ended as a (constructive-) developmental approach should be, it's humane and avoids pathologizing and reification of mental states, and last but not least - very well written. The author's personal experience as a consultist firmly grounds the excellent theory at all times in a wealth of examples and stories

Comprehensive, Brilliant, highly Creative and introduces a vocabulary for human development that plugs into so many important theoretical and practictical domains. A year before this book came out, Ken Wibler wrote "The Atman Project" which articulates a very similiar vision from a slightly different angel.

The Evolving Self is one of the best books that I have ever read. Kegan's eloquent presentation of the dynamic process of human consciousness evolution is incredible. Kegan presents the very best of developmental theory, while at the same time acknowledging and avoiding the trappings that such a perspective tends to fall into. Developmental theory can often lead to a very compartmentalized view of people, but Kegan's emphasis on the person as a meaning-making process sidesteps these tendencies. Throughout his writings, I felt an incredible empathy with the undercurrent of evolution sliding under all personality. Rather than using his model to categorize myself and those around me (as I have an unfortunate inclination to do with developmental theory) I instead found myself identifying with the universal forces that run through all human beings which express themselves in and as the developmental stages. This might perhaps seem like an unimportant semantic shift, but in actuality it discloses a monumental difference between these two stances. This is true precisely because my ability to help another is proportional to the degree to which I can identify with them and their struggles. The warmth of this genuinely empathetic approach to psychological development is refreshing and liberating.

A challenging comprehensive look at human development through the lense of "meaning making" which Kegan asserts is the fundamental human activity. Not interested in developing the five (six if you count the birth stage) stages so much as describing the dynamic of forming (and dissolving) the negotiated "truces" between the need for inclusion (assimilation) and the need for differentiation. On this point, Kegan includes the feminist concern that most developmental research has been done on male subjects (who tend to test out on the differentiation end of what Kegan believes is a continuum) and includes the notion of assimilation in his dynamic helix (the paperback cover drawing is enormously descriptive of the text inside). Kegan is interested in the person who is doing the meaning making and his theory has enormous applicability in the therapeutic project: we are helping a human person whose ability to make meaning of their lives is temporarily in crisis (often because of the very proces of meaning making itself). One should expect this type of crisis because meaning making by its very nature is a process in evolution: various "made meanings" contain within themselves the components of an as yet unrevealed meaning that will come about in the future. When it begins to emerge the human experience will be one of loss of meaning in the service of the new meaning that is to be made. Wonderful, reverential treatment of the subject as meaning maker. Challenging to therapists to maintain their human touch and not pathologize the client by thinking that the present crisis is regression; rather the present crisis is an instance of the attempt to make meaning. Book is difficult to read because the thought is so condensed and well worked out and because the vision of the author challenges the reader's own made meaning. Tod S. Laverty, OFM, MS. [email protected] for further thoughts on this or author's other book In Over Our Heads (reviewed elsewhere on the web).