Psychological Knowledge Engagement and Robert Kegan’s Knowledge Enterprise

A case study for the “Territory of Concepts” project

The above diagram uses the “Universal Reference” diagram, the “Kinds of Actors” framework, and a sub-framework of “Ecological Formism” to explore a thematic network around “Mindset” and build a Configurational Theory of “Mindset”.

This diagram goes beyond the original “Universal Reference” diagram and offers us a new creative space for discussing the Concept — Theory Transformation which is part of the “Territory of Concepts” project.

In the previous articles, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to discuss four types of actors and test the Mental Tuning framework. See the links below:

• The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration (48 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists (27 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Intervenors (28 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Actors (39 min read)

This article will review the discussions and pay attention to a particular knowledge creator’s knowledge enterprise.

Contents

1. Four Types of Knowledge Workers

2. Psychological Knowledge Engagement

3. The Landscape of Robert Kegan’s Knowledge Enterprise

4. Robert Kegan: Theoretical Integration and Concept Creation

4.1 A Third Psychological Tradition
4.2 The Piagetion Framework
4.3 A Theoretical Integration Project

5. Robert Kegan: Perspectives and Frameworks

5.1 Agency, Communion, and Evolutionary Truces
5.2 Dynamic Equilibrium and Self — Other Balances
5.3 Meaning-making
5.4 Natural Therapy
5.5 Five Orders of Consciousness
5.6 The DDO Framework

6. Robert Kegan: Methods and Tools

6.1 The Subject-Object Interview
6.2 Internal Language and Immunity Map
6.3 Mental Complexity and Three Types of Mindsets

7. A Successful Knowledge Enterprise

7.1 Kegan’s Creative Thematic Spaces
7.2 Robert Kegan’s Initial Ambition
7.3 Utilizating Theoretical Resources
7.4 Frame a Creative Space
7.5 Mental Moves as Mental Tuning
7.6 A Long-term Collaboration Project
7.7 Psychological Knowledge Engagement as Social Moves

1. Four Types of Knowledge Workers

In Nov 2022, I followed sociologists’ distinction between Actors and Researchers and developed a new typology of actors for the Creative Life Curation project. See the diagram below.

The above diagram is based on a diagram called Universal Reference. The Vertical group refers to the Degrees of Abstraction of “Knowledge”.

The “Theory — Practice” dimension is shared with the following pairs of concepts:

• The “Heaven — Earth” dimension
• The “Langue — Space” dimension
• The “Episteme — Empeiria” dimension

The “Langue — Space” dimension is inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics. Langue and parole is a theoretical linguistic dichotomy distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Langue refers to the abstract system of language while parole means concrete speech. The “Langue” refers to universal concepts or vocabulary while “Space” refers to spatial structure and immediate embodied experience.

Four kinds of actors were inspired by Ping-keung Lui’s theoretical sociology. According to Lui, “There are three kinds of theories in sociology, namely, social theory, sociological theory, and theoretical sociology. ”

• Social theories are speculations about the social world. They constitute the speculative project of sociology.
• Some social theories are amenable to positivistic investigation under certain specific conditions. I call them sociological theories.
• Also, some other social theories, being very ambitious, attempt to recruit as many as they can sociological theories supporting themselves. I call them theoretical sociologies. They compete against each other. The winner becomes the paradigm of sociology, and its supporting sociological theories become exemplars of the paradigm. In this way, theoretical sociologies and sociological theories constitute the scientific project of sociology.

Lui used “Langue (Language)” to refer to his theoretical sociology while “Parole (Speech)” refers to all empirical sociologies.

In this way, Lui presented a typology of actors:

• Actors
• Empirical Sociologists
• Theoretical Sociologists

I added Curators to expand Lui’s typology for the Creative Life Curation framework. There is also an implicit similarity between Curators and Theoretical Sociologists. However, the above Universal Reference diagram doesn’t display it. We need to develop a new diagram. The final result is the diagram below.

I use “Linguistic Formism” as a label to describe Theoretical Sociologists, especially Lui’s approach.

Lui also uses “empirical sociology” to refer to “theory about some specific thing” and “theoretical sociology” to refer to “abstract theory”. He also illustrates the connections between the ruling paradigms, theoretical sociologies, empirical sociologies, and data, in the following diagram:

Source: Ingold’s Idea of Making — A View from Theoretical Sociology (Ping-keung Lui 2020, p.13)

Since Curators have to deal with Actors’ life experiences, their frames have to be suitable for sensemaking with actions and projects. So, I called it “Ecological Formism”.

The similarity between Curators and Theoretical Sociologists is “Formism” while their difference is between the Ecological approach and the Linguistic approach.

The above discussion is about sociological knowledge creators. Now we can apply the same logic to discuss psychological knowledge creators.

• Theoretical Psychologists
• Empirical Psychologists
• Intervenors
• Actors

While Theoretical Psychologists and Empirical Psychologists are working on producing public knowledge, Intervenors and Actors are working on solving mental problems or optimizing subjective experience by using psychological knowledge.

These four types of knowledge creators have different perspectives and behavioral patterns because they have different construal levels, practical interests, points of observation, methodological preferences, and expressive conventions (or language habits).

2. Psychological Knowledge Engagement

In the previous four articles, I discussed four types of psychological knowledge engagement using the Knowledge Discovery Canvas.

In general, Theoretical Psychologists think and work with the following perspective.

• Construal Levels: Meta-theory or the most abstract level
• Practical Interests: The progress of the discipline as a meaningful whole
• Points of Observation: The “Concept — Theory” Move
• Methodological Preferences: Concept Analysis and Formal Representation
• Expressive Conventions: Mathematical formulas or Conceptual frameworks

Empirical Psychologists move to a different position and they have a different perspective:

• Construal Levels: Specific-theory or abstract models/frameworks
• Practical Interests: Develop a particular innovation concept or framework for the discipline
• Points of Observation: The “Perspective — Framework” Move
• Methodological Preferences: methods for Empirical Research, such as laboratory experiments
• Expressive Conventions: Conceptual frameworks and data charts

Intervenors also have their specific needs for psychological knowledge engagement:

• Construal Levels: concrete models/frameworks and related test tools
• Practical Interests: Develop a particular intervention program for behavior change or related education
• Points of Observation: The “Methods — Heuristics” Move
• Methodological Preferences: methods for design, communication, test, report, etc.
• Expressive Conventions: face-to-face communication and questionnaire test

While Actors come from various domains, they share a primary theme: Subjective Experience. For Actors, psychological knowledge engagement is all about understanding their own subjective experience and making sense of their life situations, either stressful or enjoyable.

• Construal Levels: concrete models/frameworks, simple heuristic tools, etc.
• Practical Interests: learning for work or reflecting on life experiences, solving own problems, etc
• Points of Observation: The “Work—Project” Move
• Methodological Preferences: reflection, discussion, reading, etc.
• Expressive Conventions: face-to-face communication, metaphorical words, storytelling, etc.

You can find more details in the original articles:

• The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration (48 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists (27 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Intervenors (28 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Actors (39 min read)

3. The Landscape of Robert Kegan’s Knowledge Enterprise

The previous articles discussed four types of psychological knowledge engagement under four types of roles. In the real-life world, people can move between these different areas. A person could engage with psychological knowledge in different situations.

Let’s use Robert Kegan’s creative life as an example to see a multiple-role psychological knowledge enterprise.

Who is Robert Kegan?

Source: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/directory/faculty/robert-kegan

Robert Kegan is a teacher, a therapist, a researcher-theorist, and an author. Let’s see his own introduction in his 1982 book The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development.

[As a teacher] I admit that I am trying in part to engage you in the highly personal process of learning, to join you in an exploration of just how much can be understood about a person by understanding his or her meaning system, to explore with you how these meaning systems might work and how they seem to feel. (1982, p.viii)

According to Wikipedia, Robert Kegan (born August 24, 1946) is an American developmental psychologist. He was the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He taught there for forty years until his retirement in 2016.

[As an author]… I have taken courage in Erikson’s choice to publich what was essentially an empirically grounded speculation, what he called “a conceptual itinerary.” Like Erikson, I am holding the framework in this book to the first-order test that it be able to take account of a very wide range of complicated and carefully observed human phenomena in a consistent and substantive manner. Like Erikson, I draw these phenomena from my own and others’ life experience, from my own and others’ clicical experience, and from my own and others’ research.

Since the theoretical thinking by which I have been guided grows out of academic rather than clinical psychology, it is true that I have a larger body of rigorously gathered observations upon which to draw, especially the work of Piaget himself, his research-oriented adherents, and that of the social cognitivists, especially Lawrence Kohlberg. Although this gives me a whole additional category of phenomena which is perhaps more intersubjectively perceived than Erikson’s, I am still orienting to the material of these researches as phenomena which the framework must be able to take into account rather than claiming that the researches “prove” my position. In effect the theories become themselves phenomena which the framework must engage, and I do try to suggest here the context in which a number of developmental theories might be best integrated.(1982, p.viii)

As a prolific author, Kegan has written several theoretical books and practical books on adult development and organizational behavior change. The list below highlights some of his publications.

• 1982 — The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development (Harvard University Press)
• 1994 — In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (Harvard University Press)
• 1998 — A Guide to the Subject-Object Interview: Its Administration and Interpretation (Lisa Laskow Lahey, Emily Souvaine, Robert Kegan, Robert Goodman, Sally Felix)Cambridge: The Subject-Object Research Group, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• 2001 — How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work (Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey). Jossey-Bass/Wiley
• 2005 — Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools (Tony Wagner, Robert Kegan, et al.). Jossey-Bass
• 2009 — Immunity to Change: How to overcome it and unlock potential in yourself and your organization (Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey). Harvard Business Review Press
• 2016 — An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization (Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey). Harvard Business Review Press

As a clinician I am attending to the way this framework might help clinicians in their most fundamental activity: conveying to the client that they understand something of his or her experience in the way he or she experience it. Why this activity on the part of the therapist is so crucial to the client’s thriving has not been well understood, although it has long been appreciated by phenomenological and client-centered psychologists and is lately being rediscovered by psychiatry through the work of Heinz Kohut. In this book I try to demonstrate that this special kind of empathy is crucial at every phase in the lifespan because it is actually intrinsic to the process by which we develop. (1982, p.viii)

He is a licensed psychologist and practicing therapist, lectures widely to professional and lay audiences, and consults in the area of professional development.

Finally, I am a researcher-theorist who finds the field of ego or personality development somewhat encumberred by a number of poorly constructed meta-psychological questions: “Which is to be taken as the master in personality, affect or cognition?” or “Which should be the central focus, the individual or the social?” or “Which should be the primary theater of investigation, the intrapsychic or the interpersonal?” or even “Which is to be taken as the more powerful developmental framework, the psychoanaytic or the cognitive-structural?” In this book all these questions get reconstructed by moving from the ditchotomous choice to the dialectical context which brings the poles into being in the first place,. Is there some context in personality, the book asks, which is philosophically prior to, and constitutive of, these polarities — and can this context be observed and studied? The book suggests that the evolution of meaning-making is just this context, and the suggestion is supported through the consideration of a wide variety of human experience gleaned from the settings of the clinic, the research laboratory, and everyday life.

(1982, p.viii)

Based on the above books, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to represent Robert Kegan’s knowledge enterprise. The canvas was designed with two spaces: Outer Space and Inner Space. While Outer Space refers to objective knowledge, Inner Space refers to subjective knowledge. Kegan’s ideas are public knowledge, so we only need to use Outer Space.

I used the following blocks to curate Kegan’s ideas.

• Approaches
• Concepts
• Perspectives
• Frameworks
• Methods
• Heuristics
• Domains

It’s clear that Kegan moves between four areas. From 1982 to 2016, he moved from theoretical development to practical applications. His early two books were published by Harvard University Press, his late books were published by Harvard Business Review Press and other publishers.

There is no boundary in his journey of engaging with psychological knowledge.

What a creative life!

4. Robert Kegan: Theoretical Integration and Concept Creation

Kegan’s knowledge enterprise started in the THEORY area. Born in Minnesota in 1946, Kegan received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Dartmouth in 1968, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977.

In a 40-year-long journey of psychological knowledge engagement, Kegan wrote many books and articles that introduced many concepts. I only select a few concepts for the present discussion. See the diagram below.

Kegan’s knowledge enterprise is an ambitious journey of adopting Jean Piaget’s theory to build “a third psychological tradition” in adult development and clinical psychotherapy.

4.1 A Third Psychological Tradition

What are the first psychological tradition and the second psychological tradition? Kegan referred them to the neo-psychoanalytic school and the existential-phenomenological tradition.

While any number of theorists and frameworks can be said to take an interest in the person as a meaning-maker, the psychological traditions that, in doing so, have probably had the most impact on clinical and counseling psychology are two: the neo-psychoanalytic school, including both neo-psychoanalytic ego psychology and neo-psychoanalytic object relations theory; and the existential-phenomenological tradition, whose most influential exponent for counseling and clinical psychology has surely been Carl Rogers (1951). (1982, p.3)

Kegan claimed that his vision is to build a third psychological tradition in The Evolving Self:

… the integration of the two is not at all straightforward. This book does not attempt such an integration, but, in putting forward a third psychological tradition, it ends up doing honor to a surprising extent to the deepest convictions of both existential and dynamic personality psychologies. This third tradition I will call the “constructive-development” (it attends to the development of the activity of meaning-constructing), and it has a venerable past in the meaning-making ranks. Its origins lie in the work of James Mark Baldwin (1906), John Dewey (1938), and George Herbert Mead (1934); and its central figure has certainly been Jean Piaget (1936).

… My “neo-Piagetian” approach to the person will suggest that not only is this tradition capable of addressing these issues, but it may be capable of doing so in a way that gives a new kind of strength to whatever lens the counselor or therapist holds most dear.
(1982, p.4)

If we use three keywords to describe these three different approaches, then we can use “Personality”, “Meaning”, and “Activity” to highlight their significant aspects:

• Personality: the psychoanalytic tradition
• Meaning: the existential-phenomenological tradition
• Activity: the “constructive-development” approach

The foundational issue of clinical and counseling psychology is a set of intertwined concepts such as the “ego,” the “self,” the “person,” the “mind”, the “meaning”, the “life”, etc. Each psychologist has his own theoretical approach to dealing with this set of concepts.

What’s Kegan’s view on the “Person”? We can find the answer in The Evolving Self:

The subject of this book is the person, where “person” is understood to refer as much to an activity as to a thing — an ever aggressive motion engaged in giving itself a new form. The English language (in fact, all Western language) is not well suited to preserving this sense of the dialectical relation between entities and processes…While it may be possible for us to accept in isolation an axiom like Hegel’s, or Whitehead’s (1929), that what is most fundamental about life is that it is motion (rather than merely something in motion), it remains that we are greatly tempted — and seduced — by our language into experiencing ourselves and the world as things that move. Even the action nouns (gerunds) which we use to refer to ourselves have lost their active dimension and get constituted as things. A writer has to strain to make the reader recover the process in the words “human being”; we talk about “a being” and “beings.” This book is about human being as an activity. It is not about the doing which is a human does; it is about the doing which a human is. (1982, p.8)

Following the notion of “human being as activity”, Kegan grasped two big ideas and used them to name his approach: Constructivism and Developmentalism.

This notion of human being has been most powerfully represented by two separate Big Ideas which have been appearing throughout this Prologue. As big ideas should, one or both have had an influence on nearly every aspect of intellectual life in the last hundred years. These are the ideas of constructivism (that persons or systems constitute or construct reality) and developmentalism (that organic systems evolve through eras according to regular principles of stability and change). (1982, p.8)

In The Concept of Mindset and Actors, we learned Dan P. McAdams’ narrative identity and his approach to personality. In The Person: An Introduction to the Science of Personality Psychology, McAdams suggested a three-level personality model: Dispositional traits, Characteristic adaptations, and Life Stories.

Both McAdams and Kegan pay attention to meaning-making. However, they use different solutions to solve the problem of meaning-making.

4.2 The Piagetion Framework

While McAdams adopted narrative psychology to build a new layer called Life Stories, Kegan adopted Jean Piaget’s theory to build the Constructive — Developmental Approach.

Who is Jean Piaget? A child developmental psychologist?

While Piaget was known for his work on child development, his creative life was about developing a new thought called Genetic Epistemology. Some researchers also found that Piaget’s calling is to solve the conflict between science and value. Michael Chapman mentioned this idea in his 1988 book Constructive Evolution: Origins and Development of Piaget’s Thought.

In my subsequent encounter with his adolescent novel Recherche and his early writings on religion, I discovered that the original problem motivating his work had been the attempt to reconcile science and values. His interest in psychology now appeared in a different light. Psychological research had been less an end in itself than a way of addressing the problem of values with scientific means. By observing the development of increasingly more powerful forms of reasoning in children, he had hoped to discover a principle underlying development progress. In this way, scientific observation could provide a basis, not for deciding judgments of relative value, but for distinguishing the relative values of different forms of judgment. (1988, preface)

This piece of information is very useful for understanding what Kegan called the Piagetian Framework. See the diagram below.

Source: The Evolving Self (1982, p.292)

According to Kegan, the Piagetian Framework is a three-dimensional framework.

Notions of health are one kind of address to biology, but they do not lend themselves to philosophical analysis; there is no way to assess their truth value. Notions of growth or development, as I have defined it here, do. A framework which itself is generative of justifiable goals must be more than psychological; it must, as well, be philosophical and biological. This, as suggested by Figure 6, is the nature of the constructive-developmental framework. It is biological, psychological, and philosophical; it studies the relationship of the organism to the environment (what biologists call “adaptation”), the relationship of the self to the other (what psychologists call the “ego”), and the relationship of the subject to the object (what philosophers call “truth”). The constructive-developmental framework studies one context (meaning-constructive evolutionary activity) which it considers to be about ego, adaptation, and truth. It is a framework at once psychological, biological, and philosophical. While this may not guarantee its wisdom, it makes it an extremely promising framework for consideration of these kinds of jointly philosophical and natural-scientific question. (1982, 293)

Kegan also associated the above framework with the developmental stage view.

The framework suggests a demonstrable conception of development as the process of “natural philosophy,” latter stages being “better,” not on the grounds that they come later, but on the philosophical grounds of their having a greater truth value. The popular psychological notions of greater differentiation and greater integration as goals are here given a substantive and justifiable meaning… Each new truce accomplishes this by the evolution of a reduced subject and a greater object for the subject to take, an evolution of lesser subjectivity and greater objectivity, an evolution that is more “truthful”. (1982, 294)

The above quotation summarizes Kegan’s main theoretical approach which defines the foundation of his knowledge enterprise.

4.3 A Theoretical Integration Project

Based on the theoretical foundation, Kegan did a great work of theoretical integration. In Knowledge Engagement: The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration, I discussed the notion of “Theoretical Integration” from the perspective of Theoretical Psychologists. There are many types of theoretical integration. Kegan’s work is about building a theoretical approach by comparing several relevant theoretical approaches.

In The Evolving Self, Kegan applied the Piagetian Framework to discuss the Self — Other relationship. The outcome is a six-stage framework of self. See the picture below.

Source: The Evolving Self (1982, p.86)

The core of the neo-Piagetion theory is the evolution of self from the perspective of Subject—Object transformation. Kegan pointed out the difference between his “Subject — Object relation” and psychoanalytic “Object Relation”.

Central to that theory [the neo-Piagetian theory] is an understanding of motion as the prior context of personality. Simply put, this is the motion of evolution; less simply, it is evolution as a meaning-constitutive activity. As the prior context of personality (I mean, of course, philosophically prior; not temporally), it is argued to be not only the unifying, but also the generating, context for both (1) thought and feeling (about which more later), and (2) subject and object, or self and other (about which more now).

Evolutionary activity involves the very creating of the object (a process of differentiation) as well as our relating to it (a process of integration). By such a conception, objective relations (really, subject-object relations) are not something that go on in the “space” between a wordless person and a personless world; rather they bring into being the very distinction in the first place. Subject-object relations emerge out of a lifelong process of development: a succession of qualitative differentiations of the self from the world, with a qualitatively more extensive object with which to be in relation created each time; a natural history of qualitatively better guarantees to the world of its distinctness; successive triumphs of “relationship to” rather than “embeddedness in.” (1982, 77)

The above ideas were presented in The Evolving Self which was published in 1982. In an interview with Otto Scharmer in 2000, Kegan reflected on his early creation:

So when you have a big earthquake, there are aftershocks. Some of these developments — and I still feel like I’m riding the waves of that energy — might turn out to be more important than the original apprehension in other people’s minds. But, for my mind, everything really starts from there. I can go back and look at things I’ve written and think, ugh, this is a pretty raw and distorted way of stating what I think I understand much better now.

The feeling of creating something out of nothing really started 25 years ago. That was my Big Bang. That started the intellectual universe for me. How many times does the sun have to get created? But it’s still glowing and things are still growing as a result….So when Michael says, when’s the next thing? To me, it’s like saying well, when are you going to find another woman and get rid of this wife and get another one?

But I think that is the nature of finding something in life that excites you so much that you find some place to bring it to, so it has a home. It has a home in the university and you can, in today’s world, use the university as a context to find yourself in all these places.

I also mentioned the following several primary concepts in the above canvas.

• “The Evolving Self”
• “Mental Complexity”
• “Socialized Mind”, “Self-authoring Mind”, and “Self-transforming Mind”
• “Hidden Curriculum”
• “Immunity to Change”
• “Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO)”

Some concepts are associated with practical applicated works. I will review these concepts in the following sections.

5. Robert Kegan: Perspectives and Frameworks

In The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists, I discussed the “Hypothesis — Data” Gap and the “Perspective — Framework” Move. For the Knowledge Discovery Canvas, I use “Approaches” and “Perspectives” for two blocks. What’s the difference between these two terms?

• I use “Approaches” to refer to Theoretical Approaches.
• I use “Perspectives” to refer to both Theoretical Perspectives and Practice Perspectives.

Theoretical approaches and Theoretical perspectives are the same things. Theoretical Perspectives could be high-lever philosophical theories or psychological approaches. Practical Perspectives are a bridge between theoretical approaches and the object of knowing in a particular domain.

I selected four ideas from Kegan’s knowledge enterprise and placed them in the “Perspectives” block.

• The Duality of Human Experience
• Meaning-making
• Dynamic Equilibrium
• Natural Therapy

They also related to some knowledge frameworks. I selected three for the present discussion.

• The Helix of Evolutionary Truces
• Five Orders of Consciousness
• The DDO Framework

5.1 Agency, Communion, and Evolutionary Truces

Kegan mentioned “the Duality of Human Experience” in The Evolving Self. In fact, it was quoted from David Bakan’s writing (1966).

These two orientations I take to be expressive of what I consider the two greatest yearnings in human experience. We see the expression of these longings everywhere, in ourselves and in those we know, in small children and in mature adults, in cultures East and West, modern and traditional.

Of the multitude of hopes and yearnings we experience, these two seem to subsume the others. One of these might be called the yearnings to be included, to be a part of, close to, joined with, to be held, admitted, accompanied.

The other might be called the yearning to be independent or autonomous, to experience one’s distinctness, the self-chosenness of one’s directions, one’s individual integrity.

David Bakan called this “the duality of human experience,” the yearnings for “communion” and “agency” (1966). Certainly in my experience as a therapist — a context in which old-fashioned words such as “yearn” and “plea” and “long for” and “mourn” have great meaning — it seems to me that I am often listening to one or the other of these yearnings; or to the fear of losing a most precious sense of being included or feeling independent; or to their fearful flip slides — the fear of being completely unseparate, of being swallowed up and taken over; and the fear of being totally separate, of being utterly alone, abandoned, and remote beyond recall. (1982, p.107)

In The Concept of Mindset and Actors, I introduced Dan P. McAdams’ approach to life stories and narrative identity. He claimed that agency and communion are two central themes of stories and personal myths.

Kegan believed that the conflict between agency and communion is a lifelong tension, “our experience of this fundamental ambivalence may be our experience of the unitary, restless, creative motion of life itself”. (1982, p.107)

Biologists talk about evolution and its periods of adaptation — of life organization — as involving a balance between differentiation and integration. These are cold and abstract words. I suggest they are a biological way of speaking of the phenomena we experience as the yearnings for autonomy and inclusion.

Every developmental stage, I said, is an evolutionary truce. It sets terms on the fundamental issue as to how differentiated the organism is from its life-surround and how embedded. It would be as true to say that every evolutionary truce — each stage or balance I have sketched out in this chapter — is a temporary solution to the lifelong tension between the yearnings for inclusion and distinctness.

Each balance resolves the tension in a different way. The life history I have traced involves a continual moving back and forth between resolving the tension slightly in the favor of autonomy, at one stage, in the favor of inclusion, at the next.

(1982, p.108)

Kegan used the helix diagram to represent his model. See the diagram below.

Source: The Evolving Self (1982, p.109)

Why did Kegan choose the Helix diagram?

While any “picture” of development has its limitations, the helix has a number of advantages. It makes clear that we move back and forth in our struggle with this lifelong tension; that our balances are slightly imbalanced. In fact, it is because each of these temporary balances is slightly imbalanced that each is temporary; each self is vulnerable to being tipped over. The model suggests a way of better understanding the nature of our vulnerability to growth at each level.

(1982, p.108)

The Helix of evolutionary truces is the primary framework of The Evolving Self. Kegan used it to organize the content of Part Two of the book. See the table of contents:

• Four: The Growth and Loss of the Incorporative Self
• Five: The Growth and Loss of the Impulsive Self
• Six: The Growth and Loss of the Imperial Self
• Seven: The Growth and Loss of the Interpersonal Self
• Eight: The Growth and Loss of the Institutional Self

Though Kegan used “Self” in the titles of chapters, the primary theme of these chapters is Self-Other Balances. He also used the term “Dynamic Equilibrium” to describe the same meaning.

5.2 Dynamic Equilibrium and Self — Other Balances

The concept of Equilibrium is a core idea of Jean Piaget’s cognitive equilibration theory. According to Piaget, there are three types of equilibration (Constructive Evolution, 1988, Michael Chapman, p.293):

• Equilibration #1 occurs between action schemes and external objects using assimilation and accommodation.
• Equilibration #2 occurs among the various subsystems of a total system through the reciprocal assimilation and accommodation of the respective schemes to one another.
• Equilibration #3 occurs between subsystems and the total system of which they are a part through a simultaneous differentiation of the parts and their integration into the whole.

We can see this typology as a general description of the part—whole relationship.

• Equilibration #1: Between Parts and the external influences
• Equilibration #2: The Parts themselves
• Equilibration #3: The Parts and the Whole

Kegan didn’t directly apply the part-whole relationship to the self-other relationship. We can roughly use “Self” as a whole, “Self + Other” as a whole, and so on. Moreover, Kegan used the Subject—Object structure for different stages, each stage has its own content of “Subject” and “Object”.

First, subject-object relations become, they are not static; their study is the study of a motion.

Second, subject-object relations live in the world; they are not simply abstractions, but take form in actual human relations and social contexts.

(1982, p.114)

For Kegan, the term “Dynamic Equilibrium” is associated with the Self — Other balances. At the beginning of Part Two of The Evolving Self, Kegan used making meaning and losing balance to describe “Dynamic Equilibrium”.

In this second section of the book, we return the stages to their proper place as markers in an ongoing process. They mark those periods of relative balance in the lifelong process of evolution. We turn now to the experience of this process throughout the lifespan…The person is not static. These “psychologics” change. As important as it is to understand the way the person creates the person, we must also understand the way the world creates the person. In considering where a person is in his or her evolutionary balancing we are looking not only at how meaning is made; we are looking, too, at the possibility of the person losing this balance. We are looking, in each balance, at a new sense of what is ultimate and what is ultimately at stake. We are looking, in each balance, at a new vulnerability. Each balance suggests how the person is composed, but each suggests, too, a new way for the person to lose her composure. In this section of the book we look at the experience of defending and surrendering the balance we are, we have been, and we will be throughout the lifespan.
(1982, p.114)

In a 2001 book titled How the Way We Talk Change the Way We Work, Kegan used “Dynamic Equilibrium” as the third force of work and change.

Yet most important for the work we are about to undertake in this book, what we have today is neither detonation nor disarmament; neither the entropic nor the negentropic. This brings us to a third force in nature: the processes of dynamic equilibrium, which, like an immune system, powerfully and mysteriously tend to keep things pretty much as they are.

The forces that tend to keep things as they are may be a much greater player in the prospects of change than is commonly understood. Many leaders work toward accomplishing significant change — that is, negentropic change that moves their group or organization to a new level of capacity or complexity. Other leaders worry about their organizations losing their competitive edge and running down — that is to say, succumbing to the entropic processes of complacency, routinization, loss of focus, or dissipation of energy. But, as we hope to demonstrate in the pages ahead (using your own experience as the focus of attention), the biggest player standing in the way of an organization’s chances to learn and grow might be the same force standing in the way of an individual’s chances to learn and grow: this third force we call dynamic equilibrium.

Although it contrasts with processes of greater complexity and greater disorder, the third force is not about standing still, about stasis or inertia, about fixity or the lack of motion. As we are soon to see, this third force is also about motion. More precisely, it is about a system of countervailing motions that maintains a remarkable hearty balance, an equilibrating process continuously manufacturing immunity to change.
(2001, pp.5–6)

How the Way We Talk Change the Way We Work was written for business readers, Kegan didn’t use the Self—Other Relationship in the book.

5.3 Meaning-making

Kegan’s approach emphasizes the meaning-interpretive dimension of human personality. He often used the word “Meaning-making” in his books.

What’s Kegan’s “Meaning-making” perspective? Kegan quoted Herbert Fingaretts’s writing on Meaning and picked one from two views.

As Herbert Fingarette writes (1963), the idea that we are constitutive of our own experience crosses philosophy, theology, literary criticism, and psychology. In psychology it is an axiom of existential, phenomenological, Gestalt, Piagetian, perception theorist, and Kelly-construct approaches. Yet, Fingarette says, it is not at all clear what it means from each approach to say the person is a meaning-maker; in fact, the word may refer to two apparently quite different activities. We may be speaking about the person’s tacit “formulating of a public, logically consistent, and prediction-oriented theory,” which is largely how English-speaking philosophy and psychology have used the word “meaning”; or we may be speaking of “questions and answers about life’s meaning or meaninglessness … attempts at expressing a perception, adopting a stance, recommitting ourselves to a new life strategy,” which is how Continental thought has taken the word. Thus, Fingarette concludes, the individual’s presumed meaning-making may refer to a “scientific process of developing a logical, reliably interpretable and systematically predictive theory,” or to an “existential process of generating a new vision which shall serve as the context of a new commitment” (pp. 62–68)

(1982, p.11)

What was Kegan’s choice?

The Piagetian framework embraces what Fingarette calls the scientific view of meaning-making. This is Kegan’s choice. Moreover, he also emphasized his view on meaning-making is from the outside, not inside.

… And yet this constructive-developmental perspective has taken no interest whatever in the equally important, but quite different, side of the same activity — the way that activity is experienced by a dynamically maintained “self,” the rhythms and labors of the struggle to make meaning, to have meaning, to protect meaning, to enhance meaning, to lose meaning, and to lose the “self” along the way. The Piagetian approach, viewing meaning-making from the outside, descriptively, has powerfully advanced a conception of that activity as naturally epistemological; it is about the balancing and rebalancing of subject and object, or self and other. But what remains ignored from this approach is a consideration of the same activity from the inside, what Fingarette would call the “participative.” From the point of view of the “Self,” then, what is at stake in preserving any given balance is the ultimate question of whether the “self” shall continue to be, a naturally ontological matter. (1982, p.12)

In Situational Note-taking: The Thematic Matrix Canvas and Meaning Discovery Canvas, I introduced a canvas for the Meaning Discovery Activity.

You can find the “Self — Other” relationship on the canvas. Kegan’s view on Meaning-making doesn’t consider other relationships.

5.4 Natural Therapy

In the final chapter of The Evolving Self, Kegan reviewed the therapy practice from the constructive-developmental perspective and discussed themes such as integrity, validity, and natural truth.

I have been considering here the implications of the constructive developmental theory for practice. My central point is that “practice” is not alone the activity of self-conscious practitioners and that the careful study of “natural therapy” might itself be a guide to the applications of psychological knowledge. I have discussed the way the naturally therapeutic environments (cultures of embeddedness) suggest a highly articulated context for the consideration of psychological support and “preventive” practice. I have suggested that counseling or psychotherapy, whatever else it is about, might necessarily also be about the creating of the therapeutic environment as a culture of embeddedness. (1982, p.288)

Kegan suggested a solution to build the “Natural Therapy” practice.

At a theoretical level this has involved building bridges between developmental, existential, and object relations theories. At a conceptual level this has involved a new way of understanding the relationships between cognition and affect, and between the individual and the social. At the level of practice, we have seen in this chapter that it involves the relation between preventive-supportive psychology and ameliorative-clinical psychology….I am referring to the need to think about the process of therapy in company with thinking about the goals of therapy. (1982, p.288)

The goal of therapy is a psychological question but a philosophical one. Kegan claimed that no framework that is strictly psychological can hope to address it.

Any framework that is strictly psychological leaves its adherents to import an extratheoretical source from which to justify the use of its understandings. This means the continual challenging and refining of one’s own theory does not necessarily have any relation to an ongoing examination of the goals to which it is applied; it means the framework itself cannot generate an authority to enter the conversation about what uses are made of it; it means the question of goals and uses is outside the discipline. This is a situation fraught with danger. (1982, p.289)

What do you think about his opinion?

Wow! He just hit the right nail on the head!

The goals of therapy and the meaning of life in general, is a philosophical issue. I believe it should be solved at the ontological level of a theoretical approach.

On Sept 16, 2023, I reflected on the Mental Muning framework and used the “Ontology — Realism — Hermeneutics” schema to generate a new idea:

• Ontology: Human — Meaning Matrix
• Realism: Actor — World of Activity
• Hermeneutics: Mindset — Life Domains

Like Kegan’s approach, my framework creates a space called “Meaning Matrix” at the ontological level, considers a space called “World of Activity” for social-cultural activities, and leaves a space for helping professionals at the Hermeneutical level. Unlike Kegan’s approach, my framework doesn’t include the biological dimension.

Kegan rejected two different approaches to the question of goals. He believed that “the norms of health” and “humanistic normlessness” are arbitrary and dangerous. He suggested “the norms of growth” approach as an alternative. (1982, p.289)

Kegan also pointed out the distinction between the integrity of the person and the validity of the process.

I do not judge a person’s meaning-making activity, but I must admit that in an indirect way I do judge a person’s made meanings. Persons cannot be more or less better than each other; the person has an unqualified integrity. But stages or evolutionary balances (the structure of made meanings) can be more or less better than each other; stages have a qualified validity.

It is, in fact, the unequal validity of the various evolutionary truces that actually provides the basis for my sense that counseling is proceeding.

…this distinction between integrity and validity has a bearing on that problem which many therapists experience when they are first exploring for themselves the client-centered approach. “How do I confirm the client’s experience but not be taken as necessarily agreeing with or buying into his framework?” The question is itself the question, “How do I confirm the integrity of the person’s attempts to make the world cohere, without appearing to be confirming or disconfirming the validity of the way he makes the world cohere?” The answer lies in our holding ourselves to the rigors of addressing the person in the experience of meaning-making, rather than the meaning the person has made. How many times it it the case that our experience of being taken incorrectly is due to our having addressed the stage rather than the process?

(1982, pp.292–293)

Instead of relying on norms of health and humanistic normlessness, Kegan argued that the constructive-developmental perspective provides a basis for norms of growth. He emphasized that the determination that a change is preferable — a matter of bitterness — is intrinsically a philosophical question though psychology can study and demonstrate the changes of personality. (1982, p.293)

What’s the difference between norms of health and norms of growth? Kegan mentioned an example: Is homosexuality an “illness” or an “alternative sexual lifestyle”? In order to accept the norms of growth, a clinician should work like a phenomenologist.

An orientation to growth in relation to truth does not make the therapist’s address either judgemental or oracular; the truth is made, not heard. The constructive — developmental clinician locates himself or herself in the processes of growth. She regards the client’s disorder not as his sickness, nor his undoing, but as the throes of his own becoming. The clinician is a phenomenologist; she takes the interior perspective; but at the same time, and without contradiction, she considers meaning-making to be more than merely subjective. That development she seeks to facilitate is itself the growth of the truth. The career of the truth is not a person’s only vocation, but it may be the only one upon which the intervention into that person’s life can be justified. (1982, p.295)

Kegan used the message below to close the chapter about the theme of Natural Therapy. It is the last paragraph of The Evolving Self.

Perhaps people do become more loving and more gentle, and so on, as they develop; but perhaps they do not, and if they do not, while we can continue to hope that they might (should those be our values), the client all the same must be protected from our hopes. The “career of the truth” may turn out to include a far greater degree of personal functioning than we might at first imagine, but the fact remains that in a world where people increasingly will put themselves in the hands of “mental health professionals” it is the professionals above all who must understand that much of human personality is none of their business. (1982, p.296)

Kegan reached a dilemma of helping professionals. How can a professional know she is right to judge the client? It’s clear that this is a specific type of Self-Other relationship.

5.5 Five Orders of Consciousness

In 1994, Kegan published In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life and used “Five Orders of Consciousness” as a knowledge framework to organize the book.

Following The Evolving Self, Kegan developed an analytic tool to understand the mental complexity inherent in social expectations. He used general words to describe his theory:

• A philosophy-laden theory
• A theory of the psychological evolution of meaning systems or ways of knowing
• A theory of the development of consciousness — and using it as an analytic tool to examine contemporary culture
• …It will enable us to consider the fit, or lack of fit, between the demands our cultural curriculum makes on our consciousness on the one hand, and our mental capacities as “students” in this ongoing school on the other.

In fact, Kegan used a metaphor called “School — Curriculum — Student” to describe the idea of “Social expectations — Mental Complexity” which is a concrete representation of the “Self — Other” relationship.

Were we to look at contemporary culture itself as a kind of “school,” and were we to evaluate the effectiveness of the environment we create for the growth of all its constituents, I believe we might be surprised by our assessment of both ingredients. We will soon be turning to consider how modern-day adults are faring in our culture-as-school, but even if we confine ourselves for the moment to the adolescent “student,” I think we could conclude that our culture deserves high marks when it comes to providing adolescents with a continuous experience of challenge.

At home, at work, in school, and even in many of their peer relationships, adolescents experience a continuous demand for cross-categorical consciousness. Without any national figure or agency directing it, our culture may thus design a curriculum that is admirable on the grounds of its extensiveness (it cuts across all important arenas of an adolescent’s life), its intellectual consistency or coherence (the order of complexity being demanded in the various “courses” of this “curriculum” is the same), and its difficulty (the order of complexity is neither so far beyond adolescents’ capacity as to be unrecognizable or unattainable nor so firmly within their current grasp as to be boring.) The challenge of a curriculum is greatly impaired if it is confined to a small aspect of the student’s life, or if it is inconsistent in the order of complexity it demands, or if it is too far out of, or too easily within, reach. On these grounds our culture-as-school may deserve the highest grade when it comes to the criterion of providing challenge.

(1994, p.42)

From 1982 to 1994, Kegan worked on developing the Constructive-Developmental approach with his co-workers and students. He taught graduate students at classes at Harvard and the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology and developed the “Subject—Object Interview” method as an instrument for empirical studies. The outcome was presented in the book In Over Our Heads.

While The Evolving Self was more about building the foundation of the theory, In Over Our Heads was more about a psychological—cultural creative thematic dialogue. Kegan presented his ambitious goal of the project in the following words:

The social sciences in contemporary culture are at a crossroads. Will they continue to be essentially a punny force, founded on no civilization of their own, borrowing from, and buffeted by the powerful civilizations of science and the humanities? Will the social sciences continue to be reminiscent of Freud’s hapless infantile ego, appearing to be a player in personality but in reality swamped by the contending forces of conscience and desire? Or will the social sciences grow up and, like the mature conception of the ego, become capable of integrating the contending powers and thereby creating a third original force that can really be a player in human personality or contemporary culture? Such an integration in psychology would realize the fuller promise of the word itself — psyche and logos, spirit and reckoning.

In this book, I bring the psychology of adoration to the study of the relationship between two fascinating phenomena, one psychological, and one cultural. The psychological phenomenon is the evolution of consciousness, the personal unfolding of ways of organizing experience that are not simply replaced as we grow but subsumed into more complex systems of mind. In spite of the fact that the developmental trajectories of Freud and Piaget, which constitute the twin towers in the field, reach their conclusions in adolescence, most of this book is devoted to transformations of consciousness after adolescence. The cultural phenomenon is the “hidden curriculum,” the idea that to the list of artifacts and arrangements a culture creates and the social sciences study we should add the claims or demands the culture makes on the minds of its constituents. (1994, P.9)

In order to represent the fit between social expectations and mental capacities, Kegan used the Subject-Object complexity to develop the “Five Orders of Consciousness” framework. See the table below.

The above table is very complicated. How to read it?

As mentioned above, Kegan’s Self — Object relationship can be seen as the Part — Whole relationship. If you see the row of Underlying Structure, you will find a pattern behind the five orders of consciousness.

• Single Point: The is a simple Whole which is the part. There is no distinction between the Whole and the Part.
• Durable Category: The Single Point becomes a Part of a Whole which refers to a Category. There is a distinction between the Whole and the Part.
• Cross-categorical/Trans-categorical: The Durable Category becomes a Part of a Whole which refers to two categories.
• System/Complex: There are more than two categories within the Whole.
• Trans-system/Trans-complex: There are two Systems within the Whole.

Now we can move to the left side of the table, we see a transformation of the Self—Other relationship.

• Order #1: Subject = Perceptions, Object = Movement
• Order #2: Subject = Concrete, Object = Perceptions
• Order #3 (Traditionalism): Subject = Abstractions, Object = Concrete
• Order #4 (Modernism): Subject = Abstract Systems, Object = Abstractions
• Order #5 (Post-modernism): Subject = Dialectical, Object = Abstract Systems

We see a pattern again. The Subject of a lower level becomes the Object of a higher level.

5.6 The DDO Framework

The concept of Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO) was introduced by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in their 2016 book An Everyone Culture.

According to Kegan and Lahey, DDO are the most powerful settings in the world we have found for developing people’s capabilities, precisely because they have created a safe enough and demanding enough culture that everyone comes out of hiding. (2016, p.3) From the research, they found DDO has three characteristics:

• They are doing what the science of human development recommends, and they are doing so in ingenious and effective ways.
• They are taking these concepts to scale so that everyone in the organization — workers, managers, and leaders alike — has the opportunity to develop.
• They intentionally and continuously nourish a culture that puts business and individual development — and the way each one supports the other — front and center for everyone, every day.

This sounds like an ideal type of organization. Kegan and Lahey also developed a framework for building a DDO culture. According to them, “We’ve found it useful to think of the conceptual structure of a DDO in terms of depth, breadth, and height — the depth of its developmental communities (which we call home); the breadth of its developmental practices (which we call its groove); and the height of its developmental aspirations (which we call its edge). By considering all three dimensions at once (and the way each intersects with the other two) the DDO comes into view as a single, dynamic system.”(2016, p.85)

Source: An Everyone Culture (2016, p.86)

It is clear that DDO is not the normal type of organization. Unfortunately, Kegan and Lahey only conducted their research from three organizations (Bridgewater, Decurion, and Next Jump). It seems like a call from the perspective of developmental psychologists. It argues that we should rethink the very place of people development in organizational life.

In 2021, I developed a concept called “Developmental Platform” for writing a book titled Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century.

In fact, the idea of “Developmental Platform” was inspired by DDO. In order words, we can roughly consider the Developmental Platform as an expanded version of DDO. However, there are two major differences between these two ideas. First, DDO is only about organizations while Developmental Platform considers other types of social environments. Second, DDO is an objective category while Developmental Platform is an ecological concept that allows “perceived developmental platform” by people. In other words, the developmental platform is perceived by people in their specific life situations. Due to individual differences, one organization may be perceived as a Developmental Platform by only a few people.

6. Robert Kegan: Methods and Tools

In The Concept of Mindset and Intervenors, I discussed Intervenors, methods for applied psychological sciences, and types of heuristics. In Kegan’s knowledge enterprise, I selected the following methods and tools for the present discussion.

• Subject — Object Interview
• Immunity-to-Change Coaching Process
• Immunity Map
• Internal Languages

The above discussions mentioned the Subject—Object complexity many times.

How did Kegan actually run empirical studies about it?

6.1 The Subject-Object Interview

Kegan and Lahey briefly introduced the Subject-Object Interview in their 2009 book Immunity to Change.

Our assessment tool is a ninety-minute interview we call the Subject-Object Interview, so named because the complexity of a mindset is a function of the way it distinguishes the thoughts and feelings we have (i.e., can look at, can take as object ) from thoughts and feelings that “have us” (i.e., we are run by them, are subject to them). Each different level of mindset complexity differently draws the line between what is subject and what is object. Greater complexity means being able to look at more (take more as object). The blind spot (what is subject) becomes smaller and smaller. The assessment instrument has proven to be quite subtle: it can identify, with high degrees of interrater reliability, fully five different transitional places between any two mindsets.
(2009, p.22)

They designed a set of index cards for the interview:

• Angry
• Anxious, nervous
• Success
• Strong stand, conviction
• Sad
• Torn
• Moved, touched
• Lost something, farewells
• Change
• Important

The interview is divided into two sections. In the first fifteen minutes, the interviewee is asked to write notes on each card. The second section is a systematic exploration of Whats and Why.

Following the interviews, researchers analyze the content of the interviews and write research reports.

According to Jennifer Garvey Berger and Paul W. B. Atkins, the Subject-Object Interview is a semi-clinical interview. Since the goal of the interview is to investigate the Structure of the participant’s thinking rather than the Content of his thinking, the topics are totally participant-generated, and the interview follows whatever the participant wishes to explore. (Mapping complexity of mind: using the subject-object interview in coaching, 2009)

The method is used for both academic theoretical research and applied developmental intervention.

6.2 Internal Language and Immunity Map

The concept of “Immunity to Change” was initially introduced in the 2001 book How the Way We Tak Can Change the Way We Work. Later, Kegan and Lahey used the concept to develop a method called the Immunity-to-Change coaching process and a tool called Immunity Map for organizational behavior change studies.

In 2009, Kegan and Lahey published a book titled Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and unlock the Potential in yourself and your organization.

In this section, let’s review the historical development of the Immunity Map in the 2001 book. Kegan and Lahey introduced the concept of “Immunity to Change” as a metaphor to understand the third force: Dynamic Equilibrium.

There are countless books about personal change and leadership for organizational change. In one way or another, they recognize and warn against succumbing to the deteriorative drift of the entropic current. Such books can be tremendously appealing in championing the negentropic possibility of our moving against the tide. But as psychologists of adult learning and adult development, we wonder whether with just these two dynamic forces we have fashioned a sufficiently complex picture of the forces at work in our prospects for change.

Is any effort at personal change — our own or that of others we may seek to lead — likely to be powerful without better understanding of this third force in nature, our own immunity to change? Specifically, is change likely without grasping how this third force expresses itself in the unique particulars of our own lives? And yet, one of the things that makes gaining this understanding so difficult is that we tend to be held captive by our own immune systems. We live inside them. We do not “have them”; they “have us.” We cannot see them because we are too caught up in them. This is precisely why a new technology for personal learning is needed. In this book, we present such a technology, built around the idea of transformative “languages”; it is a technology rooted in twenty years of research and practice as developmental educators.

(2001, p.6)

Since the book was written for ordinary people and managers, they use a practical language style to present their ideas. The book was organized with a transformative “languages” framework.

The building blocks for this new technology are novel language forms. Each language is a tool, transforming a customary mental or social arrangement into a form that increases the possibility of transformational learning. The places where we work and live are, among other things, places where certain forms of speech are promoted or encouraged, and places where other ways of talk- ing are discouraged or made impossible. We are referring to how we speak to each other in public and private conversation, in groups and informal one-on-one communication, and perhaps most especially (at least in the beginning) with those few others with whom we may feel the most trust and comfort. (2001, p.7)

In fact, they used “Internal Languages” and “Social Languages” for the framework.

We are also referring to how we speak to ourselves, which, though too rarely considered, is one of our most influential and continuous conversational venues. (Being psychologists, we can certify that, contrary to popular lore, talking to oneself is not a sign of being crazy; it depends on what we say to ourselves!) Here we are emphasizing less the content of what we say than the form in which our saying goes on. The forms of speaking we have available to us regulate the forms of thinking, feeling, and meaning making to which we have access, which in turn constrain how we see the world and act in it. (2001, p.7)

In the first part of the book, take a step-by-step process to build the early version of Immunity Map. Each step introduced an internal language.

Using four new languages as tools, you build a technology that gradually introduces you to your own immune system, your own dynamic equilibrium, the forces that keep the immune system in place, and the possibilities of transcending it. Each of the four transforms a customary internal psychological set or mental arrangement into a novel form

1. From the language of complaint to the language of commitment

2. From the language of blame to the language of personal responsibility

3. From the language of “New Year’s Resolutions” to the language of competing commitments

4. From the language of big assumptions that hold us to the language of assumptions that we hold
(2001, p.8)

They called the final outcome a “mental machine” which requires you to maintain it and upgrade it. It seems that we also use the term “Mindware” to describe it.

What does the “mental machine” actually look like?

Let’s see an example. The picture below is the third example of a two-column version of the conceptual map.

Source: How the Way We Tak Can Change the Way We Work (2001, p.42)

The first column is about the language of Commitment while the second column is about the language of Personal Responsibility.

Source: How the Way We Tak Can Change the Way We Work (2001, p.45)

Finally, they built a simple four-column conceptual map. See the table below.

Source: Immunity to Change (2009, p.231)

According to Kegan and Lahey, the step of exercising the third language is less linear and more counterintuitive, and the usual approach to reflection does not get beyond the second column!

Each four-column conceptual map, read backwards, has a powerful story to tell (Figure 4.1). Holding as true the Big Assumption of our fourth columns, we are understandably committed to protecting ourselves in ways indicated by our third columns. Faithfully, effectively, even brilliantly living out these third-column commitments, we act in the fashion reflected in our second column, which consistently and constantly undermines our capacity to fully realize other kinds of genuinely held commitments (such as those appearing in our first columns). This may be the road to hell, but in drawing a fuller map we may discover a way to get off.

It is a fuller map because the usual approach to reflection does not get beyond the second column. We articulate a goal, a vision, or commitment (column one) and discover by some means how we are keeping the goal, vision, or commitment from being real- ized (column two), but then what? We conscientiously move to eliminate the offending behaviors of column two. We seek to shrink them as if they were a cancer or tumor. (2001, p.77)

Source: Immunity to Change (2009, p.249)

In the 2009 book Immunity to Change, Kegan and Lahey gave a definition of the concept of “Immunity to Change” as a multidimensional phenomenon. See the diagram below.

Source: Immunity to Change (2009, p.249)

First, at the most practical level, an immunity map gives us a picture of how we are actively preventing the very change we wish to make. But it also shows us how a given place in the continuum of mental development is at once a way of knowing the world and of managing a fundamental anxiety. Thus it reveals a second dimension in the way persistent anxiety is managed, and a third, the epistemological balance that must be preserved if we are to maintain our way of knowing the world and ourselves.(2009, p.56)

They also mentioned the function of using the Immunity Map to develop mental complexity.

… his map could be a foundation for a bigger project than accomplishing his first-column goals. It could support development beyond the self-authoring mind in general. Were he able to alter, even somewhat, the big assumptions of column 4, he might begin to include both the “doing self” and the “being self” into his active identity. With this more complex system (the self-transforming mind) he would not only be less captive of the doing self; he would also be less inclined, in general, to identify himself so onesidedly with just one pole in any of life’s great dialectics (e.g., being independent vs. relying on others; being an elder vs. being the child). (2009, p.60)

Kegan mentioned the term “Self-transforming Mind” in the 1994 book In Over Our Heads. It is part of the description of the Fifth order of consciousness.

6.3 Mental Complexity and Three Types of Mindsets

Kegan and Lahey used the term “Mental Complexity” to discuss “the potential trajectory of mental development across the lifespan”, especially the Subject-Object complexity and the “Five Orders of Consciousness” framework.

Based on their thirty years of longitudinal research, they rejected the traditional view on adult cognitive development: our mental development ends in our twenties. They claimed that “mental complexity tends to increase with age, throughout adulthood, at least until old age”. (2009, p.14)

Source: Immunity to Change (2009, pp.13–14)

They also noticed some significant insights about adult mental development from their data (2009, pp.14–15):

• There is considerable variation within any age. For example, six people (the bolded dots) in their thirties could all be at different places in their level of mental complexity.
• There are qualitatively different, discernible distinct levels (the “plateaus”); that is, the demarcations between levels of mental complexity are not arbitrary. Each level represents a quite different way of knowing the world.
• Development does not unfold continuously; there are periods of stability and periods of change. When a new plateau is reached we tend to stay on that level for a considerable period of time.
• The intervals between transformations to new levels — “time on a plateau” — get longer and longer.
• The line gets thinner, representing fewer and fewer people at the higher plateaus.

In order to efficiently introduce the “Five Orders of Consciousness” framework to the field of organizational behavioral change, Kegan and Lahey used general words such as “adult meaning systems”, “Socialized mind”, “Self-authoring mind”, and “Self-transforming mind” in Immunity to Change. See the diagram below.

Source: Immunity to Change (2009, p.16)

They also linked three types of mindsets with organizational theorist Chris Argyris’ ideas.

For more than a generation, Argyris (and those who have been influenced by him) has unwittingly been calling for a new capacity of mind. This new mind would have the ability not just to author a view of how the organization should run and have the courage to hold steadfastly to that view. It would also be able to step outside of its own ideology or framework, observe the framework’s limitations or defects, and re-author a more comprehensive view — which it will hold with sufficient tentativeness that its limitations can be discovered as well. In other words, the kind of learner Argyris rightly looks for in the leader of today may need to be a person who is making meaning with a self-transforming mind. (2009, pp.26–27)

To be noticed, the word “complexity” in “Mental Complexity” should be understood as “the higher order of meaning-making or consciousness”.

Why did Kegan and Lahey emphasize the significance of the Self-transforming Mind? The answer is very simple because of the complex demands and arrangements of the world!

7. A Successful Knowledge Enterprise

Knowing is a hard thing. Getting significant outcomes from knowing is a challenge. It is like climbing mountains. Once you reach the top of the mountain, the world unfolds in a different view.

In 2020, I used the picture below to introduce a concept called “Knowledge Heros”.

Knowledge Heroes are one of three types of heroes who change the world in their unique way.

1. Business Leaders: Founders, entrepreneurs, and managers who make great market impacts.
2. Social Changemakers: Non-profit founders, activists, and social workers who make positive social impacts.
3. Knowledge Heroes: Scholars, authors, and artists who make unique epistemic impacts.

Robert Kegan is one of my knowledge heroes. His 40-year journey of psychological knowledge engagement represents the beauty and complexity of a creative life.

In this section, I will reflect on his knowledge enterprise from multiple perspectives.

7.1 Kegan’s Creative Thematic Spaces

Kegan’s creative life actually matches the model of “Building A Knowledge Enterprise”. See the diagram below. On May 6, 2022, I published an article titled How to Grow A Knowledge Enterprise and introduced the model below.

The model is inspired by Project-oriented Activity Theory. Each phase refers to a focus. The three-phase development is inspired by the following diagram which is one of a series of diagrams in the book.

I used the above diagram to explain the concept of “culture” from the perspective of Project-oriented Activity Theory. It zooms out to a large view that connects the Individual mind (Idea) and Collective theme (Zeitgeist) through Collective Projects (Concept).

Kegan’s ideas have been incorporated into the field of adult development. His books have been translated into twelve languages. It’s a successful knowledge enterprise.

On Nov 2, 2023, I published an article to introduce a new method to explore a creative life’s thematic spaces by using the Knowledge Discovery Canvas. You can find more details in Creative Life Curation: Discover Thematic Spaces of Creative Life. I used the method to discover Robert Kegan’s creative thematic spaces. See the diagram below.

I identified eight creative themes from Kegan’s creative life. Let’s start with the following basic unit of a thematic space.

The above basic unit represents a thematic space in a three-layer structure:

• Creative Life Story
• Creative Theme
• Knowledge Model

Creative Life Story refers to an interesting real-life story from a person’s creative life. I selected eight keywords to represent Kegan’s creative life stories.

Creative Theme refers to a theme behind a creative life story. Each story is associated with a theme that defines a thematic space.

Knowledge Model refers to a knowledge framework for understanding the thematic space.

This three-layer structure was designed for the Activity Analysis & Intervention (AAI) program. For the present discussion, we don’t need Knowledge Models.

The eight thematic spaces are placed around the Knowledge Discovery Canvas.

• Enter: Early Discovery (Initial Ambition)
• Exit: Mindsets (Dialectical Thinking)
• THEORY: Cognitive Development (Mental Complexity)
• PRACTICE: Qualitative Research (SOI), SOI stands for Subject-Object Interview
• END: Applied Psychological Science (Natural Therapy)
• MEANS: Behavior Change (Immunity to Change)
• Individual: Meaning-making (Self)
• Collective: Supportive Environments (DDO)

I also use the AAI program and the Life Discovery Canvas to frame these 8 thematic spaces.

• The AAI program defines two types of analysis: First-order Analysis and Second-order Analysis.
• The Life Discovery Canvas defines four areas of life discovery: THINK, LEARN, SAY, and DO.

First-order Activity Analysis (DO and SAY) is about Creative Work. I placed four thematic spaces into this category because they are all about Creative Work (DO and SAY).

• Qualitative Research
• Applied Psychological Science
• Behavioral Change
• Supportive Environments

Second-order Activity Analysis (THINK and LEARN) is about Meta-knowledge about life and work. I placed the other four thematic spaces into this category.

• Early Discovery
• Cognitive Development
• Meaning-making
• Mindsets

The above discussion shares many details of Kegan’s creative stories. The only missing one is the “Early Discovery (Initial Ambition)” thematic space.

This one is not about Kegan’s theories, but his early life.

7.2 Robert Kegan’s Initial Ambition

In an interview with Otto Scharmer in 2000, Robert Kegan shared his creative life. Let’s see his initial ambition.

Robert Kegan: Then I left college and taught school to get out of the war, and then I came to Harvard. And I thrived in this very self-designed, interdisciplinary program. Eventually I found that I was most drawn to the psychologists, but, again, I didn’t want to be quite like any of them. I was interested in bringing together the rigor of the cognitive development line of psychology with my sense that it actually had hold of a very fascinating phenomenon, the phenomenon of the gradually increasing complexity of mind. But I felt that it was being realized at a very pale and diminished level. It was the study of the external description of the structures of mind, rather than the internal phenomenology of them. It was a study of the stages and balances, rather than the upheavals of transition and the gradual, the change and the loss and the kind of suffering that goes on in the process of moving from one way of organizing the world to another. It was largely the study of children.

So I really wanted to bring lifespan and internal phenomenological and existential dimension to what was otherwise, at some level, a very dry cognitive psychology.

At the same time, I felt that humanistic psychology — which was kind of in mode at that time, asking the bigger questions about life’s meaning, drawing on European philosophy and theology — was asking the biggest questions, but they lacked any real substantive, rigorous, logical driver, internal power.

I wanted to bring these things together and create a richer developmental psychology that was both powerfully descriptive from the outside, but also powerfully descriptive from the inside — the internal experience of being a growing person and thinking about the context and support of development….

Initially, I thought of it for enhancing empathic practices, largely clinical and counseling kinds of things. I was interested in the ways in which this richer developmental theory could enhance the work of psychotherapy. That was my initial ambition.

7.3 Utilizating Theoretical Resources

In Knowledge Engagement: The Utilization of Theoretical Resources, I introduced a diagram to discuss the theme of utilizing theoretical resources. Now we can use the diagram to see Robert Kegan’s psychological knowledge engagement.

He curated two major philosophical views together to build a new approach to developmental psychology which is a subject of pure science. Based on these theoretical resources, he developed more ideas in clinical psychology and organizational studies and applied these ideas to clinical psychotherapy, etc.

7.4 Frame a Creative Space

I often used the ECHO Way (v3.0) model to make diagrams for discussing creative dialogue.

The ECHO Way (v3.0) is based on the following three-container diagram. The concept of Container is the core of the Ecological Practice approach. By adjusting the quality and quantity of the Container, we can create advanced frameworks for discussing complex phenomena. The quality of the Container can be potential and actual, the quantity of the Container can be one and two. If we develop a new framework with one potential container and two actual containers, the outcome is the above diagram.

I named the potential container (Container Z) Echozone which refers to a creative space containing echoes between Container X and Container Y. The term “Echo” of “Echozone” refers to a dialogue between two containers.

From 2020 to 2023, I developed several versions of the ECHO Way framework. You can find more details in Theme U for Single-theory Curation and WXMY for Interdisciplinary Curation. I also used it in the journey of developing Creative Life Theory.

Can we find a creative dialogue from Kegan’s Creative Life?

Yes. We can find several examples from the above discussion.

• (Cognitive Developmental Psychology vs. Humanistic Psychology) → The Constructive — Developmental Approach
• (The norms of health vs. Humanistic normlessness) → The norms of growth

Let’s use In Over Our Heads as an example to map a creative dialogue. See the diagram below.

In Over Our Heads was framed in a creative space between Psychological Dynamics and Cultural Context.

On the left side, Kegan didn’t pay attention to traditional Personality theories which emphasize stable traits. His primary interest is the Self — Other dynamics which is represented by the Subject — Object complexity. Though there are two views on Meaning-making, he preferred to view meaning-making from the outside, not inside.

On the right side, Kegan considered Modern Life as his primary domain, not History. Moreover, his focus was on the mental demands of modern life, not other aspects of modern life.

He started with the fit between our culture’s mental demands on adolescents and their capacity to meet these demands. He used the lens to look at several major life domains such as parenting, partnering, work, living with diversity, adult learning, and psychotherapy. Finally, he explored the mental demands implicit in the so-called Postmodern prescription for adult living and argued that “these expectations constitute a qualitatively even more complex order of consciousness and thus require an even greater caution on the part of those who would make these demands of others”. (1994, p.10)

7.5 Mental Moves as Mental Tuning

Kegan selected several life domains to tell various stories of five orders of consciousness in the book In Over Our Heads. I used the Mental Tuning framework to represent the framework of the book. See the diagram below. Kegan didn’t use “Mental Moves” to name his framework. Since he emphasized moves between different levels of consciousness (the Subject — Object complexity), I used the term “Mental Moves” to name the part of “Mental Tuning”.

Kegan didn’t use “Competent Mindset” and “Incompetent Mindset” in his books. He emphasized competencies or capacities in our knowing, especially with Subject — Object principles which refer to “the hierarchical differences of epistemological capacity”. (1994, P.201)

If a person gets the experience of “Coping” with a particular life domain and she/he believes it’s impossible to change the situation, then we can claim that the person holds the Incompetent Mindset. In this situation, helping professionals could help her/him to work on the change with an intervention program.

If the professional chooses Kegan’s approach, then the process means moving between different levels of consciousness.

7.6 A Long-term Collaboration Project

The Evolving Self (1982) and In Over Heads (1994) were published by Harvard University Press as academic books. They fully represent Kegan’s Constructive — Developmental theoretical approach to adult development.

After 1994, he moved to the field of applied psychological science and worked with Lisa Laskow Lahey on the Immunity-to-Change project which aims to apply Kegan’s approach to organizational behavioral change. They co-authored several books including How the Way We Tak Can Change the Way We Work (2001), Immunity to Change (2009), and An Everyone Culture (2016).

.Kegan and Lahey started collaboration on the Mental Complexity knowledge enterprise in the 1980s.

We began as academic psychologists researching the development of mindsets and mental complexity in adulthood. With one of us (Kegan) taking the lead in the development of a new theory, and the other (Lahey) taking the lead in developing the research method and assessment procedures to test and refine it, we proceeded, in the 1980s, to uncover something that has been fascinating us — and fellow researchers and practitioners all over the world — ever since. (2009, Preface and Acknowledgements)

From the perspective of Project-oriented Activity Theory, the Mental Complexity knowledge enterprise is a large Collaborative Project and it contains a set of sub-projects.

Activity Theory or the “Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)” is an interdisciplinary philosophical framework for studying both individual and social aspects of human behavior. Activity Theory is an established theoretical tradition with several theoretical approaches developed by different theorists. Originally, it was inspired by the Russian/Soviet psychology of the 1920s and 1930s.

A major development of Activity Theory during the past decade is Andy Blunden’s account “An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity”.

In order to develop the notion of “Project as a unit of Activity” as a theoretical foundation of the new interdisciplinary theory of Activity, Blunden adopts Hegel’s logic and Vygotsky’s theory about “Unit of Analysis” and “Concept” as theoretical resources. The process is documented in four books: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014), and Hegel for Social Movements (2019).

Blunden also gives an archetypal unit of project in his 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity.

Source: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010, p.315)

He says, “The rich context of the notion of collaboration also brings to light more complex relationships. The notions of hierarchy, command, division of labor, cooperation, exchange, service, attribution, exploitation, dependence, solidarity, and more can all be studied in the context of just two individuals working together in a common project. And yet almost all the mysteries of social science as well as a good part of psychology are contained in this archetypal unit: two people working together in a common project.” (2010, p.315)

Blunden’s 2012 book Concepts: A Critical Approach continues the journey. Blunden reviews the theoretical development of Concepts in an interdisciplinary approach which curates theories about Concepts from various disciplines such as cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy, linguistics, and the history of science. He adopts Hegel’s theory of concept and Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology as theoretical resources and proposes a new approach to Concepts. He argues that concepts are equally subjective and objective: units both of consciousness and of the cultural formation of which one’s consciousness is part. In other words, the formation of concepts is an activity.

“Project as a unit of activity” and “formation of concept is activity” are combined in Blunden’s 2014 book Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study which is a collection of twelve research reports with a common theme. As the editor of the book, Blunden invites his friends to write a report about a concrete collaborative project and write a review on their story.

What Blunden suggested is that 1) We can use “Project” as a new unit of analysis for Activity Theory, 2) Project should be understood as a formulation of the concept, and 3) The archetypal unit of “Project” is two people working together in a common project.

Kegan’s knowledge enterprise is a large Collaborative Project about the concept of “Mental Complexity” which establishes a Knowledge Center around the Constructive — Developmental theoretical approach.

Lisa Laskow Lahey made a significant contribution to the growth of the knowledge enterprise because developing the research method and assessment is a critical step in building an intermediate object to bridge theory and practice. She also co-authored books with Kegan. In addition, she is the leader of Minds at Work which is a professional firm specializing in teaching the Immunity-to-Change approach.

Source: Minds at Work

According to Wikipedia, Kegan retired in 2016. Jennifer Garvey Berger wrote a related story titled Robert Kegan at Harvard: The end-and beginning — of an era.

Last week I taught Bob Kegan’s Introduction to Adult Development class at Harvard for the last time. Bob is retiring from Harvard this year, and it’s the end of an era — not just for him, but for those of us who were his students, and all of us who care deeply about the field of adult development.

When I was a doctoral student at Harvard in the late 90s (!), there were a cluster of us studying myriad aspects of adult development. I met with one of Bob’s final doctoral students last week and she talked about the late 90s, early 2000s as the heyday of adult development research at Harvard. Heyday or not, it was delightful. We called ourselves ALERT — Adult Learners Eating and Reflecting Together and we had monthly lunches where we talked about our research and our practice. We circulated our passing (and failing) drafts, read each other’s Subject-Object Interviews, went out for Burdicks hot chocolate to mourn or celebrate. Most of us were Teaching Fellows for Bob, and we sat on the back row in his Adult Development class Monday morning after Monday morning, year after year. After taking the class, I sat in the back row as a Teaching Fellow five years in a row.

Once I graduated, Bob asked me to come in and guest lecture one class a year. I was honoured and excited — and terrified. Not even the TED stage would have struck me as so daunting as the stage in Askwith Hall. I was standing on Bob’s stage — and Bob was (and remains) the best teacher I have ever seen — clear, funny, thoughtful. Those are massive shoes to fill. Bob said — and I think this was meant to be comforting at the time — “Don’t think of this as a one-off thing. If it goes well, we’ll have you back again and again.” At the end of that first lecture, I found myself holding my breath as Bob came up to thank me–and to tell me he would look forward to my return the following year. It was, perhaps, one of the most memorable achievements of my life. And over the last 14 years, I have gotten more used to the front of the room perspective than the back of the room perspective.

From the 1980s to 2016, Kegan and his students and coworkers built a unique knowledge community at Harvard and around the world. In New Zealand, Jennifer Garvey Berger co-founded Cultivating Leadership and worked on the theme of Mental Complexity. She published several books such as Unleash Your Complexity Genius (co-authored with Carolyn Coughlin), Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Simple Habits for Complex Times (co-authored with Keith Johnston), and Changing on the Job. In China, Joey W.K. Chan translated Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Changing On The Job (2011) and Chris Argyris’ Organizational Learning II (1995) into Chinese, he also teaches the Immunity-to-Change method in China.

What a journey of collaborative knowledge engagement!

7.7 Psychological Knowledge Engagement as Social Moves

I have mentioned the theme “Social Moves” in several articles. Kegan’s knowledge enterprise offers me an opportunity to conduct a case study about “Social Moves”.

In July 2023, I finished the “Mental Moves” knowledge project and edited a possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition. On August 24, 2023, I started the “Social Moves” knowledge project which uses “Social Territory” as the primary concept.

The term “Social Territory” was inspired by Ping-keung Lui’s term “Social Territory” and his Subjectivist Structuralism which is part of his theoretical sociology.

I have claimed that “Knowledge Center” is a type of Social Territory. You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Creative Course Framework.

I use “Social Territory” in general in the “Social Moves” knowledge project.

If we put “Mental Moves” and “Social Moves” together, we see a new unit of analysis of Social Cognition. While “Social Moves” are about Social Actions, “Mental Moves” are about related Mental Activities.

Social Cognition = Social Moves (Mental Moves)

Both “Mental Moves” and “Social Moves” shared the concept of “Thematic Space”.

In Sept 2023, I used a Psychological Counseling Platform as an example to conduct a case study about “Social Moves”.

The above diagram used the Activity Circle model as the basic model. People’s social life can be understood as moving between different types of Activity Circles. You can find more details in Value Circle #4: From “ARCH” to “Activity Circle”.

What does Kegan’s knowledge enterprise look like from the perspective of “Social Moves”? See the diagram below.

As mentioned in the beginning, Kegan switched between four roles and moved between four different types of thematic spaces of psychological knowledge engagement.

• Theoretical Psychologists — The THEORY thematic space
• Empirical Psychologists — The END thematic space
• Intervenors — The MEANS thematic space
• Actors — The PRACTICE thematic space

These four types of knowledge creators have different perspectives and behavioral patterns because they have different construal levels, practical interests, points of observation, methodological preferences, and expressive conventions (or language habits).

Since the four thematic spaces correspond to four types of roles, moving between these thematic spaces means moving between four social spaces.

This is a perfect example of Social Moves (Mental Moves).

This case study is based on the Knowledge Discovery Canvas. If we use the canvas to analyze Psychological Knowledge Engagement in general, we can use the same model.

In fact, we can also apply the model of “Psychological Counseling Platform” to Kegan’s knowledge enterprise. Minds at Work is a real “Psychological Counseling Platform”.

In this way, the Knowledge Engagement project moves from the theme of “Mental Moves” to the theme of “Social Moves”.

Related Articles

• The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration (48 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Empirical Psychologists (27 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Intervenors (28 min read)
• The Concept of Mindset and Actors (39 min read)
• Value Circle #4: From “ARCH” to “Activity Circle” (20 min read)
• Knowledge Engagement: The Utilization of Theoretical Resources
• The Knowledge Engagement Framework (v4)
• Creative Life Theory (v2, book, 2023)