- tiffani-hypothesis Kegan’s stages roughly correspond to important skills we develop as we progress through structures.
- Stage 2: skills learned in late detachment
- Stage 3: skills learned in late psychosis
- Stage 4: skills learned in late neurosis
- Stage 5: skills learned in late perversion
- See also
- tiffani-hypothesis
- So I think they probably don’t strictly correlate, because what Kegan’s describing is more about skills than structure. Something like, emotional intelligence, morality and ethics, along those lines. So I think there will be developmental limits, where a child before a certain age (or an adult before a certain structure) might not be able to reach a certain Kegan level just because they can’t develop those skills, there’s something blocking them. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who’s technically able to develop it, will. It also relates to interest, experience, character, and so on.
- In the example you provide, [a 4 year old Pervert] is not capable of acting in the way that girl acted. He can and does lie sometimes, but that lie requires too much…experience, let’s say? To know how to steal something without getting caught, and then to know that it is stealing and that it should be hidden, to anticipate how the parent would react, and then to concoct a plan of how to pass it off to the parent.
- the example, from page 141 of The Evolving Self:
- His daughter was 5 or 6, came in the house from playing outside, and sought her father out, sheepishly and hesitantly asking him about a toy she “found”:
“You see this toy? I uhh found it right in the street between Janie’s house and our house. Some kid must have just lost it. Since it’s lost and there’s no way of finding out who it belongs to I guess I can just keep it. Ahh isn’t it strange…”
- In fact she had stolen it from her friend and she was feeling in turmoil about it, seeking help and insight from her father about what to do with these new feelings.
- This represents a transition from the impulsive mind (stage 1) to the imperial mind (stage 2) for Kegan, because she is in the process of becoming aware of her impulses and gaining control over them
- If she had been firmly in stage 1, then she would have simply been playing with the toy, not knowing or caring about it having been right or wrong to take it.
- If she had been firmly in stage 2, then she would have the impulse rather than be it, and experience herself as jealous, leading her to avoid stealing it due to this feeling, or purposefully steal it. It’s a more conscious choice of right-or-wrong.
- By the time [the 4 year old Pervert] is capable of doing that, he never would. He has too much empathy and an inner sense of morality. On the other hand, detached adults aren’t really capable of convincing lies either - if the little girl described was late detached, she could maybe try to do that, but it would usually be pretty obvious that she was lying. Detached criminals for instance usually either just confess to the police or try to hide it in a way that’s so obvious that a lot of people (at least psychotics or later) are immediately suspicious. So on the one hand I agree with the timeline that a person would need to reach puberty to behave the way you describe because of the experience and skills required…
- …but I think it would be unlikely to find anyone other than a psychotic or early neurotic actually [stealing and lying], because a detached kid still wouldn’t be able to and a late neurotic or later wouldn’t want to. Another way to think about it is, there are other skills that people develop during perversion that mean they wouldn’t need to steal the toy because they’re able to get their satisfaction in a different way. Needing to steal a toy to get satisfaction is an earlier structure “goal”, let’s say, like a psychotic one actually, come to think of it.
- I think the impulsive mind clearly correlates to detached and the imperial mind to psychotic in terms of motivations and goals and ethical or moral development
- But in terms of cognitive development, planning, and experience, some of those things would not be possible until reaching a certain age
- Someone who murders out of rage is almost certainly acting in their impulsive mind, right? But a baby can’t murder people. So even if you would say that most murderers are impulsive minder-ers, you still wouldn’t expect to see people start actually murdering until puberty at the earliest, and much more likely not till they’re teens or adults.
- So what stage does that correlate to, what age? The age when their structure is set, or the age when their full capabilities are seen?
- Of course you can see evidence of an impulsive, or imperial, or whatever mind earlier [then Kegan’s nominal age ranges]. The 4 year old Pervert already cares (a lot - too much!) about right and wrong, rules, empathy, kindness, and so on, he’s just also a four-year-old so he still has limited capabilities. For instance he can delay gratification, but not indefinitely, and it takes effort on his part. If someone stays in a pervert structure, they’ll get better and better at being perverts as they get older and gain new experiences and skills, as they pass through the later developmental structures, but their goals and intentions will stay at a baseline “pervert” level most of the time, they’ll just get better at it.
- “She has the ability to see others as distinct from her, but only to a limited capacity. Other people are confused with the satisfaction and thwarting of her impulses. It’s like, dad isn’t giving me attention, so I am left unsatisfied and therefore upset.”
- This is how Detached adults mostly are, they’re just a lot better at handling it - handling frustration, trying different strategies, etc. - to meet those goals.
- Look at Elon Musk for example. His motivations are really transparent.
- Even kids up to 5 will sometimes exhibit these kinds of behaviours, because even if they’re later structure, they just haven’t had much experience or practice yet in the “higher” skills, although later structure kids will try to be a higher Kegan level, and sometimes succeed
- Think of it like physical or developmental skills. Like almost all babies learn how to walk, but people keep walking for the rest of their lives. Some people, however, are motivated to run, and try to do it earlier and with more motivation than their peers do, and then spend leisure time running for fun and looking for opportunities to run. Others develop the skill to run, even deploy it occasionally when necessary, but generally aren’t interested in it for its own sake. I think that’s probably how Kegan’s levels are.
- I think if you keep trying to correlate them one-to-one you’re going to frustrate yourself because they’re talking about related but different things.
- My opinion is that it’s better to try hard to understand them in their own contexts first, as separate things, and to let the connections and correlations emerge on their own.
- spencer-hypothesis Kegan levels are at a higher level of abstraction in the stack; they are an emergent behaviour of the underlying structure.