Integral Psychology 5: Some Developmental Lines

Integral Psychology 5

Chapter 9: Some Developmental

Lines

Dr. Rodney H. Clarken

School of Education

Northern Michigan University

© Rodney H. Clarken 2004 1

This presentation is my attempt to summarize

Chapter 9,

• of Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology, published in 2000 , pp. 115-128 .

• I recommend you view the earlier presentations in this series and read

Integral Psychology for a more complete and in depth understanding of the content.


Levels of development: self sense: worldview

• Sensorimotor: material: archaic

• Emotional: body-ego: magical

• Representational &

Rule/role mind: persona: mythic

• Formal-reflexive: ego: rational

• Vision-logic: body-mind: existential

• Psychic & Subtle: soul: divine

• Causal & nondual: spirit: one Spirit


All developmental lines

• Are variations on the three irreducible modes: aesthetic (subjective, I, UL), moral

(intersubjective, we, LL) and scientific

(objective, it/s, UR, LR)

• Subjective: e.g., self identity, affects, needs, aesthetics

• Intersubjective: worldviews, linguistics, ethics

• Objective: scientific cognition


Consciousness

• Arises within the clearing created by culture

• Subjectivity and intersubjectivity are mutually arising and interdependent

• What you think is controlled by level of development of individual and collective


Affect, emotions, feelings

• Energetic feeling tone of each level

• Consciousness is more a feeling awareness than a thinking awareness

• Love is the foundation for and primary force behind all emotions


Levels of affect

• Reactivity, sensations: touch, temperature, pleasure, pain

• Impulse: tension, fear, rage, satisfaction

• L2: anxiety, anger, wishing, liking, safety

• L3: love, joy, depression, hate, belongingness


Levels of affect, cont.

• L4: universal affect, global justice, care, compassion, all-human love, worldcentric altruism

• Awe, rapture, compassion

• Ecstasy, love-bliss, saintly commitment

• Infinite freedom-release, one taste


Levels of need, drive or motivation: “food”

• Physical: food, water, warmth, labor

• Biological/emotional: breath, sex, elan vital

• Mental: communication, symbols and units of meaning

• Spiritual: virtues, relationship with Source


Relational Exchanges

• Each level needs to be in a relational exchange

• Oppression and repression distort exchanges, resulting in pathology

• All genuine needs reflect the interrelationships necessary for life at that level


Maslow’s needs hierarchy

• Survival, physiological

• Safety

• Social, belongingness

• Self-esteem

• Self-actualization

• Self-transcendence


Morals

• Includes principles of moral judgment

(how one reaches a moral decision) and moral span (those deemed worthy of consideration)

• You treat as yourself those with whom you identify; it expands as you develop from me to us (family, friends, community, nation) to all of us (humanity)


Moral span

• Preconventional: egocentric, narcissistic,

“me”, locus of bodily self,

• Conventional: sociocentric, conformist,

“us”, locus of mythic-membership

• Postconventional: world centric, universal, “all of us”, locus of rational universal pluralism


Creativity

• Part of human nature and the Kosmos: will

• Eros: the self-transcending pull or allurement of the Kosmos, Spirit-in-Action

• Drives emergences of higher and wider holons, an expansion of identity


Gender Identity

• Undifferentiated

• Differentiated, basic gender identity, biological givens

• Conventional identity, cultural constructions

• Trans differentiated, gender androgyny


Gender

• Deep features of development and self stages are gender neutral

• However, men tend to develop with and emphasis on agency (being in action) and women on communion (being in relationship), though both use both


Aesthetics

• You can analyze any activity, such as art, on the level it comes from (subject, self) and the level it aims at (object, reality)

• For example, art produced by the mental level can take as its object something in the material, mental or spiritual realms

• This dual analysis can be done with all modes of consciousness


Dual analysis

• Rationality can take as its object the sensorimotor realms, producing empiricalanalytical knowledge, the mental realms, producing phenomenology and hermeneutics, or the spiritual realm, producing theology

• With modernity, very high levels (reason) confined their attention to very low realms

(matter)


Art levels

• Sensorimotor

• Emotionalexpressivist

• Magical imagery: cave art, surrealist

• Mythological-literal: religious, icons

© Rodney H. Clarken 2004

• Perspectival: naturalistic

• Aperspectival: cubist abstract

• Symbolist: fantastic

• Archetypal

19

Gross Cognition

• Takes as its object the sensorimotor realm, matter

• Begins with sensorimotor development, moves to preoperational, then to concrete operational to formal operational where it begins taking the world of thought as its object


Subtle cognition

• Takes as its object the world of thought

• A distinctive developmental line from gross cognitions that goes through similar stages

• Begins in infancy with imagination, reverie, daydreams, creative visions, transcendental illuminations and thoughts


Causal cognition

• The root of attention, the capacity for

Witnessing, equanimity, integration

• Can be traced to infancy, but cones increasingly to the fore in the post formal stages of development in psychic vision, subtle archetype and meditative states


Different lines of the self

• Like cognition, self has three realms that develop relatively independently:

• 1. Gross self: ego, frontal

• 2. Subtle self: soul, deeper psychic

• 3. Casual self: Spirit, Witness


Integral Psychology

• Involves waves (levels), streams (lines), and states (ego, soul and spirit)

• Center of gravity of self moves by the force of Love through all stages, from body to mind to soul to spirit, with concerns of the lower fading from immediacy while the higher move to the foreground


Integral therapy

• Works concurrently with ego, soul and spirit as they unfold along side each other, carrying their own truths, insights and possible pathologies, recognizing and strengthening the soul and spirit as they emerge

• Integrate higher and lower domains into a full-spectrum realization


References

• Most of the material in this presentation was taken from Chapter 9 of Ken

Wilber’s Integral Psychology, (2000), pp.

115-128.


Contact information

Dr. Rodney H. Clarken

Director of Field Experiences and Professor

School of Education, Northern Michigan University,

1401 Presque Isle Avenue, Marquette, MI 49855-

5348

Tel: 906-227-2160 (secretary), 227-1881 (office), 226-

2079 (home), Fax: 227-2764, email: rclarken@nmu.edu

Website with this presentation and web cast and info on courses, papers, Baha'i and China: http://wwwinstruct.nmu.edu/education/rclarken


Integral Psychology 5: Some Developmental Lines

Integral Psychology 5

Chapter 9: Some Developmental

Lines

This presentation is my attempt to summarize

Chapter 9,

Levels of development: self sense: worldview

All developmental lines

Consciousness

Affect, emotions, feelings

Levels of affect

Levels of affect, cont.

Levels of need, drive or motivation: “food”

Relational Exchanges

Maslow’s needs hierarchy

Morals

Moral span

Creativity

Gender Identity

Gender

Aesthetics

Dual analysis

Art levels

Gross Cognition

Subtle cognition

Causal cognition

Different lines of the self