Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting: Including a Comprehensive Overview of Ego Development Theory, its Validation, Critique and Empirical Foundations [1 ed.] 9783666400056, 9783525403785, 9783525400050

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Thomas Binder

Ego Development for Effective Coaching and a Comprehensive Consulting Including ­Overview of Ego Development Theory, its Validation, Critique and Empirical Foundations

Thomas Binder

Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting Including a Comprehensive Overview of Ego Development Theory, its Validation, Critique and Empirical Foundations

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

The translation into English was done by Susan Welsh. For further assistance with technical and linguistic subtleties, I thank Dr. Dagmar Frohning and Jason Kay. This work has also been published in German by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht under the title »Ich-Entwicklung für effektives Beraten«. ISBN: 978-3-525-40378-5

With 26 figures and 32 tables Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available online: https://dnb.de. © 2023 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Robert-Bosch-Breite 10, D-37079 Göttingen, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany; Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Cover image: Cropped image of a girl walking along the beach/shutterstock.com Typesetting: SchwabScantechnik, Göttingen, Germany Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISBN 978-3-666-40005-6

What others have to say about this book:

“Thomas Binder’s book, published in English for the first time, is a truly necessary book in the ongoing history of developmental psychology and its pragmatic impact on the coaching, consulting, and leadership development professions. It foregrounds and judiciously reviews the ego development work of Jane Loevinger and of the many scholars who have used her WUSCT (Washington University Sentence Completion Test) and its variants in their own work. We owe Binder a debt of gratitude for his labor of love and his contribution to the field.” William R. Torbert Leadership Professor Emeritus, Boston College, Founding Board Member, Global Leadership Associates, Author, Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, ­Organizations, and Social Science.

“If you want a deep and wide understanding of the theory and research behind vertical development, this is the book you want to read. The depth and rigor of scholarship is first class, yet the style of writing keeps it interesting and easy to understand. I doubt there is any study of vertical development in the last 40 years, that is relevant to coaches, consultants, and managers, that isn’t summarized somewhere in this book. It’s a treasure trove of models, evidence and dots connected between research and practice.” Gervase Bushe Professor of Leadership and Organization Development, Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada.

“It has been a pure, undiluted pleasure for me to read this book. I doubt that there is any other scholar worldwide that has such a comprehensive grasp ofthe accumulated literature on ego development from the beginnings in the 1960s up to now. Thomas Binder offers an extremely thorough and easily accessible review of empirical research on all the relevant aspects of the ego development framework that I could think of, with particular emphasis on coaching, consulting and leadership. This book will be a reference work that I believe will not have its equal for a generation to come. In terms of audiences, the book will be a treasure for academic scholars in the adult development field, but its main impact will be for coaches, organizational consultants and leadership development trainers, both those who are already practicing professionals and those who are in training. I sincerely hope that it will be used as course literature in academic and private programs on counseling, coaching and consulting.”   Thomas Jordan PhD, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Work Science,  Gothenburg University, Sweden.

“For those of us committed to supporting the learning and growth of others through the fields of leadership education, coaching, or consulting, the field of adult development is an invaluable resource and inspiration. The downside of becoming a mainstream feature of this area of practice is that adult development is often reduced to superficial, commodified concepts that have lost their depth, dimensionality, and nuance. Thomas Binder’s new contribution on the implications of ego development provides both theorists and practitioners a rigorous, critical, and comprehensive insight into the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger, the relationship between her vast empirical study and other prevailing theories of adult development, such as Robert Kegan’s, as well as helpful critical insights into the limits and possibilities of applying these powerful theories to the field of accompaniment. For anyone serious about supporting human growth, integration, and maturity, I highly recommend Binder’s Ego Development for Effective Coaching and Consulting.” Rev. David C. McCallum, S.J. Ed.D, Executive Director of the Discerning Leadership Program, The Pontifical Gregorian University

“Mid-life crises interrupt our lives and are costly in many ways. Few scholars examine the interstitial periods, between the liminal episodes of angst, and ask what people want or can handle during these stages, phases or eras in order to grow and develop. Using ego-development theories with Loevinger’s as the backbone, Binder does a magnificent job of explaining what both the coach/ consultant needs to address in their own issues and needs, as well as those of their clients to be of most help. Beware, you ignore your stage at the peril of your clients! This book can enlighten and guide you to more effective coaching and consulting and a better life!” Richard Boyatzis PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Co-author of the International Best Seller, Primal Leadership and the new Helping People Change.

“If you love the ideas of adult development theory and coaching, Binder’s artful synthesis is a necessary addition to your library. Thoughtfully researched and clearly presented, this wide-ranging book will shore up any weaknesses in your foundation and open new doors to your exploration. A must-read for developmental coaches and anyone who cares about the research-based ideas of adult growth!” Jennifer Garvey Berger EdD, Former Associate Professor, George Mason University, CEO Cultivating Leadership, Author of Books on Adult Development, e. g. Changing on the Job, Simple Habits for Complex Times.

“Binder’s thoroughly researched and clearly written book is an extremely welcome first step toward better training and evaluation of management consultants. Moreover, what the book says about consultants also applies to their clients: namely, that organizational work is differentiated by developmental stages that can be comprehensively and unambiguously determined empirically.” Otto Laske PhD, Founder and Director Interdevelopmental Institute, Boston/MA, USA, Author of books like Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems or Dialectical Thinking for Integral Leaders: A Primer.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 17 19 21 23

1 Introduction, relevance, and overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 1.1 Introduction and relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 1.2 Overview of the work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2 Ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.1 Detailed presentation of Loevinger’s ego development model . . . . . 33 2.1.1 The ego (the “I”) – attempt at a definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.1.2 The “discovery” and development of the model . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.1.3 Stages of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.1.3.1 Early stages of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.1.3.2 Middle stages of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 2.1.3.3 Late stages of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2.1.4 Aspects and areas of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.1.5 Ego development as transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 2.1.6 Levels of development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 2.1.6.1 Pre-conventional level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2.1.6.2 Conventional level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2.1.6.3 Post-conventional level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.1.7 Extension of the post-conventional level by Cook-Greuter . 58 2.1.7.1 Reinterpretation of the post-conventional level . . . . . . . . . . . 59 2.1.7.2 2.1.8 2.1.8.1 2.1.8.2

The last two stages of ego development according to Cook-Greuter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Excursus: Kegan’s subject-object theory of the evolving self . 64 The “discovery” of the subject-object model . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Cognition and emotion as two sides of development . . . . . . 65

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Subject-object relations as the basis of “meaning making” . 66 The spiral process of the evolving self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Main stages of the self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Stability and changeability of ego stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Age and ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Achieving a stable balance of ego stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Mechanisms that promote stability or change in personality with reference to ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 2.1.9.4 Conclusion on the changeability of ego stage in adulthood . 87 2.1.10 Distribution of ego development stages in adulthood . . . . . .  89 2.1.10.1 Studies based on Loevinger’s work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  89 2.1.10.2 Comparison with studies on Kegan’s model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 2.1.11 Ego development and personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 2.1.11.1 Clarification of the term “personality” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 2.1.11.2 Ego development and trait approaches to personality . . . . . . 95 2.1.11.3 Ego development in integrative personality approaches . . . . 97 2.1.11.3.1 Ego development in the context of McAdams’s three levelmodel of personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 2.1.11.3.2 Ego development in Kuhl’s theory of personality system ­interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 2.1.12 Criticism of Loevinger’s ego development model . . . . . . . . . 105 2.1.12.1 Lack of definitions of the ego and of ego development . . . . . 106 2.1.12.2 Questioning the unity of the ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 2.1.12.3 No hard structure theory in Piaget’s sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 2.1.12.4 No method to measure the deep structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 2.1.12.5 Insufficient explanation of the mechanisms of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 2.1.12.6 Not considering mental health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

2.1.8.3 2.1.8.4 2.1.8.5 2.1.9 2.1.9.1 2.1.9.2 2.1.9.3

2.2 Empirical validation of the ego development model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 2.2.1 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 2.2.2 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 2.2.2.1 Discriminant and incremental validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 2.2.2.1.1 Ego development and socio-economic status . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 2.2.2.1.2 Ego development and intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 2.2.2.1.3 Ego development and language skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 2.2.2.2 Convergent validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 2.2.2.2.1

Ego development and other methods and concepts of maturity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2.2.2 Ego development and methods for measuring individual aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2.2.2.1 Character as a domain of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2.2.2.2 Interpersonal style as a domain of ego development . . . . . . .

126 130 132 136

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2.2.2.2.2.3 2.2.2.2.2.4 2.2.2.3 2.2.2.4 2.2.2.4.1 2.2.2.4.2 2.2.2.4.3 2.2.2.4.4

Conscious preoccupations as a domain of ego development Cognitive style as a domain of ego development . . . . . . . . . . Unity of the ego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sequentiality of stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross-sectional studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Longitudinal studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intervention studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies on the asymmetry of the understanding of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2.4.5 Studies of the regularity of response patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2.4.6 Biographical research based on criteria of ego development 2.2.2.5 Cultural universality of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

139 142 146 149 150 151 153 154 155 158 159 161

3 Analyses of coaching/consulting competence and ego development . 163 3.1 Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 3.2 Clarification of the terms “coaching” and “consulting” . . . . . . . . . . . 164 3.3 Clarification of the term “competence” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 3.4 Substantive parallels between competence requirements for coaches/consultants and aspects of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 3.4.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 3.4.1.1 Choice of professional associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 3.4.1.2 Choice and evaluation of competence requirements . . . . . . . 173 3.4.2

Results: Aspects of ego development in competence ­requirements of coaching and consulting associations . . . . . 174 3.4.3 Examples of underlying development requirements implicit in competence models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 3.4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

3.5 Empirical relationships between coaching and consulting competences and aspects of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 3.5.1 Studies within coaching and consulting contexts . . . . . . . . . 184 3.5.1.1 Studies with focus on empathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 3.5.1.2 3.5.1.3 3.5.1.4 3.5.1.5 3.5.2 3.5.2.1

Studies with focus on the competence and/or effectiveness of coaching/consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies with focus on the fit between coach/consultant and client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies with focus on one’s own well-being and selfregulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies with focus on morality, ethical attitudes and values . Other relevant studies outside coaching and consulting contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Studies with focus on self-competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

186 191 194 196 199 200

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3.5.2.2 Studies with focus on dealing with complexity . . . . . . . . . . . 205 3.5.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

4 Discussion and prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 4.1 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 4.1.1 Discussion on the model of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 4.1.2

4.1.2.1 4.1.2.2

Discussion on the relationship between coaching and consulting competence and ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Substantive parallels between competence requirements for coaches and consultants and aspects of ego development . . . 216 Empirical relationships between coaching and consulting ­competences and aspects of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

4.2 Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 4.2.1 Prospects for further research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 4.2.2 Prospects for practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. Mark Twain (Loeb, 1996, p. 15)

Preface to the English edition

I am pleased that this book is now available in English, after a second edition has been published for the German market after only two years. The issue of ego development has fascinated me since the early 1990s, when I began working at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. This issue raises many questions and continues to intrigue me to this day as a researcher, coach, teaching supervisor, organizational consultant as well as a human being wanting to develop with my family as well as others. Beyond my own spiritual practice – and perhaps even more directly than there – it is precisely the topic of ego development that confronts and connects me to the process of life – if I manage to live it. By now I have analyzed well about 1500 ego development profiles and worked in countless coaching sessions with clients and various leadership development programs on the issue of ego development. This experience, as well as the intensive learning of measurement techniques of other developmental models (e. g. Kohlberg, Kegan) have profoundly changed my understanding of ego development and my practice. From this arose the desire to compile a well-founded scientific summary and critical classification of the theoretical and empirical questions of the ego development model. In addition my aim was to comprehensively research the connection with coaching/consulting competence, within the framework of a dissertation. This has not been done yet. This would not have been possible, had I not started studying this discipline about 30 years ago. A lot has changed. Back then, it was still considered to be a niche discipline for only a few university professors, most of whom had a solid methodological background and no commercial interests. Today, the topic of “adult development” has increasingly arrived in everyday life, where it actually belongs and where it can be useful to a broader audience. In my view, the model of ego development in particular can contribute to many things that make a more conscious life possible.

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Preface to the English edition

For the individual, increasing ego development is first and foremost a “promise of freedom”. With regard to human societies, it is probably pivotal that as many people as possible reach a full Self-Governed Stage (E6) (with some signs of the next stage). This would allow for societies in which self-determination is a lived reality, whilst guaranteeing sufficient understanding of others. Reaching this stage is what I call the completion of the first journey in adult life (“freedom from others”). Given the political developments in many countries, this stage of development appears to be more necessary than ever for human society, and more relevant than focusing on ever later stages of development, as tempting as this may be (even for me). In my opinion, the increasing dissemination of ideas and models of “vertical development” in everyday life is unfortunately also causing some questionable developments – exploitation interests and the claim to interpretative sovereignty are increasing. Concepts and models are compared1 with each other without deeper understanding and coaches and consulting companies “craft” their own “models” with a scientific veneer with a quick pen, to be sold to bona fide clients. Scientific concepts are abridged, “mixed” with others or expanded into all-encompassing models, so that one wonders what construct is actually involved – a question that should be at the beginning of any serious theory-­ building. Others promise a rapid stage development, leaving a critical person or one familiar with the research in doubt. Despite these developments, I believe that the potential benefits for society outweigh the disadvantages. I would be pleased if my book contributes to a more sound understanding of ego development and helps researchers and practitioners alike to orient themselves in the “thicket” of publications and offerings. Thomas Binder

Berlin, Germany

Note on gender-related formulations In order to write as neutrally as possible, I use alternating masculine and feminine forms per paragraph. The only exceptions are quotations, in order not to change the original text afterwards.

1

e. g. Ross, 2008b

Foreword

It is a rare pleasure to find oneself as an elder in the adult development research community to applaud a younger colleague’s clear and elegant writing and his intellectual contribution to the field. Thomas Binder and I have both spent most of our adult lives exploring, almost independently of one another, the pioneering work of Jane Loevinger on ego development, expanding it and making it available for practical applications. For him, this effort has been driven equally by his own dedication and his curiosity as a consultant, coach, and scientist. With this work, I hope that more and more researchers, consultants, and executives realize that understanding the reality of adult vertical development is a difference that makes a difference. The model of ego development shows us how people develop during their lives through qualitatively different stages, each building upon the previous one. In the field of adult development, most models tend to privilege cognitive complexity as the sole index of maturity. I tend to call this “aboutism,” since one can learn to reason in a complex way “about” any topic – including self-­ development and morality – without embodying or translating that knowledge into real world action. In contrast, ego development is a whole person theory that takes thought, affect and action as well as context (historical and cultural) into account. It shows what needs people have, what they attend to, how they define themselves, interact with others, and how they think and feel. In short, what they have already mastered on the long and sometimes rocky road of a person’s development and what limits remain. Thomas Binder puts forward the most comprehensive and thorough exploration in the world today of the concept of ego development: He describes its origin, its diverse facets, points of criticism, and its refinement as well as extensions since the 1960’s, and compares it with other personality models. He provides for the first time a complete picture of the empirical foundations of the ego development model and the projective testing procedure on which it is based. To this end, he carefully analyzes hundreds of studies that have tried to

18

Foreword

validate or refute Loevinger’s approach from every possible corner of psychometrics. He examines these issues with meticulous attention to psychometric knowledge and practices and offers telling data, diagrams, and arguments, in order to be able to systematize the various research results. The reference list spans 46 pages and follows psychological theory from its forerunners to today. This shows that the ego development model (and the proper measurement methodology for it) can now be considered as one of the best-substantiated stage models of development. On this foundation, Binder offers his own carefully crafted research studies and makes a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between competence requirements in process-oriented coaching and consulting and aspects of ego development, showing vividly the diverse ways in which these are linked with vertical development. These empirical analyses also indicate the minimum level of personal maturity that is actually required for effective coaching and consulting. As his conclusions show, a large percentage of adults are not yet able to gain the necessary insights and to act accordingly. Thomas Binder’s book can inspire many other fields – such as education, therapy, coaching, management, and leadership development – to address their questions from the perspective of ego development. Just as our outer world is ever more rapidly changing, so too are demands on adults increasing, to be more discerning and to more flexibly take a broader, longer-term, and more multi-faceted perspective. Without considering the interactions among individuals, groups, cultural systems, and global factors, we cannot adequately address the serious challenges that we face as humanity. Binder in this labor of love demonstrates the continuing power of ego development theory for understanding human growth and thriving, and he substantiates it skillfully. In his chapter “Discussion and prospects”, he also shows what this could mean in coaching and consulting practice. I hope that he and this work will reach many more fields and people, because he proves, in a scientifically sound and readable manner, that personality development ceased being “esoteric” long ago, and that maturity can now be accurately measured and also purposefully promoted. Susanne Cook-Greuter

List of figures

Fig. 1: Two sides of the “I”/ego/self: Subject and object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Fig. 2: Linear and curvilinear relationships using the example of ego development, cognitive complexity and conformism . . . . . . 40 Fig. 3: Typical progressions of ego development aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Fig. 4: Developmental directions: Horizontal and vertical . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Fig. 5: In-formation vs. trans-formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Fig. 6: Shift of the subject-object balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Fig. 7: Helix of development with stage numbers following Loevinger (E) and Kegan (S) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Fig. 8: Ego development and age in various samples (Cohn, 1998, p. 140) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Fig. 9: Model for a milestone sequence (Loevinger, 1976, p. 167) . . . . . 76 Fig. 10: Ego development at start/end of doctoral program and type of university (Billington, 1988, p. 190) (Ego Level 2 = E6) . . . . . . 81 Fig. 11: Ego development of psychiatric patients and adolescents of the same age (Noam, 1992, p. 682) (I3 = E4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Fig. 12: Ego development evaluated by three procedures (Sutton & Swensen, 1983, p. 471) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Fig. 13: Ego development and emotional understanding (Labouvie-Vief, DeVoe & Bulka, 1989, p. 432) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Fig. 14: Ego development and responsiveness in two interview phases (Hauser, 1978, p. 343) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Fig. 15: Use of types of political reasoning by ego level (Candee, 1974, p. 624) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Fig. 16: Ego development and authoritarian attitudes (Browning, 1983, p. 143) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Fig. 17: Ego development and emotions (Hauser & Safyer, 1994, p. 495) 145 Fig. 18: Cross-sectional studies of ego development (Loevinger & Wessler, 1978, p. 50) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

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List of figures

Fig. 19: Longitudinal studies of ego development (Redmore & Loevinger, 1979, p. 18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Fig. 20: Ego-Development Profile distribution from the first survey (ID-37a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Fig. 21: Ego development profile distribution from the second survey (ID-37b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Fig. 22: Hypothetical development continuum composed of five developmental stages (Ø = subject’s level of development) (Davison et al., 1980, p. 123) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Fig. 23: Different levels of competences (Spencer & Spencer, 1993, p. 11) 169 Fig. 24: Ego development and effectiveness in leadership situations (Eigel & Kuhnert, 2005, p. 375) (LDL 3–4 ~ E5, LDL 4 ~ E6, LDL 5 ~ E8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Fig. 25: Schematic representation of the relationship between maturity and adaptivity (Mickler, 2004, p. 26) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Fig. 26: Values of correlation coefficients and variable dispersion in relation to the scattering of variables (Kuhl, 2010, p. 37) . . . . . . . 219

List of tables

Tab. 1: Tab. 2: Tab. 3: Tab. 4:

Four areas of ego development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Levels of development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Levels and ego development stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Levels and ego development stages with expansion following Cook-Greuter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Tab. 5: Subject-object balance at two stages of cognitive development . . 68 Tab. 6: Subject-object balance following Kegan and corresponding levels of ego development following Loevinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Tab. 7: Ego development and participation in self-inquiry groups (Torbert & Fisher, 1992, p. 186) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Tab. 8: Meta-analysis of intervention studies with social role taking (Sprinthall, 1994, p. 89) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Tab. 9: Distribution of ego development stages of adult women in com­ parison to the total s­ ample (Loevinger & Wessler, 1978, p. 28) . . 90 Tab. 10: Representative distribution of ego development stages in adolescence and adulthood (Holt, 1980, p. 916) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Tab. 11: Distribution of ego development stages in three aggregated samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Tab. 12: Distribution of ego development stages compared – Kegan based studies (Kegan, 1996, p. 193) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Tab. 13: Three levels of personality and their relations to culture (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 212) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Tab. 14: The seven system levels of PSI Theory (Kuhl, 2010, p. 437) . . . . . 101 Tab. 15: Correlation between ego development and SES measures by age group (Browning, 1987, p. 116) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Tab. 16: Correlation of ego development with occupation, education, social class, and work complexity (Snarey & Lydens, 1990, p. 90) 121 Tab. 17: Correlation between ego development and intelligence measures (Cohn & Westenberg, 2004, p. 765) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

22

List of tables

Tab. 18: Minnesota Q-Set items relating to two levels of ego development (Rozsnafszky, 1981, p. 114) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Tab. 19: Level of ego development and values of an aggregated measure for maturity (Novy, 1993, p. 337) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Tab. 20: Ego development and complexity of life goals (McAdams, Ruetzel & Foley, 1986, p. 805) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Tab. 21: Correlation between ego development and emotions (Hauser & Safyer, 1994, p. 495) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Tab. 22: Intra-individual changes in ego development (Adams & Fitch,1982, p. 581) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Tab. 23: Ego development response patterns (Davison et al., 1980, p. 126) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Tab. 24: Schein’s basic consultation models (according to Fatzer, 1999, pp. 22–23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Tab. 25: Counseling ability (VPPS) and stage of ego development and training level (Borders & Fong, 1989, p. 79) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Tab. 26: Ego development and stages of moral judgment following Kohlberg (Lambert, 1972b, p. 116) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Tab. 27: Ego development and preferred social distance from persons with disabilities (Sheaffer, Sias, Toriello & Cubero, 2008, p. 152) 199 Tab. 28: Ego development and variability of the self (Pazy, 1985, p. 75) . . 201 Tab. 29: Evaluation scales on the ability to change, with inter-judge reliability (O’Connor & Wolfe, 1991, p. 330) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Tab. 30: Scope of transition and paradigm shift by ego level (O’Connor & Wolfe, 1991, p. 333) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Tab. 31: Ego development and percentage of second-order responses (Merron, 1985, p. 133) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Tab. 32: Ego development and percentage of collaborative responses (Merron, 1985, p. 134) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Appendices

Annex 1: Overview of ego development stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Annex 2: Interpersonal Understanding Scale (Spencer & Spencer, 1993, p. 39) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Annex 3: Summary of the empirical survey (see Binder, 2014b) . . . . . . . 260

1 Introduction, relevance, and overview

1.1  Introduction and relevance My personal experiences in coaching, consulting and training form the starting point of this book. Since 1995 I have worked as an organizational consultant, and from 2002 also as a supervisor and coach, and the professional director of a year-long change management program. In 2005 I began lecturing on additional process-oriented coaching and consultancy trainings, in the context of systemic consulting and organizational development. Throughout this time, I have been interested in questions such as the following: Ȥ What are the reasons for the trainees’ different skill application levels, when it comes to effectively using the approaches and methods they have learned? Ȥ Why is it that some consultants seem to “stick” to the problem as it is described by the client, while others can easily reinterpret the situation, pose additional questions, and are thus capable of much more flexible coaching and consulting? Ȥ Why is it that executives differ greatly in how they deal with feedback? Some request it, but still respond defensively to even the most discreet expression of it. Others seem more to welcome different perspectives as a gift. These differences seemed to me not so much a matter of intelligence or personality characteristics, such as those described in the Big Five model of personality. Rather, I suspected that there was an underlying developmental component, familiar to me from my previous work as a project assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. At that time I was doing research in the department of Wolfgang Edelstein (e. g., Grundmann, Binder, Edelstein & Krettenauer, 1998) and conducted interviews, interviewer training, and scoring according to Kohlberg’s model of moral development. That was where I came into contact with the ego development model of Jane Loevinger, whose survey instrument was being used in an MPIB longitudinal

26

Introduction, relevance, and overview

study in Iceland (Edelstein & Krettenauer, 2004). I also became acquainted with Augusto Blasi, who had been one of Loevinger’s closest associates, and who also gave scorer training during his visits. The ego development model describes stages of personality development (Loevinger, 1997) rather than individual developmental aspects such as moral judgment or social perspective taking. Therefore it seemed to me particularly well suited to shed new light on my questions and to help answer them (Habecker & Binder, 2014). This made me determined to study these questions in detail, for their relevance to coaching and consulting. If we consider the challenges that successful coaches and consultants must overcome, the competencies required have parallels to Loevinger’s ego development model. This is illustrated by the example of the German Professional Association for Coaching e.V. (DBVC). In the section of its “Coaching Compendium” on “The competence profile of a coach,” we find the following description of personal requirements (Wolf, 2009): A coach must be able to use himself effectively as a tool in consultation – without submitting to the urge to over-represent himself, but also without denying himself. For this he requires cross-disciplinary qualifications, in particular realistic self-assessment, emotional stability, a healthy sense of selfworth, a sense of responsibility, intellectual flexibility, and empathy. (p. 36) This description by the DBVC touches upon aspects of impulse control (“the urge to over-represent oneself ”), interpersonal style (“sense of responsibility”), conscious preoccupations (“realistic self-assessment”), and cognitive development (“intellectual flexibility”) (see p. 48). These are all qualities that exist in Loevinger’s ego development model, but not before the Conscientious Stage (E6). Combining this with my personal experience calls into question whether the requirements for consultants listed by the DBVC can be achieved by the majority, given their individual developmental level, because the majority of the adult population in Western societies has not reached a level that corresponds to the full Conscientious Stage (E6) of ego development (Cohn, 1998). In fact, ego development is stabilized by the middle of the second decade of life at the Self-Aware Stage (E5) for most adults (Loevinger, 1976; Westenberg & Gjerde, 1999; Syed & Seifge-Krenke, 2013). Therefore, coaches and consultants could, despite extensive training, end up in a state that Kegan (1996), in his analysis of the demands made upon adults, referred to as “in over our heads.” This work is based upon the model of ego development of Loevinger, who retrospectively described herself as “a psychologist whose work has been on

Introduction and relevance

27

the fringe of psychometrics, of personality theory, and, at a stretch, of psychoanalytic theory and the philosophy of science” (Loevinger, 2002, p. 195). Her model is simultaneously a theory of personality and a developmental psychology model of stages (see p. 42). It therefore suggests a bridge between two disciplines, because “[p]ersonality theories often lack an appreciation of development, and developmental theories often lack an appreciation of individual differences” (Westenberg, Blasi & Cohn, 1998, p. 1). Loevinger’s model is a developmental psychology model within the field of stage theories. In this field development is not understood as continuous or “gradual transition with small behavioral changes” (Garz, 2008, p. 8), but rather as discontinuous, with qualitative developmental steps. Stage theories interpret development not as an internal maturation process or a response to the environment, but as a person’s active engagement with their environment, in which the person should be seen, at least from a certain stage of development, as a “reflexively active subject” (Hoff, 2003). Such theories thus take an “interactionist viewpoint” (Lerner, 2002, p. 372). Loevinger’s model seems to contribute more effectively than other developmental models to explaining the differences in competence of coaches and consultants (or even managers). It is not a domain model of development (such as Kohlberg’s model of moral judgment), but rather understands the ego as a holistic construct. It is also not a purely cognitive development model, but it concerns also “impulses and methods for controlling impulses, personal pre­ occupations and ambitions, interpersonal attitudes and social values” (Blasi, 1998, p. 15). The ego development model also includes the aspect of identity formation (Blasi, 1988; Kroger, 2004; Jespersen, Kroger & Martinussen, 2013), especially the question of what we perceive as belonging to our own ego and how the boundary between our ego and others is drawn. This aspect, which Kegan (1982) also emphasizes in his model of ego development, is crucial for coaching and consultancy - for example, when acting independently of (presumed) expectations of others or gaining distance from one’s own constructions of reality (the latter being characteristic for post-conventional stages). Even in research on competence models ego development is often understood as an aspect of personality related to competence (Boyatzis, 1982, p. 33). Coaches and consultants also often confront problem situations that place high demands on dealing with complexity. The following description of super­ vision taken from the German Society for Supervision illustrates this (Hausinger, 2011): Supervision works at the points of intersection of person – activity – role/ function – organization – environment – society, i. e., supervision consid-

28

Introduction, relevance, and overview

ers different systems of reference, each with their own logic and dynamics. Therefore, supervision takes a multi-perspective approach. A subject is considered both from different individual perspectives and in detail, as well as in the broader context. In supervision, the general, the special, and that which underlies them can therefore all be considered simultaneously. (p. 9) Consulting contexts such as these, which are typical of process-oriented consulting forms such as supervision, coaching, and organizational development, thus have many attributes of high complexity, as Dörner (2003) and Wilke (2006), for example, have identified them: Ȥ Many influential factors Ȥ Interconnectedness of the individual elements Ȥ Rather poorly defined problems Ȥ High impact of the decisions Ȥ Consideration of different interests, feelings, motives, and behavior patterns The more comprehensive and sophisticated coaches and consultants are in understanding their environment, themselves, and their role, and the more flexibly they can act in such contexts, the more they should be able to be effective, because there are a number of “adaptive advantages involved in functioning at advanced ego stages” (Manners & Durkin, 2000, p. 477). People who are at the late, so-called post-conventional stages of ego development more often show up with the following characteristics. They: Ȥ understand complex social situations easily, Ȥ can change their perspective flexibly, Ȥ keep process and objective in mind simultaneously, Ȥ turn “either/or” questions into “both/and” and Ȥ generally are able to adopt a meta-perspective. Aspects such as these are described in process-oriented forms of consultation as a common repertoire of professional behavior. The fact that only from 7 to a maximum of 17 percent of the population has achieved a post-conventional level of ego development (Torbert, 1991, 2003; Rooke & Torbert, 2005; Cook-­ Greuter, 2010), suggests rather the oppositevthat many consultants are far from having such a repertoire. The goal of this book is to review the literature on ego development for its relevance to the coaching and consultancy profession. A second goal ist to provide a complete overview of ego development theory and its empirical find-

Introduction and relevance

29

ings. The guiding question is to what extent there is a systematic relationship between competence requirements for coaches and consultants and aspects of ego development. Loevinger’s ego development model has been discussed in hundreds of empirical studies and theoretical publications worldwide. In 1993 – almost 30 years after Loevinger’s work was first published – the journal Psychological Inquiry devoted an entire issue to her ego development model and invited researchers to pursue it. Loevinger herself also spent decades advancing the investigation and refinement of her model. Thus Kroger (2004, p. 124) concludes that “she has been one of the few social scientists studying identity or related phenomena to generate her model from a solid empirical base.” Early on, ego development was discovered to be a relevant model for counseling (e. g., Swensen 1980; Young-Eisendrath, 1982). Cebik (1985) drew the following conclusion for supervisors: “Failure and ineffectiveness in the mental health disciplines could be reduced by allowing for the educating of persons with respect to their own stage of ego development” (p. 232). Likewise, many researchers have used Loevinger’s ego development model in empirical research about counseling, supervision, and organizational development. These studies have usually explored individual aspects such as its relationship to empathy (e. g., Carlozzi, Gaa & Liberman, 1983), the quality of interaction between counselor and client (Allen, 1980), counseling students’ perception of clients (Borders, Fong & Neimeyer, 1986), or attitudes towards potential clients (Sheaffer, Sias, Toriello & Cubero, 2008). These works mostly noted comparisons to other works dealing with similar aspects, but there was no systematic comparison and compilation of results relevant to coaching and consulting, such as were found in empirical studies of ego development. A subsequent survey by Borders (1998) also fails to do this. There is a significant research gap here. In the last few years, developmental psychology stage models, especially those of Loevinger and Kegan, which pertain to personality development as a whole, appear to be increasingly applied in practice. This is especially relevant for counseling, coaching, consulting, mediation and management development (e. g. Torbert & Associates, 2004; Joiner & Joseph, 2007; McGuire & Rhodes, 2009, Bachkirova, 2010; Berger, 2012; Nicolaides & McCallum, 2013; Binder, 2010, 2014a, Laloux, 2014; Binder & Türk, 2015; Reams, 2020; Sharma, 2021; Binder, Langeder & Pichler, 2023) even to the development of political leaders (Fein & Jordan, 2016; Wagner & Fein, 2016). Thus, a structured reappraisal of the relationship between ego development and coaching and consulting seems advantageous, not only for research, but also for practice.

30

Introduction, relevance, and overview

My complete dissertation/research report (Binder, 2014b) also includes a comprehensive longitudinal survey using the Ich-Entwicklungs-Profil (Ego-­ Development-Profile). This is a revised, refined and expanded version of the WUSCT [Washington University Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development] available in German and English (www.E-D-Profile.net). This allowed the simultaneous empirical testing of the instrument and the presentation of its basic principles, modifications, and procedures. The aim of the empirical survey (N = 101) was to identify the participants initial level of ego development at the beginning of supervision trainings, and whether, through further training (two to three years), they develop in the direction of the later developmental stages (for a summary, see Annex 3).

1.2  Overview of the work This work is divided into two main parts and a final chapter on prospects for the future. The second chapter is an up-to-date and comprehensive presentation of ego development - the most comprehensive review on this subject published to date. It is divided into two sections: The first consists of a detailed overview of Loevinger’s ego development model in all its relevant facets. The second systematically reviews important studies conducted for the empirical validation of her model. This model deals with a very comprehensive personality construct, and one difficult to render accessible. Even renowned development experts do not always use the model correctly in their studies, for example by selecting unrealistic intervention periods. Therefore the studies are discussed in detail in this part. By this point, the issue has been explored in all its various facets to the extent that possible points of reference for coaching and consultancy may be apparent. The current state of research is presented in a synopsis, which has up to now not existed in such detail, including in the more recent overview articles (e. g., Manners and Durkin, 2001; Westenberg, Hauser & Cohn, 2004). The third chapter pursues the question of whether there is a relationship between ego development and effective coaching and consulting. The first section examines, based on competence requirements of selected coaching and consultancy associations, to what extent there are parallels with the model of ego development. The second section pursues this question on the basis of empirical studies in which ego development and competence issues relevant to coaching and consultancy were researched together. A study overview is provided, arranging the available studies into thematic clusters (e. g., ego development and dealing with complexity) and commenting on their procedures and results.

Overview of the work

31

In the fourth chapter, I discuss the results in light of prior research, identifying the consequences arising from this work. On the one hand, I discuss the research gaps and questions that have arisen in the controversy over the ego development model and the research behind it. On the other, I elaborate the practical consequences of this work for consultancy and consultancy training.

2 Ego development

2.1  Detailed presentation of Loevinger’s ego development model 2.1.1  The ego (the “I”) – attempt at a definition I – what does it mean? In everyday speech we generally use this word without thinking about it. To use the word “I” seems to us the most natural thing in the world, as when we complete sentences such as the following: Ȥ I think that … Ȥ When I am criticized … Ȥ I want … Ȥ I am … All of these sentences express an acting agent that positions itself in relation to the world, reacts to it or interprets it. But who is actually acting and reacting? And to what extent is what the “I” reacts to, dependent on this “I” - its specific structure or its developmental stage? Can we equate this structure with an individual’s personality? If we pursue this idea further, then we enter into a field that philosophers, mystics, founders of religions, and sociologists have struggled with for centuries. Psychologists too have been dealing with it for over a hundred years, and for several decades especially by means of empirical research. Thinking about the “I,” one can find many similar terms in everyday language, such as ego, self, identity, and personality. When one enters the field of psychology (if not before), one experiences almost Babylonian linguistic confusion: self-concept, self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-image, I, superego, ego strength, ego control, ego functions, and many more terms. Plunging deeper into the conceptual world of the “I,” one notices that there is not only a multitude of similar terms, but that one and the same term is used completely differently or even understood in a completely opposite sense by another author.

34

Ego development

When Young-Eisendrath and Hall (1987) wanted to organize a small conference on “The Self ” in 1983, they were surprised when more than 350 researchers and practitioners registered. But they all seemed to be speaking about different things, and above all: “No one shared a common language” (p. xi). This is particularly notable in the psychoanalytic literature (Redfearn, 1987); ever since Freud, with his structural model (id, ego, superego), the ego has also shifted toward a focus on psychoanalytical treatment, (Eagle, 1991). But when we compare all these different everyday and psychological terms, the “I” seems to have a special role. What the “I” is, and how it differs from other aspects of the personality, was best expressed by William James in his famous chapter about the Self (1892/1963). Figure 1 illustrates this. The Me and the I – Whatever I may be thinking of, I am always at the same time more or less aware of myself, of my personal existence. At the same time it is I who am aware; so that the total self of me, being as it were duplex, partly known and partly knower, partly object and partly subject, must have two aspects discriminated in it, of which for shortness we may call one the Me and the other the I. (p. 166)

Fig. 1: Two sides of the “I”/ego/self: Subject and object

James’s essential distinction between the I and the Me was often not noticed or was mixed up in psychological research (McAdams, 1996a, 1996b). Usually only the object side (the Me) or part of it was investigated, and the knowing side (the I as subject) was eliminated, such as in trait approaches to personality (see p. 95).

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In constructivist approaches to development, however, the knowing subject has been the main area of research since the pioneering work of Piaget (1932). He saw himself as an epistemologist, interested mainly in the question of how a person attains knowledge about the world and how the “cognitive apparatus” developed. This led to extensive studies of how a person obtains, for example, such complex skills such as the understanding of numbers, quantities, or causality. This process culminates in the fact that most people by about the age of 20 have developed what Piaget called a formal operational logic. But the cognitive apparatus is only a part of James’s “I”, albeit a key one. If a person says “I,” this usually includes other aspects, such as wishes or goals, and a kind of attitude to the world is also always implied. The “I” cannot be limited to man’s purely cognitive apparatus, because thought and action always involve intention. According to Blasi (1988, p. 232) “his believing, desiring, controlling, or hoping – is not one component among others, but permeates every aspect of the action and gives unity to it.” For Piaget, these aspects were more in the background, but he recognized the issue and grappled at various points with the self or the I (Broughton, 1987). He also saw it as more than just a cognitive apparatus: “It is like the center of one’s own activity” (Piaget, 1967, p. 65). If the I is the knowing subject and also the center of one’s own activity, the question arises how this I in its entirety “functions” or what really constitutes the I in its entirety. Loevinger pursued this question since the 1960s, by investigating the I (the ego) empirically, although she had not intended to do that at all when she began (see p. 38). Rather she stumbled accidentally upon patterns in her research data that she could not explain with the classic (linear) paradigm of adjustment and trait theories. It struck her especially that the persons being studied did not differ only in the complexity of their thinking, as per Piaget; they also showed great differences in how they could control their own impulses, for example. Due to the large number of interwoven aspects that occur at different levels of development, she called this variable “ego development.” She herself saw virtually no difference between the term “ego” and “self ” (Loevinger, 1983, 1984; Loevinger & Blasi, 1991), and used both interchangeably, in contrast to Jung (Adam, 2011). As a psychometrician, it was important to her to conceptualize this “ego” as a construct, so that it could be understood and validly measured. Therefore, she resisted defining the ego or ego development (1983, p. 344–345): “I maintain it [the ego] cannot and need not be defined. It need only be pointed to. Ego development is what is occurring as a person grows from impulsivity to self-­ protectiveness to conformity, etc.” Loevinger’s conception of the ego complements, but also contrasts with other approaches. Especially in many psychoan-

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alytic theories, the ego is conceived of differently (Mertens, 2010). An example is Freud’s above-mentioned structural model and the familiar division into its three entities: the id (drives/pleasure principle), the ego (consciousness/reality principle), and the superego (demands/moral authority). Another example is the later psychoanalytic ego psychology (e. g., Hartmann, Rapaport), which arose as a result of Anna Freud’s classic “The ego and the mechanisms of defense” (1937/2018). Here the ego was understood as a system of individual ego functions (e. g., to perceive, to think, to decide). As a natural scientist, Loevinger was in principle suspicious of such postulated entities or functions (Loevinger, 1983), which notably contradicted what she had discovered from her research data about the ego as a whole. This data constituted a bundle of many interrelated aspects that resulted in a “structured whole” for each developmental stage. She understood the ego as a unity, which can be decoded from its many individual aspects once we understand the pattern that underlies it: “I am convinced that the self, ego, I, or me is in some sense real, not created by our definition. My purpose is to comprehend the way the person navigates through life, not to create artificially demarcated entities.” (Loevinger, 1984, p. 50). She describes how she understands the ego, in contrast to psychoanalytic conceptions, as follows: Similarly, the ego is above all a process, not a thing. The ego is in a way like a gyroscope, whose upright position is maintained by its rotation. To use another metaphor, the ego resembles an arch; there is an architectural saying that “the arch never sleeps”. That means that the thrusts and counterthrusts of the arch maintain its shape as well as support the building. Piaget (1967) uses the term “mobile equilibrium” – the more mobile, the more stable. The striving to master, integrate, to make sense of experience is not one ego function among many but the essence of the ego. (Loevinger, 1969, p. 85) McAdams (1996b) conceives of the ego quite similarly and coined the word “selfing” to describe it, which could be understood as “creating a self ”: “Selfing is the I. Selfing is the process of appropriating experience as one’s own. In and through selfing, the person implicitly knows that he or she exists as a source, an agent, a locus of causality in the world” (p. 383). The ego is thus clearly on the “subject” side of James’s division (Fig. 1), and a process that reveals itself in every utterance and that organizes a person’s thoughts and experiences. This corresponds approximately to the division that Funk (1994, p. 12), also makes, with his distinction between “ego as process” (EPro) and “ego as representation-­ individualization” (ERep, the ego as object). He thus clearly rejects theories that

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split the ego into several different egos or selves. According to James (1892/1963, p. 182 ff.), there must be a kind of unity of the stream of consciousness, so that one experience can be connected to the next. Or, as Loevinger (1987a, p. 92) puts it: “I may have twelve selves at war with one another, but if I do, I will wake up tomorrow with the same twelve selves engaged in the same war.” In summary, the question is how the ego deals with experiences, whether internal or external, interprets them and gives them meaning. According to Perry (1970), this is exactly what any organism does: to organize. For humans, this process is the organization of meaning. The ego provides a frame of meaning making (Kegan, 1980, 1982). Cook-Greuter (1994) expresses the point succinctly: The need for coherent meaning seems to be a fundamental and driving force in human life. Whenever we are not quite certain of things because they are beyond the scope of our present understanding, most of us begin to feel anxiety. We want closure and certitude. One of the main functions of the ego is to provide this closure and to generate coherent meaning. (p. 120) Thus when we study personality and its influence on relevant areas of life, the ego seems to play a central role, because “the ego is the executive I of the personality which is able, through its integrative powers, to construct the me, that is, to construct identity” (McAdams, 1985, p. 129). The ego is not, however, identical with the personality as a whole (see p. 94). It also should not be confused with individual ego functions (e. g., Blatt & Bermann, 1984), specific defense mechanisms (e. g., Cramer, 1999, 200; Levit, 1993; Vaillant, 1992) or coping strategies to protect the self (e. g., Harter, 1988), although these are undoubtedly related (e. g., Labouvie-Vief, Hakim-Larson & Hobart, 1987). At the start of this section, four beginnings of sentences were listed. Everyone will complete these sentences in his own way. Two of them are from Loevinger’s measuring instrument for ego development. Although thousands of people continue such sentences in almost a thousand different ways, Loevinger was able to show that they conceal the structures of the ego, and analysis of these responses provides information about how fully developed the ego of the respondents is. Hundreds of empirical studies meanwhile show that the particular structure of the ego has significant effects on how people deal (or could deal) with key questions, issues, tasks, and aspects of their lives – both professionally and privately. After reading this section, you may be asking yourself, “How would I respond?”

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2.1.2  The “discovery” and development of the model Surprising though it may seem, the model of ego development did not originate from any deliberate research program, but was rather discovered “in passing.” At the beginning there was no theory, just pure data. Loevinger always stressed: “[O]ur conception has been shaped by our data” (1984, p. 56). This discovery and development, however, had a great deal to do with her way of dealing with data, as well as with her methodology of instrument development. Loevinger (1993a, 1993b), as a renowned psychometrician, always understood theorizing as a recursive process. She used the data she had collected not only for testing, but also for discovering, developing, modifying, and revising her model of ego development (Loevinger, 1957, 1978). This methodological approach ultimately enabled her to realize that, through her early research, an aspect such as ego development operated in the background of her data. And this approach allowed continuous development of the concept, which throughout her research program underwent many changes, small and large (Loevinger & Cohn, 1998). At the beginning of the 1960s, Loevinger worked first on a research project on the attitudes of women to family problems. For this purpose, she constructed the “Family Problems Scale” (FPS) (Loevinger, Sweet, Ossorio & LaPerriere, 1962). The FPS initially consisted of 213 statements about different family problem situations, involving daily difficulties as well as difficulties over the entire life cycle. The FPS also included statements characteristic of how current theories covered attitudes toward the family and related personality characteristics (Loevinger & Sweet, 1961). The FPS statements were presented as pairs of opposites, and both possible answers were formulated in a socially acceptable way to avoid possible defensive reactions (e. g., “There is something is wrong with a child who hates his mother” vs. “Most children have times when they hate their mothers”). The statistical analysis did not show the patterns that the researchers had hypothesized (e. g., acceptance of the feminine role or evidence of psychosexual stages as described by E. Erikson), but mainly a cluster of statements that apparently captured something like the attribute “punishment orientation versus permission orientation.” Interestingly, this cluster of statements could not be interpreted unambiguously, but it revealed other relationships than what she had expected. For example, the more punitive mothers tended to agree with the statement, “A father should be his son’s best pal” (instead of the opposite statement, “A father should not try to be his son’s best pal”). But Loevinger and her research team did not follow the common methodological approach of limiting themselves to the statements in a cluster that were easy to interpret and elimi-

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nating those that were difficult, in order to obtain a homogeneous scale. Instead, they pursued precisely these apparent contradictions and tried to describe the similarities that they still found in their data. For example, they characterized a woman who had a high score in this cluster as follows (Loevinger et al., 1962): She has a punitive and controlling attitude towards many areas of child rearing; she has little ability to conceptualize the child’s inner life; and she has a view of family life at once hierarchical and sentimental. … she has a rigidly conventional conception of woman’s social role; some mistrust of other people and corresponding anxiety; an orderly scheduled approach to daily life; and perhaps a somewhat dim view of woman’s biological functions. (p. 113) Comparing her results with other studies and concepts, Loevinger noticed that this characterization was quite similar to the “authoritarian personality” concept, developed in the Berkeley circle around Adorno (Adorno, Frenkel-­Brunswik, Levinson & Sanford, 1950). This was all the more surprising, because the FPS research was focused on family issues within the home environment, while ­Adorno’s research was politically oriented. Moreover, Loevinger’s team studied girls and women, while Adorno’s research mainly involved male participants. Both studies, however, showed that authoritarian people lack the ability to express their inner experience. Based on the clusters she had found and similarities to the concept of the “authoritarian personality,” Loevinger proceeded from the assumption that behind the feature she had detected was a more far-reaching aspect of personality than she had first assumed. On this basis, she developed the “Authoritarian Family Ideology” questionnaire (AFI) (Ernhart & Loevinger, 1969), which her team used for further research. Comparing the results with clinical observations of troubled mothers, the research team noticed patterns that did not fit their previous theory. Some of these women had a personality structure that seemed chaotic and unstructured, that could barely control their impulses, and that rejected authorities. Therefore, there was nowhere to classify these women along the continuum between the two poles of “authoritarian–subservient to authority” vs. “democratic–­flexible.” Thus, the researchers conjectured that the attribute measured by the AFI questionnaire was not linear, but that extreme authoritarianism is more a center point than an endpoint for this variable. It did not seem to be bipolar, but a sequence of milestones that indicate a developmental sequence. “This insight was a turning point in my intellectual history, changing me from a psycho­metric psychologist into a developmental one, from a trait theorist into a structuralist.” (Loevinger, 1978, p. 7).

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To verify this assumption, the AFI questionnaire was used in further studies with larger and varied samples. The samples covered people from a whole range of ages, experience in dealing with children, religious orientations, and levels of education. The statistical analysis showed, as expected for a development variable, significant correlations with age, experience, and education (LaPerrière, 1962). Authoritarianism in these relationships was not linear, but curvilinear. When this variable was studied along with the variable “age,” for example, the value initially rises, reaches a peak (maximum expression of authoritarianism), and then falls again. However a variable that is not a milestone sequence usually behaves linearly. Figure 2 illustrates linear and curvilinear relationships of ego development based on the examples of cognitive complexity and conformism.

Fig. 2: Linear and curvilinear relationships using the example of ego development, cognitive complexity and conformism

It seemed that Loevinger was dealing with an elusive syndrome with many different aspects that had not hitherto been considered together. The previous focus on “authoritarianism” obviously covered only part of the variable, so that the previous concept no longer seemed suitable. At the same time the variable measured by the AFI questionnaire was a milestone sequence, which showed relationships with other variables and thus suggested a developing character. For these reasons, the research team decided to give it a new name: “[I]t seemed that no term less than ‘ego development’ encompassed this variable” (Loevinger, 1978, p. 11). This was all the more justified, since the attributes found in very different contexts occurred completely independently of the family context that was orig-

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inally being studied. Evidently it was Loevinger’s approach – openly exploratory and always in pursuit of contradictions – that made this discovery possible: The curvilinear relation between the milestones and the underlying developmental continuum has a major practical consequence. A psychologist can study intensively types of behavior that are in fact manifestations of ego level and he can be rigorously quantitative for years on end without ever having a glimmer of the variable of ego development (Loevinger, 1973, p. 16). To better understand the variable of ego development, which still appeared hazy, the Loevinger research team developed the first Sentence Completion Test (SCT), which it used simultaneously with the AFI questionnaire. At that time they became aware of a publication by Sullivan, Grant, and Grant (1957), who were also working with open sentence completions on a concept of interpersonal maturity. This concept was developed independently of Loevinger’s team, with data from male delinquents, but presented fascinating parallels. Thus Sullivan et al. provided a first macro-validation of the ego development model. Loevinger took from this concept its four stages and their designations (the Impulsive, Conformist, Conscientious, and Autonomous stages) and began on this basis to further conceptualize ego development. It proved to be an advantage that Sullivan et al., in their study based on clinical interviews, had worked out a number of indicators to classify their four stages of development, which could be used to assess the individual sentence completions. In applying their new instrument in practice, the scorers, who were very familiar with the developmental sequence and the indications for it, soon noted, however, that there seemed to be a step missing between the Impulsive and Conformist stages: They repeatedly noticed people assigned to the first stage who appeared less impulsive, but who also could not clearly be assigned to the second stage. These people were oriented primarily to their own short-term advantages, but had no internalized rules and seemed rather to protect themselves. This previously missing stage corresponded, however, to the delta code described in Isaacs’s theory of relatability (1956). Similarly, Loevinger compared her model with other concepts in which comparable developmental aspects were independently examined. For example, Peck’s model of character development (Peck & Havighurst, 1960) had many parallels to her own. This led to Loevinger’s first publication, in which she laid out her concept of ego development (1966). But for Loevinger, this was only the beginning of further exploration of ego development. For three decades, she used new data to continuously revise untenable assumptions, and to

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refine the Sentence Completion Test and its scoring criteria. She then published a first comprehensive scoring manual (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970; Loevinger, Wessler & Redmore, 1970) and six years later a work that thoroughly explained her concept of ego development (Loevinger, 1976). But the intensive research process was not completed for a long time. Loevinger once described her self-­ conception in this way: “to be a scientist it is not enough to have theory and data, or even to have good theory and sound data. The nub of the scientific approach is the constructive interconnection between them, that is, a systematic program for correcting, revising, and expanding theoretical conceptions in response to empirical studies” (Loevinger, 1978, p. 2). Over the next 20 years, Loevinger and her team pursued that program for studying ego development. Soon they had verified for both sexes the construct originally based on research with women, and had issued another manual (Redmore, Loevinger & Tamashiro, 1978). Loevinger also undertook extensive validation studies (e. g., Loevinger, 1979a), which led to improved versions of the test (Loevinger, 1985b). In light of her ongoing research, over the next 17 years she revised some of the stages in the ego development sequence in the pre-­conventional domain, and numbered them uniformly. This resulted in a scoring system modified by more recent samples (Hy & Loevinger, 1996). At age 84 she published a resumé with an overview of her approximately 40 years of research on ego development, under the appropriate title “Confessions of an iconoclast: At home on the fringe” (Loevinger, 2002). 2.1.3  Stages of ego development The unique feature of Loevinger’s ego development model is that it is simultaneously a personality typology and a developmental sequence. Ȥ As a personality typology, it describes typical modes of functioning and personality patterns, and what characterizes them (e. g., community orientation, self-determination). Ȥ As a developmental sequence, it assigns these personality types in a sequence in which each builds on the one before it, a process that people undergo as their personality develops. Loevinger herself (1976) writes that these (and other) specific features of the ego development model make it less accessible than other personality models: A conception that has ego development both as a typology and as a developmental sequence implies that it is an abstraction. It cannot be reduced

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to concrete, observable performances … Ego development is related to and based on observation, but it is not directly observable. (p. 57) Nevertheless, the results of numerous studies show that such a comprehensive construct as ego development seems to actually exist (see p. 112). The various levels of development also seem to have great impact on many aspects of life, which can be managed better and better as the individual becomes more mature (Kegan, 1996). The construct of ego development is an abstraction, which is nonetheless very real for Loevinger (1984): I am convinced that the self, ego, I, or me is in some sense real, not created by our definition. My purpose is to comprehend the way the person navigates through life, not to create artificially demarcated entities … What I have called ego development is, I believe, the closest we can come at present to tracing the developmental sequence of the self, or major aspects of it. (p. 50) To understand the stages of ego development outlined by Loevinger, we have to be able to abstract from specific behaviors (see Overview in Annex 1), because a certain ego development level can manifest itself in a great many different ways. A child who is very much the captive of his impulses, for whom the Impulsive Stage is normal, and adolescents or adults who are still impulse-­ dependent, who have ordinarily reached a later stage of development, share a specific pattern that is, along with other aspects, characteristic of this stage. They will probably express these behavior patterns very differently, however, because of their age difference. Therefore, a developmental sequence that is truly age-independent, like Loevinger’s, must describe the stage’s components in an abstract way. Haan, Stroud, and Holstein (1973) provide an example with their study of the hippie culture, which saw itself as an alternative to the conservative U.S. culture of the time. Haan et al. showed that the most of the studied hippies were at the Conformist (E4) or Self-Aware Stage (E5). One of the central aspects of the Conformist Stage (E4) and the subsequent Self-Aware Stage (E5) is the aspect of “conformism.” Just by observing the anti-conservative hippies, one would probably not think of them as conformist. But from a developmental point of view, they would still be considered conformist if “conformity-nonconformity-anticonformity is the central issue of life” (Loevinger & Blasi, 1976, p. 195). One might rather speak of meta-conformity in this aspect of ego development, since we are not talking about everyday conformist or anti-conformist behavior, but about the underlying ego structure.

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The individual ego development stages are briefly described below in their essential characteristics, in order to provide an overview of the developmental sequence (see Loevinger, 1976; Hy & Loevinger, 1996; Westenberg, Hauser & Cohn, 2004). The terms for the stages, as well as the numbering (E2 to E9), illustrate an important and salient feature of the particular stage. Loevinger (1976, p. 15) herself warned, however, not to take these terms literally, as they by no means capture the entire pattern of each developmental stage. Characteristics reflected in the above-mentioned terms for the stages also appear at other developmental stages, but not to the same extent. The terms used here to describe the stages are those that are used in the Ego-Development-Profile (www.E-D-Profile.net; Binder 2007a, 2010; Binder & Kay, 2008). These terms are based on Loevinger’s designations, but are amended for two reasons: 1. Some of Loevinger’s terms are not easily enough understood and do not capture the essence of the particular stage. 2. Some terms for the stages may be difficult for people at that stage of development to accept. Developmental stage E8, which Loevinger calls the Autonomous Stage, is an example: It often conveys the figurative association of “standing on one’s own two feet”/“being independent,” which is actually more a key feature of developmental stage E6 (an independent ego). Loevinger chose this name to draw attention to the aspect of recognizing other people’s need for autonomy (Hy & Loevinger 1996, p. 6). In her last revision, she recognized that the term was misleading, although she did not change it: “Erikson (1950) used the term autonomous for the stage here designated as Self-protective [E3]. … Here the term autonomy is reserved for a stage at the other end of the scale” (Hy & Loevinger, 1996, p. 6). The second point of criticism relates to the application of the developmental model. As Loevinger engaged purely in research, she did not report the individual assessments of ego development stages back to her research participants. This point is important, however, when working practically with this model, whether in coaching, management development, or management diagnostics. For example, Loevinger called developmental stage E4 “Conformist,” which has a rather negative connotation. In the Ego Development Profile, this stage has the more neutral name “Community-Oriented,” which is more readily accepted by people who are at this stage. Similar changes were made for other stage designations (e. g., “Self-Oriented” instead of “Opportunistic”). This should also prevent the use of terms for the stages for labeling of people (e. g., expert, strategist), as the terms used by Torbert for his practical research seemed to do (e. g., Torbert, 1987a).

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2.1.3.1  Early stages of ego development

When a person enters the world, she does not have an ego as such. Loevinger calls this the Pre-Social Symbiotic Stage (E1), but does not elaborate it, since this stage is not within the scope of her ego development model. Here an infant does not yet know the difference between herself and the environment or between animate and inanimate objects: “The child cannot, for example, differentiate between the source of discomfort from a bright light and that from hunger” (Kegan, 2003, p. 85). It is only later that infants learn to perceive themselves as separate from the environment and to discover that a stable outside world of objects (object permanence) exists. They learn to distinguish their mother from the environment, although they still have a symbiotic relationship with her. Only at the end of this stage one can speak of a true ego, the result of a process in which language acquisition obviously plays a strong role. In contrast to Loevinger’s concept, the psychoanalytic literature usually refers to only this short phase as ego development. This is followed by the Impulsive Stage (E2), in which the child differentiates himself more and more from his main caregiver and exerts his own will. He freely expresses his physical needs and impulses, but he remains highly depen­ dent on and demanding of others. At this point of ego development rules are poorly understood; what will be punished is considered as bad behavior. Other people are categorized by how they serve the child’s own needs. Therefore, the assessment of “good” or “bad” is confused with how kind or unkind another person is to the child himself. Emotions are still undifferentiated and mainly of a physical nature. Time orientation refers exclusively to the here and now. As a person learns the mechanism of reward and punishment, she realizes that there are rules. The Self-Oriented Stage (E3) is therefore a further step in development, which includes a first form of self-control. Rules are now followed (or broken) because to do so is to the child’s advantage. Maximization of one’s own advantage is paramount. Interpersonal relationships too are measured primarily by one’s own advantages, whereby the dependency of the previous stage diminishes and the child wants to do things for herself. A longer time horizon is still lacking and the desire for immediate satisfaction of needs remains – in case of doubt, at the expense of others. A self-protective orientation prevails, whereby causes and blame are located outside oneself (e. g., “I was with the wrong people …”). Self-criticism is still rare or refers to things for which one does not feel responsible.

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2.1.3.2  Middle stages of ego development

Another qualitative step is taken with the Community-Oriented Stage (E4), at which one’s own welfare is linked to a community or other authority (e. g., family, working group, teacher, supervisor). The person now identifies with these and to a large extent accepts their values, opinions, and world-views unquestioningly. Rules are followed because they are there. Recognition by the reference group is important, so one subordinates oneself to its terms and tries to be an accepted member. This goes hand in hand with dividing the world into simple categories, with clear ideas and rules about how something should be or how something should be done. One sees oneself and others as they should be, and perhaps not how they actually are. The consciousness is thereby directed at externals (e. g., clothing, appearance, a good reputation) and there is evidently still no differentiated inner life. With the emergence of one’s own voice, independent of others, the next step begins to the Rationalistic Stage (E5), which is actually a transitional stage. At this stage it has become clear that people are multi-faceted and often do not match stereotypes. This also extends the ability to grasp one’s own inner life. Relationships with others are no longer understood only in terms of joint activities or common reference groups, but also by what they mean to the person and the feelings associated with them. In this regard, rules that were previously considered fixed and unalterable are differrently demarcated. So now, for example, different conditions are taken into account for different situations or groups. This is associated with greater cognitive flexibility and things are now increasingly questioned. One begins to search for reasons for behavior, even if these are still often simple (e. g., “… because something is bothering him”). There is some self-criticism, but in social situations it is usually accompanied by a feeling of inhibition. The key thing is to distinguish oneself from others, although often still according to one’s individual (sometimes one-sided) standards. The shift to the Self-Governed Stage (E6) marks a dramatic change in ego development. Here for the first time an ego comes into being that is “constructed” independently of others. It is characterized by self-evaluated standards and values, in which one’s own responsibility is grounded. A decision is made not because other people want it, but because one sees and feels it to be right. A memorable example is Luther’s taking his stand on April 18, 1521 before the Diet of Worms: “… I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is dangerous and impossible to go against conscience.” (Treu, 2006, p. 51). A person at this stage recognizes more and more choices and creative options, and considers rules in terms of their appropriateness. Motives and other internal aspects are considered when evaluating people, which means that one can describe oneself

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and others in a more variegated way. A person at this stage is therefore reflective and capable of self-criticism. This is accompanied by a longer time horizon, a desire to move forward, and a wider view of the world, in which the ego no longer has to be exclusively at the center. 2.1.3.3  Late stages of ego development

With the next stage of development, the Relativistic Stage (E7), a person can see individual differences in greater breadth and depth. He attains, so to speak, a realistic view of peoples’ individuality. She increasingly recognizes her own subjectivity and takes it into account. He can also tolerate differences more readily than at earlier stages. People at this developmental stage relativize more and increasingly take context into account. Internal and external conflicts and contradictions are tolerated more often, but are mostly located outside oneself. Situations and people are now perceived more as part of an unfolding process and thus less static, so that overall the individual is more mindful of the process of development. Increasingly, different types of dependencies are understood, especially emotional ones. Increasingly, differences are perceived between how something appears on the outside and how it might actually be. The Relativistic Stage is essentially still a transition to the Systemic Stage (E8), in which many aspects that were so far implicit first fully appear. People at this developmental stage, which is rarely achieved, can now fully accept the “otherness” of others and appreciate their desire for self-determination. This is contrary to the moral outrage people feel at earlier stages. The sometimes excessive sense of responsibility that we find at the middle stages of development (E4– E6) thus disappears. Possible mistakes by others can therefore be more easily viewed from a benevolent distance to facilitate learning, rather than by intervening, as would have been done previously. This is achieved mainly because inner conflicts and contradictions are fully recognized and are no longer projected outward or denied. One is now able to combine inconsistent ideas or concepts that previously seemed to be contradictory alternatives. Besides the inner indepen­ dence now gained, a deep respect for mutual dependencies and interconnections predominates. This goes along with a broader view of the world and the inner desire to develop oneself further. The last stage identified by Loevinger is the Integrated Stage (E9) which, as she emphasizes self-critically, is the hardest to describe. People who have attained this level are, in her view, very much like the “self-actualizer” that Maslow described (1998) in his case-oriented study. Loevinger never explored this stage further, and saw a drawback in the difficulty of finding a sufficiently large sample size to identify similarities and characteristics at this stage of devel-

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opment with sufficient accuracy. Nevertheless, there was always interest in this stage, along with criticism of Loevinger’s approach, e. g., by Billington (1988, p. 76): “However, evidence indicates that the [latest] stage does exist. Because it is rare and not completely understood does not seem to be sufficient reason to eliminate the stage …”. Cook-Greuter took up this theme and focused her research on the late stages of development in Loevinger’s model. The extensive database thus assembled over many years led ultimately to a reformulation of the late stages of development (see p. 59). Although Loevinger was skeptical about Cook-Greuter’s (1990, 1994, 2000a) research, which deals exclusively with the late ego development stages, she never considered the developmental sequence to be closed. She emphasized that “there is no highest stage but only an opening to new possibilities” (Loevinger, 1976, p. 26). She also always resisted a normative substantiation of her developmental sequence, as requested by Kohlberg: “I can only agree with his criticism of my work (Snarey, Kohlberg and Noam, 1983), that it lacks the normative component of his approach, that I am solely trying to determine what is, unrestricted by what ought to be” (Loevinger, 1986a, p. 187). Therefore, she never named an endpoint of her ego development sequence. 2.1.4  Aspects and areas of ego development If we pursue the description of the individual ego development stages, we notice that each stage has a variety of aspects. Ego development, in contrast to other domains of human development (e. g., development of moral judgment, cognitive development), is a very broad field and encompasses many inter­ related aspects. The individual aspects that can be found in the ego development sequence (e. g., time orientation in the here and now, thinking in terms of right or wrong), are not, however, the same across all stages. Rather, each stage of ego development is a structure of aspects that emerge and are evidently related to each other. Lasker (1978, p. 32) goes right to the point: “The ego is seen as a holistic phenomenon. It is the underlying unity among a variety of facets that constitutes the essence of ego level. Each facet cannot be understood outside the context of others.” Each stage of ego development is defined by other aspects than those of the previous or subsequent stage. These are not always completely new, but they change over the various stages of the ego development sequence, as Figure 3 shows. The example of rules is a good illustration of how individual aspects change across the different stages of ego development. At the Impulsive Stage (E2), rules

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Fig. 3: Typical progressions of ego development aspects

are still barely understood; at the Self-Oriented Stage (E3), on the other hand, the advantage of rules is recognized, especially because they make life predictable. Only at the Community-Oriented stage (E4) are rules accepted in themselves, as long as they come from the group with which one identifies and feels connected. With further development, a person begins to see more and more that rules apply only under certain conditions or may be completely rejected in individual cases, according to his own conscience. Loevinger & Wessler (1978, p. 55) describe how challenging it is to methodologically implement this qualitative and quantitative change of individual aspects in an appropriate way: “One difficulty in writing down scoring rules is that ideas do not spring fullblown at one level but tend to appear in cliché form at lower levels, in fully realized forms at higher levels.” Starrett (1983) as well as Kishton, Starrett, and Lucas (1984) investigated such non-monotonic progressions based on the aspect of impulsivity. In order to test the extent to which impulsiveness is a consistent aspect across stages or rather related to particular stages, they used an innovative study design. They measured ego development with two impulsiveness scales in a group of 89 younger students (average age 14.8) and 83 older students (average age 18.7). The impulsiveness measured by the two scales was thus conceived as a linear trait (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1977). Using factor analysis, a multivariate method of measuring latent factors in a data set, they examined the data collected, then compared the resulting factor loadings in the two study groups. Their results showed the relationships expected from Loevinger’s ego development model, which ­Kisthon, Starrett, and Lucas (1984) commented on as follows:

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A personality dimension that is a major component of ego function at one age may be much less critical to ego functioning at another age. In the present study, the relationship between impulsivity and ego development serves as an illustration. Among young adolescents impulse expression has a high degree of interdependence with other strands of ego development: conscious preoccupations, interpersonal style, and conceptual complexity affect and are affected by weak impulse control. As cognitive and social maturation accur, ego functioning becomes more differentiated and integrated. Achievement, role conceptualization, and cognitive complexity become the dominant ego themes. Impulse control (in absence of pathology) reaches a milestone and becomes a peripheral element. Since one of the hypothesized attributes of high ego levels is spontaniety there has been some speculation that the importance of impulsivity remerges during adulthood. This probably takes the form of openness to experience or sensation seeking rather than the resistance to socialization characteristic of impulsive children or adolescents. (p. 61) To further understand the relationship between individual aspects and ego development, it is important to realize that there is a difference between individual observable behaviors and the overall pattern of a developmental stage. Regarding the Impulsive Stage (E2), for example, Loevinger (1977, p. 157) points out the following: “Some manifestations of this stage remain remarkably the same throughout the life span, hence are not age specific, e. g., temper tantrums.” It is therefore necessary to distinguish between individual tantrums and being dominated by impulses in life overall, which occurs along with many other aspects (as an indication of the impulsive stage of development). In the first case, one could speak of a lack of impulse control, and in the second, more of a general impulse dependence. The many aspects that show up in the ego developmental sequence can be categorized into four areas, which are listed in Table 1. Tab. 1: Four areas of ego development Ego development 1.

2.

Character (Dealing with one’s own impulses and standards)

Interpersonal style (Manner of dealing with others)

3. Conscious preoccupations (Areas that draw one’s attention)

4. Cognitive style (Way of thinking)

Loevinger recognized in her research that these four areas of ego development are not isolated from each other, nor are they understood as four fixed factors

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of ego development. Using factor analysis to check the dimensionality of ego development, only one main factor could consistently be found (see p. 146). She observed that the four areas develop together in a kind of coherently organized entity. This development follows a common direction that leads to greater and greater differentiation and integration of the ego. The development in each of these four (only conceptually distinct) areas proceeds as follows: 1. Character develops from strong impulse domination and fear of punishment (for the “wrong” behavior) toward increasing self-regulation and finding one’s own standards, which will later be progressively transcended. 2. Interpersonal style develops from being very manipulative toward an increasing recognition of the autonomy of others and respect for interpersonal arrangements that are acceptable to all sides. 3. Conscious Preoccupations at the early stages are directed more toward external objects and one’s own needs. At later stages, these include more and more internal aspects (motives, feelings, etc.), as well as being directed toward individuality and development. 4. Cognitive Style develops from being very simple and undifferentiated, toward greater conceptual complexity, multiple perspectives, and the ability to deal with contradictions. The term “character” seems to be somewhat outdated in psychological research. Loevinger (1987a, p. 226) more often called this area of ego develop­ment “impulse control.” That term is misleading, however, since it refers more to the early stages of ego development and not to the broader spectrum, which is what the term “character” actually means in the ego-development model. Recently some psychologists have started using the term again, but like Loevinger, they understand it not as it was used previously, as a synonym for personality as a whole, but in a narrower sense. An example is the work of Peterson and Seligman (2004), who developed a classification scheme for character strengths similar to the ­clinically oriented DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). 2.1.5  Ego development as transformation Loevinger does not consider ego development as a cumulative variable because of the diversity of aspects that comprise a developmental stage, as well as the qualitative change of individual aspects: Any subsequent stage of the ego development sequence involves a qualitative change. Because of these qualitative differences from one stage to the next, ego development represents a sequence of

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milestones; there are many curvilinear relationships (as the above-mentioned example of rules illustrates), and the meaning of individual aspects changes over the developmental sequence (see Kishton, Starrett & Lucas, 1984). As longitudinal -and other studies to test the sequentiality of ego development have confirmed (see p. 149), there is a distinct order of this developmental sequence. Each stage is more differentiated and integrated than the one before and allows a person greater degrees of freedom in dealing with others, herself, and her environment. A step to the next stage of ego development therefore means greater personal maturity. To illustrate the difference between a qualitative and stepwise development, and “more of the same,” Cook-Greuter (2004) distinguishes two different types of development: horizontal and vertical. Ego development is a form of vertical development, while horizontal development refers to learning. But what is the difference (cf. Binder, 2010)? Ȥ Learning: This leads to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and new experiences. If we take “development” as the word is used in everyday parlance, we should call it horizontal development, for there is only an additional acquisition of new concepts. The fundamental way that a person deals with himself and the world remains unchanged. Ȥ Development: Here there is a more differentiated and integrated view of oneself and the world. A qualitative leap occurs (transformation to a later stage of development). We can call this vertical development, in contrast to the everyday understanding of the word. Figure 4 illustrates this distinction. The disks stand for different levels of ego development. Their different sizes illustrate that at each subsequent developmental stage, the person is qualitatively more mature than at the previous stages. This also implies that with more progressive ego development, more and different learning and thus action are possible. One could also say that a person’s inner space expands. In Figure 4, the dashed arrow pointing downward is intended to clarify the phenomenon of regression, falling back to an earlier stage of development, which is usually temporary. Often a person is aware of his regression or at least can notice it once it is over. McCallum (2008) studied the phenomenon of regression intensively with participants in a week-long group dynamics laboratory. Through the very personal experience provoked by the unstructured group situations with unknown participants and the emergence of conflicts among participants, this event seemed particularly well suited to examine the phenomenon of regression. It was found that participants at all stages of ego develop-

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Fig. 4: Developmental directions: Horizontal and vertical

ment experienced regression. Depending on the stage of ego development, however, the regression was of variable intensity and differing duration. McCallum noted that the participants who were at later stages of ego development were meanwhile aware of their relapses, whereas those in the middle stages noted it more in hindsight. The phenomenon of regression, however, does not contradict a stepwise model of development, as Kegan, Lahey, and Souvaine (1998) explain very graphically: It may be true that we are organizing aspects of our experiencing according to a principle inconsistent with our current, most complex capacity. But it is also true that we do not like the way we feel. The way we are thinking does not feel to us acceptable or syntonic; we do not feel like ourselves. Now who or what is doing this evaluating? … We feel unhappy because our current, most complex, adult way of organizing is still at work, here evaluating this whole experience, finding it dystonic, even lamenting that we are not able to “put into play” our fullest selves. (p. 57) The ego model of development thus involves a qualitative change from one stage to the next, by vertical development. What occurs from one developmental stage to the next is what Kegan (2000) calls “transformation.” In the transition from one stage of development to the next, there is a change in the

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structure of how a person interprets herself, others, and the world. Kegan speaks of the organizing of experience so that each stage constitutes a “meaning making system” which enables a person to create meaning for herself. Like Cook-Greuter (2004), Kegan distinguishes between two different types of change, which he calls information and transformation. Figure 5 illustrates this difference with the image of two containers and the inherent meaning of the two terms when separated into their component parts: in-formation and trans-formation.

Fig. 5: In-formation vs. trans-formation

According to Kegan, learning is mainly in-formation. This can be thought of as more and more topics and aspects being “poured” into an existing form, while the form remains unchanged. “In-formation” here is what Cook-Greuter called horizontal development (or learning). With “trans-formation,” however, a qualitative restructuring takes place, such that the form itself is transformed. The larger container illustrates this new form, which can now integrate the components of the earlier form. As easy as it may be to understand the difference between horizontal and vertical development or between information and transformation, it is just that difficult to diagnose this difference, to reliably determine a person’s level of ego development. For this reason Loevinger developed a sentence completion test for her model (the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, WUSCT), while Kegan uses a special interview format (Subject-Object Interview, SOI). The following interview excerpt from a study by Kegan illustrates how a woman came to a new understanding of her marital relationship, which she is now putting into practice (Kegan, Lahey & Souvaine, 1998): I’ve been just doing some of the things I like to do by myself rather than either not go or try to get Randy to go with me. He really prefers to sit at

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home and watch TV, and I used to just sit there with him or not go out. But now I realize that he really doesn’t mind just doing that by himself and that he really feels better if I go off to an art museum by myself, because then he doesn’t feel as if he’s depriving me of going or as if he really should go. Before, it really was a strain between us because we didn’t get to go as much as I’d want or we’d go and he really wouldn’t like it and I’d feel guilty for making him come. Going by myself occasionally makes both of us happier and even makes things between us a lot smoother. (p. 49) The woman speaks here about a change in her relationship to her husband. Evidently she has learned something about their relationship and has realized that she can act differently, and is also putting this into practice. If the question of going out by herself was a concern of the woman when she entered into counseling, we could say that the counseling was successful. But was this actually development (transformation)? Was it a qualitative leap that also allows her the above-described freedom in dealing with other matters, or was it only a change in specific content (in-formation)? A transformation would have taken place if the woman were now able to fulfill her own wishes regardless of the feelings, beliefs, and wishes of her husband. If that were so, then the still clearly nascent conformist structure of her ego that is shown upon closer inspection of this excerpt (adapting herself to others), would no longer be expressed. This difference between a purely behavioral approach and an approach that also takes into account the underlying organization of the ego, is the essence of a development-oriented perspective. 2.1.6  Levels of development Loevinger’s model of ego development describes a process of successive stages. Each stage represents a milestone that leads to an increasingly broad and more differentiated view of oneself, others, and the world. As diverse as these stages are, similarities can be discovered from a broader perspective. By analogy with Kohlberg (1969), we can distinguish not only stages, but also levels of development. Kohlberg identifies three levels for his model for the development of moral judgment and calls them pre-conventional, conventional, and post-­conventional. The three levels illustrate the general framework in which the individual stages are ordered. They help to understand the similarities of individual developmental stages better and especially to characterize the key developmental transitions. Kohlberg’s three-way division has therefore been taken up by other researchers (e. g., Alexander & Langer, 1990; Miller & Cook-­Greuter, 1994). Table 2 provides

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a schematic overview (see Garz, 2008, p. 102). The characterizing features of the levels have been slightly adjusted compared to Kohlberg’s version; here they also include aspects that relate not only to the development of moral judgment. Tab. 2: Levels of development Levels

Characteristics

pre-conventional

individual, non-socialized perspective mainly focused on oneself

conventional

level of the socialized individual oriented toward expectations, norms, and rules of society or parts thereof

post-conventional

“prior-to-society” perspective orients independently, based on general principles acknowledges the relativity of one’s own points of view

2.1.6.1  Pre-conventional level

The pre-conventional level includes the Impulsive and Self-Oriented Stages of ego development (E2 and E3). Both are normal stages of development for children and adolescents, but rarely occur in adulthood. At this level, people are oriented mostly to their own needs and interests and are not yet capable of durably incorporating the perspectives of other people or society into their actions. This does not mean that people at this level do not engage with others or think only of themselves; rather, it means that they are more oriented toward their own thoughts, feelings, or motives. 2.1.6.2  Conventional level

The designation “conventional” should not be confused with “conservative.” Conventional in this sense means that people at this level are influenced largely by their social environment. How they do so and what specifically they orient toward can be very different (see Haan, Stroud & Holstein, 1973). In Western societies, the majority of adults are at the conventional developmental level (see p. 89). They have reached the stage, so to speak, of being a “socialized member” of society. The conventional level comprises three stages of ego development. Starting with the Community-Oriented Stage (E4), which is strongly defined by the expectations of the relevant reference group, most people proceed to the Rationalistic Stage (E5). Their vista extends beyond the immediate reference group, so they gain more inner independence and a stronger orientation toward their own standards. The Self-Governed Stage (E6) is the last conventional stage.

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It can be regarded as the “model” of Western society: A person who has developed her own identity, is able to perceive differences, rationally weigh situations, and set her own goals. Further development beyond this stage, moreover, is not likely to be supported by society (e. g., Billington, 1988). 2.1.6.3  Post-conventional level

The post-conventional level begins with the Relativistic Stage (E7). People who reach this level of development are increasingly able to distance themselves from the way things are normally judged, deemed important or right, in a given social system (family, friends, business, society, etc.). Existing norms, rules, and structures are now regarded as a way to affect reality and are therefore in principle subject to change. While at the conventional stages of ego development (E4 to E6), similarity to others and stability are seen as paramount, at the post-­ conventional stages, differences and change are increasingly welcomed. This is accompanied by a growing awareness of how things are interpreted and how that is influenced by one’s culture. Table 3 gives an overview of the three levels of development associated with the ego development stages. Tab. 3: Levels and ego development stages Stage number

Ego development stages

E2

Impulsive Stage

E3

Self-Oriented Stage

E4

Community-Oriented Stage

E5

Rationalistic Stage

E6

Self-Governed Stage

E7

Relativistic Stage

E8

Systemic Stage

E9

Integrated Stage

Levels pre-conventional conventional

post-conventional

Loevinger does not use Kohlberg’s distinction among the three levels of development for her stages of ego development; nevertheless, the parallels in the basic features of the developmental levels expressed there are manifest. This is made clear in overview works that compare the stages of different development models (e. g., Kegan, 1979; Lee & Snarey, 1988). In some empirical studies a partially similar grouping of participants was used. These researchers differentiate among “pre-conformists” (E2, E3 = pre-conventional level), “conformists” (E4, E5 = conventional level), and post-conformists (≥ E6 = late conventional and post-conventional levels), in order to better discern their developmental dif-

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ferences (e. g., Rozsnafszky, 1981; Novy, 1993). However, another crucial development step begins with the Relativistic Stage (E7), which is associated with greater distance from one’s own culturally determined point of view, which is thereby increasingly relativized. In this respect, Kohlberg’s distinction among the three general levels of development seems to be a more meaningful classification for the ego development sequence. 2.1.7  Extension of the post-conventional level by Cook-Greuter Loevinger (1976, 1996) describes a total of nine stages in her ego development model. Her research suggests that after the Systemic Stage (E8) there seemed to be another stage, but she could not clarify this because of the small number of people who reach that stage of development. Loevinger (1976) herself was the first to address this issue critically: It is the hardest stage to describe for several reasons. Because it is rare, one is hard put to find instances to study. Moreover, the psychologist trying to study this stage must acknowledge his own limitations as a potential hindrance to comprehension. The higher the stage studied, the more it is likely to exceed his own and thus to stretch his capacity. (p. 26) Hauser (1976), in the first critical overview of Loevinger’s ego development model, objected that the Integrated Stage (E9) was too imprecise and could not be measured with sufficient accuracy. He suggested to combine the last two stages (E8 and E9) into one for future research. Loevinger accepted this critique: “Because this stage is rare in most samples and there are major differences among qualified raters both as to the description of this level and application of the description in particular cases, under most circumstances it is best combined with the Autonomous stage.” (Hy & Loevinger, 1996, p. 7). However, from a scientific as well as practical point of view, this proposal remains unsatisfactory, which is why not all researchers were satisfied this solution. The further research on the late post-conventional stages of ego development was mainly initiated and advanced by Cook-Greuter (1994). She had been a scorer for the WUSCT in many different studies since the late 1970s. Soon she realized that the scoring criteria for Loevinger’s Integrated Stage (E9) were inadequate, as compared to the earlier stages. In the tests to be scored there were often sentence completions for which no equivalent could be found in the theory or in the scoring manual. These unusual sentence completions suggested a developmental stage at which the mechanisms of one’s own meaning making are

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increasingly conscious and called into question. These sentences also came from people with a total score beyond the Self-Governed Stage (E6). Cook-­Greuter therefore suspected that these were signs of even later stages of development than those described in Loevinger’s model. Starting in the 1980s, she began to systematically collect unusual sentence completions, not sufficiently classifiable by the current evaluation criteria, and to find criteria by which she could classify these. As with Loevinger, Cook-Greuter’s starting point for exploring the late ego development stages, was puzzling over the unusual data. In the further course of her work, she matched the criteria developed from her data with concepts of other researchers who were dealing on an empirical basis with the development of thinking in adults (Basseches, Commons, Kegan, Koplowitz, Torbert). She also studied theories that dealt with transpersonal developmental stages (Alexander, Wilber) to gain more information about the rare later stages of ego development. Interestingly, she was not encouraged in this endeavor by Loevinger, who was convinced that research into “higher” levels of development was impossible (Cook-Greuter & Volckmann, 2003). The extension of Loevinger’s ego development model coincided with a time at which many researchers began to study development in adulthood more intensively (e. g., Alexander & Langer, 1990). Up to that point, Piaget’s final stage of cognitive development, the stage of formal operations, had long been considered by many researchers to be the end of development. It seemed to be a general form of equilibrium that is no longer modified during the lifespan (Piaget & Inhelder). Starting in 1981, the first symposia were held on adult development at Harvard University, from which emerged two influential anthologies (Commons, Richards & Armon, 1984; Commons, Armon, Kohlberg, Richards, Grotzer & Sinnott, 1990). There Cook-Greuter (1990) for the first time introduced her extension of Loevinger’s ego development model. By then she had evaluated data from 24 research projects and nearly 2,000 Sentence Completion Tests, looking for signs of the later stages of development. Her extension mainly concerns two aspects: It clarifies the development after the Self-Governed Stage (E6), and it describes two new developmental stages that for Loevinger fall in the “residual category” of the Integrated Stage (E9). 2.1.7.1  Reinterpretation of the post-conventional level

According to Cook-Greuter (2000, pp. 81–82), there is a division of the post-conventional level, which Loevinger had not yet recognized: She called the first step in the post-conventional level, following Koplo­witz (1984), the systemic level of post-conventionality. People who reach this level (E7 and E8) begin to realize more and more how they interpret the world and

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how much this is influenced by their personal and cultural background. Thus they take their own subjectivity increasingly into consideration. They construe themselves and the world as largely stable, but are increasingly aware of the significance of how they construct this concept. They consider interdependencies and construct relationships among individual elements that are no longer just linear, but also circular. They take into account different approaches, models, and perspectives, and can relate these to one another. In regard to themselves, they are increasingly able to integrate different and contradictory parts of their personality into a stable self. The second step in the post-conventional level can be best described as a dialectical level of post-conventionality. People who develop up to this point (E9 and E10), recognize increasingly that all objects are only human constructs. They struggle with the way that language limits their experience and they lose, so to speak, the belief in language as an adequate instrument for understanding reality (see Laske, 2006a, p. 73). People at this level are trying to get closer to the ongoing flow of things that underlies all labels, assessments, and distinctions. Without language and its constructs, which are created by the ego, there seems to be only an undifferentiated flow of phenomena, so these people also feel increasingly constrained by the idea of the ego itself. The second step within the post-conventional level therefore represents a transition to the modus of consciousness described by researchers of transpersonal development as an ego-transcendent level. Cook-Greuter first called the second step within the post-conventional level “unitary” (1990) and later “post-autonomous” (1999, 2000, 2011). By using the term “post-autonomous,” she signifies development beyond the stage of ego development that Loevinger called “autonomous” (E8). Cook-Greuter’s term, however, seems not entirely satisfactory for two reasons: First, the wording is an attempt to differentiate the term from a stage whose designation is itself often misunderstood; second, the specific quality of this step is not expressed by her term. The designation “dialectical,” as Basseches (1984a, 1984b, 1986) uses it, seems to better depict the essential features (at least of thought) of this second step within the post-conventional level, because dialectical thinking assumes that an object cannot be conceptualized without its opposite; is always part of a larger field; stands in relation to other objects; and is conceived to be constantly changing (see Laske, 2009). Perhaps Lenin (1915/1964, p. 338) states its essence most clearly in his famous essay “On the Question of the Dialectic”: “The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts … is the essence … of the dialectic.” Cook-Greuter’s (2000, p. 105) comparison of her scoring criteria with other post-formal developmental the-

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ories also corresponds the most with Basseches’s features of dialectical thinking. Pascual-Leone (1990, p. 279 ff.) even suggests the notion of a “dialectical stage” for this developmental domain. Basseches described this type of thinking by means of 24 so-called “dialectical forms of reasoning” and made them empirically measurable. An empirical study by Ledoux (1991) pointed to their relationships to the late stages of ego development, and Laske too gives several examples (2006, p. 73; 2009, p. 249 ff.). Above this second step of the post-conventional level, there seems to be another level of development of consciousness: the ego-transcendent level (Cook-Greuter, 2000b), which, however, no longer seems detectable by the methods chosen by Loevinger or Cook-Greuter. Other development theorists (e. g., Alexander & Langer, 1990; Wilber, 2000) describe this in theoretical terms. Miller and Cook-Greuter (1994) explain the difficulty in understanding this level, as follows: One of the intractable problems in trying to talk about these nonordinary modes of experience is the lack of vocabulary adequately reflecting the gestalt nature and nonlinearity of the concepts used. Seen from a universal perspective, there is only an indivisible reality, an interconnected web of phenomena. Prior to language, there is no higher and lower, no earlier and no later, no good and no evil. With language we give special weight to some aspects of the phenomenal flow, but not to others. We analyze, cut apart, compare, categorize, evaluate experience, and thus build our human world of verbal constructs. Experience in the human realm is mediated and shared through language. But words are never neutral: they have been abstracted, made special by our attention. To most people, “higher” means “better”: a higher salary, higher achievement, higher development. The journey of development, however, is more adequately described as a journey inward to deeper and more subtle levels of perception. It leads to a progressively more direct experience of the nonverbal, nonrepresentational realm of being. (pp. xxii-xxiii) Table 4 shows the expanded model of ego development with the division of the post-conventional level, and the two newly identified post-conventional stages. These are described in the next section.

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Tab. 4: Levels and ego development stages with expansion following Cook-Greuter Stage number

Ego development stages

E2

Impulsive Stage

E3

Self-Oriented Stage

E4

Community-Oriented Stage

E5

Rationalistic Stage

E6

Self-Governed Stage

E7

Relativistic Stage

E8

Systemic Stage

E9

Integrated (Construct-Aware) Stage

E10

Fluid (Unitive) Stage

E11 - ?

Levels pre-conventional

conventional Step 1: systemic Step 2: dialectical

post-conventional

Ego-transcendent

2.1.7.2  The last two stages of ego development according to Cook-Greuter

Instead of the Integrated Stage (E9), whose description of which Loevinger did not seem entirely convinced of (see above), Cook-Greuter worked out two new stages: the “Construct-Aware Stage” (E10) and the “Unitive Stage,” both located in the second section of the post-conventional level. At the Integrated (CG: Construct-Aware) Stage (E9), a person realizes that the ego is her central reference point (ego as a representation of all of life’s experiences) and it simultaneously processes all internal and external stimuli (ego as process). The resulting egocentrism is perceived as a limitation to one’s own experience and an obstacle to further growth, so the person turns her attention increasingly to overcoming the limitations of the ever-attentive ego, by which all experiences are organized. One tries increasingly to get a grasp of one’s own automatic thought patterns and processes. People at this stage feel that it is almost impossible not to think and analyze, and that language in itself is always a presorting and abstracting of the underlying reality. They become aware that the increasing refinement of descriptions leads them further and further away from the underlying unity they feel is there. In relation to themselves, they feel the futility of adequately describing themselves. They increasingly see such an effort as self-limitation and question the idea that there is such a stable core of their own personality. The Fluid (CG: Unitive) Stage (E10) represents a transition to the egotranscen­dent level and can perhaps be described most succinctly by reference to its central motivation of being (see Cook-Greuter, 2000, p. 155). People at the Fluid (Unitive) Stage no longer strive, like those at the Systemic Stage (E8), for maximum self-development, nor “to be aware,” as at the Integrated

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(Construct-Aware) Stage  E9), but rather just “to be.” They desire to be free of any self-limiting self-definition, as well as of excessive categorization and judgments by other people. The self-identity at this stage is rather fluid. The function of the ego, to define and objectify itself by differentiation from others, has been figured out. An expansion and new quality of the ego also occurs, because one now experiences oneself and others as part of the history of mankind, embedded in the flow of events and no longer separate from them. “Feelings of belongingness and feelings of one’s own seperateness and uniqueness are experienced without undue tension” (Cook-Greuter, 1990, p. 93). People at this stage seem to be able to fluidly shift their focus among different perspectives, levels, and time frames, or between the large and the small. They also accept all forms of consciousness as homologous experiences. They feel less compelled to control things or to constantly make more accurate observations, but feel more like a “witness” to what happens. Their ego, which transcends its own boundaries more and more, seems to allow them a freedom to really leave others as they are, or even to feel a unity with them, because they feel themselves to be in a unity with all. This stage is at the end of a long journey of ego development, where the ego is constructed in the beginning (up to Stage E6), only to be liquefied or be deconstructed again. Hardly anyone has made this point as felicitously as Engler (1986, p. 17): “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” Cook-Greuter’s research and her reformulation and extension of the late stages of the ego development model was the starting point for further research into the late post-conventional level. Her work became more and more widely known, especially through her collaboration with Ken Wilber (2000). As a result, more research was done that used her extensions of the stages and scoring mechanisms. These studies seemed to confirm the fundamentals of her reformulation of the late ego developmental stages (Hewlett, 2003; Stitz, 2004; Marko, 2006; Pfaffenberger, 2007; Nicolaides, 2008). An anthology was published with various contributions on “post-conventional personality,” which provide a critical analysis (Pfaffenberger, Marco & Combs, 2011). In recent years, extensions of Cook-Greuters’s last stage (E10) have even been proposed by O’Fallon (2011, 2010). These appear to be a tempting extension. However, given the samples from which they were generated as well the underlying theoretical assumptions, they should at least be critically questioned (Cook-Greuter, Wilber & Sharma, 2017; Jordan & Murray, 2020). Hy and Loevinger (1996) themselves commented in later years on the growing interest in this, along with the admonition to correctly interpret one’s own position on the developmental sequence:

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Understandably, there is special interest in the lowest and highest stages, because both have some aura of mystery …The highest stages are fascinating in part because they embody so much of what each of us aspires to or believes that he or she has achieved. (1996, p. 7). Cook-Greuter (2010) in turn expressed skepticism about some of the more recent research on post-conventional stages of ego development, because in all these studies the question is to what extent the researchers themselves have reached a stage of development sufficient to really understand this type of research at its core, and to be able to engage in it (see Laske, 2006b). 2.1.8  Excursus: Kegan’s subject-object theory of the evolving self In addition to Loevinger’s model of ego development, there is another developmental approach that has many parallels to it: Kegan’s (1982) subject-object theory of the evolving self. Both approaches are classified by other authors (e. g., Speicher & Noam, 1999) in the same category (ego development) and overviews of various development models frequently compare them (e. g., Wilber, 2000). Both Loevinger’s and Kegan’s models consider ego development from a constructive developmental perspective. Loevinger’s research is largely outside the Piagetian approach, however, because of the way her model developed out of research practice, as well as her measurement method (the WUSCT). Only later did she integrate aspects of Piaget’s approach into her work. Kegan, by contrast, is clearly part of Piaget’s structural genetic tradition, both with respect to its theoretical background and his own measurement methodology (the SOI). This makes it all the more surprising that the two theories and the empirical findings obtained from them almost completely overlap. Kegan’s model in addition illustrates aspects which are implicit for Loevinger, although she did not describe them directly. These aspects (relationship of cognition/emotion, subject-­object balance, spiral process of development) offer complementary approaches to the deeper understanding of ego development. Since Kegan worked not only as a scientist but also as a clinical practitioner, he could vividly illustrate many principles with examples. Loevinger and Kegan in the 1970s and 1980s referred directly to each other, at first critically (Loevinger, 1979c, 1986b; Kegan, 1979, 1986b; Barrett & Harren, 1979), and in later years more conciliatorily (Kegan, Lahey & Souvaine, 1998). Comparing the two approaches, all the evidence suggests that they are referring to basically the same developmental sequence, even if their classifications of the stages and their concepts are somewhat different. Block (1971), for example, describes the core of ego development as an increasing differentiation of the bal-

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ance between self and other, essentially emphasizing one of the core principles later stressed by Kegan. Unlike Loevinger, Kegan, speaks not of the “ego” but of the “self ” (1982), but refers in the classification of his model to Loevinger’s ego development approach (1979, 1998); and Loevinger too sometimes speaks of the “self ” instead of the “ego” (Loevinger, 1987a; Loevinger & Blasi, 1991). Unfortunately, there has so far been no in-depth comparison of the theoretical background, topics covered, comparability of the developmental sequence, measurement methodology, empirical research, and practical applicability. This is primarily because mastering the developmental models and their specific measurement methodology requires intensive and comprehensive training for many months. Both Loevinger (Loevinger & Wessler, 1970; Hy & Loevinger, 1996) and Kegan (Lahey, Souvaine, Kegan, Goodman & Felix, 1988) explicitly point out the demands on individuals and the difficulty of learning to master the respective scoring systems. Theoretical comparisons of the two models can be found in Kroger (2004) and Stålne (2011). The first empirical evidence for the same stage sequence can be found in Kroger and Green (2004) as well as in Al-Owidha, Green, and Kroger (2009). 2.1.8.1  The “discovery” of the subject-object model

Kegan and Rogers conducted a series of clinical interviews with psychiatric patients in the 1970s to detect their underlying subjective epistemology (Lahey et al., 1988, p. 290). They made two discoveries: First, they realized that there are a number of topics that are well-suited to bringing out the underlying structure of how a person defines his self/ego. For example, when people talk about topics that make them angry, or when they feel successful or anxious. These topics are implicitly self-referential and therefore draw the boundary between what one feels belongs or does not belong to one’s self. Second, they found out a specific interview strategy to discern and validly measure the structure behind what is said. The topic “anger” is a good example, because anger is a kind of violation of the self. Usually one would ask a person why she is angry or what has angered her; but Kegan and Rogers delved into the underlying subjective epistemological dimension. With their specific interview strategy, they tried to find out how the self must be constructed if the described experience is to be perceived as a threat to the self, to which a person responds with anger. A fundamental difference in how the question is posed! 2.1.8.2  Cognition and emotion as two sides of development

Loevinger explored ego development using sentence completions that pertain to topics that are general (e. g., rules), personal (e. g., self-definition), and interpersonal (e. g., family). The inner emotional experience of the individuals stud-

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ied was not at the center of her attention, even if it is implicitly expressed in the sentence completions. By contrast, in his clinical interviews, Kegan explored the topics raised by the respondent, directly and in all the facets that are at stake. In this way, he dealt more directly with the emotions and thus their relationship to the specific organization of the self (the so-called subject-object balance). Kegan thereby redefined the classic question, “What is the relationship of cognition to emotion?” and asked instead, “What is the relationship that ‘has’ cognition and affect?” (Kegan, Noam, Rogers, 1982, p. 105). He argues that cognition and emotion are inseparable, but represent two sides of a common structure and a common developmental process. Piaget too (1981), although his own work dealt mainly with cognitive aspects, was convinced that there are no two separate developmental processes, one cognitive and one affective, but that all objects are cognitive and affective at the same time. Kegan, Noam, and Rogers (1982, p. 106) illustrate this idea using the metaphor of a glass tube with two open ends and containing a marble. If the glass tube moves, one wonders which end the marble will roll out from; that is, one begins to distinguish the right opening from the left opening and to focus only on the two openings. Perhaps, however, one will eventually develop the view that the two openings are connected and that the glass tube is the crucial element: Without the glass tube, there are also no openings. By analogy with the glass tube, the question of the relationship between emotion and cognition consists of what the larger context could be, to which emotion and cognition can jointly be attributed. 2.1.8.3  Subject-object relations as the basis of “meaning making”

In the course of his research, Kegan realized that this larger context lies in the specific relationship between subject and object. He describes the resulting subject-object balance as a fundamental principle of the organization of the self. He refers to it as “the sleeping key to a better understanding of transformation” (Debold & Kegan, 2002). According to his model, these terms are to be understood as follows: Ȥ Subject: includes all aspects that cannot be seen or scrutinized by a person, such as relationship definitions or assumptions about the world. This could be compared with a pair of glasses through which one looks at the world, without knowing or noticing that one is wearing them. Aspects that are completely on a person’s “subject” side, therefore, cannot be reflected upon, because one is merged with them, identified with or embedded in them. In this regard, an aspect that is associated with the subject of a person, steers this person.

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Ȥ Object: This includes all the aspects that a person is able to see, to reflect, to steer, and to consciously relate to. In this respect, an aspect that is located on the “object” side, one is more able to take responsibility for, and in the best case, has access to in the moment. The question of subject and object is an age-old philosophical question, which Kegan in his model has made empirically verifiable and applicable to practice. In the course of ego development, the relation of subject to object shifts more and more toward the object and the subject becomes smaller. Figure 6 illustrates this shift.

Fig. 6: Shift of the subject-object balance

This allows an ever-greater awareness and freedom of the ego. But not only that: “With each move he [the person] made a better guarantee to the world of its distinct integrity, qualitatively reducing each time a fusion of himself with the world, thereby creating a wider and wider community in which to participate, to which to be connected, for which to direct his concern.” (Kegan, 1982, p. 70). Kegan sees, in his model of subject-object relations, a principle that underlies various theories of development. He shows, for example, how the development of formal logic by Piaget and of moral development by Kohlberg can be explained. The following example (Kegan, 1982) illustrates the subject-object relationship in terms of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: One day a mother of two was at the end of her rope with her sons’s constant bickering. The current squabble was over the allocation of a dessert pastry.

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The mother had given two of the small squares to her ten-year-old and one to her four-year-old. She had explained to her aggrieved younger son that he had received only one because he was smaller, that when he was bigger he could have two. He was quite unappeased by this logic, as you can imagine, and he continued to to bemoan his fate. The mother lost her patience, and in a fit of sarcasm she swept down on his plate with a knife, saying, “You want to pieces? Okay, I’ll give you two pieces. Here!” – whereupon she neatly cut the younger boy’s pastry in half. Immediately, all the tension went out of him; he thanked his mother sincerely, and contentedly set upon his dessert. The mother and the older son were both astonished. They looked at the boy the way you would look at something stirring in a wastebasket. Then they looked at each other; and in that moment they shared a mutually discovered insight into the reality of their son and brother, a reality quite different from their own. (p. 27–28) The four-year-old boy is probably at the preoperational stage of cognitive development. He is not yet at a stage that confers stability on the world (concrete operational stage), as it is studied, for example, in Piaget’s famous water experiment on the conservation of quantity. But what is the underlying subject-object-­ balance that makes it seem to him that cutting the piece of cake is not a farce, but satisfies him? The four-year-old still seems to be bound by his perceptions, that is, he cannot yet distinguish between things in themselves and his perception of them. Nor can he coordinate his perceptions so that he can conceive of “before” and “after” simultaneously. So he now says that he got two pieces, just like his older brother; the four-year-old therefore “is” his perceptions, rather than “having” them. On the object side, however, he can already claim achievements at his age which, until the age of about two, he did not possess, such as coordination of his actions and reflexes. Table 5 (Kegan, 1982, p. 40) shows this subject-object balance. Tab. 5: Subject-object balance at two stages of cognitive development Piaget’s stages of ­cognitive development

Subject: What steers me?

Object: What can I steer?

Preoperational

perceptions

action-sensation-reflexes

Concrete operational

“reversibilities” (the “actual”)

perceptions

At the next stage of development (concrete operational), what had been the subject at the previous stage of development becomes the object. “Now instead of seeing

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the world through her perceptions, she is able to see her perceptions …”(Kegan, 1982, p. 32). An example would be a boy who looks down from a high building and says, “The people look like ants” (dito, p. 32), by which he conveys the idea that he can take his own perceptions into account. A qualitative leap has occurred in the organization of the self: The self is more differentiated, because it can make more definite distinctions, and it is more integrated, because it can integrate these distinctions on a more conscious level in the person’s actions. Kegan, in his research on the subjective epistemology of adults, was able to identify specific qualitatively different stages of development of the self that form a clear developmental sequence. These are each characterized by a specific subject-­object balance. Kegan sometimes used other designations for this, speaking for example of stages of “meaning making,” stages of consciousness, or complexity of the mind. These stages correspond to a large extent with Loevinger’s stages of ego development. In later publications, Kegan and Lahey (2009) mention Loevinger’s WUSCT and the subject-object interview as two instruments by which the complexity of the mind can be measured. Table 6 (cf. Kegan, 1982, pp. 86–87) illustrates the subject-object balance at the various stages of self development and places them alongside Loevinger’s corresponding ego development stage numbers. Tab. 6: Subject-object balance following Kegan and corresponding levels of ego development following Loevinger Developmental stage (Loevinger)

Developmental stage (Kegan)

Subject: What steers me?

Object: What can I steer?

E2

Impulsive Self (S1)

impulses, perceptions

reflexes (sensing, moving)

E3

Imperial Self (S2)

needs, interests, wishes

impulses, perceptions

E4

Interpersonal Self (S3)

relationships, expectations of relevant significant persons

needs, interests, wishes

E6

Institutional Self (S4)

own identity, ­ideology, world-view

relationships, expectations of relevant significant persons

E8

Interindividual Self (S5)

supra-individual principles and values, exchange between self systems

own identity, ­ideology, world-view

E10

subject-object differentiation dissolves

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Ego development stages E5, E7, and E9 are not listed in this table because they are intermediate stages of the subject-object balance. Loevinger’s research led her to see these as separate stages of development, since they may be stable stages of development over years or decades, which are also defined by a specific structure of aspects. According to Kegan’s model, however, these steps are in an imbalance, which Laske (2006a, p. 115 f.) calls a developmental conflict. A person at this stage finds herself, so to speak, between two very different subject-­object balances that are difficult to reconcile. Table 6 shows that with each major new stage, what constituted the ego at the previous stage (subject), now becomes the object. This means that, on the one hand, an increasingly undistorted perception and, on the other hand, more degrees of freedom are developed. For example, at the Community-Oriented Stage (E4), one is one’s relationships, while at the Self-Governed Stage (E6) one has relationships. Thus the person is in a position to deal better with conflicting demands from others. 2.1.8.4  The spiral process of the evolving self

There is another process that underlies the developmental stages of the self as described by Kegan. This can be called, following Kroger, a process of (structural) identity development, for ultimately it comes down to the balance “between that which is taken to be self and that considered to be other” (Kroger, 2004, p. 10). The addition of the word “structural” is intended to indicate that it is not a matter of the specific content of the identity, which can, for instance, be based on completely different topics and aspects (e. g., religion, occupation, nationality, hobbies, political views). For Kegan, however, it is not a question of the content, but the structure of the identity. The following example perhaps illustrates this difference the best (Kegan, 1982): A white teenager living in a liberal northern suburb may espouse values of racial egalitarianism if that is the prevailing peer ethic, only to become a holder of racist views among racist friends if her family relocates to a school and neighborhood in the South or closer to the action in the North. The prevailing wisdom here will be that the teenager has changes as a result of new friends and new influences; it would be as true to say, however, that the teenager’s way of making meaning has remained the same. (p. 57) In the course of this (structural) identity development, two aspects are important: Ȥ The development of identity is accomplished in a recurrent alternation between relatedness to oneself and relatedness to others. At stages with a comparable focus, however, these are structurally defined differently (e. g., E3 and E6).

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Ȥ A person’s identity at each stage of ego development becomes more comprehensive and simultaneously more flexible. This gives the self more and more degrees of freedom. This alternation between relatedness to oneself and relatedness to others goes back to two basic needs that make up the “duality of human experience” (Bakan, 1966): “One of these might be called the yearning 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” (Kegan, 1982, p. 107). Stage no.

Focus: Self

Focus: Others Levels

E10 E9 E8/S5

post-conventional

E7 E6/S4 E5

conventional

E4/S3 E3/S2 E2/S1

pre-conventional

Fig. 7: Helix of development with stage numbers following Loevinger (E) and Kegan (S)

Figure 7 (cf. Kegan, 1982, p. 109) illustrates this process of identity development. The points on the curve indicate the respective stage of ego development and thus what is most aptly described as a “structural identity position” (Binder, 2009b). The points at the outer positions, which can each be associated with one focus, are the main stages of the self, which are based on a stable subject-­ object balance (see Table 6). The points in the center (e. g., E5 and E7) are stable, intermediate positions, which, according to Loevinger, are their own developmental stages. The last two identity positions (E9 and E10) have not been further explored or described by Kegan himself and are within the second section of the post-­conventional level (Cook-Greuter, 2000).

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2.1.8.5  Main stages of the self

The main stages of the self are briefly described below. Kegan also calls them levels of consciousness (see Kegan, Lahey & Souvaine, 1998). The first stage (S1) is omitted, since it mainly refers to small children and is also not considered in Loevinger’s model of ego development. Ȥ S2 – Imperial Self: A person at this level is primarily dominated by his own desires and needs (subject). Compared to the previous stage, he no longer feels compelled to immediately pursue his impulses (object). He has learned that other people have other opinions and thoughts that are separate from his, but it is difficult for him to put himself in another’s place. He is oriented toward his own interests; he only thinks about other people if they can serve or conflict with his own interests. Ȥ S3 – Interpersonal Self: From this stage on, a person no longer sees others only as a means for satisfying her own needs. Since her needs and interests now lie on the “object” side, she is more able to reflect on them and to coordinate them with the interests of others. She has now internalized the opinions, expectations, and expectations of relevant others or reference groups and is dependent on them for her feelings. There is, so to speak, no “ego” that exists independently of the demands and point of view of (relevant) others. In this regard, a person at this level is conflicted, if two relevant persons who are close to her have different expectations of her, because she does not yet have an inner system that enables her to resolve the matter from an outside position. Ȥ S4 – Institutional Self: If a person achieves this stage, he has for the first time constructed a stable ego, independent of the opinions, views, and expectations of others. The ego “is” no longer his relationships, but it “has” relationships and can therefore reconcile them from his own point of view. It has developed its own values and systems of reference, which it can use to make decisions. The limitation of this self-system is that the ego rarely questions its own meaning making, which values and frames of reference it is subject to. Nor does it see their possible limits when applied to others. Ȥ S5 – Interindividual Self: The few people who reach this stage recognize the limitations of their own internal system or the limitations of identifying with any system at all. Their own values and system of reference are now on the “object” side and are therefore accessible to reflection, verification, and steering. They are no longer identified with any system, but are in a position to question their own system, to adapt it or abandon it, if something else seems more sensible in a particular context. As with stage 3 (Interpersonal Self), at this stage the focus is on the relationship with others, although at

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a structurally different level: “The great difference between this and stage 3 is that there now is a ‘self ’ to be brought to, rather than derived from, others; where ego stage 3 is interpersonal (a fused commingling), ego stage 5 is interindividual (a commingling which guarentees distinct identities” (Kegan, 1982, pp. 105). The above-described stages not only reveal increasingly complex structures of the self, but allow a person a greater and greater degree of freedom. This also has emotional effects. As Kegan makes clear, it seems rather like “stage-specific irritability”: Each additional step in ego development allows a person to see more calmly things that she could not before. At the stage of the Sovereign Self (S2/ E3), for example, she is no longer the object of her impulses and momentary moods, and therefore also puts up with sacrifice more easily (cf. Loevinger’s aspect of impulse control as part of ego development). 2.1.9  Stability and changeability of ego stage 2.1.9.1  Age and ego development

A distinctive aspect of ego development is its remarkable stability in adulthood. While childhood and adolescence are times of growth, in terms of personal maturity, ego development appears to stabilize in adulthood. Thus Loevinger (1976) found in her studies that the majority of people grow into the Rationalistic Stage (E5) (but not further). To verify this finding with a broader and more reliable database, Cohn (1998) conducted a meta-analysis, investigating the findings of many other empirical studies of adolescents and adults in which ego development and age were examined together. In his secondary analysis of existing data, Cohn pursued a multi-step evaluation strategy. First he analyzed the data of 30 cross-­ sectional studies and then of 16 longitudinal studies. In the next step, he examined 56 more studies with a regression analysis to be able to better study their trends. The advantage of this approach was that the relationship between age and ego development could be analyzed using various research designs and methods. Cohn used 102 studies in his meta-analysis, with data from 12,370 participants. His results confirm Loevinger’s observations on the stability of ego development in adulthood. In his analysis of the cross-sectional studies, he found that the average correlation between age and ego development in adolescence (up to age 20) was r = 0.40. In adults (older than age 20), however, Cohn found a correlation of r = 0.04, that is, only a very weak correlation between age and

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ego development. The longitudinal studies showed a similar picture: While a significant increase in ego development occurred among the adolescents in 11 of the 16 studies, among young adults this was the case for only 6 out of 21 studies. Also in the longitudinal studies, the average correlation of age and ego development differed in the two age groups: Among adolescents it was almost the same as in the cross-sectional studies: r = 0.41. Among young adults, however, the value was r = 0.13, significantly lower. The different sizes of these correlations are again an indication that ego development weakens with the onset of adulthood, even if it does not stop entirely. The regression analyses with a total of 144 samples showed a similar picture: The appearance of quadratic trends supports the hypothesis that in childhood and adolescence there is a progressive ego development, which weakens in early adulthood and then stabilizes. Figure 8 clearly shows such a trend, with mean values for a total of 252 samples. Thus, Cohn (1998, p. 143) draws the following conclusion: “Individual development occurs during adulthood, although it does not seem to characterize most people.” 9 8

Mean WUSCT Score

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Age of Sample Fig. 8: Ego development and age in various samples (Cohn, 1998, p. 140)

Gender differences were not taken into account in this study. For this purpose, however, there already existed a meta-analysis, also by Cohn (1991), which

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showed a distinct developmental advantage for teenage girls in ego development. This decreased around the age of admission to college, so that by adulthood there were hardly any differences between men and women. Shortly after Cohn’s meta-analysis (1998), Westenberg and Gjerde (1999) released the results of their nine-year longitudinal study, with two data collection points and participants aged 14 and 23 (N = 97). In contrast to previous studies, they investigated developmental trajectories from adolescence into early adulthood. Their findings confirm an average increase of about 1.5 stages, with a high variability of ego development from adolescence to early adulthood. Comparison of the data from the two measurement points also showed that the variance of the ego development stages at age 23 was significantly greater: At age 14, there were four different ego development stages among the participants, whereas at age 23 there were six. In adulthood, therefore, aside from the age increase in itself, there seem to be other aspects that play a greater role. Westenberg and Gjerde found another interesting result from their small-scale studies of intra-individual trends: Depending on the stage of ego development at age 14, there were different amounts of growth by the time of the second data collection point at age 23. Adolescents who were already at the Rationalistic Stage (E5) at the time of the first survey registered the least increase in ego development in the subsequent nine years. This led Westenberg and Gjerde (1999, p. 247) to assume that the stabilization of ego development levels has more to do with reaching the Rationalistic Stage (E5) than with a particular age. Syed and Seifge-Krenke (2013, p. 379), who picked up on this question, came to the same conclusion later on, from the results of their 10-year longitudinal study with 98 female adolescents (age 14 to 24). Similar findings with respect to age and development can also be found in wisdom research. Staudinger (2005, p. 346) notes in a review article: “Between the ages of about 14 and 25, the basis of this system of insight and judgment evolves; after the age of 25, however, getting older seems to be insufficient to becoming ‘more insightful about life’, let alone ‘wiser’.” 2.1.9.2  Achieving a stable balance of ego stage

Loevinger and Kegan both understand ego development (in Piaget’s sense) as an interactionist process. This means that development is an active engagement of people with their environment and not a mere maturation process (such as puberty), which leads to a fixed endpoint. Loevinger illustrated this using a model of overlapping curves. At any age, different people can be at different levels of ego development. Many influences can cause ego development to continue to advance or to stop (temporarily).

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1.0

A

B

Probability of Occurrence

C

D

0 Age Note: A, B, C, and D are signs of successive stages. Fig. 9: Model for a milestone sequence (Loevinger, 1976, p. 167)

Piaget’s model of cognitive development, which describes qualitatively different and successive stages of thinking, can also be seen in terms of the above-­ outlined model (Loevinger, 1976, p. 172). Comparing the empirical studies of both models, however, reveals a striking difference: Most people achieve Piaget’s final stage of cognitive development (formal-operational) between the ages of 11 and 15 (Buggle, 2001; Scharlau, 2007). They have basically reached a way of thinking by means of which they can abstract from concrete content and reason with abstract logic. Piaget’s final stage of cognitive development is thus achieved long before adulthood, even if not always in its full expression and in all domains equally (e. g., Shayer & Wylam, 1978; De Lisi & Staudt, 1980; Bradmetz, 1999). By contrast, in the majority of adults there is no further growth up to the last (currently measurable) level of ego development (E10). In most adults in Western countries, the ego development level stabilizes at the Rationalistic Stage (E5). Thus, they seem to have found a balance at their current stage of ego development that makes further development in the sense of personal maturity unlikely. This is particularly surprising, because further development toward the later stages of ego development has many attendant benefits that affect virtually all areas of work and life (see Kegan, 1996; Rogers, Mentkowski & Reisetter Hart, 2006, p. 509 ff.). For example Manners and Durkin (2000, p. 477), in their review of ego development in adulthood, emphasize the following advantages: Ȥ Better preventive health self-care among elder adults (e. g., Gast, 1984) Ȥ Higher levels of support and understanding of children’s communication among mothers (e. g., Dayton, 1981)

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Ȥ Greater empathy, closeness, and clarity of communication in couples (e. g., Zilbermann, 1984) Ȥ Greater competence and effective decision making among managers (e. g., Givens, 1984) Ȥ More effective decision making by managers (e. g., Merron, 1985) Ȥ Lower symptom severity of psychiatric patients (e. g., Noam, 1998) Ȥ Higher client satisfaction among psychotherapists (e. g. Callanan, 1986). The studies listed in the second chapter (p. 130) and the third chapter (p. 183) show that this is only a small selection of the many positive aspects of the later stages of ego development. Especially with a personality construct like ego development, in which differences are not just a matter of personal “style” (a neutrally valued “this way or that way”), the question arises, why development slows down in adulthood, or in many people comes to a halt (see Edelstein & Krettenauer, 2004). It seems at first that Piaget’s key development principles have a limited ability to explain ego development. According to Piaget (1970/2010), resolving internal contradictions is one of the key sources of development. This leads, according to Werner’s “orthogenetic principle,” to internal structures of thought that are more differentiated and integrated, with which novel situations, can be handled with increasing flexibility (Werner, 1948; Glick, 1992). This resolution of contradictions that pose an imbalance for a person (disequilibration) occurs, according to Piaget, through an interplay of two mechanisms: 1. Assimilation: A person adapts his experiences to his own cognitive structure without changing himself. 2. Accommodation: If the previous thought patterns are no longer adequate to deal with certain experiences, a person adapts his cognitive structure to the environment. Thus, in principle, assimilation is a stabilizing mechanism, and accommodation is a mechanism acting for change. Loevinger (1976) explains why these two mechanisms are both manifestly inadequate to lead to a late ego development stage: [N]atural phenomena act as pacer for cognitive growth, constantly disconfirming expectations based on false hypothesis. Hence maximal equilibration requires attainment of formal operations. The ego [instead] is a structure of expectations not about natural phenomena but primarily about interpersonal ones. As long as the child is operating in an environment that does not conform to his expectations and that disconfirms them in a way to pace his

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growth, he has the potential for further growth. When the child’s view of his interpersonal surroundings conforms to what really exists, when his expectations match the conduct of those around him, equilibration is achieved and the likelihood of change is small. (p. 311) Block (1982) also points out, in his classic article on Piaget’s conception of the mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation, that these have only a limited application to personality development, because they relate to thinking about inanimate things (such as the understanding of space, time, causality, etc.): “The difference between a passive and passionless world about which one can generate unequivocal understandings and an interactive, passion-involving world where understandings never rise above uncertainty or ambiguity is a profound one.” (Block, 1982, pp. 289–290). In the case of events or situations that can cause an imbalance, other aspects play a key role, such as the extent of the person’s own anxiety, attitudes, expectations, or motives, and how he deals with these. The question is how these aspects together influence ego development, or how one can promote it, because it seems that further development is rather unlikely once people have found a convenient niche for themselves. Loevinger (1976) also posed this question, but also saw the difficulties it entails: Some persons believe that society ought to favor arrangements that will lead more people to stages above Conformity. Society, they may propose, should reward the Conscientious and Autonomous persons as it now rewards the Conformist and often the Opportunist. But that proposal is, or leads to, paradox. For the essence of the Conscientious Stage is to be at least partially liberated from socially imposed rewards and punishments. How can one manipulate rewards so as to free a person from responding to them and being shaped by them? (p. 28) Meanwhile, there are a number of practical experiences and research findings that bear on these questions. These offer many indications of which aspects are related to progressive ego development. For this it is useful to consider both ­stability-promoting and change-promoting personality mechanisms. The change mechanisms do not seem to be only the flip-side of stability mechanisms: “Rather, these are often separate mechanisms that can work at any time to engender continuity and change” (Caspi & Roberts, 2001, p. 62).

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2.1.9.3  Mechanisms that promote stability or change in personality with reference to ego development

Caspi and Roberts (2001; Roberts & Caspi, 2003) describe a framework model for the continuity and changeability of personality over the life course. Based on numerous studies in different research areas, they outline essential aspects or mechanisms that are responsible for continuity as well as change of personality over the life course. The following three mechanisms seem to have a potentially stabilizing effect on personality over the life course: 1. Environmental influences due to long-term stable environments; 2. Genetic influences; 3. Person-environment transactions across the life course: a) Reactive transactions – conscious selection and filtering of information from the environment; b) Proactive transactions – selective choices of environments and people that match one’s own personality; c) Evocative transactions – eliciting of certain reactions from others based on one’s own personality traits (which in turn exert an affirmative effect). Caspi and Rogers summarize the large number of mechanisms that potentially change personality, in the following clusters: 1. Circumstances/conditions that require other reactions, such as the adoption of new roles or new types of situations; 2. Self-observation and reflection; 3. Observation of others (social learning); 4. Exchange and feedback from others. The model of Caspi and Roberts makes no explicit reference to stage models of personality development. This raises the question to which extent studies of the ego development model also contain references to the mechanisms they have identified. Roberts and Caspi also do not refer to personality changes in a particular direction, whereas in personality development models, a certain sequence is postulated, with hierarchical developmental stages. Therefore, it is also relevant to ask how the above-mentioned mechanisms of change relate to ego development. Many studies of ego development provide information about the first aspect, which relate to environmental influences, notably the studies by Hauser and colleagues (Hauser, Powers, Noam, Jacobson, White & Follansbee, 1984; Hauser, Powers & Noam, 1991; Billings, Hauser & Allen, 2008; Allen, 2010). In their first study, Hauser et al. (1984) surveyed the ego development of adolescents and

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their parents. Then they analyzed the communication behavior of the families (N = 61), using transcribed recordings of discussions about moral dilemmas. They found moderate to strong correlations between the communication behavior of the parents and the ego development of their children. The so called “accepting” communication behavior was, for example, correlated positively (r = 0.40) and the “constraining” communication correlated negatively (r = −0.24) with the adolescents’ ego development level. Also in longitudinal studies with young people aged 14 to 25, the further development of adolescents was correlated with the communication behavior in the parental home (e. g., Billings et al. 2008). Syed and Seiffge-Krenke (2013) found similar results in their 10-year longitudinal study of 98 families, using questionnaires pertaining to the family climate. In addition, the young people who developed particularly strongly up to the age of 25, had parents with a significantly later ego development stage on average (compared to those whose development was average in the group comparison). Using a cross-sectional study, Billington (1988) specifically investigated the impact of doctoral programs on ego development. She compared the ego development level of 60 middle-aged doctoral students (age 37 to 48), 30 of whom had just started their study and 30 of whom had completed it. Half of them studied at “traditional” universities, the other half at a university that explicitly followed a philosophy of self-determined and mutual learning (“non-­traditional”). Information about the learning environment and related aspects (e. g., feedback) was collected by questionnaires and interviews. While the doctoral program in itself had no effect on ego development, there was a significant interaction effect in the analysis of variance regarding the type of university (Figure 10). Only the students at the “non-traditional” university showed a significant difference in ego development level between start and end – an increase of almost one stage. The lack of a main effect suggests that the purely intellectual challenge of doctoral studies is not a trigger for further ego development, if the program is not supplemented by an open and exploratory learning climate. Noteworthy also was the interaction effect found between the standards the students had for a stimulating and challenging environment, and the type of institution. While students with high standards at the non-traditional university had a significant mean increase in ego development level, students at traditional universities actually regressed in their the ego development levels by the end of their studies. Regarding genetic influence on ego development, there is just one twin study by Newman, Tellegen, and Bouchard (1998), which tested 45 monozygotic and 28 dizygotic twins aged 16 to 70, who grew up separated since childhood. Using this classic twin design to determine the genetic component of a personality

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School Type Note: Ego Level = Mean SCT scores Fig. 10: Ego development at start/end of doctoral program and type of university (Billington, 1988, p. 190) (Ego Level 2 = E6)

characteristic (see Asendorpf, 1988), they calculated the proportion of variance at 47 percent (controlled for intelligence measures). Thus, the hereditary component is similar to other previously studied personality traits. Exactly how and what causes this 47 percent proportion of variance is unclear. In their study, Newman et al. also compiled values for general intelligence and especially verbal intelligence, but this could not explain the large differences in ego development level of the participants. Although the correlation with age in this study was very low, the age range starting at 16 might be a confounding factor that could easily lead to overestimation of the genetic component. A group of exclusively adult participants with a minimum age of 20 would have been justified, in view of the meta-analysis by Cohn (1998), for empirical and theoretical reasons. Loevinger always noted particularly the stability-promoting mechanisms that Roberts and Caspi call person-environment transactions. She refers to Sullivan (1953), to explain the remarkable stability of ego development. His concept of the “self-system,” which Loevinger calls a central influence on her model, corresponds largely to what she understands as the specific structure of each ego development stage. According to Sullivan, each self-system tends to preserve its internal consistency by selective inattention, ignoring information that does not fit the stage of development the person has reached. Each self-system is essentially an anxiety-management system, whose function is to protect the individual

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from unpleasant and potentially anxiety-provoking information and situations. Elsewhere, Loevinger compares the respective stage of ego development with the function of the immune system (1987a, p. 93). The fact that a majority of adults is at a medium level of ego development, suggests that further development would come at some kind of cost. This idea is also found in the transformation-oriented methodology of Kegan and Lahey (2001, 2009, 2010), which serves to identify the particular “immune system against changes,” to facilitate development. Examples of especially reactive person-environment interactions can be found in the narrative studies by McAdams (e. g., 1985) or his later work with Bauer. In a study of 176 people aged between 19 and 70, Bauer, McAdams, and Sakaeda (2005; Bauer & McAdams, 2004a), for example, investigated the relationship between the emphasis on growth objectives and more hedonistic objectives. They compared the scope of these objectives with the independently assessed ego development level. It was interesting that participants were not explicitly asked about these objectives, but individual episodes of the participants’ autobiographical memories were coded using a scheme specially developed for the purpose. The analyses confirmed the thesis that a late ego development level was especially related to a large number of memories of growth. People who particularly reflect on their experiences, what they learn from them or what new perspectives they gain, displayed, on average, a later stage of ego development than those who stressed the “hedonistic” aspect (regarding their well-being at that time). Further studies were able to substantiate these factors in longitudinal studies (Bauer & McAdams, 2010). Studies of ego development in the clinical context or in cases of psycho­ pathology provide further information about factors that cause people not to develop greater personal maturity or to do so only with greater difficulty. The numerous studies by Noam and colleagues are particularly noteworthy. Noam (1992) compared high school students with adolescents in psychiatric treatment (N = 139). The latter group exhibited a significant delay in ego development by comparison, as the distribution of the light grey bars in Figure 11, further to the left shows. He attributes this to something he calls “encapsulation”: old structures that are shaped by earlier affective and cognitive logic, and that lead to “rigid, isolated aspects of the prevailing view of the self and the world” (Röper & Noam, 1999, p. 263). Noam (1992, p. 686) explains why these are maintained: “Often the loss involved in detachment from encapsulation is experienced as greater than the gains anticipated in development.” Noam, Recklitis, and Paget (1991), in a study of 37 participants (age 12 to 16), investigated to what extent improvement of clinical symptoms is correlated with an increase or standstill in ego

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Stages of Ego Development Distribution of ego stages of adolescent psychiatric patients (light bars) and high school students (dark bars) (N = 139). Fig. 11: Ego development of psychiatric patients and adolescents of the same age (Noam, 1992, p. 682) (I3 = E4)

development stage. Adolescents who registered a slight increase in ego development after their release from hospitalization, showed a significant decrease in their psychiatric symptoms compared to those for whom there was no progressive ego development. An example of proactive person-environment interactions can be found in one of the first intercultural ego development studies. Lasker (1978), working with some subsamples in Curaçao, also studied to what extent ego development affects friendships. Six months after conducting five-day training sessions, he asked the participants to draw up a list of their best friends; he was able to construct sociograms with these and calculate the frequency of mutual choices. The findings show ego development is also a “sociological” variable: Mutual choices appeared most often between people who were within half an ego development stage of each other (p  S4  S3  S2