European Society for Research on Adult Development, 2021, online

1. Integrating ego development,
hierarchical complexity, and trauma
theory:
Wisdom Skills model
Tom Murray
ESRAD conference
April, 2021
(video at https://youtu.be/JpwtYvWikLc)

2. Origins: 2009 IR journal paper
Do Heart and Ego Develop Through
Hierarchical Integration?
Intuiting the Cognitive Line in Developmental Assessment

3. Underlying Intuition
• Hierarchical complexity alone does not
capture much that is important to the
development of “wisdom”
• Ego development (and ethical capacity)
involves letting go as well as building up.

5. Goal #1
• To integrate/coordinate adult developmental
models:
– 1. Hierarchical Complexity (Fischer; Commons)
– 2. Ego Development (Loevinger, Torbert, Cook-
Greuter, O’Fallon) and
– Orders of Consciousness (Kegan)
• Conceptually/Theoretically
– First principles and mechanisms
– NOT: assessments or level-by-level concordance

6. Vertical Development

7. Growing critiques of misuse
of developmental theories
• Fetishization of vertical growth, esp. in
practice communities
• Growth to goodness fallacy, that higher/later
development is
– better,
– happier,
– more ethical,
– most needed,
– …

8. The VUCA Narrative
We live in a complex and fast-changing world…
We have to increase the complexity of our thinking

9. Premise #1
(Question Complexity)
• We over-focus on vertical advancement
• Most of the worlds problems are from existing
cognitive structures (not insufficient complexity)
• We need equal focus on
releasing/deconstructing structures (i.e.
complexity)

10. Goal #2
• Integrate modern Trauma Theories better into
Adult Developmental models
– Shadow work as informed by cognitive science
– Models of health & recovery at all levels of self

11. Goal #3
• Need better models of how Spiritual
Development (states and stages) integrates
with adult developmental theories

12. Premise #2
(Question Transcendence)
• Spiritual Development models conflate
– Developmental growth w. Structural Release
– (Ascending w. Descending)
– (Learning w. Unlearning)
– (Construction w. Deconstruction)

13. “Transcend
and Include”

14. Premise #4
• In reality, human development (almost)
always TRANSCENDS AND EXCLUDES;
(requiring more emphasis on recovery and
healing)

15. Wisdom Skill model
• Integrating cognitive developmental theories of
hierarchical complexity and trauma recovery into
“grow up, clean up, wake up”
• Is strongly informed by O’Fallon’s STAGES model

16. What is vertical development?
• Learning as increased complexity (including
emergent “simplicity on the other side”)
• Commons’ axiomatic “complexity order”:
• Building upon (composition, coordination,
operating upon…defined in terms of)

17. “Operating upon”
>> five sub-operations
of hierarchical complexity
1. Differentiation
2. Composition
3. Generalization
4. Abstraction
5. Integration

18. …Inevitably lead to “demi-realities”
1. Disastrous Differentiation
2. Noxious Composition
3. Vicious Abstraction
4. Pernicious Generalization
5. Tyrannical Integration

19. E.g.: “Vicious” Abstraction
• Our theories, models, beliefs, ideologies are
composed of conceptual abstractions.
• I.E. simplifications that highlight certain
properties and ignore others
• Who chooses what is left out as unimportant?
• Abstractions are always biased (motivated,
perspectival)

20. Negative Externalities
• Structures later found to be inadequate,
partial, occluding
• Lost capacities and psychic resources
• And need unlearning, recovering, healing
processes

21. Associations with Complexity Capacity
(ascending movements)
• Learning, cognitive growth, skill-building,
• achievement, problem solving,
• reflective abstraction, meta-cognition,
• development, evolution
• …

22. Spiritual Clarity
RELEASING COMPLEXITY, UNLEARNING
Descending: healing, letting go, forgiveness, loss, death,
simplicity, purity, emptiness, purgation, purification,
non-attachment, dissolution, deconstructing,
dismantling, cutting-through, eradicating, seeing
through, laying bare, letting go, dis-identifying, …

23. Complexity
Capacity
Spiritual
Clarity
Wisdom Skill
(ego development)
Ascending,
Complexity,
Learning,
Additive,
Growth,
Evolutionary
Descending,
Simplicity,
Un-learning,
Subtractive,
Healing,
Involutionary
Wisdom skill =
complexity capacity + spiritual clarity

24. Wisdom skill = complexity capacity + spiritual clarity
A developmental model of shadow work and spiritual practice
Spiritual Clarity:
deconstruct,
critique,
release,
heal,
unlearn,
see through,
reveal,
Insight…
Post-Rational Mind
Rational Mind
Social Mind
Perceptual Mind
Philosophy
Psycho-
therapy
Contemplative
practice

25. Complexity
Capacity
Spiritual
Clarity
Post-Rational Mind
Rational Mind
Social Mind
Perceptual Mind
Motivations, skills for deepening...
Insight for Integration back into...
diversity
uniqueness
similarity
unity

26. Wisdom as “Volume”
WIDTH
HEIGHT
+
DEPTH
VOLUME

27. Applications
• Is “transcendence” about the bottom or top?
– A critique of “Omega Point” and evolutionary Telos
– “Nonduality” or “Source of Being” -- bottom or top?
– Spiritual Attainment as descending …then ascending
• Why are some “awake” people such jerks?
• Can one evolve/awaken too fast? (in ego or
spiritual development)
• How to honor, yet not romanticize, aboriginal
wisdom?
• When should interventions construct, vs.
deconstruct?

28. Thank
You!
art: Harri Aalto

29. End

30. Untying Knots

31. Compounding
complexity & complication
• Any “solution” that ignores root causes
• Rules/laws to fix the imperfection of rules/laws…
• Bureaucracies; runaway tech-acceleration
• Family dynamics: lies (or silences) produced to
cover for prior lies or silences
• Shadow: complex defense mechanisms to avoid
painful memories/realities (“double binds”)
• The global “meta-crisis”…

32. Meta-Crises
"We’re building technologies that are supposed
to foster bigger, more complex communities, but
instead they are leading us into mistrust, privacy
invasion, fragmentation, and loss of shared
public rituals. ”
Annalee Newitz, Feb 22, 2021, https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/the-internet-as-we-know-it-is-doomed

33. What can get left behind?
• At 2nd PP Conventional: Playfulness, awe, creativity,
physicality, naive trust, …
• At 3rd PP Modern: Loyalty to tribe and ideologies,
concrete communities and rituals…
• At 4th PP Pluralist: solid identity, confidence in
rationality, …
`
• From infancy:
Oneness, timelessness, space-lessness, subject-
object nonduality, synesthesia,
fullness/abundance, selflessness ....

34. Proposition
• It is more important to recover what was left
behind, than to push toward greater complexity
• Receptivity (openness), awe (reverence,
humility), trust in a basic goodness (that the
world is safe, kind..), joy/playfulness/vibrancy,
ease/quiet mind, …
• These are not truths, they are perspectives that
are vital psychic resources for troubled times

35. From HCT to Ego Development
1. Complexity capacity
2. >> Applied to psycho-social world
(me/you/we) [but exterior “out their” first]
3. >>>>Applied reflectively to SELF
understanding and de-selfing
== Wisdom / Ego Development (and Kegan’s
meaning making “levels of consciousness”)

36. • Growing in “ego development” and
wisdom necessitates a self-
deconstruction move (of something
different for each level)

37. Not forgetting/erasing, but releasing
the grip/necessity/assumption of…
• For example:
– Postconventional: releasing dependence on
family and tribe to be more independent
– Pluralist: releasing the idea that logic (& individual
choices) is sufficient for collective well-being
– Socialization: releasing impulsivity, narcissism
– Contemplative practice:

38. Applications of the Model…

39. What is at the bottom and top?
• A critique of “Omega Point” and evolutionary
Telos
• Is “Nonduality” or “Source of Being” at
bottom or top?

40. Complexity
Capacity
Spiritual
Clarity
Post-Rational Mind
Rational Mind
Social Mind
Perceptual Mind
diversity
uniqueness
similarity
unity

41. Spiritual Attainment as descending
…then ascending
• SC: Releasing structures in the lowest layers
• SC: Recovering occluded modes of potential
• INSIGHT: into what is NOT true!
• OPENING new potentials
• CC: Re-integrating into current meaning-
making system.

42. The Jerk Guru
• Releasing structures at lowest levels does not
necessitate releasing structures at other
(middle) levels of the psyche
• Nor does releasing foundational structures
necessitate ethical maturity

43. Growing too fast?
• What does the method deconstruct?
• WHY would one need to deconstruct that?
• What are the dangers of deconstructing that?
• Development in response to real needs
• Complexity needed to untie the knot, then drop
it.
• People are “OK where they are at”

44. Nonduality and Source of Being
• At the bottom or top of “development”?

45. Aboriginal Wisdom
• What is “left behind” in modernity is not a few
minor details; it may be 90% of our humanity
– that traditional culture remind us of, and can help
us recover
– Health of the lower levels is most important
• Alternative “intelligences” can develop
• Avoiding romanticizing….

46. Issues in Measurement
• Ego development assessment (and the SOI)
include descending movements implicitly, but
they combine ascending and descending
• We don’t have good measures to separate out
descending health or “spiritual clarity”

47. Conclusions
• Increased Hierarchical Complexity creates
shadow and “leaves things behind”
• Unlearning and releasing complexity is called
for for healthy individuals/organizations
• But under theorized/modeled
• Ego development = wisdom skill = CC + SC
– Descending movement is just as important

48. EXTRA SLIDES

49. Change Mechanisms
VERTICAL DEVELOPOMENT
• (Undifferentiated)
• (problem/opportunity >
focus)
• Differentiation
• >> practice, feedback…
• Vertical Integration
• Automation (> unconscious)
RELEASE / CLARITY
• (Hidden structure < unconscious)
• (motivation to change/look within)
• Differentiated awareness of pre-
aggregated elements, tensions, and
emotions
• Witnessing the steps of construction
• Releasing the automation/habit
• Insight and re-construction

50. Concepts from Trauma Theories
• Stress/threat effects
• Post-traumatic growth
• Collective trauma/shadow
• Titration, Pendulation
• Attachment theory
• Resourcing, Co-regulation
• Coping and resilience
• Triggers, dissociation

51. Importance of Foundations
• Embodiment
– Not being lost in abstractions, wishes, ideologies
– Grounding ideas in actions
– Emotional awareness (bodily sensation)
• Basic Ethics and mental health
– Integrity, non-knowing, self-acceptance
• “Indigenous” knowledge and perceptual
acuity

52. Common Issues in using
developmental models
• Reification (confusing the map for the territory)
• Pigeonholing people (over-simplification,
caricatures, objectification)
• Growth to goodness fallacy (higher is better,
happier, more ethical…)
• Push to the top (neglecting horizontal health,
robustness, depth)
– Cogntive complexity version
– Spiritual attainment version
• Conflating wisdom with complexity
• Sloppy extensions of individual development
research into cultural development

53. Wisdom Skills
• Self-understanding; self-inquiry; humility
• Complexity / systems thinking
• Perspective taking/seeking; empathy
• Ability to receive (and seek) feedback
• Tolerance for uncertainty, chaos, change
• Creative responsiveness (Sense for what wants to emerge)
• Vision-time-scope: today…months…decades…
• Pragmatic, context-aware judgment
Black-&-white, us-vs-them >> increasing

54. Example for Conflict Resolution Work
• Assessing the field in preparation for a conflict resolution session
• 1) What dialogical/dialectical skills does this group have? (on average; and its leaders)
• 2)** What needs to be released to allow enough trust, openness, listening, forgiveness,
appreciation, and/or gratitude?
• >> Skills build only very slowly (take as a given)
• >> Methods toward release (possible on one or a few sessions):
– Setting: welcoming, non-judgmental, respect, listening…
– Monitor/support emotional/philological stress/calm levels
– Sharing stories (I statements); sharing values
– Putting ideologies, abstract “truths,” and categories aside
– Finding common ground: facts; values; interests
– Clarifying disagreements or differences in perspective
– Perspective-taking (“in their shoes…”)
– Reflecting on assumptions; deconstructing beliefs and mental models
– Taking responsibility: how I/we contribute; immunity to change; I could do better if…
– Caucusing: safe containers for vulnerable exploration of biases, mistakes, missed opportunities;
– Celebrating strengths and achievements; appreciations