Review: Human Development and the Spiritual Life: How Consciousness Grows toward Transformation

by Ronald R. Irwin

Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: New York, etc. 2002

Michael Lamport Commons Joel Funk

Harvard Medical School Plymouth State College

The field of positive adult development began in the mid-1970's but really became an organized field in 1981, with the first symposium on postformal thinking, entitled Beyond Formal Operations. Despite this apparently long history, the overall field of adult development is only coming to recognize the importance of higher stages of development, whether cognitive, moral, egoic, or spiritual. One curious characteristic of many individuals who do research on higher stages of development is their strong interest in the growth and development of consciousness and spirituality (e.g. Miller & Gook-Greuter, 1994; Miller & West, 2000; Sinnott, 2000, 2001). This is perhaps due to the growing interest in Eastern thought emerging from the human potential movement. Irwin’s book reviews many of the theories of the adult development of self and consciousness first proposed in the 1980's in lucid, but non-integrative terms. In addition, Irwin presents his own views about development. To do so, he synthesizes three perspectives: an evolutionary perspective, a dialectical and stage perspective, and an Eastern and spirituality perspective. As such, his thinking is representative of one of the threads of adult development.

This book is divided into two main sections: 1) Irwin’s general outline of a theory of psychological development, and 2) “his sketch of a theory of the nature of self and spiritual development from both Eastern (Oriental-Asiatic) and Western (Euro-American) perspectives. One of the more interesting sections is Irwin's discussion of “ego and self” in terms of evolution, childhood and ego development, impulse control and repression, cognition, and language. Irwin’s evolutionary theory has it that we evolve to conform–a surprising argument at first glance. It is true that most people terminate development in one of the conventional stages (e.g., Concrete, Abstract, Formal, see Table 1), but there are many well known examples of highly developed individuals who move beyond the conventional levels and conformity. Irwin’s model may have trouble accounting for the post-conventional stages.

In Part 2, the author delves into identity: identity as development and achievement, as fiction and constraint, and as narrative. Irwin sees the narrative approach as crucial for understanding the self. The author identifies three types of knowing: epistemic knowing, relativistic knowing, dialectical knowing, and then turns to what he call self-knowing. In this subsection of Part 2 appear discussions of Kegan’s vertical-organizational changes in ego, of midlife crisis, of Pascual-Leone’s moral and social knowing , and the substantial contributions to this field on the parts of Kohlberg and Armon. Under “cosmic knowing,” which focuses on spiritual development, Irwin considers the work of Cook-Greuter, Wilber, Alexander, and Fowler, among others.

Unfortunately, Irwin leaves the reader with the impression that these are really separate theories rather than flavors of the same developmental sequence with different content as shown in Table 1. In the integrative view, there can only be one set of stages of the development of self and consciousness. There can only be one stage sequence and the higher stages must be defined in terms of and organize lower stage actions and constructions in a non-arbitrary way. Compared to Wilber's (2000) model or the concordance shown in Table 1, Irwin’s review seems somewhat out of date and lacking in power and scope. Also, the more scientific stage models of Commons et al., Dawson, and Fischer are not reviewed. Because those theories are not strictly theories of the development of consciousness, perhaps, he does not include them. As a result, he misses an opportunity to integrate these disparate theories in the manner of Wilbur (2002) and Miller and Cook-Greuter (1994).

Other issues raised by Irwin remain somewhat problematic. Theories of spiritual development tend to fall into two camps: one suggests that higher states consciousness or spiritual development occur after the normal postformal stages (or at least after one of the higher stages such as metasystematic); and the other suggests a parallel development of higher states of consciousness. That is, spirituality is seen as a separate line of development, alongside mathematic, logical, social and moral judgement and problem solving. A major issue remains is whether “spiritual development: comes “on top of “ normal postformal cognitive development (Alexander, Cook-Greuter, and Kohlberg) or whether it is a parallel line (Commons, Fowler, Funk and Irwin). Wilber (2000) argues that either view is acceptable (in fact he offers five definitions of spirituality, several of which do not involve stages). The implications of these competing views are not discussed by Irwin.

The first reviewer observes that many transcendental consciousness theories place the development of spirituality after one of the higher adult developmental stages. This might happen because the highest stages of adult development are very difficult to understand. It also might happen because very few individuals reason at those higher stages. Hence, there is the perception of some theoreticians that transcendental theories are similarly ‘high up.’ However, they do not carry out the kind of reasoning that would be required to in fact show that their transcendental stages are ‘higher’ than adult postformal stages. Because it is all so mysterious to them, they assert that the stage is transcendental and therefore at the ‘top’, as it were, of adult development. This resembles a common phenomenon observed in human cultures which is that whenever there is a phenomenon that people do not understand they attribute some kind of religious/transcendental explanation to it.

Incidently, in the generalities that are the meat of the text of this book, lie at least one potential trouble spot. Care must be taken with the author’s statements on some peripheral matters. In the section on language, for example, the author gets basic little things wrong. For example, he misdefines orthography and phonology, and seems totally unaware of distinctive-feature theory, an important feature of linguistics for more than 30 years now, when he tells us that the phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit.

Despite these flaws, and because of the excellent writing style and the extensive surveys of existing theories of transcendental development, this book would be a useful introduction to at least some of the historical theories of the development of consciousness for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and professionals who are interested in positive adult development.

References

Commons, M. L., Richards, F. A., & Armon, C.  (Eds.). (1984). Beyond formal operations: Vol. 1. Late adolescent and adult cognitive development. NY: Praeger.

Miller, M. E., & Cook-Greuter, S. R. (Eds.). (1994). Transcendence and mature thought in adulthood : the further reaches of adult development. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Miller, M. E., & West, A. N. (Eds.). (2000). Spirituality, ethics, and relationship in adulthood: Clinical and theoretical explorations. Madison, CT: Psychosocial Press.

Fowler, J. (1994). Moral stages and the development of faith. In Puka, Bill (Ed). Fundamental research in moral development. Moral development: A compendium, Vol. 2. (pp. 344-374) New York: Garland Pub..

Sinnott, J. D. (2001). A time for the condor and the eagle to fly together: Relations between spirit and adult development in healing techniques in several cultures. Journal of Adult Development. 8(4), 241-247. Special Issue

Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston: Shambhala. Publications.

Table

Comparative Table Postformal Stage

Researchers	Abstract	Formal	Systematic	Meta-systematic	Paradigm-atic	Cross-Paradigmatic	Transcen-dental	Transcendental 2
Commons & Richards (1984)	9. variables formed from concrete classes	10. relations formed from abstract variables	11. systems formed from formal-operational relations	12. meta-systems formed from systems	13. paradigms formed from metasystems	14. paradigms crossed to form new fields
Inhelder & Piaget (1958)	formal III-A	formal III-B	consolidated form, postformal	polyvalent logic; systems of systems
Kohlberg (1981)	3 mutuality	3/4	4 social system	5 prior rights/ social contract 6 universal ethical principles	Stage 7 transcen-dental
Fowler (1994)	3	3/4	4	5
Armon (1984)	3 affective mutuality	3/4	4 individuality	5 autonomy	6 universal categories
Labouvie-Vief (1984)		intra-systematic	inter-systematic	autonomous
Sinnott (1984)		formal	relativistic/ relativize systems, metalevel rules	unified theory: interpretation of contradictory levels
Basseches (1984)	phase 1b: formal early foundations	phase 2 intermediate dialectical schemes	phase 3: 2 out of 3 clusters of advanced dialectical schemes	4. advanced dialectical thinking
King & Kitchener (2002)	4	5	6	7
Benack (1994)	4	5	6	7
Pascual-Leone (1983)	late concrete	formal and late concrete	pre-dialectical	dialectical			transcendental
Kegan (1994)	3 interpersonal	3/4	4 institutional	5
Loevinger (1998)	conformist-conscientious	conscientious	individualistic	autonomous integrated
Cook-Greuter (1990)	3/4	4	4/5	5	5/6	6	states of consciousness

Journal of Adult Development........................................................................................................................................ 3

Miller & Gook-Greuter, 1994.......................................................................................................................................... 1

Miller & West, 2000........................................................................................................................................................ 1

Miller and Cook-Greuter (1994)...................................................................................................................................... 1

Sinnott, 2000, 2001. ....................................................................................................................................................... 1

Wilber (2000) ............................................................................................................................................................. 2, 6

Wilber's (2000................................................................................................................................................................. 1

Index