Human development across the lifespan (I of VIII)

My ambitious quest in my next seven posts

Yesterday I was able to finalize my piece of thinking and writing about the human perinatal self — and the stage of life from our conception to about a year after our birth. So, as previously promised, I’m going to begin to lay out my model of ideal human development across the lifespan.

This will take us into the heart of what I symbolically call the New Florence. The New Florence is about the pursuit of excellence — especially psychospiritual excellence and both historical and contemporary cultural excellence — in our modern pluralistic free societies. In my view, a model of ideal human development across the lifespan is vital to our pursuit of excellence. Even foundational. So it’s time for me to get on with it.

Since I’m not going to be doing quotations, documentation, or attributions within the seven posts, let me throw out here in this post the names of the thinkers I’ve relied on. Along with a few brief statements about my approach. Apologies for the intellectual complexity in this post, but it’s kind of a necessity and I’m keeping it very brief.

First, I’ve done something I don’t think anyone else has ever done. I’ve taken the seven “ages” most of us would think of: the babe, the toddler, the child, the youth, the rising adult, the midlifer, and the elder. And I’ve taken the “stages” in the similar and overlapping paradigms of the five thinkers whom I regard as the five leading developmentalists in human history: Clare Graves, Jane Loevinger, Jenny Wade, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and philosopher Ken Wilber. And I’ve merged the two. I’ve combined the ages and the stages.

(Jenny Wade)

This creates a few limitations and problems. There are some insights you don’t have when you merge ages and stages. And this approach certainly wouldn’t work in professional academic psychology.

However, I’ve found that merging stages into ages opens up a point of view that is quite remarkable. It makes information about our development across the lifespan simple and accessible and therefore quite useful. Certainly it’s a narrative we can follow much more easily than thinking about ages and stages separately. (Something I’ve always found difficult.) And it provides us an ideal model for our lifetime growth that we’ve never had before.

You’ll soon be able to judge all this for yourself. I hope this approach enriches your life.

In addition, for the early years, I’ve relied quite a bit on Margaret Mahler. For midlife and even the rising-adult years, I’ve drawn from Daniel Levinson and the popular writer Gail Sheehy. And through Ken Wilber, I’ve picked up notions from Jean Piaget, Sri Aurobindo, Michael Commons and Francis Richards, and Jean Gebser.

(Jane Loevinger)

I’ve read and drawn insights from many developmental psychology textbooks, for sure. These generally cover the first twenty years of life and don’t go beyond it. And like most academic psychology these days, developmental psychology focuses on the human being as a physical organism and has no room for consciousness much less the soul. Despite this, it’s essential.

(Susanne Cook-Greuter)

Next, five huge caveats:

1. You can imagine how difficult it was to develop this. It’s been an ambitious undertaking across many years. And you can imagine how much boldness and audacity it takes to present it publicly. Who the heck am I to take this on? But, hey, nobody else has. Somebody’s got to. I assure you that I do so with a great deal of humility.

2. While I’ve read about 4,000 books about psychology, consciousness, spirituality, and human development, I remain a layperson, perhaps a lay expert. I began my professional career at age 22, in 1988, as a researcher and journalist in these fields, with the internationally-influential Brain-Mind Bulletin. I’ve been thinking and reading about these things ever since. But I am a writer, not a psychologist.

3. I’ve tried to make it as simple and accessible as possible. While trying to adhere to the very best views that I could find, I’m not trying to attain the standards of professional academic scholarship.

4. This model will deal with ideal development. I won’t be focused on clinical psychology in these seven posts, nor developmental disabilities. I care passionately about both, but they won’t be my focus in these posts.

5. It is almost impossible to discuss these stages and ignore metaphysics. I do so in the most ecumenical and inclusive way that I know how to.

   

   Finally, I’d note that I rely on experiential accounts of early life experiences from Arthur Janov’s Primal Therapy patients, from many thousands of Stanislav Grof’s clients’ and workshop attendees’ deep-breathing and psychedelic sessions since the 1950s, and from the hypnosis sessions of psychological thinkers and practitioners like David Chamberlain, Ernest Rossi, David Cheek, and Thomas Verny.

   These accounts remain controversial. They enter into complex questions of consciousness and memory, including thorny issues in neuroscience. But I have personally experienced and profoundly and massively benefitted in therapeutic ways from reliving memories from very early in life — earlier than many theorists believe possible — and I stand firmly in the camp that finds these accounts valid. I stand firmly with Janov, Grof, Chamberlain, Rossi, Cheek, and Verny.

   As I post these seven posts in the weeks ahead, feel free to share your own views, add things you regard as important that I miss, and comment freely and frankly. No one has a monopoly on the truth about human development — that would be impossible — and certainly I do not. But I think you’ll find this an engaging intellectual adventure that enriches our lives — and that is my sole intent.

   Onward!

   Mike