The Evolving Self
23 Sep 2024
The spirit is never at rest but always engaged in ever progressive motion, in giving itself a new form.
In The Evolving Self (Kegan, 1982), Kegan describes human being as a motion of meaning making. Motion is the key term here. It's not so much that we are static entities embedded in a world of objects that are isolated from us (objects to be read as those that are not us, i.e. things and other people). We are dynamic processes driven by the need to create meaning, and part of this process involves the creation of objects and a sense of reality that is coherent and meaningful to us. There isn't just a world out there that we passively receive and respond to. We are active agents in the creation of the world that we inhabit.
Kegan posits a "zone of mediation" where meaning is made. This is the "region" between stimulus and response. Our response to a stimulus depends on the structure of our zone of mediation. Thus, the same stimulus can elicit different responses from different people, because the structure of their zones of mediation are different. The technical term used by Kegan for this zone of mediation is subject-object balance. It is the meeting point between subject (self, I) and object (other, not-I). Thus, one's subject-object balance determines the nature of one's experience, or a sense of reality.
Moreover, the subject-object balance is not fixed permanently, but evolves over time. It is constantly developing, in motion. Since the subject-object balance determines the nature of one's experience, the evolution and transformation of the balance into new forms leads to a corresponding change in one's experience of the world. For example, a newborn with a relatively undeveloped subject-object balance experiences the world in a qualitatively different way from an adult with a more developed subject-object balance.
Kegan identifies six stable forms that the subject-object balance can take in between successive transformations:
Each stage is characterized by a different sense of reality. Stage 0 is the most primitive, there is no subject-object distinction at all. The self is embedded in its own world of immediate sensation and movements. In Stage 1, the self becomes capable of organizing and mediating its sensations and movements as perceptions and impulses. There is now a world out there that the self is able to perceive. However, the self is still embedded in its world of perceptions. Things exist only insofar as they are perceived. If an object is concealed, then it no longer exists.
The transtition from one stage to the next involves two sub-processes: differentiation and reintegration. Differentiation is the process of objectifying parts of the self that were previously undifferentiated. These parts enter the "field of vision" of the self, and the self is now able to hold them at a distance. In the transition from Stage 0 to Stage 1, the self differentiates its sensations and movements into the objects of perceptions and impulses. The second sub-process is reintegration. After differentiation, the self must reintegrate the objects that were differentiated in a way that is coherent with the new subject-object balance. The objects are relativized in such a way that does not result in a loss of the self's own distinct integrity.
Differentiation can be destabilizing because it involves a "breaking up" or "shedding" of the old subject-object balance, the old way of making sense. Fortunately, reintegration can help restore stability through the "reclaiming" or "reowning" of the objects that were differentiated. The motion of meaning making is thus characterized by successive differentiations and reintegrations, each leading to the emergence of a new subject-object balance that is "one-order higher" than the previous one.
In Stage 2, the self objectifies its perceptions and impulses as needs, interests, and wishes (Kegan calls these "enduring dispositions"). There is a sealing up of the self into a self-contained private entity, which experiences the world as a place where its needs and interests can be satisfied. In Stage 3, needs and interests are relativized in the context of the interpersonal, as the self begins to perceive others as separate selves with their own needs and interests. The self becomes embedded (and thus unable to transcend) in the interpersonal, where a "shared reality" emerges in which coordination of needs and interests is possible. Transcendence of the interpersonal occurs in Stage 4, where the interpersonal is objectified and the self becomes capable of coordinating multiple shared realities that are often conflicting. The self anchors itself in a particular identity or idealogy that serves as a framework for understanding and coordinating these shared realities. The highest stage, Stage 5, involves the objectification of the institutional and idealogical. The self becomes capable of seeing through the forms of the institutional and the idealogical, and, thus, is able to move across them without being bound by them. Moreover, the Stage 5 self is able to see through other people as individual self-systems, each with their own subject-object balance. All this contributes to a coherent sense of self that can be maintained across wildly different and varying social contexts.