Adult Development

Everyone knows that as children age and grow up they develop. They learn how to talk, how to reason, how to manipulate their parents and how to be sociable. But development doesn’t cease when someone becomes 18 or 21. Adult development theory aims to explain how adults can continue to develop as they mature – though not everyone chooses to do so.

Development takes place in stages, with each stage encompassing and superseding the prior stages – so nothing is lost. The father of adult development, Robert Kegan, saw the shift from one stage to the next as a shift from subject to object. At the early stage the individual is identified with something, after the shift the same individual “has” that something. For example small children are often identified with their feelings – they are angry or hungry or in pain. Later the child becomes someone who has angry feeling, who feels hungry or who has pain. Note that the anger, hunger and pain have not disappeared, their relationship to the individual is what has changed. Instead of ‘being hunger’ they are now an individual who ‘has hunger’; the shift is from subject (being identified) to object (something possessed). There is a stage of adult development referred to as the Expert Stage. In this stage individuals identify themselves as an expert in some domain. When they transcend this stage they identify as someone who has an expertise; again the shift from subject to object.

Adult development can be observed in different domains, or along different lines of development. The main lines of development are cognitive, emotional, spiritual, social, relational, moral and physical. These are broad categories and it is not clear whether, for example, mathematical development and  linguistic development should be considered as separate lines of development or considered aspects of cognitive development. Regardless of the precise definitions of the different lines, the point I wish to emphasise here is that development along the different lines is largely independent. By this I mean that development on one line does not mean there will be a corresponding development along any other line. People who are well developed on one line of development may not be well developed on other lines. An archetypal example is the absent minded professor who has superb cognitive development but is socially and emotionally inept.

Some people are endowed with a gift on a particular line. The gift may have given them a head start along that line, or just the ability to develop in that direction very quickly. For example many academics have a cognitive gift and outstanding therapists often have a gift that enables them to understand other people emotionally. Another example, relevant to what I wish to communicate about, are people who are well developed spiritually, often as a result of a spiritual gift of some kind. It is often assumed that such people will also be morally, emotionally and socially advanced – but actually there is no reason for this to be the case. I guess that this presumption comes from regarding people such as Christ or Buddha as perfect in all ways. Actually the very large number of spiritual teachers who have exploited their students sexually or financially is clear evidence that advancement along the spiritual line does not correlate with advances along the moral, relationship or social lines. So the frequent assumptions made about spiritual teachers are simply incorrect. There are likely to be other factors involved in their misbehaviour, as described here.

The fact that a Professor of mathematics is unable to relate to her teenage children says nothing about her ability as a mathematician. In the same way, the fact that a spiritual teacher misbehaves in some moral, emotional or relational way does not invalidate their spiritual teachings nor their spiritual accomplishments. Their spiritual development is, like yours and mine, independent of their moral, emotional and relational development and behaviour. If an individual is advanced along their spiritual line of development then their spiritual teachings are likely to be very helpful.

Further Reading

Robert Keegan’s books are dense, not an easy read. But I found them worth the effort. The first The Evolving Self published in 1982, sets out his understanding of the way that human beings evolve, first as children, then as adolescents and then as adults. Easier to follow is his book  In over our heads: the mental demands of modern life published in 1994. In this he explains that people at different stages of adult development find it hard to understand people at a higher stage. Since it is people at higher stages of development who tend to become therapists, consultants and coaches this explains a lot of the difficulties associated with those professions.

Probably the best expositions on lines of development are in the writings of Ken Wilber. (However a word of warning. Although I learned a great deal from Wilber, he does not come to the same conclusions as me regarding spiritual development and spiritual teachers. Indeed I do not know of anyone else who has applied adult development ideas to spiritual teachers. ) Chapter 2 of Wilber’s Integral Psychology is devoted to lines of development. In his Integral Spirituality the lines are explained further – again in Chapter 2. In the latter book Wilber is  careful to explain the difference between stages of development and states of consciousness – in part because in his earlier writings he confused them. Individuals can experience any state of consciousness at any stage of development; thus a relatively undeveloped person can experience a state of enlightenment, union with the Divine. This does not mean the person is enlightened. There are many stages of development, each encompassing the previous stages, and transition from one stage to the next usually takes a significant time, years rather than days. In general someone at a later stage of development would find it easier to access the enlightened state of consciousness.

For a less academic approach to adult development I would recommend Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership by William R. Torbert. In this book Torbert refers to different stages of adult development as action logics and shows how they relate to the way people make sense of the world and choose to act.  You can find out what stage of development you are in by completing the Leadership Development Profile used by Harthill (https://www.harthill.co.uk/). However note that there is a charge for the process and it requires someone familiar with the Harthill system to sponsor you.