OK. It has been some time since I put thoughts here. I've been in recovery. After quadruple heart surgery one year ago, I have been getting back into the swing of things and had to decide to let some things simply wait.
And I'm glad that I've had time to reflect and think about what is truly important. My kids and friends reminded me that sharing the insights about type development would be important to do for those who really care about such topics as I've been pretty focused on this issue for some time.
As I shared earlier, development is best viewed int he context of what we know about development in general. I feel that Susanne Cook-Greuter's work "Nine Levels of Increasing Embrace" says a great deal about how to frame and consider psychological development and I think that Robert Keagn is on to some profound principles--especially in In Over Our Heads: Managing The Demands of Modern Life. On the shoulders of these brilliant thinkers we can peer into the world of type development with a greater respect for the psychological system at work.
Peter Geyer recently reminded me of a line from Jung's work, Psychology and Alchemy, in which he wrote: "If we think about psychological functions as arranged in a circle, then the most differentiated function is usually the carrier of the ego, and, equally regularly, has an auxiliary function attached to it. The inferior function, on the other had is unconscious, and for that reason is projected into a non-ego. It too has an auxiliary function."
What are you to make to this? If Greuter is right that she has "outlined one possible path from the unconscious, undifferentiatedsymbiosis of the newborn to the conscious experience of embeddedness in the universe ofmature adults, that is from prerational to metarational and from preverbal ignorance (= not
knowing) to beginning postsymbolic wisdom. Much freedom is gained when people realize the
essential inter-connectedness of all phenomena and the constructed aspects of boundaries,
objects, our self-identities and our stories about life and nature. Much suffering is alleviated
when the automatic habits of mind and heart are unlearned and uncoupled from memory (what
was) and desires (what ought to be) and replaced by mindful, non-evaluative attention to what is
- now." (BOLD, Underline, Italics are mine).
And if Kegan is right that our primary task is "not to be had" by our psychologies and that what is required is a mindfulness that allows us to dance with our past, our unconscious personages, and to live fully in the present, he (Kegan) and she (Greuter) are pointing to the same truth. Jung is suggesting that there is an architecture to it all and the more we recognize that the structure serves the self (mind), the better off we will be.
I am fond of sharing that Myers suggested we would be better off if we "focused perception on the world and judgment on ourselves." And I think she is hinting at the same profound insight. Being mindful, open to the present and allowing yourself to experience life as it is, will lead to more satisfying choices. Because of psychological type, we know that there are at least four lenses for seeing and four lenses for making sense of experience and the question is whether we will be wise enough to learn, activate, and attend to them in our lives.
