Роберт Кеган: Психолог развития и теории сознания

American psychologist

Robert Kegan (born August 24, 1946) is an American developmental psychologist. He is a licensed psychologist and practicing therapist, lectures to professional and lay audiences, and consults in the area of professional development and organization development. He was the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He taught there for forty years until his retirement in 2016. He was also Educational Chair for the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education and the co director for the Change Leadership Group.

Kegan's book In Over Our Heads (1994) extends his perspective on psychological development formulated in The Evolving Self. What he earlier called "evolutionary truces" of increasing subject–object complexity are now called "orders of consciousness". The book explores what happens, and how people feel, when new orders of consciousness emerge, or fail to emerge, in various domains. These domains include parenting (families), partnering (couples), working (companies), healing (psychotherapies), and learning (schools). He connects the idea of orders of consciousness with the idea of a hidden curriculum of everyday life. Kegan repeatedly points to the suffering that can result when people are presented with challenging tasks and expectations without the necessary support to master them. In addition, he now distinguishes between orders of consciousness (cognitive complexity) and styles (stylistic diversity). Theories of style describe "preferences about the way we know, rather than competencies or capacities in our knowing, as is the case with subject–object principles". The book continues the same combination of detailed storytelling and theoretical analysis found in his earlier book, but presents a "more complex bi theoretical approach" rather than the single subject–object theory he presented in The Evolving Self. In the last chapter, "On Being Good Company for the Wrong Journey", Kegan warns that it is easy to misconceive the nature of the mental transformations that a person needs or seeks to make. Whatever the virtues of higher orders of consciousness, no one should expect us to master them when we are not ready or when we are without the necessary support; and we are unlikely to be helped by someone who assumes that we are engaged at a certain order of consciousness when we are not. He ends with an epilogue on the value of passionate engagement and the creative unpredictability of human lives. In Over Our Heads has been cited favorably by Morton Deutsch, John Heron, David A. Kolb, and Jack Mezirow.

The book An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization (2016) was co authored by Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, Matthew L. Miller, Andy Fleming, and Deborah Helsing. The authors connect the concept of the deliberately developmental organization (DDO) with adult development theory and argue that creating conditions for employees to successfully navigate through the transitions from socialized mind to self authoring mind to self transforming mind (described in Kegan's earlier works) "has a business value", at least in part because they expect demand for employees with more complex mindsets "will intensify in the years ahead". Three different and successful DDOs are introduced and analyzed throughout the book. These DDOs are Next Jump, Bridgewater Associates, and The Decurion Corporation. Kegan, along with his fellow co authors, explore the successful business practices that promote a culture where individual growth and personal satisfaction can flourish. The book elaborates on three concepts that the authors believe to be critical to the success of a DDO. These three concepts are what they refer to as "edge", "groove", and "home". The "edge" of a DDO is the drive of the organization to uncover weaknesses and to develop. The "groove" is the practices or "flow" of the company from day to day that foster development. "Home" is the supportive community within a DDO that allows people to be vulnerable and trust each other. The authors emphasize that underlying each of these parts of a DDO is the idea that adults are truly capable of continuous improvement and development. The authors also explain that for DDOs, the goals of adult development and business success are not mutually exclusive, but both ultimately become one objective.

Adult education professor Ann K. Brooks criticized Kegan's book In Over Our Heads. She claimed that Kegan fell victim to a cultural "myopia" that "perfectly reflects the rationalist values of modern academia". Brooks also said that Kegan excluded "the possibility of a developmental trajectory aimed at increased connection with others". Ruthellen Josselson, in contrast, said that Kegan "has made the most heroic efforts" to balance individuality and connection with others in his work. In an interview with Otto Scharmer in 2000, Kegan expressed self criticism toward his earlier writings; Kegan told Scharmer: "I can go back and look at things I've written and think, ugh, this is a pretty raw and distorted way of stating what I think I understand much better now. "—Basseches and Mascolo said that they "embrace both Piagetian models of psychological change and their organization into justifications of what constitutes epistemic progress (the development of more adequate knowledge)". However, Basseches and Mascolo rejected theories of global developmental stages, such as those in Kegan's earlier writings, in favor of a more finely differentiated conception of development that focuses on "the emergence of specific skills, experiences, and behavioral dispositions over the course of psychotherapy as a developmental process".

Full Harvard class session taught by Kegan included.