Integral Psychology

Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy

Year: 2000 · Format: Book

Description

Systematic attempt to cross-index dozens of Western developmental-psychology models (Piaget, Kohlberg, Loevinger, Graves, and others) against contemplative stage models within the AQAL framework; includes Wilber's widely reproduced comparative charts.

In-Depth Overview

Integral Psychology is the most reference-like of Wilber's core books: it cross-indexes over a hundred developmental models — Western psychological (Piaget, Kohlberg, Loevinger, Erikson, Gilligan, Kegan, Graves), depth-psychological (Neumann), cultural-historical (Gebser), and contemplative (Vedantic koshas, Kabbalah, Aurobindo, Teresa of Ávila, and others) — against a single underlying set of developmental "waves." The organizing distinction is between developmental lines or streams (cognitive, moral, affective, aesthetic, interpersonal, spiritual, and so on, each of which can develop somewhat independently of the others — someone can be cognitively very advanced and morally undeveloped, for instance) and the waves or levels those lines pass through. Layered on top of lines and waves are states of consciousness (temporary — anyone can have a peak experience regardless of developmental level), quadrants (the same four-perspective distinction from SES, here applied specifically to psychology), and horizontal types (discrete personality or style variables, such as Myers-Briggs types or gender, that cut across all of the above rather than ranking on it). A self system navigates all of these simultaneously, identifying with, defending, and integrating material at whatever levels and along whatever lines it is currently working through.

The bulk of the book's length is in its appendices — the widely reproduced comparative charts lining up dozens of named developmental models side by side against Wilber's own scale. It's written more for psychology and clinical/therapy professionals than for a general audience, functioning as the technical reference volume behind the more narrative treatments in SES and A Brief History of Everything — useful to consult when you want to know exactly where a specific psychologist's model (say, Kohlberg's moral stages, or Loevinger's ego development) is claimed to map onto Wilber's own framework, rather than to read start to finish.

Notes

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