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The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development
The Evolving Self focuses upon the most basic and universal of psychological problems--the individual's effort to make sense of experience, to make meaning of life. According to Robert Kegan, meaning-making is a lifelong activity that begins in earliest infancy and continues to evolve through a series of stages encompassing childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The Evolving Self describes this process of evolution in rich and human detail, concentrating especially on the internal experience of growth and transition, its costs and disruptions as well as its triumphs.
At the heart of our meaning-making activity, the book suggests, is the drawing and redrawing of the distinction between self and other. Using Piagetian theory in a creative new way to make sense of how we make sense of ourselves, Kegan shows that each meaning-making stage is a new solution to the lifelong tension between the universal human yearning to be connected, attached, and included, on the one hand, and to be distinct, independent, and autonomous on the other. The Evolving Self is the story of our continuing negotiation of this tension. It is a book that is theoretically daring enough to propose a reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex and clinically concerned enough to suggest a variety of fresh new ways to treat those psychological complaints that commonly arise in the course of development.
Kegan is an irrepressible storyteller, an impassioned opponent of the health-and-illness approach to psychological distress, and a sturdy builder of psychological theory. His is an original and distinctive new voice in the growing discussion of human development across the life span.
At the heart of our meaning-making activity, the book suggests, is the drawing and redrawing of the distinction between self and other. Using Piagetian theory in a creative new way to make sense of how we make sense of ourselves, Kegan shows that each meaning-making stage is a new solution to the lifelong tension between the universal human yearning to be connected, attached, and included, on the one hand, and to be distinct, independent, and autonomous on the other. The Evolving Self is the story of our continuing negotiation of this tension. It is a book that is theoretically daring enough to propose a reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex and clinically concerned enough to suggest a variety of fresh new ways to treat those psychological complaints that commonly arise in the course of development.
Kegan is an irrepressible storyteller, an impassioned opponent of the health-and-illness approach to psychological distress, and a sturdy builder of psychological theory. His is an original and distinctive new voice in the growing discussion of human development across the life span.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Robert Kegan
15 books138 followersRobert Kegan is a developmental psychologist, consulting in the area of adult development, adult learning, professional development and organization development.
He taught at Harvard University for 40 years until his retirement in 2016.
The recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, his thirty years of research and writing on adult development have contributed to the recognition that ongoing psychological development after adolescence is at once possible and necessary to meet the demands of modern life.
His seminal books, The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads, have been published in several languages throughout the world.
He taught at Harvard University for 40 years until his retirement in 2016.
The recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, his thirty years of research and writing on adult development have contributed to the recognition that ongoing psychological development after adolescence is at once possible and necessary to meet the demands of modern life.
His seminal books, The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads, have been published in several languages throughout the world.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
January 26, 2019
Kegan spent his career at Harvard studying psychological development. The Evolving Self outlines his model for human psychological development. I found the model insightful and the writing tight which is an unusual combination (you usually get one of the two, at best). The book focuses on the process of meaning-making, a lifelong activity that begins in infancy and continues through adulthood, a contrast to Freudian understandings of psychology which tend to be more static and focus on childhood experiences while downplaying the ability for people to continue to evolve through life.
The heart of meaning-making is the drawing and re-drawing of the distinction between self and other. I picked up the book after reading a summary which explained that many adults get stuck at Stage 3 (communal) where they identify themselves and what is right/wrong with their immediate community and are unable to transition to Stage 4 (systematic) where they can see justice, responsibility, and principles as something systemic and outside of their immediate social group. This rang true as did the observation that many get stuck in the Stage 4-Stage 5 transition and fall into a nihilistic worldview because they can’t transition from a systemic to a more fluid understanding of self and other.
I’ve found Kegan’s five-stage framework helpful for better understanding my own choices and the choices around me and understanding how to discuss those choices through a lens that makes sense to them.
The heart of meaning-making is the drawing and re-drawing of the distinction between self and other. I picked up the book after reading a summary which explained that many adults get stuck at Stage 3 (communal) where they identify themselves and what is right/wrong with their immediate community and are unable to transition to Stage 4 (systematic) where they can see justice, responsibility, and principles as something systemic and outside of their immediate social group. This rang true as did the observation that many get stuck in the Stage 4-Stage 5 transition and fall into a nihilistic worldview because they can’t transition from a systemic to a more fluid understanding of self and other.
I’ve found Kegan’s five-stage framework helpful for better understanding my own choices and the choices around me and understanding how to discuss those choices through a lens that makes sense to them.
May 17, 2015
I have read this book about five times. It continues to influence my thinking and lead me towards integration, of ideas, theories and the practice of psychology with human evolution.
October 4, 2010
Read for my Adult Development class. Not a light read at all but thought provoking if you can get over rereading a paragraph three times.
March 11, 2019
I read this book because David Chapman (https://meaningness.com/further-reading) recommended it as:
No radical personal transformations on my end but an interesting framework and a few other neat points:
- Emotional Conflict as a means of internal conversation.
- Depressive sleep disturbance, people reliably sleep a lot (hypersomniac) or the don't sleep much at all (hypervigilant) as a defence mechanism. If the world is dangerous you need to stay awake if the self is dangerous you need to stay asleep.
- Also people with eating disorders deriving all their meaning/self-worth from physical appearance so anorexia can be seen as triumph of self control over very basic impulses. an interesting perspective. I certainly don't have that much self control. :)
Robert Kegan’s The Evolving Self is the most sophisticated explanation I’ve found of the ways we relate self and other, and the ways we relate to our selves.
The book strikes many readers as a major revelation. It’s not only intellectually fascinating, making sense of so much of our lives—it’s also useful in practice as a guide to radical personal transformation.
Other readers find nothing meaningful in it. Tentatively, I suspect that’s not because they miss the point, but because Kegan’s framework simply doesn’t apply to everyone.
No radical personal transformations on my end but an interesting framework and a few other neat points:
- Emotional Conflict as a means of internal conversation.
- Depressive sleep disturbance, people reliably sleep a lot (hypersomniac) or the don't sleep much at all (hypervigilant) as a defence mechanism. If the world is dangerous you need to stay awake if the self is dangerous you need to stay asleep.
- Also people with eating disorders deriving all their meaning/self-worth from physical appearance so anorexia can be seen as triumph of self control over very basic impulses. an interesting perspective. I certainly don't have that much self control. :)
August 10, 2017
This is not a light read. The book takes awhile to get through but is worth the effort. Kegan presents evolutionary psychology as the outcome of Piaget's stages of development. He carefully constructs and describes the stages of the leaders of the field and then carefully pulls each stage together to describe them as a stage or transition a person is working through in their search to make meaning in their lives. Due to the subject of this book, it is not necessary to be in the field of psychology to understand the principals within it; although it is fair to say that those within the filed may have a better go of reading this.
As someone seeking a degree in Biological Anthropology, I was incredibly surprised to the the external cultures one lives in as well as the family and intimate unit, presented with a cultural understanding as well. There is something for everyone who reads this book and I will add this to my shelves to use in my own life.
I recommend this book to anyone, but want to stress that it requires work and dedicated time.
As someone seeking a degree in Biological Anthropology, I was incredibly surprised to the the external cultures one lives in as well as the family and intimate unit, presented with a cultural understanding as well. There is something for everyone who reads this book and I will add this to my shelves to use in my own life.
I recommend this book to anyone, but want to stress that it requires work and dedicated time.
October 21, 2009
This is a stunning work, not so easy to read (it took me reading it twice to really absorb the genius of it). Kegan re-contextualises Piaget, bringing out his passion for Human Emergence, and then goes on to build on that, in his wake showing why Freud's views are completely dated, and how we could revolutionise field of Psychology: from the science that explains how to 'fix' our lives by going back to illusory security, to understanding our lives as a process, driven by the mysterious drive we have to evolve.
October 5, 2017
This is a brilliant book merging the philosophical, psychological and biological ways of understanding human development. It will not be for everyone — its not a light read and particularly for those not already steeped in psychology it requires patience and some hard work. It was worth the work though as Kegan unveils a compassionate and engrossing look at how human beings grow in our ability to make meaning in the world and what it means to really 'meet someone where they are.'
May 15, 2022
So insight-dense that I had to limit myself to one chapter a day. Will read again.
April 5, 2020
If you consider yourself a smart dude, you won’t like this book. Your grammar skills will be tested to the extreme by the sophisticated words used inside. I was personally challenged to understand what the author was trying to say throughout most of the text. On top of that, I often skipped sections and felt asleep. Not intentionally, but because I wasn’t simply getting what Rober wanted to say and my attention quickly wandered.
Yet, the elegant, but complex words and statements, were not enough to stop me from finishing the book. What Robert Kegan gathered in The Evolving Self is staggering. As a fan of human psychology and a lifelong learner of personal behavior, reading this book was like giving candy to a baby. I was able to understand so much about how the minds of the infants work that it will be hard to tell you all about it in this summary. You simply have to read the book. But be warned, the text is really complicated to grasp. First, I thought it was just me. But once I read reviews I realized that I’m not the only one struggling with sentences like:
“But how did our four-year-olds come to find themselves in this predicament in the first place? How did they get embedded in their perceptions? Why do they get disembedded? And what does disembedding do to the subject-object balance?”
Key takeaway?
You’re not the relationship with other people. You’re not the stuff you have around. You simply have these things. If you give too much attention to the objects around, they’ll cage you. You need to separate yourself from your environment (the stuff around) to find meaning.
Read more:
https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...
Yet, the elegant, but complex words and statements, were not enough to stop me from finishing the book. What Robert Kegan gathered in The Evolving Self is staggering. As a fan of human psychology and a lifelong learner of personal behavior, reading this book was like giving candy to a baby. I was able to understand so much about how the minds of the infants work that it will be hard to tell you all about it in this summary. You simply have to read the book. But be warned, the text is really complicated to grasp. First, I thought it was just me. But once I read reviews I realized that I’m not the only one struggling with sentences like:
“But how did our four-year-olds come to find themselves in this predicament in the first place? How did they get embedded in their perceptions? Why do they get disembedded? And what does disembedding do to the subject-object balance?”
Key takeaway?
You’re not the relationship with other people. You’re not the stuff you have around. You simply have these things. If you give too much attention to the objects around, they’ll cage you. You need to separate yourself from your environment (the stuff around) to find meaning.
Read more:
https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...
March 18, 2008
I am so glad I came across this book. It is performing this crucial role in my life right now, providing exactly the ideas i needed to allow conversation between the stuff I worry about in my personal life and the problems I'm trying to work out in my writing. I think everyone should read it.
Kegan's topic is development, but unlike most developmental psychologists, he doesn't stop at adolescence. He breaks down all the data collected by his predecessors to build a convincing argument of what's going on when, say, an infant begins to realize that a toy hidden under a box is still "there," or when a seven year old, who recently accepted the idea that a stuffed animal could turn into Barney, takes on a nerdy sneer and starts critiquing the unrealistic portrayal of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In Kegan's system, these modes of relating to the world are determined by the person's stage in the life process of defining the self against the exterior world. In other words, who is the "I" that I cannot stand outside of and think about?
Most interestingly, Kegan continues the system into adulthood. It's some serious food for thought for anyone who isn't convinced that they or most of the adults around them are done growing up. I think it's one of the great systematic books of philosophy I've ever read.
This was one of those rare books that I just devoured. Kegan comes through as this caring, thoughtful, funny guy, and his prose goes down like butter.
P.S. This isn't new age hoity-toity, the guy's a Harvard don.
Kegan's topic is development, but unlike most developmental psychologists, he doesn't stop at adolescence. He breaks down all the data collected by his predecessors to build a convincing argument of what's going on when, say, an infant begins to realize that a toy hidden under a box is still "there," or when a seven year old, who recently accepted the idea that a stuffed animal could turn into Barney, takes on a nerdy sneer and starts critiquing the unrealistic portrayal of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In Kegan's system, these modes of relating to the world are determined by the person's stage in the life process of defining the self against the exterior world. In other words, who is the "I" that I cannot stand outside of and think about?
Most interestingly, Kegan continues the system into adulthood. It's some serious food for thought for anyone who isn't convinced that they or most of the adults around them are done growing up. I think it's one of the great systematic books of philosophy I've ever read.
This was one of those rare books that I just devoured. Kegan comes through as this caring, thoughtful, funny guy, and his prose goes down like butter.
P.S. This isn't new age hoity-toity, the guy's a Harvard don.
January 4, 2020
Really powerful ideas about what it means to be human (to be one who makes meaning), how that process of development defines our maturation and psychology. Rather than a given mode of thinking, we are best understood by being in a state of change, evolution, growth. It’s not the specific or current content, but the process of meaning making that we all share and that defines our being.
I thought his stages of development, the idea of equilibrium, and the discussion of transition between states (and the loss it includes as well as the new objectivity it gains) was fascinating. I also think there is a lot to be considered by those who make up the environments within which one develops (e.g., parents/institutions/workplaces/religions) for how they support development (both by validating and contradicting a person).
The challenge of the book was its dense-ness. Quite difficult to get through. I had to re-read passages often and was glad I did because it was really good once I “got it,” but it was tough. Couldn’t read if at all tired, and honestly it helped me fall asleep a couple times.
I would love to see more hard data validating the theory. I’ve read up externally on critiques of the theory and they sum essentially to “it’s too complex to be accessible by most” (amen) and “it’s too complex to be easily tested in large scale quantitative ways.” Makes sense. The qualitative, theoretical, and logical nature of it is very strong - it rings true - but some better data wouldn’t go amiss.
I thought his stages of development, the idea of equilibrium, and the discussion of transition between states (and the loss it includes as well as the new objectivity it gains) was fascinating. I also think there is a lot to be considered by those who make up the environments within which one develops (e.g., parents/institutions/workplaces/religions) for how they support development (both by validating and contradicting a person).
The challenge of the book was its dense-ness. Quite difficult to get through. I had to re-read passages often and was glad I did because it was really good once I “got it,” but it was tough. Couldn’t read if at all tired, and honestly it helped me fall asleep a couple times.
I would love to see more hard data validating the theory. I’ve read up externally on critiques of the theory and they sum essentially to “it’s too complex to be accessible by most” (amen) and “it’s too complex to be easily tested in large scale quantitative ways.” Makes sense. The qualitative, theoretical, and logical nature of it is very strong - it rings true - but some better data wouldn’t go amiss.
November 24, 2018
I feel like running a victory lap. This was a really difficult book to read because it was so packed full of ideas and concepts. It’s a work of genus though and thoroughly worth it. So much of this work made a lot things make sense. Like why workplaces can be so dispiriting and why some people more than others are sooooo difficult to connect with. Let alone why personal troughs happen when and how they do. I would be fascinated to find out how much has been validated and how this connects to much of the work in positive psychology.
January 5, 2020
This may end up being the most influential thing I've read in my adult life. I feel drawn to this book in ways I can't even describe yet. It's so rich, I think I could read it many times and still be finding new wisdom. In fact, I plan to.
March 9, 2013
Reading the book is a slog for a non-psych major, but the insights are worth the work.
January 10, 2019
Very hard to read, but worth the effort.
March 5, 2019
One of the best ever about this subject.
January 5, 2020
Gostei muito de ler este livro. Gostei em primeiro lugar da honestidade de Kegan que em vários momentos deixa claro que toda a sua teoria pode estar errada, pois de certa forma não passa de pseudociência. Isto é, não há evidências suficientes para confirmar ou refutar a sua teoria de que a personalidade evolui na sua tentativa natural de fazer sentido com e no mundo que a rodeia. Ainda assim, faz sentido. Os seis estágios talvez não sejam seis, talvez a transição nem sempre tenha que ocorrer de forma linear, talvez os estágios não sejam unidimensionais, talvez até nem existam da forma como descrita, mas ainda assim parecem ser uma imagem lógica viável para compreender o “ego”. Também gostei da discussão final sobre a forma como o terapeuta deve encarar a terapia. Em suma, um livro interessante sobre o desenvolvimento da personalidade, desde a “entrada” no mundo até à vida adulta.
June 14, 2022
This thus far has been the most influential work on self development I have read. Ofcourse it coincided with my current sense of self and world view based off prior reading.
The articulation of Object-subject relations comes alive in this text the used of stories to relay developmental stages was/is master class.
The beginning three quarters of the book is a gentle exploration of the concept. Kegan one feel is conducting a therapy session in his prose and patience with the reader. Well done.
The last quarter was less poignant but indeed the points had struck home by this point.
Life changing this book. Master class.
The articulation of Object-subject relations comes alive in this text the used of stories to relay developmental stages was/is master class.
The beginning three quarters of the book is a gentle exploration of the concept. Kegan one feel is conducting a therapy session in his prose and patience with the reader. Well done.
The last quarter was less poignant but indeed the points had struck home by this point.
Life changing this book. Master class.
January 24, 2019
Would make a great textbook for psychologists/counsellors/therapists with lots of anecdotal examples of differing developmental stages. Never is there a concise or clear description of each stage to work from, instead the reader must draw it out of anecdotes and the prose of kegan. It's like kegan viewed this as more of a novel, needing to string the reader along and give only tidbits at a time so that the reader could stay engaged. Not what I like in my non-fiction books, especially if I'm reading for fun.
October 10, 2022
A riveting read on human cognitive development that emphasizes the evolving nature of one's relationship to the world through continuous differentiation from and inclusion with other people.
I found the chapter on natural therapy (i.e., the supporting functions that long-term relationships such as family or community ties provide the growing individual) and the discussion on the limitations of modern (Western) societies in providing such long-term embedding contexts particularly illuminating.
I found the chapter on natural therapy (i.e., the supporting functions that long-term relationships such as family or community ties provide the growing individual) and the discussion on the limitations of modern (Western) societies in providing such long-term embedding contexts particularly illuminating.
July 31, 2019
This book took a false start to be ready for but once I committed to it I was hooked. While previously unfamiliar with Kegan’s work and the constructive-development approach to psychology and development this book has reshaped some of my thinking but more importantly given me a language and framework to consolidate meaning I have already been making.
December 14, 2019
the content is great, though hard for me to get through. He talks in a convoluted fashion that makes digestion difficult. Wishing there was a transcription easier to understand. I prefer reading articles on his discovery on 5 stages. Also curious about stages beyond 5 when we move to witness consciousness.
January 24, 2020
An interesting snapshot in the history of cognitive developmental psychology, of which I know very little. I'm not sure where this book lives in the development of this field, but it seems a little too old and a little to friendly with Freud to be up-to-date. I read it to better understand the idea of subject-object relationships, and for that it was helpful!
January 6, 2024
This is a love hate relationship. It had some glimmers of excitement and humor. A times it was intellectually stimulating. However, it dragged on a lot. Read like a textbook at times. Probably very useful for those studying the field. It had some interesting moments but most of it was just tough to get through. I say this humbly as I’m not a psychology expert but it read like its dated because of its vocabulary.
December 18, 2018
I know this book has been around a long time and I probably should have read it long ago...but I am glad I got to it eventually. It gave me lots to think about in terms of human development and how we evolve to make meaning as we work through the tensions between differentiation and connection.
June 3, 2018
Challenging and dense read for those interested in adult development, and the process of meaning making.
December 29, 2018
A seminole work though less practical than some of his others.
September 15, 2022
Nice
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 4, 2023
An essential read for anyone interested in understanding adult development. It’s a bit dense at times, but full of interesting insights into our meaning making.
September 15, 2023
Have absolutely no idea what I read. Draining.
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