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. 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.

Table of Contents:
Contents Prologue Part One: Evolutionary Truces One: The Unrecognized Genius of Jean Piaget Two: The Evolution of Moral Meaning-Making Three: The Constitutions of the Self Part Two: The Natural Emergencies of the Self Four: The Growth and Loss of the Incorporative Self Five: The Growth and Loss of the Impulsive Self Six: The Growth and Loss of the Imperial Self Seven: The Growth and Loss of the Interpersonal Self Eight: The Growth and Loss of the Institutional Self Nine: Natural Therapy References Index

About the Author :
Robert Kegan is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Review :
Kegan acknowledges a debt to Piaget, Kohlberg, and the psychoanalytic object-relations theorists. He regards his theory as a synthesis and extension of their views, resulting in a developmental theory that presents a unified conceptualization of affective, cognitive, and moral development. Individual chapters are devoted to each of six developmental stages--their growth and loss. The last chapter explores the implications of the theory for psychotherapy and for implementing growth in everyday life...The theory is elegant...There is much food for thought and many hypotheses for research in Kegan's book. If one has not appreciated the importance of meaning-making as a central concept in personality theorizing, the book might even propel one into the next stage. More likely, the reader will...obtain some important new insights. All in all I recommend the book highly. -- Seymour Epstein Contemporary Psychology Kegan's great contribution is his description of the powers and difficulties entailed in each of these bases for conducting relations with self and others and his systematizing of considerations involved in changing from one basis to another...Kegan's is indeed a provocative contribution! -- Guy E. Swanson American Journal of Education Replete with literary allusions and personal anecdotes, this scholarly and appealing discourse represents a fascinating appraisal of the evolution of the self, devoting particular attention to the role of environmental forces which may have crucial impact on the individual. It evaluates, compares, and contrasts the contributions of Piaget, Erikson, Freud, Kohlberg, and others in a refreshing and informative fashion. Written by a clinician, the book also proposes a thought-provoking metatheory of therapy and considers the topic of depression from an evolutionary orientation. [This work is] well articulated and comprehensive in scope. -- Lucille F. Halgin Library Journal A landmark book...[It] proposes to integrate thought and emotion in human development and I responded to it on this double level. Breathlessly I encountered all the disparate ideas I had had about human development in the last ten years, all under one single solidly constructed theoretical roof...It is a book about meaning-making which revises one's own meaning-making in very profound ways. -- Sophie Freud Lowenstein Review of Psychoanalytic Books