INTRODUCTION
 
This paper is a critical reflection on the nature of change using Ken Wilber’s integral theory for understanding how change may occur in a process of psychotherapy or clinical supervision.  Wilber occasionally reworks his material and republishes with new contexts, interpretations, applications.  However, I have largely found the core part of his work to remain the same.  As Wilber has recently published his latest book, “Finding Radical Wholeness: The Integral Path to Unity, Growth, and Delight” (2024), I decided to emulate Wilber by digging out a paper I had written a number of years ago and reworking it a little bit for presentation on my blog.  In this piece I engage with theories of cognitive development, learning, and reflective practice.  I conclude with an appreciation of Wilber’s Integral Theory, and an acknowledgment that change occurs within relationship through critical self reflection on assumptions.
 
 
ENERGY FOR CHANGE – A WITNESS TO HOPE
 
In developing his integral theory, Wilber (2001) produced a map of integral reality, bringing together the basic repeating patterns of reality.  He sees the developmental theorists producing consistent stories of the evolution of consciousness as a series of unfolding stages or waves.[1]  He identifies harmony between the theories whose stage sequences can be aligned across a common developmental space.”[2]  Wilber (2011) describes evolution of consciousness as a natural developmental process of change, navigated by the proximate self, the “I” (as opposed to the distal self, the “Me”).[3] 
 
The question is what motivation the proximate self has to disidentify with its existing level in the Great Nest?  Wilber refers us to Kegan to understand this further.  Kegan (1982) comments that it is much more than a theory of motivation … it is a theory of the life force itself and how we figure in it.[4]  Following Piaget, Kegan (1982) places the individual within a single energy system of all living things,[5] and points out that Piaget’s principal loyalty is to the ongoing conversation between the individuating organism and the world.[6]  This is marked by periods of dynamic stability, an evolutionary truce, followed by periods of instability and qualitatively new stability.[7]  Kegan (1982) posits this conversation as the fundamental motion in personality itself: activities of knowing and being; theory-making; and investments and commitments of the self.  He also comments that the same ongoing tension between self preservation and self-transformation is descriptive of the very activity of hope.[8]
 
Kegan (1982) then develops the concept of “motion” as evolutionary renegotiation, which research suggests is not a matter of cultural teaching, but of individual meaning-making.[9]  Later, he comments on psychological pain as being about resistance to the motion of life, a turning away from the crisis present in the transformation of meaning.[10]  This corroborates with Kegan’s (1982) comment that the work of the clinician is to lead the person in pain to face into the crisis as a move toward growth:[11]
… as his loyalty is to the person in her meaning-making, rather than to her stage or balance.  He is seeking to join the process of meaning-evolution, rather than solve the problems which are reflective of that process.[12]
 
 
PERSPECTIVAL CHANGE AND INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE
 
Mezirow (2009) identified ten phases of learning in the transformative process.[13]  Pivotal here are disorienting dilemmas – acute personal crises in which individuals meet an edge, reach their limits and search for what is missing from their lives.[14]  This is the beginning of Wilber’s (2001) “evolution of consciousness” where the self identifies with one stage of development, then disembeds from it in order to identify with a new stage of development.  What Mezirow (2009) adds is the context of change being critical reflection for transformative learning.[15]  He says:
Meaning schemes may be transformed by becoming critically reflective of the assumptions supporting the content or process (or both) of problem solving.[16]
 
Cranton (1996) explores this in her discussion of critical reflection leading to transformation.[17]  She says: for perspective transformation to occur, we not only examine the content of our experiences, but we question why we are questioning (premise reflection).[18]  This is the core of Mezirow’s, Wilber’s and Kegan’s theories, that reflection attends to the justifications for one’s beliefs, and reflective action often involves overcoming situational, knowledge, and emotional constraints.[19]
 
Moon (1999) focuses on three key elements of reflective practice for personal development: self-awareness, self-improvement, and empowerment and emancipation.  In exploring self-awareness, she says most of the time we work to maintain the integrity and credibility of our cognitive structures of understanding.[20]  Self-improvement, then, builds upon self-awareness and Moon (1999) presents Progoff’s work as an example of how intensive journaling involves simultaneous processes of reflection and growth.  She then points up how the creative interaction between the person and the person’s self-development helps incorporate new realities into that self-development.[21]  Moon (1999) then draws out empowerment and emancipation from Friere’s process of ‘conscientization’, which is a process for change through engaging at depth with authentic feeling.[22]  Once this well of deep feeling has been activated, critical self reflection allows for a reassessment of one’s orientation to perceiving, knowing, believing, feeling, and acting.[23]
 
Wilber (2001) comments that what is needed is not just an integral theory, but also what he called Integral Transformative Practice: [exercising] body, mind, soul, and spirit in self, culture, and nature (all-level, all-quadrant).[24]  He understands that the more aspects of our being we simultaneously exercise, the more likely transformation to the next higher wave of the Great Nest will happen.[25]
 
 
FROM BOOMERITIS TO UNIVERSAL INTEGRALISM
 
Wilber (2011) then comes closer to identifying the very nature of the change when he outlines that many of the problems at one stage of development can only be defused by evolving to a higher level.[26]  He highlights the self as the locus of integration… responsible for balancing and integrating all of the levels, lines, and states in the individual.[27]  Wilber’s attention to Integral Transformative Practice resonates with what Mezirow values in critical self reflection on assumptions, as can be seen in Wilber’s (2006) Integral Life Practice Matrix[28].  In Spiral Dynamics, Beck & Cowan (2006) present six conditions for change leading to upward development.[29]  Pertinent to this reflection is condition 3: that dissonance is present as the current system meets new life conditions.[30]  This is similar to what Jullien (2004) refers to as the cleavage within the system.[31]
 
 
A similar dialectical process occurs in Damasio’s (2010) hypothesis on the evolution of a capacity for reflection under homeostatic impulse.[32]  He says cultural developments respond to a detection of imbalance in the life process, and they seek to correct it within the constraints of human biology and of the physical and social environment.[33]  This, significantly, has led to the development of storytelling as a means of preserving discovered wisdom.[34]
 
Bolton’s (2005) exposition of narrative in reflective practice offers practitioners just this.[35]  She relates how we are changed by the stories we live, and we go on to change those very stories in turn.[36]  In psychotherapy and clinical supervision the text of a person’s personal and professional story is critically explored and creatively reworked, as Finegan (2010) notes, to transcend the rigidly restrictive solipsisms of defensive self-interest and the unrecognised but nevertheless destructive dynamics of narcissistic self-involvements that exclude otherness of any kind.[37]  This is very closely aligned with Wilber’s (2006) assessment of Boomeritis – that strange mixture of very high cognitive capacity infected with rather low emotional narcissism…[38] and which is the anti-thesis of integral culture.  In reflective clinical work, the fixation to such pluralistic relativism can be highlighted and relaxed, preparing for the leap into Wilber’s (2006) second tier consciousness of universal integralism.[39]  There is an ethical component in this, as Carroll and Shaw (2013) reflect the integral nature of ethical maturity as the ability to make ethical judgements that involve a growing ability to take the perspective of others into consideration.[40]
 
 
PSYCHOTHERAPY AND CLINICAL SUPERVISION AS RELATIONSHIPS OF CHANGE
 
Attention to shifts between levels of development in psychotherapy and clinical supervision opens the challenge to give up `knowing’ and enter a creative space where both can be transformed.[41]  This demands courage and trust that both parties may emerge with new learning and be both possibly altered.[42]  Scaife (2010) describes this as the subversive nature of reflective practice in clinical work.[43]
 
Weld (2012) highlights that transformative change in supervision involves connection between the people behind the professional work.[44]  She then offers aspirations of what this would entail:
Strengthening self-belief and self-efficacy in those we supervise.
Encouraging supervisees, through their Critical Self Reflection on Assumptions, to rely on their intuitive and innovative selves.
Helping supervisees to be proactive both within and outside their organisation.
Challenging supervisees to reach deeply into themselves, and to connect beyond themselves with the wider human consciousness that supports them.
Support supervisees to learn from practice experience about adapting to change.[45]
 
 
CONCLUSION
 
In this paper I have critically reflected on the nature of change using Wilber’s integral theory for understanding how change may occur in a process of psychotherapy or clinical supervision.  I conclude that Wilber’s Integral Theory offers a helpful map of co-ordinates to direct personal and professional development.  However, for real change there is a need for relationship, an opening up of self to the presence of an other in a space of trust and courage.  Wilber’s Integral Life Practice Matrix suggests this, where all quadrants and all levels are activated through a transformative change driven by critical self reflection on assumptions.  In considering greater perspectives on change occurring in present time Okri (1999) comments:
 
We are now at that rare intersection
That magic favours,
That history adores,
That legend has no need to embellish
Because it is already a legendary moment
In its own wonderful light.[46]
 
 
 
References

[1] Wilber, K., (2001) A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, Dublin, Gateway, p.5.
[2] Wilber, K, (2011) Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Kindle Edition, Shambhala Publications, p. 90.
[3] Wilber, K., (2011) Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Kindle Edition, Shambhala Publications, p. 35.  Wilber describes the dynamic thus:  Each time the self (the proximate self) encounters a new level in the Great Nest, it first identifies with it and consolidates it; then disidentifies with it (transcends it, de-embeds from it); and then includes and integrates it from the next higher level. In other words, the self goes through a fulcrum (or a milestone) of its own development.
[4] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.43.
[5] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.43.  This positioning of the individual draws one’s attention therefore not to shifts and changes in an internal equilibrium, but to an equilibrium in the world, between the progressively individuated self and the bigger life field, an interaction sculpted by both and constitutive of reality itself.
[6] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press pp 43, 44.  This leads to a process of adaptation shaped by the tension between the assimilation of new experience to the old “grammar” and the accommodation of the old grammar to new experience.
[7] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.44.  Kegan comments here that the guiding principle of such a truce is what, from the point of view of the organism, is composed as “object” and what as “subject”… To what extent does the organism differentiate itself from (and so relate itself to) the world?
[8] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.45.  Here Kegan asks: Might we not better understand others in their predicament if we could somehow know how their way of living reflects the state of their hoping at this depth? – not the hopes they have or the hoping they do, but the hopes and hoping they are?
[9] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, pp.56, 57.  That is, it is a matter, literally, of their “knowing better” and not of their having been taught a “bit different”.
[10] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.266.
[11] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.267.
[12] Kegan, R., (1982) The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development, Cambridge, and London, Harvard University Press, p.274.  Kegan says the clinician prizes the person as meaning making, even at its most painful, and seeks, first of all, not to relieve that pain but to join her in the fundamental context of who she is.  In this, Kegan says the counsellor is offering the client a culture to grow in.
[13] Mezirow, J., “Transformative Learning Theory”, in Mezirow, J., Taylor, E.W., & Associates, (2009) Transformative Learning in Practice, Insights from Community, Workplace, and Higher Education, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, p.19.  The ten phases are:
A disorienting dilemma
Self-examination
A critical assessment of assumptions
Recognition of a connection between one’s discontent and the process of transformation
Exploration of options for new roles, relationships and action
Planning a course of action
Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plan
Provisional trying of new roles
Building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships
A reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new perspective
[14] Roberts, N. (2006), “Disorienting dilemmas: Their effects on learners, impact on performance, and implications for adult educators”, p.101, in M. S. Plakhotnik & S. M. Nielsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual College of Education Research Conference: Urban and International Education Section (pp. 100-105). Miami:Florida International University.http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/  Accessed 7^th June, 2013.  Roberts here comments: Many supervisees are socialized in sub-cultures that place little or no value on critical reflection and as a result, any challenge to this in supervision is painful since it questions their deeply held personal values and threatens their very sense of self as they struggle to embrace new ways of thinking and of being.
[15] Mezirow, J. “Transformative Learning Theory”, p.20, in Mezirow, J., Taylor, E.W., & Associates, (2009) Transformative Learning in Practice, Insights from Community, Workplace, and Higher Education, San Francisco,  Jossey-Bass.  Mezirow defines Transformative Learning as: learning that transforms problematic frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, reflective, open, and emotionally able to change
[16] Mezirow, J. “Transformative Learning Theory”, p.20, in Mezirow, J., Taylor, E.W., & Associates, (2009) Transformative Learning in Practice, Insights from Community, Workplace, and Higher Education, San Francisco,  Jossey-Bass.  This is relevant to Kegan’s appraisal of the subject as meaning-maker and his understanding of change arising out of authentic communication with the person as meaning-maker.
[17] Cranton, P., (1996) Professional Development as Transformative Learning: New Perspectives for Teachers of Adults, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, p.113.  Cranton, here, outlines that it is only if the process of reflection leads to an awareness of an invalid, undeveloped, or distorted meaning scheme or perspective; if that scheme or perspective is then revised; and if the educator acts on the revised belief, the development has been transformative.
[18] Cranton, P., (1996) Professional Development as Transformative Learning: New Perspectives for Teachers of Adults, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, p.114.
[19] Mezirow, J., “Understanding Transformation Theory,” in Adult Education Quarterly, 1994, 44(4), 226.
[20] Moon, J., (1999) Reflection in Learning & Professional Development: Theory & Practice, London and New York, Routledge Falmer, p.83. This is similar to the embeddness described by Wilber and Kegan.
[21] Moon, J., (1999) Reflection in Learning & Professional Development: Theory & Practice, London and New York, Routledge Falmer, p.86.
[22] Dorr, D., (2004) Time for a Change: A fresh look at Spirituality, Sexuality, Globalisation and the Church, Columba Press, Dublin, p.155.  Dorr comments here: Paulo Freire… saw that people will commit themselves wholeheartedly to the struggle for social change only when their attention is focussed on something that for them, is a “generative theme”… one which touches a well of deep feelings in them – feelings such as anger or pain or enthusiasm – which can stir them to action in a way which ideas alone can never do
[23] Moon, J., (1999) Reflection in Learning & Professional Development: Theory & Practice, London and New York, Routledge Falmer, p.87.
[24] Wilber, K., (2001) A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, Dublin, Gateway, p.55.
[25] Wilber, K., (2001) A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, Dublin, Gateway, p.138.
[26] Wilber, K, (2011) Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Kindle Edition, Shambhala Publications, p.42.
[27] Wilber, K, (2011) Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Kindle Edition, Shambhala Publications, p.37.
[28] Wilber, K., (2006) Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World, Boston, Integral Books, p.203.
[29] Beck, D. & Cowan, C.C., (2006) Spiral Dynamics: mastering values, leadership, and change, Malden, Oxford and Victoria, Blackwell Publishing, p.75ff.
[30] Beck, D. & Cowan, C.C., (2006) Spiral Dynamics: mastering values, leadership, and change, Malden, Oxford and Victoria, Blackwell Publishing, p.83.  The authors here comment that a sense of abject failure of old solutions to solve the problems of new life conditions may stimulate fresh thinking, release energy, and liberate the next Meme along the spiral.
[31] Jullien, F., (2004) A Treatise on Efficacy, Between Western and Chinese Thinking, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, p.73.  Jullien here explains that the foreknowledge in question does not proceed from a hypothetical argument, nor from any magical procedure: it is content simply to illuminate that which is going to happen in the light of that which has just happened… so I can sense in advance the unfolding that will result from it, and, in this way, I can control it.
[32] Damasio, A., (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Self, e-version, New York, Pantheon Books, p.220.
[33] Damasio, A., (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Self, e-version, New York, Pantheon Books, p.220.
[34] Damasio, A., (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Self, e-version, New York, Pantheon Books, p.221.  Damasio suggests that this adaptive capacity has ultimately led to the development of the arts as a means of supporting the further development of the conscious organism as well as the social community.
[35] Bolton, G., (2005) Reflective Practice: Writing & Professional Development, 2^nd ed., London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Sage Publications, p.104.  Bolton here comments: Writing, exploring, and discussing our essential narratives is a route to taking responsibility and control of our lives, professional and personal.
[36] Bolton, G., (2005) Reflective Practice: Writing & Professional Development, 2^nd ed., London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Sage Publications, p.105.  Bolton here comments that we are embedded and enmeshed within the stories and story structures we have created, and which have been created around us…
[37] Finegan, J., “Dialogue and Theory in Clinical Supervision,” in Benefiel, M. & Holton, G., (2010) The Soul of Supervision: Integrating Practice and Theory, Kindle Edition, New York, Harrisburg, Denver, Morehouse Publishing, Kindle Locations 1445-1447.
[38] Wilber, K., (2006) Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World, Boston, Integral Books, p.26.
[39] Wilber, K., (2006) Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World, Boston, Integral Books, p.29.
[40] Carroll, M. & Shaw, E., (2013) Ethical Maturity in the Helping Professions: Making Difficult Life and Work Decisions, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, p.133.
[41] Davys, A. & Beddoe, L., (2010) Best Practice in Professional Supervision: A Guide for the Helping Professions, Kindle Edition, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Kindle Location 732.
[42] Davys, A. & Beddoe, L., (2010) Best Practice in Professional Supervision: A Guide for the Helping Professions, Kindle Edition, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Kindle Location 740.
[43] Scaife, J., (2010) Supervising the Reflective Practitioner: An Essential Guide to Theory and Practice, London and New York, Routledge, p.57.  Here the author says reflective practice in supervision encourages the identification and questioning of values and beliefs whether these are of social and/or familial origin.
[44] Weld, N., (2012) A Practical Guide to Transformative Supervision for the Helping Professions: Amplifying Insight, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kinglsey Publishers, Kindle location 589.  Weld here says transformation occurs when people make a connection to a new idea, thought, behaviour, or approach, and a powerful way for a supervisor to enable this, is to make an explicit connection to the person who sits behind the professional work.  When we tune into the person before us, we are interested in them as both practitioners and human beings.
[45] Weld, N., (2012) A Practical Guide to Transformative Supervision for the Helping Professions: Amplifying Insight, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kinglsey Publishers, Kindle location 1837.
[46] Okri, B., (1999) Mental Fight, An Anti-spell for the 21^st Century, London, Phoenix House, p.19.
 
 
  
Bibliography
 
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Benefiel, M. & Holton, G., (2010) The Soul of Supervision: Integrating Practice and Theory, New York, Harrisburg, Denver, Morehouse Publishing.
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Carroll, M. & Shaw, E., (2013) Ethical Maturity in the Helping Professions: Making Difficult Life and Work Decisions, London and Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
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Mezirow, J., “Understanding Transformation Theory,” in Adult Education Quarterly, 1994, 44(4), 226.
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