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Orders of mind: These are Kegan’s ideas about the qualitatively
different ways of
constructing reality. This is a constructive-developmental theory because it is concerned
both with the construction of reality, and with the development of
that construction
to more complex levels over time. There are five Orders of mind, ranging from a two
year old to a (mostly theoretical) person well into the second half of life.1 Each
Order is
a qualitative shift in the meaning-making and complexity from the Order before it. We
do not give up what we’ve learned in a previous Order; we transform, changing the
actual form of our understanding of the world. Perhaps the most important thing to
remember about the Orders is that, while they become more complex with time, there is
no Order that is inherently better than any other Order (just as a more complex idea
isn’t necessarily more valuable than a simple one). People can be kind or unkind, just or
unjust, moral or immoral at any of these Orders, so it is impossible to measure a
person’s worth by looking at his or her Order of mind. What is more important is the fit
between the Order of mind and the task each
person is required to do. Each of the five
Orders is described briefly below, but the ones to pay closest attention to are the ones
where the majority of adults spend most of their lives—the Third and Fourth Orders of
mind. To help understand this system, I’m going to offer a fictional tribal village made up
of members from all five Orders. I’ll give the people in the village “jobs” based
on the
strengths of their particular Order of mind.
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First Order (mostly
young children): Young children cannot yet hold the idea of
“durable objects”—which is the notion that things in the world retain the same
qualities over time. When they look out an airplane and see how small people
look, they believe the people actually are small. They believe that others in their
lives can live in their minds and are mystified when others hold different opinions
(about bed time, for instance) or can’t pick right up on a game in an imaginary
world. When water is poured from one container to another, and the quantity of
the water looks different, they believe the water actually has grown (or shrunk),
and no amount of persuasion will convince them otherwise. They believe they
can slip down the drain in the tub because they can’t hold themselves as different
from the water which slips away. Children in this Order need to be reminded of
the rules over and over, because they can’t hold the ideas in their mind for very
long; the rule that existed yesterday about drawing on the walls might not seem
to apply today. The First Order is a time of magic and mystery as the world
inexplicably changes from second to second. If we imagine a member of our
village at this Order, we’d see someone who needs constant supervision and is
not yet ready to police himself because he simply can’t remember the laws from
moment to moment (we’d keep him firmly under adult supervision). His job is to
learn about the world.
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Second Order—the “Instrumental” Mind (older children—seven to ten—and
adolescents, but also some adults): When children learn that objects stay the
same no matter what their own relationship is to the object (when I walk away
from the car and it looks smaller, the car isn’t actually shrinking), their world
becomes less magical and more complex. They discover that they have beliefs
and feelings that remain constant over time, as well (I love chocolate but hate
mashed potatoes; I’m great at ice skating). This insight lets them know that other
people have opinions and beliefs that remain constant, too. Their concrete
understandings let them know that a rule yesterday is probably a rule today, too.
Their orientation is to figuring out how to get past the rule if it is in their way.
While they are aware that others have feelings and desires, empathy isn’t
possible for them yet because the distance between their minds and other minds
is great. Mostly other people’s interests are important only if they interfere with
the interests of the person at the Second Order. When rules are not broken, it’s
because of a fear of being caught; when friends don’t lie to each other, it’s
because of a fear of retaliation. Children—and adults—at this stage are self-
centered and see others as helpers or barriers on the road to get to their desires.
A villager at this Order follows the laws because she’s afraid of punishment; if
the laws don’t seem to meet her needs and she can find a way to break them
with minimal risk, she will. We can count on her to work in her own best
interests, so we’ll give her a job that is in her own best interests (like tending a
garden for her family) that has clear boundaries and limited scope. We’ll also
make sure that she is fairly well supervised by others.
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Third Order—the “Socialized”or “Traditional” Mind (older adolescents and the
majority of adults): People at this Order no longer see
others as simply a means
to an ends; they have developed the ability to subordinate their desires to the
desires of others. Their impulses and desires, which were Subject to them in the
Second Order, have become Object. They internalize the feelings and emotions
of others and are guided by those people or institutions (like a church or
synagogue or a political party) that are most important to them. They are able to
think abstractly, be self-reflective about their actions and the actions of others,
and are devoted to something that’s greater than their own needs. The major
limitation of this Order is that, when there is a conflict between important others
(or between a single important other—like a spouse—and an institution—like a
political party), people at the Third Order feel “torn in two” and cannot find a
way to make a decision. There is no sense of what I want
outside of
others’expectations or societal roles. This is generally admirable in teenagers,
but, in adults, it can often seem like a personality flaw. As Kegan (1982) notes,
“When I live in this balance as an adult I am the prime candidate for the
assertiveness trainer, who may tell me that I need to learn how to stand up for
myself, be more ‘selfish,’ less pliable, and so on, as if these were mere skills to
be added on to whoever else I am. The popular literature will talk about me as
lacking self-esteem, or as a pushover because I want other people to like me”
(p. 96). Kegan goes on to point out that the very notion of “self-esteem” is
inappropriate at this Order because self-esteem implies an internal source
for
feeling good about oneself. Those at the Third Order don’t have an
independently-constructed self to feel good about; their esteem is entirely reliant
on others because they are, in many ways, made up of those around them. A
villager at this Order is a model citizen2 and follows the laws out of loyalty to the
others in the village (or his religion or his place of business or his family). He tries
hard not to break the rules because he wouldn’t want to feel he had let others
down. In our small, homogenous, tribal village, a Third Order villager can hold
nearly any position that doesn’t require independent leadership. He can be a
teacher, have his own business, or be a member of the military. As long as he
has someone whom he respects to help him make difficult decisions, he can do
nearly anything in this village.
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Fourth Order—the “Self-Authoring” or “Modern” Mind (some adults): Adults at
the Fourth Order have achieved all that those at the Third Order have, but now
they have created a self that exists even outside of its relationship to
others. The
opinions and desires of others which they internalized and which had great
control over them when they were making meaning at the Third Order are now
Object to them. They are now able to examine those various rule-systems and
opinions and are able to mediate between them. Those at the Fourth Order have
an internal set of rules and regulations—a self-governing system—which they use
to make their decisions or mediate conflicts. Unlike those at the Second Order,
those at the Fourth Order feel empathy for others, and take the wishes and
opinions of others into consideration when making decisions. Unlike those at the
Third Order, though, Fourth Order adults don’t feel torn apart by the conflicts of
those around them because they have their own system with which to make
decisions. These are the people we read about in the literature who “own” their
work, who are self-guided, self-motivated, self- evaluative. A villager at this
Order would make a good chief because she has her own internal governing
system. She could create the rules from her internal system and fight hard to
protect those rules. This guidance would help the village run smoothly according
to her inner vision of village life. The Fourth Order chief may not be an excellent
diplomat, however, because when other people don’t understand or see the
need to follow her rules, she may be so invested in her own way of doing things
that she cannot easily see connections between her ideas of what is Right and
more foreign ideas of what is Right.
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Fifth Order—the “Self-Transformational” or “Postmodern”Mind (very few
adults): Adults at the Fifth Order have achieved all that those at the Fourth order
have, but they have learned the limits of their own inner system—and the limits of
having an inner system in general. Instead of viewing others as people with
separate and different inner systems, those at the Fifth Order see across inner
systems to look at the similarities that are hidden inside what used to look like
differences. Adults at the Fifth Order are less likely to see the world in terms of
dichotomies or polarities. They are more likely to believe that what we often
think of as black and white are just various shades of gray whose differences are
made more visible by the lighter or darker colors around them. A villager at this
Order might be an elder whose job it is to mediate conflicts between the many
villages. While he generally follows the laws set by the chief, he sees that the
many different villages have a variety of laws that are basically designed to do
similar things, and that the differences are much more like similarities than any of
the chiefs will admit. He helps the chiefs find a common ground and reminds
them that they are all members of a larger community—the community of human
beings, perhaps, or of members of our planet.
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1. Frames that Work?
