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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. Dialogue This!
