Catch yourself owning one side of an opposite completely
Notice when you have put all the good qualities on your side of a split and all the bad ones on the other.
Why it works
Quoted in later research, Kegan (1994) describes people at the fifth order as suspicious of their own tendency to feel wholly identified with one side of any opposite and to identify the other person with the other side. The suspicion is the capacity: it lets a person see that a polarity they are caught in may be built partly by their own system. Practicing the check makes the tendency something you can notice rather than something that silently sorts the people around you.
How to do it
- When you are in a sharp disagreement, write the two sides as pairs of opposites: reasonable / rigid, open / closed, caring / cold.
- Mark which side you have assigned yourself and which you have assigned them.
- For each pair, write one real instance of you on their side, and one of them on yours.
- Ask: if both of us carry both qualities, what is this disagreement actually about?
Evidence
Bauger and Bongaardt (2018) quote Kegan (1994, pp. 311–312) describing people at the fifth order as "suspicious of their own tendency to feel wholly identified with one side of any opposite and to identify the other with the other side of that opposite", and as less likely to view the world in dichotomies. The exercise turns that description into a check; it has not been studied as an intervention. (mechanistic)
Some disagreements really are lopsided. The check is for noticing your own sorting, not for concluding that every side is equally right.
Sources
- Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Harvard University Press.
- Bauger, L., & Bongaardt, R. (2018). Structural developmental psychology and health promotion in the third age. Health Promotion International, 33(4), 686–694.
Common mistake
Using the check to talk yourself out of every conviction. Seeing that you carry both sides of a polarity does not mean you have no position; it means your position is no longer propped up by casting someone else as the opposite.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for The Self-Transforming Mind: Kegan’s Fifth Order, Made Practical
- Come back to something real right now, not a worldview
Stop mapping your own mind and let the floor, your breath and one ordinary task tell you what is real today.
- Reach a person now if nothing feels real or worth doing
If nothing feels real or worth doing, and you think about not being here, call or text a person now rather than trying to rebuild meaning alone.
- Ask what your own system leaves out
Take the framework you live by and look at it as one partial system: what does it see well, and what is it built not to see?
- Treat a contradiction as information, not a problem to close
When two frameworks you trust contradict each other, study the contradiction before choosing a side.
- Talk across whole ways of seeing, not just positions
In a deep disagreement, try to understand the other person’s whole framework and let it question yours.
- Notice when the self you authored starts defending itself
Watch for the moment a challenge to your principles lands as an attack on you, and name it.
- Hold the developmental map — and your place on it — lightly
Notice when knowing about later stages has become another way to feel ahead of other people.
- Laugh at how seriously you take your own growth
Practice light-heartedness about the effort to get yourself right, as a way of loosening the grip of the self you are building.
- Stay with the unsettled stretch between selves
When the identity you authored stops holding, expect an in-between period and get support rather than rushing to rebuild.
Related concepts
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Self-Authorship: Moving From the Socialized to the Self-Authored Mind
Kegan’s stages, subject-object moves, and authoring your own life
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
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