Some Thoughts on In Over Our Heads – Review

I just finished In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life by Robert Kegan. Kegan is a Harvard guy and from what I can tell and what I’ve heard he’s been one of the leading voices and scholars in the realm of human development in recent years.

He asserts that part of the problem today is that society is functioning at a level that expects people to relate and function beyond what their developmental level often is. While many may not every “develop” in terms of his categories beyond a certain point, the real challenge seems to be how frequently different age groups, particularly teens, are challenged to relate and make moral choices on developmental grounds that are simply way beyond what they even have the physiological capacity for based on their age.

Kegan focuses on levels or orders of “consciousness.” It’s kind of an eastern term, but I like it because it gets out of the western categories so often relied upon. First order is recognizing that something exists that is not you (infants, little kids). Second order is conscious of a relationship between objects and people, but people here can only make decisions and choices out of a fairly self-centered, consequence versus pleasure paradigm. This is where he argues teens are. Third order is where one can recognize the relationship between people per se and make choices in light of the relationship. However, people in this stage are somewhat fused with their beliefs. Fourth order is being able to step outside one’s self and one’s relationships with an objective view of the system. This includes a high capacity of self-differentiation as well as the capacity to see the system for what is and evaluate one’s own role without taking things personally. There’s a fifth order, but it’s like what Neo sees at the end of the Matrix so I’m not going to go into it.

I don’t agree with a lot of Kegan’s application, for there is some great distance between our worldviews, but as I read through his theory of development it really resonated with me and my experience. I’ve wrestled at times with whether my “teaching” or “training” is requiring of others more than what they truly have the capacity for and if so, is that helpful or harmful? Working with teens or young adults and expecting them to begin seeing things from a systems standpoint without getting emotionally lost seems like a lost cause in this theory. Kegan argues that people don’t really even develop the physiological capacity to differentiate themselves this way until their late twenties and most (i.e. like 2/3rds of people) never function out of this capacity even after it is physiologically possible for them! I say, that’s a lot of people in this world who can’t engage their relationships and circumstances without taking things personally and who redefine reality according to their own fixed belief system. I’m pretty motivated to do the work to not be one of them.

Kegan’s model calls for a blend of “challenge” and “support.” He writes that challenge without support is toxic and support without challenge is a recipe for a society of immature children. His model calls for training people to move towards third and fourth order consciousness so that they have the capacity to function well and lead well in the context of our increasingly diverse world. That means, there is immense value to helping people develop the kind of self and other awareness that can increase their capacity over time for being able to assess their relationship and emotional systems with a degree of skill and relative objectivity so that we can live with the tensions of diversity without swallowing others up into our own worlds.

I recognize that it would be hard to have any clue about what this book really is about based on the above description, but it’s a quick attempt for me to process the bottom line of the book. It’s actually very dense reading and quite challenging. I recommend it, but only if the above description makes a little bit of sense to you and you find yourself interested. It’s not the easiest read, but I think it is pretty genius stuff.