Deconstruction toward reconstruction: A constructive-developmental consideration of deconstructive necessities in transitions.

Abstract

The intention of this viewpoint paper is to explore the terrain of developmental transitions, more specifically the necessity of the process of questioning or, deconstructing one’s whole frame of knowing before a new frame of knowing can emerge a “reconstruction”. Leaning on constructive-developmental theory, this paper seeks to define the deconstructive pattern that emerges and reemerges during developmental or “stage” transition, and shows how it is necessary to incorporate this deconstructed “stage” into a more complex system of knowing or “stage”. The second portion of the paper then outlines a current example of how an epistemology can have roots in logical coherency, then become disruptive or deconstructive, then re-constructive, in the postmodern theory of social science methods commonly referred to as Critical Discursive Psychology (CDP). This theory is argued to be emerging as fifth order as defined by Robert Kegan (2010) in that it is reconstructive and not just deconstructive or, antimodernist as seen in not denying, but utilizing process, the disunified self, subjectivity, and theory reproduction, as it is made clear in the argumentation of the second portion of the paper. The paper concludes in a clear affirmation of the process of differentiation and reintegration as integral for stage transition and growth not just in individual human development, but also in the social sciences.