Adult Ego Development Research Articles

The ways school headteachers/principals in England at different stages of adult ego development work with organisational complexity

In this article, we analyse the ways school headteachers/principals (HT/Ps) at different stages of adult ego development (AED) make sense of and respond to the organisational complexity of their schools. The AED stage of 20 HT/Ps in England was assessed using the Washington University Sentence Completion Test. HT/Ps in the self-aware, conscientious and individualist AED stage were identified. The research used a critical incident technique to analyse how principals made sense of and responded to the complexity of their organisations. Those HT/Ps in the self-aware, conscientious and individualist stages differed in the way they acknowledged complexity, their capacity to recognise and accept ambiguity and unpredictability; and the way they acknowledged emergence in resolving wicked problems. Importantly, the way these differences were different in individuals in the self-aware, conscientious and individualist stages showed a clear development trend with an increasing acknowledgement of complexity; a growing tolerance of ambiguity and unpredictability; and an increasing acknowledgement of emergence in complex contexts. The findings have implications for the way the role of HT/P is viewed and developed in actual and potential HT/Ps. One important implication is that the stage of HT/Ps’ AED is likely to impact on their overall effectiveness in their role.

Integrating the enneagram and the anthropological structures of the imaginary for multidimensional maturity in the personality

ABSTRACT Personality fixations that have had utility in the past can later become problematic for holistic psychological development. Adult ego development research, combined with psychoanalytic assumptions, provides a way to understand multidimensional maturity through addressing and transforming the unconscious. The Enneagram and Gilbert Durand’s Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (ASI) are two frameworks that can be integrated to help clients experience transformation in unconscious self-limiting phenomena. The Enneagram can address unconscious thoughts and feelings while the ASI can address unconscious images. Given that different personality types have different deeply structured characteristics, combining these two models can provide specifically tailored guidance to varying personalities towards multidimensional wholeness. A case study as well as implications for clinical work are provided.

Combining the enneagram and narrative therapy for adult ego development

The Enneagram and Narrative Therapy are two frameworks that have potential for unique integration to combine therapeutic effects for issues related to Adult Ego Development. The Enneagram offers a centuries-tested personality framework that has accumulated ancient wisdom from multiple spiritual traditions. Narrative Therapy offers postmodern insights into helping clients overcome their self-limiting narratives through creative interventions involving the medium of story. The nature of these two frameworks as well as their commonalities, complementary differences, and synergistic potential can help clients with Adult Ego Development issues. These issues will be explored along with an example of their integration.

Exploring Rational and Non-rational Dimensions of Interpersonal Complexity

Contemporary models of psychosocial development include domains of development for interpersonal relations and cognitive complexity. Integrating these two domains to conceptualize interpersonal complexity is a useful construct for research purposes. Furthermore, the analysis of interpersonal complexity can benefit from approaching it from both rational and non-rational dimensions. The former can be done through Jane Loevinger’s conceptualization of adult ego development while the latter can be done through Gilbert Durand’s conceptualization of the Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary. Furthermore, the Washington University Sentence Completion Test is an empirically sound instrument to test the rational aspects of interpersonal complexity while the Archetypal Test of Nine Elements is an empirically sound instrument to test the non-rational elements of it. This article will conclude with research implications and applications of approaching interpersonal complexity from both the rational and non-rational dimensions.

Growth in Adult Ego Development and Mentalizing Emotions for an Increasingly Multidimensional God Image.

Growth in cognitive complexity in the framework of adult ego development has shown to enable sophistication in mentalizing interpersonal emotions. This has implications for cultivating a more multidimensional God Image for spirituality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The construct of mentalization will be used to understand the integration of these concepts. Empirical findings that support this conceptual integration will be explored. Clinical applications for spiritually integrated psychotherapy will follow.

School principals at different stages of adult ego development: Their sense-making capabilities and how others experience them

The way school principals make sense of the context of their work shapes their actions. As in all adults, principals’ sense-making capability is a function of the ego and can change over time. Adult ego development theory describes distinct, qualitatively different stages of sense-making ability. The research reported here assessed the adult ego development stage of 20 school principals in England using the Washington University Sentence Completion Test. Principals in the Self-Aware, Conscientious and Individualist stages of adult ego development were identified. The research used a critical incident technique to analyse principals’ sense-making capabilities and how others experience them in their role as principals. The findings show substantive differences between those in different stages of adult ego development in relation to their sense-making processes, the feelings they experience and display as emotions, how they involve others in the sense-making process and how others experience them. There is a discernible trend in the behaviours of school principals and how others experience them that relates to the transition from the Self-Aware stage to the Conscientious stage and then to the Individualist stage. These findings have significant implications for understanding the practice of school principals.

An exploration of the validity and potential of adult ego development for enhancing understandings of school leadership

ABSTRACTAn adult ego development (AED) perspective accepts that the way adults interpret and interact in the social world can change during their life-span. This article seeks to analyse the validity and potential of AED for enhancing understandings of educational leadership practice and development. We analysed the AED literature and interviewed 16 individuals in senior leadership positions in the English school system. The interviews enabled them to explore the notion of AED and to reflect on their own sense-making capability and their experience of school leaders they considered to be in the different stages of AED. Educational leaders judged to be in the different AED stages were encountered by respondents to varying extents and were experienced and valued differently. Those considered to be in the later AED stages appeared to be more highly valued and their sense-making capabilities may have substantial value in the complex working environment of schools. The analyses showed that: AED has a considerable role in educational leadership practice; can inform the analysis of educational leadership practice and development; and has valuable explanatory power.

Personality Preferences and Their Relationship to Ego Development in Australian Leadership Program Participants

The growth of adult ego development to post-conventional levels is associated with many adaptive advantages for the individual and society. However, the vast majority of adults across a wide range of samples demonstrate ego stages well below the maximum potential. In an effort to advance understanding of why and how development to higher ego levels might occur for some individuals and not others, we explored whether particular personality preferences and combinations thereof (as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI) are associated with higher ego levels and whether particular personality preferences might act as inhibiting or facilitating factors in ego development. Participants were 374 adults (aged 18–61; 50 % female) undertaking 11 community leadership development and 2 professional management development programs. After adjusting for effects of age and education, a preference for Intuition on the MBTI was associated with significantly higher ego development on program entry and with greater ego development during the programs. These results are consistent with previous research and provide support for Manners’ and Durkin’s (Developmental Review, 20:475–513, 2000) proposal that dispositional personality characteristics may enhance or constrain ego development.

Developing agile leaders

PurposeWith mounting complexity and interdependence and the increasing pace of change in organizational environments, leadership agility has become a much‐needed competency. This article aims to report research findings that appear in a new publication.Design/methodology/approachThe study on which this article is based included a total of 604 subjects. Of these, 384 were participants in previous research studies that identified each manager's “stage of ego development” as measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT). The other 220 managers, who provided in‐depth case studies, were clients, interviewees, or evening MBA students, whose stage of ego development was also assessed.FindingsThis study identified five levels of leadership agility, each of which corresponds to a stage of adult ego development. It also resulted in the discovery of four leadership agility competencies (context‐setting, stakeholder, creative, and self‐leadership agility) and eight underlying capacities that evolve as managers develop from one level of leadership agility to another.Research limitations/implicationsFruitful areas for future research include: expanding knowledge about how leaders develop from one level of agility to another, identifying the competencies and capacities associated with the level beyond synergist, and better understanding the stages or levels of organizational development that parallel the levels of leadership agility.Practical implicationsThis research has significant implications for an “integral” approach to leadership development that places emphasis both on professional skills needed in complex, rapidly changing environments and on the mental and emotional capacities that underlie these skills.Originality/valueManagers and leadership development professionals both can benefit from the fresh perspective presented in this article.

Processes Involved in Adult Ego Development: A Conceptual Framework

Ego development has been found to stabilize by early adulthood among the majority of the population, at a stage which is well below the maximum potential. The modal stage of stabilization is one which involves rudimentary self-awareness and incipient conceptual complexity. The reasons for this early stabilization below the maximum potential are not fully understood. In this article, a conceptual framework is formulated to explain the processes involved in ego-stage transition in adulthood. The formulation is based on Loevinger's theoretical reflections on adult ego-stage transition and the associated research, the intervention programs designed to promote adult ego development, the theory and research in relation to moral-stage development in adulthood, and the theory and research in relation to general personality change in adulthood. In the resulting framework, it is proposed that ego-stage transition in adulthood represents an accommodative response to specific types of life experiences and that the degree of exposure to such life experiences, as well as the perception of and response to the life experience, is influenced by specific psychological characteristics. Specific research hypotheses follow from the proposed framework, and these are outlined with suggestions for empirical tests.

Individual differences in adult ego development: sources of influence in twins reared apart.

A behavior genetic analysis of the personality dimension of ego development, as assessed by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, was carried out on a sample of 45 pairs of monozygotic twins and 28 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twins. The twins ranged in age from 16 to 70 years at the time of assessment, had been separated during infancy, and had been raised apart in adoptive homes before being reunited in adulthood. Analyses indicated that reared-apart twins were similar in trait levels of ego development and that such similarity could not solely be attributed to measured similarity in cognitive ability, including verbal reasoning. Estimates of broad similarity for ego development (46%) were comparable to values reported for other major personality dimensions. Phenotypic variance in adult levels of ego development appears to have substantial genetic and environmental sources.

Individual differences in adult ego development: Sources of influence in twins reared apart.

Individual differences in adult ego development: Sources of influence in twins reared apart.

Relationships among an older adult's life review, ego integrity, and death anxiety.

The frameworks of Erikson (1963) and Butler (1963) were used to design this descriptive study that investigated the relationships among life review, ego integrity, and death anxiety in older adults. Three hypotheses were proposed: (a) the greater the life review, the higher the ego integrity; (b) the greater the life review, the lower the death anxiety; (c) the higher the ego integrity, the lower the death anxiety. The sample consisted of 115 female and male volunteers between the ages of 65 and 93. The participants filled out the Life Review Questionnaire, Adult Ego Development Scale, Death Anxiety Scale, Death Preparation Scale, and a Personal Information Sheet. Life review, while not positively correlated with ego integrity, was found to have a negative correlation with death anxiety. Also, religious subjects were found to be more prepared for death than those who did not practice. Implications for therapy and future research are discussed, as well.

Childhood Correlates of Adult Ego Development

The present study examined family socioeconomic indicators, parent child-rearing variables, and childhood and adolescent behaviors, which were hypothesized to predict adult ego development. The subjects were 206 females and 192 males, ages 30-31, who began participating in a longitudinal study at age 8. At that time, interviews with their parents yielded data on family background variables and child-rearing practices. Peer-nominations and other testing procedures with the children yielded data on the children's cognitive and behavioral styles at ages 8 and 19. At age 30, the subjects completed the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. Results confirmed the hypotheses that child-rearing styles characterized by acceptance, a nonauthoritarian approach to punishment, and identification of the child with the parent related to higher levels of adult ego development 22 years later. These relations obtained more strongly for females than for males. In addition, childhood and adolescent indicators of impulse control and cognitive development (nonaggression, prosocial behavior, and intelligence) were associated with higher levels of adult ego development. Finally, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that the development of aggression was linked to adult ego level attainment in males, while the development of prosocial behavior was related to adult ego development in females.

Childhood Correlates of Adult Ego Development

Childhood Correlates of Adult Ego Development