Kegan’s (1982) Forms and Functions of Embeddedness Cultures

Refactored from Kegan’s (1982) tables of forms and functions of embeddedness cultures (pp. 118–120).

“Feeling may be the sensation of evolution; more complexly, the phenomenology of personality in its predicament as self-constituting meaning making.” (p. 169)

“Nowhere is the predicament [of evolution] more painful than those times in our lives when the specter of loss of balance is looming over the system. These are the moments when I experience fleetingly or protractedly that disjunction between who I am and the self I have created; the moments when I face the possibility of losing my self; the moments that Erikson refers to hauntingly as ‘ego chill’. The chillc omes from the experience that I am not myself, or that I am beside myself, the experience of a distinction between who I am and the self I have created.” (p. 169).

(0) Incorporative [independent-inclusion]

Evolutionary balance and psychological embeddedness in… reflexes, sensing, and moving.

Embedded in culture of… mothering one(s) or primary caretaker(s)… mothering culture.

Confirms/holds on to… literal holding, close physical presence, comfort and protecting. Eye contact. Recognizing the infant. Dependance upon and merger with oneself.

Contradicts/letting go of… recognizes and promotes… emergence from embeddedness. does not meet every needs, stops nursing, reduces carrying, acknowledges displays of independence and willful refusal.

Continuates/maintains for reintegration… permits self to become part of bigger culture (i.e., family). High risk: prolonged separation from individual and caretaker.

Common natural transitional subject-object (bridges)… blankie, teddy, etc. A soft, comforting, nurturant representative of undifferentiated subjectivity, at once evoking that state and “objectifying” it.

(1) Impulsive [inclusion]

… impulse and perception.

… typically the family triangle… parenting culture.

… acknowledges and cultures (v.) exercises of fantasy, intense attachments, and rivalries.

… recognizes and promotes… emergence from egocentric embedded ness in fantasy and impulse. [Exclusion from self-other, we-they relations] (e.g., “holds child responsible for feelings, excludes from marriage, from parent’s bed, from home during school day, recognizes child’s self-sufficiency and asserts own ‘other sufficiency’”).

… self-other (i.e., dyad; e.g., couple) permits itself to become part of group (i.e., bigger culture), including greater excentric groups (e.g., school, peer relations). High risk: dissolution of marriage or family unit during transition period).

… imaginary friend. A repository for impulses which before were me, and which eventually will be part of me, but here a little of each (e.g., “only I can see it, but it is not me”).

(2) Imperial [independence; differentiation]

… enduring disposition, needs, interests, wishes.

… school and family as institutions of authority and role differentiation… role recognizing culture.

… acknowledges and cultures (v.) displays of self-sufficiency, competence, and role differentiation.

… recognizes and promotes… emergence from embeddedness in self-sufficiency. Denies validity of only taking one’s own interests into account, demands mutuality, that the person hold up… [localized] end of relationship. Expects trustworthiness [grounded in respect].

… groups permit themselves to become secondary to relationships of shared internal experiences. High risk: family relocation during transition period.

… another who is identical to me and real but whose needs and self-esteem are exactly like needs before were me, eventually part of me, but now something between.

In the transition from 2-3, “the self’s embeddedness in its needs, interests, wishes becomes vulnerable. That is, the organization of meaning in which I am my needs (and other people are presumed to be theirs) is threatened. I sense that it is not working. I am meeting up with experience in the world that cannot be made sense of according to my present way of organizing reality.” (p. 169).

In the transition from 2-3, “‘I’no longer am my needs (no longer the imperial I); rather I have them.” (p. 95).

(3) Interpersonal [inclusion; integration]

… mutuality, interpersonal concordance.

… mutually reciprocal one-to-one relationships… culture of mutuality.

… acknowledges and cultures (v.) capacity for collaborative self-sacrifice in mutually attuned interpersonal relationships. Orients to internal stsate, shared subjective experience, “feelings,” mood.

… recognizes and promotes… emergence from embeddedness in interpersonalism. Person or context will not be fused with but still seeks, and is interested in association. Demands… assumption of responsibility for own initiatives and preferences. Asserts the other’s independence.

… interpersonal partners permit relationship to be relativized or placed in bigger context of ideoology and psychological self-definition. High risk: interpersonal partners leave at very time one is emerging from embeddedness.

… going away to college; a temporary job, the military. Opportunities for provisional identity which both leave thge interpersonal context behind and preserve it, intact, for return; a time-limited participation in institutional life.

Women arrive to this stage faster, stay longer, and have more challenge emerging from this stage (p. 210).

(4) Institutional [independence; differentiation; ideological adulthood]

… personal autonomy, self-system identity.

… typically group involvement in career, admission to public arena… culture of identity or self-authorship.

… acknowledges and cultures (v.) capacity for independence: self-definition; assumption of authority; exercise of personal enhancement, ambition or achievement; “career” rather than “job,” “life partner” rather than “helpmate” etc.

… recognizes and promotes… emergence from embeddedness in independent self-definition. Will not accept mediated, non-intimate, form-subordinated relationship.

… ideological forms permit themselves to be relativized on behalf of the play between forms. High risk: ideological supports vanish (e.g., job loss) at very time one is separating from this embeddedness.

… ideological self-surrender (religious or political); love affairs protected by unavailability of the partner. At once a surrender of the identification with the form while preserving the form.

Men have more challenge emerging from this stage (p. 210).

“At the 4-5 shift this means abandoning—or somehow operating without reliance upon—the form, the group, standard, or convention. For some this leads to feelings of being ‘beyond good and evil,’ which phenomenologically amounts to looking at that beyondness from the view of the old self, and thus involves strong feelings of evil.” (p. 232)

“… shift to stage 5 there is often a sense of having left the moral world entirely (“ ‘ought’ is no longer in my vocabulary”; there is no way of orienting to right and wrong worthy of my respect. This is the killing off of all standards, the attempt to be not-me (who is his standard)—the cynic, or existentially despairing.” (pp. 232–233).

(5) Inter-individual [inclusion; integration]

… interpenetration of systems.

… typically genuinely adult love relationship… culture of intimacy (in domain of love and work)

… acknowledges and cultures (v.) capacity for interdependence, for self-surrender and intimacy, for interdependent self-definition.

… N/A

References

Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Harvard University Press.