Constructive-Developmental Theory

Kegan devised a meta-psychological theory called constructive-developmental theory, also known as subject-object theory (Kegan, 1982, 1994). Constructivism is “the idea that people or systems constitute or construct reality,” and that human being is the practice of making sense, is the creative, restless energy that puts the world together in a particular way (Kegan, 1994, p. 198). A developmentalist sees human being as a process of differentiating and reintegrating, organizing and reorganizing, (Kegan, 1982). It refers to the idea that “people or organic systems evolve through different eras of increasing complexity according to regular principles of stability and change” (Kegan, 1994, p. 199).

Subject-object theory is concerned with the way a person makes sense of experience. It takes into account the person’s epistemology, or way of knowing what he knows. Consider a four year old, and his older brother age eight, standing in the street watching their mom drive away to work. The four year old states: “Hey Huey, look how small mom’s car is now”, to which Huey responds: “Well, yeah, it sure looks smaller doesn’t it?” What has changed between the ages of four and eight is that the child’s epistemology, the way by which he makes meaning, and his relationship to his perceptions is now different; qualitatively different. What once was subject is now object. Whereas the four year old is his perceptions, is identified with them, is embedded in them, the older child has his perceptions and is able to reflect upon them in a way that is substantively different from his four-year old brother.

Kegan began to see that what matters most isn’t so much what we know as how we know, and that growing up is more closely related to the process of transforming one’s mind than informing it. If human development is, as Kegan suggests, the “transformation toward more complex systems or ways of knowing” (Kegan, 2003, p. 25), then it is important to be clear what form is being transformed. In Kegan’s theory, the epistemological root is the subject-object relationship. Object is any phenomena that can be looked at, considered, manipulated, or pushed against. Subject is that phenomenon that we are blind to because we are fused with it, embedded within it, and controlled by it (Berger, 2010). “We have that which is object, we are that which is subject. In other words, any meaning-making system is essentially a kind of equilibrium that maintains a certain balance between what is subject and what is object” (Kegan, 2003, p. 25). Growing up, also known as “developmental transformation,” always involves this movement from what was once subject to what is now object.