Heterodox Ideas

Something to think about...

Let’s have a look at the key contributions of Constructed Development Theory put forward in this book. We won’t be going through them all, but it is useful to list them. It is also important to know that in my original thesis, I provide support for each claim:

  • • Constructed Development Theory - the focus on shortcuts to our self-construction
  • • Adult Metacognition – thinking about habituated thinking from a heuristic perspective
  • • The Four Pillars of Constructed Development – how CDT is deconstructed
  • • Dynamic Intelligence – the process by which CDT is constructed by you and me
  • • Zone of Dynamic Development – the adult complexity arena
  • • The Development Onion – moving CDT away from a stage-based system
  • • Cognitive Intentions linked to Piagetian schemata – never been done before
  • • The Thinking Quotient – the purposeful mapping of CI’s to Kegan’s theory
  • • Cognitive Thinking Styles – and our unconscious habituated use of them
  • • The Awareness Quotient – Measurement tool for self-awareness
  • • The Development Iceberg – conscious and unconscious mapping of CI’s
  • • The Dynamic Intelligence Awareness Model – the process for DI awareness
  • • Constructed Development Grid – where one places themselves developmentally
  • • Emotional Intelligence as a facet of DI when IACR are considered
  • • CDT is the Conduit between constructivism and constructionism
  • • CDT is the Conduit between domain-general and domain-specific thinking

Each one of the contributions has the capacity to be disruptive in either the stage development field of psychology, or stage transition which offers a unique contribution to psychology as a whole.
I like the disruptive element of this. It makes people – researchers – sit up and think about how they have been resting on their laurels for decades.
If you go back to the elephant image above, that is the issue within any field: specialist researchers focusing on their speciality and ignoring the bigger picture.
With 7 billion people on the planet, perhaps there is more to our thinking construction than the existing delineated fields of psychology? What if we all decided to research how we think?

George Kelly was a prominent personality theorist in the 1950’s. He observed that we are all armchair psychologists.
He meant that we love to know what makes us, our family, friends and even strangers, tick.
I suspect one of the reasons you picked up this book was because it offers a new way of understanding not only how you think, but also how others think.
Knowing this gives us an edge, an advantage over those who do not. However, as I tell my students, those with the greatest Dynamic Intelligence (and thus the greater flexibility in the moment) can control the conversation.
They also have the responsibility for the conversation. This means that if you can see the patterns of the person with whom you are speaking, but they cannot see yours, then it is your responsibility to use your powers for good.
This will become apparent over the course of this book. For now, recognise that you might recognise your recognition of the interaction (meta-recognition), whereas your partner might not.

Therefore, you have the higher-level responsibility.