I think this is right, although I stand by the existing numbering convention. My reasoning is that the 4.5 space is really best understood in the paradigm where the thing that marks a level transition is gaining a kind of naturalness with that level, and 4.5 is a place of seeing intellectually that something other than what feels natural is possible, but the higher level isn’t yet the “native” way of thinking. This is not to diminish the in between states because they are important to making the transition, but also to acknowledge that they are not the core thing as originally framed.
For what it’s worth I think Michael Common’s approach is probably a bit better in many ways, especially in that Kegan is right for reasons that are significantly askew of the gears in the brain that make his categories natural. Luckily there’s a natural and straightforward mapping between different developmental models (see Integral Psychology and Ken Wilber’s work for one explication of this mapping between these different models), so you can basically use whichever is most useful to you in a particular context without missing out on pointing at the general feature of reality these models are all convergent to.
Also perhaps interestingly, there’s a model in Zen called the five ranks that has an interpretation that could be understood as a developmental model of psychology, but it also suggests an inbetween level, although between what we might call Kegan 5 and a hypothetical Kegan 6 if Kegan had described such a level. I don’t think there’s much to read into this, though, as the five ranks is a polymorphic model that explains multiple things in different ways using the same structure, so this is as likely an artifact as some deep truth that there is something special about the 5 to 6 transition, but it is there so it suggests others have similarly noticed it’s worth pointing out cases where there are levels between the “real” levels.
Similarly it’s clear from Common’s model that Kegan’s model is woefully under describing the pre-3 territory, and it’s possible that due to lack of data all models are failing to describe all the meaningful transition states between the higher levels. As I recall David Chapman wrote something once laying out 10 sublevels between each level, although I’m not sure how much I would endorse that approach.
I think this is right, although I stand by the existing numbering convention. My reasoning is that the 4.5 space is really best understood in the paradigm where the thing that marks a level transition is gaining a kind of naturalness with that level, and 4.5 is a place of seeing intellectually that something other than what feels natural is possible, but the higher level isn’t yet the “native” way of thinking. This is not to diminish the in between states because they are important to making the transition, but also to acknowledge that they are not the core thing as originally framed.
For what it’s worth I think Michael Common’s approach is probably a bit better in many ways, especially in that Kegan is right for reasons that are significantly askew of the gears in the brain that make his categories natural. Luckily there’s a natural and straightforward mapping between different developmental models (see Integral Psychology and Ken Wilber’s work for one explication of this mapping between these different models), so you can basically use whichever is most useful to you in a particular context without missing out on pointing at the general feature of reality these models are all convergent to.
Also perhaps interestingly, there’s a model in Zen called the five ranks that has an interpretation that could be understood as a developmental model of psychology, but it also suggests an inbetween level, although between what we might call Kegan 5 and a hypothetical Kegan 6 if Kegan had described such a level. I don’t think there’s much to read into this, though, as the five ranks is a polymorphic model that explains multiple things in different ways using the same structure, so this is as likely an artifact as some deep truth that there is something special about the 5 to 6 transition, but it is there so it suggests others have similarly noticed it’s worth pointing out cases where there are levels between the “real” levels.
Similarly it’s clear from Common’s model that Kegan’s model is woefully under describing the pre-3 territory, and it’s possible that due to lack of data all models are failing to describe all the meaningful transition states between the higher levels. As I recall David Chapman wrote something once laying out 10 sublevels between each level, although I’m not sure how much I would endorse that approach.