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A matter of heart and soul| Towards an integral psychology framework for postconventional development

<p> This dissertation seeks to formulate an integral psychology framework to better understand the nature and unfoldment of postformal, or postconventional, characterizations of individual consciousness evolution. To this end, an extensive critical evaluation and problematization of the disparate theoretical literatures indicated that while the egocentric and cosmocentric dimensions have been taken into account by various models, the psychocentric, or more specifically, the evolutionary soul dimension and its role in postconventional development has been largely overlooked. </p><p> With this background, there appeared to be hardly any substantial signs of agreement in the extensive and rapidly expanding literatures on human development. Such division has resulted in increasingly heated disagreements and debates concerning controversies of shape, goals, and, particularly, direction (e.g., structural-hierarchical versus spiral-dynamic models). Further, it was found that egocentric and cosmocentric biases bring to the fore a related set of problems that, in present-day formulation, can be summarized as the issue of epiphenomenalism along with the problem of identifying a facilitative agent (an ontological reference point that might help explain the how and why of stage change), which has apparently all but escaped developmental psychologists. </p><p> As a dialogue partner, the study adopts Sri Aurobindo and the Mother&rsquo;s rich integral acumen concerning the psychic being as an alternative assumption ground to both reveal and challenge some of the taken-for-granted assumptions found to underlie much of the ongoing theoretical debate. The guiding purpose of this dissertation, then, has been to advance the fields of both Western and integral yoga psychologies by contributing new and unique pathways to postconventional development&mdash;an integral psychology framework that places the deeper inmost source of evolution at the very center of a comprehensive whole person vision of human growth and development.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10117900
Date13 July 2016
CreatorsTeklinski, Elizabeth Marie
PublisherCalifornia Institute of Integral Studies
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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