12 - Development at Middle Level

This explains why development in our culture tends to largely plateau at the middle (personal) stages. Because of considerable emphasis on the specialised differentiation of structures (especially with respect to the cognitive aspects) the conscious becomes largely separated from the unconscious thereby reducing the creative interchange of both aspects.

In this way at the middle levels (which are dynamically complementary with themselves) one can become largely cut off from one's prepersonal roots and transpersonal destiny (with both aspects having a relative meaning!)

One indication of this problem is the manner in which the intellectual understanding of the middle stages (e.g. conop, formop and vision-logic) is applied to the interpretation of all development (thereby considerably distorting its dynamic nature).

With certain important reservations, understanding of a middle stage such as vision-logic is directly suited merely for interpretation of development with respect to the middle stages. It is not suited thereby for interpretation of any of the "lower", "higher" or "radial" stages (through it can be profitably used in conjunction with other methods for such interpretation).

This is why I find it so important to provide distinctive stage model interpretations for all development (with each "lower" stage intellectually interpreted through the lens of its complementary "higher" stage).