Robert Kegan

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11433

Robert Kegan has developed, according to this essay, a theory about "social immaturity."

Obviously, there are many places where it overlaps with Juanita's theory, because the crux of hers is about the difference between Adults and Children. Kegan does a great job of breaking down stages of growing up and I think that is enormously useful.

Another aspect of his work that is excellent is his idea about how many "mental illnesses" are actually forms of maturity. This is a really important idea because it means that people are really culpable for their actions if they are connected mentally to the "real world" (e.g., not delusional).

One thing mentioned at the end of the essay was about how difficult it is to get people to grow up. I believe there are people who want to grow up and people who don't want to. These two categories are defined by where people think their benefits lie. The people with whom Juanita worked wanted to grow up because that would get them out of scary, life-threatening situations. The people who don't want to grow up are those who benefit from remaining a child--people who are surrounded by people who are willing to allow childish behavior.

Herein lies one of the differences between Juanita's ideas and those of Dr. Kegan: it is possible to put immature people in situations where at least they have to ACT like more mature people; in other words, at least they can't hurt other people with their immaturity. A brief look at Juanita's blog demonstrates how to do this across many different situations. If we were all more able to do this, fewer people would remain as children.

A second, more important theoretical difference is what the implications of social maturity/immaturity are for Authority/Power Relationships. Juanita really unpacks the dynamics of human relationships through the concept of the Authority/Power Relationship and the concepts of Personal and Positional Authority and Power. As a result, given this information, a person can predict someone else's behavior based on assessing that person's Personal Authority.

Finally, Juanita's ideas came not so much from systematic observation of people and then developing a theory that explained those observations and successfully predicted other observations. Her ideas came through her relationship with God, and therefore, what we used to call a "theory" became Law by the end of her life. It's true. It's not a theory--it's not something that can be refuted, just like the Law of Gravity cannot be refuted. That apple will always whack you in the head if you stand under the tree and that brat will try to make your life miserable if you don't take some kind of positive action.