ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, Jane Loevinger’s theory of ego development (Loevinger, 1976, 1993b; Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) provided an influential approach to the study of personality development. Her theory and method have been attractive because they have provided a strategy differing in significant ways from more trait-oriented personality measurement. That strategy is informed by a theory of transitions and transformations in cognitive-emotional complexity, assumed to form part of a normal course of impulse control and ego processes. The theory thus provides a bridge between cognitive and psychodynamic conceptions of personality development. Because the model carries levels of ego development through all of the life span, it has been crucial in recent efforts to extend the notion of development beyond adolescence and youth into mature and later adulthood (see e.g. Kegan, 1982; Labouvie-Vief, 1994; Noam, 1988b).
