ABSTRACT
Robert Kegan and Kieran Egan build on Piaget's model of cognitive development to distinguish five phases of development that provide a capacity for live kinds of thinking. Kegan labels them simply from first order thinking to fifth order thinking, Egan writes about humans as 'five-minded animals', capable of thinking in five distinct ways which he calls somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. Egan writes of somatic understandings sharing Gebser's view that before ever people 'think' about their experience, they prehend it through their physical, organic sense of the world. Jean Gebser's model is of particular interest as a framework for looking at organizational culture because his perspective is cultural rather than psychological. The archaic structure of consciousness is the basis of 'togetherness' in groups and organizations. In the experience of groups, the archaic structure of consciousness is overlaid by the magical, mythical, and mental structures.
