ABSTRACT
A thesis of Ken Wilber’s that is central not only to this chapter but also to a significant portion of integral therapists’ clinical work is that there is a spectrum of development, pathology, and treatment. As such, Wilber’s basic structures or waves are simply markers referring to some of the relatively stable patterns that developmental psychologists have observed as they assess people across their life spans. The line of the proximate self is a particularly important line for integral therapists because “proximate-self development is,” in Wilber’s view, “at the very heart of the evolution of consciousness. Due to the developmental essence of integral theory, an “integral constructive” approach to therapy balances the value of lessons learned from the past with the value of present action. Kegan describes in great detail the different "cultures of embeddedness"—including mothering, role recognizing, mutuality, self-authorship, intimacy—that optimally provide the qualitatively distinct “holding environments” that individuals need at each stage of development.
