Susanne Cook-Greuter
Susanne Cook-Greuter
Wilber's View
Cook-Greuter supplies Wilber with the specific mechanism behind his "1-2-3 of consciousness studies" framework (see The Big Three): her research reframes each cognitive stage as a growing capacity to take perspectives, so that first-person (egocentric), second-person (sociocentric), and third-person (worldcentric) perspective-taking aren't just labels for stages but the actual developmental achievement each stage represents. Her further claim — that postformal cognition keeps adding perspectives beyond the third-person (fourth- and fifth-person) — is what gives Wilber's "1-2-3" formula room to extend past formal operations into vision-logic and beyond, rather than stopping at ordinary adult rationality. She's also presented as Loevinger's direct successor: extending Loevinger's ego-development research into her own original model rather than merely applying it.
In Integral Psychology
According to Susanne Cook-Greuter's research, preoperational thinking has only a first-person perspective (egocentric); concrete operational adds second-person perspectives (sociocentric); and formal operational goes further and adds third-person perspectives (which allow not only scientific precision but also impartial, postconventional, worldcentric judgments of fairness and care). — Integral Psychology, ch. 1
…these researchers all acknowledge the existence of yet higher, postformal stages of cognition—or a higher reason—which takes even more perspectives into account (fourth-and fifth-person perspectives, according to Cook-Greuter). — Integral Psychology, ch. 1
Susanne Cook-Greuter has refined and extended Loevinger's research, and is forging her own original and important model of self development. — Integral Psychology, ch. 7
See Also
- The Big Three — her perspective-taking research is the mechanism behind Wilber's "1-2-3 of consciousness studies"
- Jane Loevinger — the researcher whose ego-development work Cook-Greuter extends
- Chart 4: Self-Related Stages — her perspective/self-sense/characteristics table, the most detailed single-researcher table on that chart
