Jane Loevinger

Wilber's View

Loevinger supplies Wilber with the specifically ego-developmental leg of the "Habermas/Maslow/Loevinger parallels" he treats as convergent evidence for a single developmental logic running through very different research programs. Where Kohlberg tracks moral reasoning and Maslow tracks motivational needs, Loevinger tracks stages of ego or self-development directly — and Wilber maps her stage language (the "conformist" self giving way to a "conscientious" self) onto the same conventional-to-postconventional transition he finds in Kohlberg's moral stages and Maslow's belongingness-to-self-esteem shift. She's one of a handful of names (with Baldwin, Werner, Graves, Piaget) Wilber credits for the specific historical achievement of finally putting rigorous, research-backed empirical flesh on stage-development claims that, before the second half of the twentieth century, had been mostly speculative.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

One can't help but notice that this hierarchy of "deficiency needs" or "scarce resources" bears striking resemblance to Abraham Maslow's (and Jane Loevinger's and others') present-day ontogenetic needs hierarchy—from safety/power to conventional security/belonging to personal/egoic value to existential meaning.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 5

"Who am I?" becomes, for the first time, a burning question, and the self-esteem needs emerge from the belongingness needs (Maslow), or a "conscientious" self emerges from a "conformist" mode (Loevinger).

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 6

…it was only in the last half of this century that the stages of consciousness development were outlined in any sort of rigorous fashion backed by research—Baldwin, Werner, Graves, Maslow, Piaget, Loevinger, and so on.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 12

In Integral Psychology

Integral Psychology treats Loevinger's ego-development research as essentially identical to what Wilber calls proximate-self development — see The Proximate Self and the Distal Self.

What Loevinger calls "ego development" is quite similar to what I refer to as proximate-self development. And proximate-self development is, in my view, at the very heart of the evolution of consciousness. — Integral Psychology, ch. 3

Jane Loevinger's impressive research focused specifically on ego development…it brought a great deal of precision to the field and sparked an explosion of further developmental studies. — Integral Psychology, ch. 7

She found that ego (proximate-self) development moves through about ten discernible stages, the names of which tend to tell the story: autistic, symbiotic, impulsive, self-protective, conformist, conscientious-conformist, conscientious, individualistic, autonomous, and integrated. — Integral Psychology, ch. 7

Her research has been repeated in several different cultures now, and continues to garner wide support. — Integral Psychology, ch. 7

See Also

• The Proximate Self and the Distal Self — Wilber treats Loevinger's "ego development" as essentially his own proximate-self line
• Chart 4: Self-Related Stages — Loevinger is the central figure this chart correlates against Broughton
• maslow — the needs-hierarchy parallel Wilber runs alongside Loevinger's ego stages
• kohlberg — the moral-stage parallel to the same conformist/postconventional shift
• habermas — completes the "Habermas/Maslow/Loevinger" convergence Wilber cites