Introduction To Spiral Dynamics

those around us and the messages we receive from television, computers,books and other media that we use to tell us stories about the nature of life.This information provides the filtering that is the second way in which weeffectively distort and selectively react to the information we receive from theoutside world. Our sense of the world is fundamentally unique to us.We have created our own rules for viewing the world based on theexperiences we have been through. We see this as who we are and ourtruth.The recognition that we see the world in our own way and interpret it with thelight of our own experience is fundamental in communicating to others. Weneed to know that they have the same sense as the message we are trying tosend. If I ask for assistance in finding a particular book then it is helpful if Ican not only give the title and author but as much description of theappearance as possible so those helping me to find it have a similar image ofthe book as mine.Our ideas about who we are, what constitutes a healthy person and who wethink is well adjusted are also all determined by our own experience and bythe lessons we have learnt from both the people and events that we havecome across in our own lives.10

3.0 Professor Clare GravesIn the 1950s Professor Clare Graves was finding it increasingly difficult todiscuss the different theories of personal development with his psychologystudents and to say which theory was correct. He felt that the world ofpsychology was in a mess with the different views and models of humanbehaviour. He did not want to act as a referee in the ongoing argumentsbetween the differing factions.Professor Graves decided to embark on an area of research where he sawthe greatest confusion. He started to ask his students: “Can one substantiate that conflict and contradiction, confusion andcontroversy are represented in the conceptions of psychological health? “ “What are the conceptions of psychological health extant in the minds ofbiologically mature human beings? ” “Do the existing concepts suggest that psychological health should be viewedas a state, a condition or as a psychological process? “Professor Graves ’ students were aged between 18 and 61 and the groupcontained both male and female students.Graves was teaching second year psychology in three schools; One with anall male population, one all female and one with a mixed group of adults. Hisstudents became the pragmatic choice for his research subjects. He felt thatthe students would not have sufficient prior knowledge of any single theorybut would be sufficiently interested in the project to make it worthwhile.Graves asked his students to spend the first five weeks of their course openlydiscussing what they would put into the conception of a health personality.After the five weeks he asked them to write a paper on their personal ideas ofwhat is a healthy human being.11

At the end of the five weeks Graves collected the papers from his students,copied and graded the responses and handed back the work. In the followingfive weeks the students formed random small groups and presented their ownconceptions to their peers who offered critiques and asked questions.Graves witnessed the process as each person was quizzed by their peersand responded to criticism. At the end of this process each student wasasked to write a further paper either defending or modifying their originalconceptualisation after the peer feedback. The papers were again copiedand graded.In the third phase the students then studied various authorities in the field andwhat they had to say about the ideas of a healthy personality. The studentswere then asked to write a further defence or modification of their originalconcept of a healthy personality.Graves then sat down with a randomly selected group of his students todiscuss their concepts and how these had been modified or confirmed by thepeer discussion and by exposure to the work of others writing in this field.Graves repeated this procedure with eight different sets of students providinghis first data set into the conceptualisation of a healthy personality within amature adult. He established a group of independent judges to classify theconceptions in any way that they felt appropriate. Graves took theseclassifications and then passed the original data to a further independentpanel of judges, who were ignorant of the first analysis, and asked them toclassify the conceptualisations of his students however they felt appropriate.Graves then repeated the whole process each year for eight years, each timeusing independent judges who had no prior knowledge of the earlierclassifications.This rigour provided a sound foundation of data for the different classificationgroupings offered by the raft of independent judges operating over the totaleight years of the project. Each group of judges classified all the data that hadbeen accumulated up to that point so as the data accumulated, so it was reclassified alongside the more recent data. The final judges assessed all eightyears of data.The early findings showed that 60% of all the conceptions fell into twocategories with two sub types each:Deny Self Category (sacrificial) which had the sub groupings of ;Deny self for reward laterDeny self to gain acceptance now.Express Self Category (expressive) which had the sub groupings of;Express self as self desires in a calculating fashion and at the expenseof others.Express self as self desires but not at the expense of others.12

Graves looked at these four sub type themes and started then to look at howthe conceptions had been modified during each five week period. He lookedat how the concepts and their classification had been formed, at how theyhad been modified by peer pressure and peer criticism. Finally he looked athow authority criticism had caused the conceptualisations to be changed.When Graves studied both the original data and the change data he realisedthat people were changing within a pattern.Deny Self (for reward later) changed to,Express Self (at the expense of others) to,Deny Self (to get acceptance now) to,Express Self ( not at others expense) toDeny Self ( to conform to existential realities). A concept not in the originaldata.Graves wrote about some of the people who had defined the healthy adult asExpress self but not at the expense of others, “I had people show up whosaid that they used to believe that this was a healthy human being, but thatthey no longer believed it. ” A new classification of Deny self to conform hademerged during the course of the work itself.As the study evolved the student body attending his classes became moreinclusive of those who had been denied a college education in earlier years.As they provided data for the later classifications a sixth category emerged asExpress self at any cost.The emerging pattern became:Express self at any costDeny self now for reward laterExpress self for self gain at the expense of othersDeny self now to get acceptance nowExpress self, but not at the expense of othersDeny self to conform to existential realitiesGraves started to realise that he was not dealing with psychological healthbut that the conceptions were reflecting the personalities systems activewithin the study population. With this awareness Graves started to refine hisresearch.As his students moved through the college years the majority of themremained available to him for continued contact. He started to constructresults around how groups responded to standardised tests, how groups withsimilar conceptualisations worked together to solve problems, how individualswithin groups interacted with each other and how long it took for the groups13

to come up with solutions to standardised problems. He also looked at howmany potential solutions each group would find to the problem the group wasfacing and assessed the quality of those solutions.One clear result started to emerge out of all the data. The group, who hadconceptualised a healthy personality as Express self, but not at the expenseof others, were providing more good quality solutions faster than any of theother groups. Graves concluded that once the concept of a healthypersonality embraced both expression of self and consideration of others,then a step change occurred in their way of thinking.As Clare Graves worked in more detail with the results he realised he waslooking at a model of the way that personality developed and there was clearevidence of some form of cyclical swing between Express Self and Deny Selfstates. Graves never had an initial hypothesis; in his papers he makesreference to letting the data do the talking. At one point he exclaimed “Thedata stopped me cold for a while. I didn ’t know what to do with it! ”In the 1960s Clare Graves worked with the data, following the patterns andtrends that the data was showing him. A dynamic model of the developmentof personality started to emerge. Graves recognised in the data two facets topersonality that change with time. “They have the character that they spurtand then plateau for a period of time, and then they spurt and plateau again. ”The model evolved towards that of a spiral double helix: the two elements ofthe helix being the interplay of the effects of the individual on his environmentand the effects of the environment on the individual.In 1971 Graves made a presentation of his work to the delegates at theWashington School of Psychiatry in “A Seminar on Levels of HumanExistence. ” He presented the reasons for his research, areas of researchconcern, his methodology of collecting and analysing the data. “Briefly, whatI am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is anunfolding, emergent, oscillating spiral process marked by progressivesubordination of older, lower-order behaviour systems to newer, higher ordersystems as man ’s existential problems change. ”Two protégées of Clare Graves, Don Beck and Christopher Cowan, took themodel of the “Emergent, Cyclical, Double Helix Model of AdultBiopsychosocial Development ” and developed it further in “Spiral Dynamics ”which was published as a book in 1996.14

4.0 A World of ChangeOne of the key elements to the Graves work is that the personality of the adulthuman being has an impact on the environment and the environment alsohas an impact on the human being. We will see later in this document thenature of each code of personality identified in the Graves data but there aretwo significant elements which I believe are essential to understanding SpiralDynamics. Graves found a close correlation between his emergent statesand increasing cognitive ability and that the need to invoke more complexthinking, because of changing life conditions, is the prime motivator forchange. When the need becomes so intense that it causes discomfort, thenthe shift to transition will start.This should be no surprise to us. If we look at nature, we see change inresponse to life conditions all around us. If we consider plants and the waythat root systems evolve in response to the prevailing condition, we see agraphic illustration of that adaptation.Adaptation of root systems to soil and water conditions.Spiral Dynamics is built around the idea of Values Systems and the way theyadapt and change to allow us, as mature adult human beings, to live inchanging life conditions. So what are Value Systems? They are our roots.They are the element driven deep down into the very foundations of ourbeing. They are not always obvious and when the going gets tough weprotect them at all costs.If we again look at nature we can find an appropriate analogy if we look at thewater lily. We have a view of ourselves which we show to the world. This isoften the best presentation that we can offer and we spend time making surethat it is acceptable, attractive to others whilst blending into its surroundingsand being sustainable. In the model of the lily, the element we present is theflower.Supporting that flower is the stem passing through the depth of water. Itsupports the flower, adapts to variations in water depth and provides anessential of the total plant. It can be glimpsed from the surface but is not asconspicuous as the flowering lily pad.Deeper down, buried in the mud at the bottom of the pool but very muchconnected to both the flower and stem is the corm and root structure of the lilypad. It is the basic DNA that is within the very heart of the plant thatdetermines the nature of the flower and its wellbeing.15

Value Systems- At the Core.Our Values System is equivalent to the lily ’s corm and root structure. OurValues System is at the very heart of our being. It is protected and not opento public scrutiny unless by choice. It is the element which needs to adapt andchange so the lily can survive if the soil changes. Ultimately it drives thepublic face seen above the pond surface.So what was it that Graves was seeing change in his students? What was itthat was “Emergent and Cyclical ”? It was the values system that waschanging and adapting in response to the changing life conditions. When realdissonance was experienced for a sustained period the core element adaptedso that the students could continue to thrive in a more complex environment.Beck and Cowan ’s book, Spiral Dynamics, brought another element to thetable, “the Meme ”. Richard Dawkins had used the word to describe anelement of cultural information, fashion or political ideology. RupertSheldrake, in “The presence of the Past ” draws the comparison betweenDawkins ’ meme and the idea of the Morphic Field, where ideas oncegenerated, propagate and simultaneously appear at different, apparentlyunlinked, locations. The acceptance of mobile phones across cultural andgeographic boundaries, in a short space of time, could be seen as a currentday manifestation of a meme. Beck and Cowan introduced the idea of a “vMEME ” or Values Meme as a value that becomes embedded within aculture. The assembly of our vMEMEs becomes a Values System.The conceptualisation is that it is our Values System which is reacting to thelife conditions and is emerging and cyclical as we experience the dissonanceof being unable to solve increasingly complex issues with ways of thinkingthat are no longer adequate and are demonstrably in need of upgrading.The double helix model offered by Graves was formed by the two elements ofinteraction; the influence of the individual on the environment and theinfluence of the environment on the individual. When neither had anything16

left to give, a twist of the spiral was complete and the transition took place tothe next code, with the ability to adapt. The new set of Values was againrelevant to the changed life conditions for a period, providing the plateau ofdevelopment observed by Graves in his students.A Basic Double HelixIn the basic double helix illustrated above the blue ribbon can be regarded asthe effects of the environment on the individual and the orange, the effects ofthe individual on the environment.The results of study showed that as we moved along the helix, on our path ofdevelopment, each code is complete and more complex than its predecessor.Each emergent code transcends and includes the elements of the previouscode. This means that we don ’t forget the old way of thinking when we movebut we take it with us and build on it, enabling us to deal with the increasedcomplexity. In this way our double helix model changes as each steprepresents an ability to deal with greater complexity and is itself, a greaterstep. We become all the people we have ever been. Our double helixrepresentation becomes more like:The Double Helix model of Spiral Dynamics.We now have the image presented to the world by Beck and Cowan torepresent the “Emergent, Cyclical, Double Helix Model of AdultBiopsychosocial Development. ”17

5.0 Codes on the SpiralWhat is it that Graves observed as changing in his students when theyconsidered the concept of psychological health? What was the element ofpersonality that was undergoing change in response to their life conditions?Beck and Cowan introduced the concept of the gene-like vMEME as a DNAlike code within the brain that responds to the Bio-Psychosocial systemsexternal to the individual. Elements are awakened and others dimmed toprovide the complexity of thinking necessary to solve the problemsassociated with more complex life conditions.As the students matured and dealt with the issues surrounding them theymoved towards a state where they could express themselves but not at theexpense of others. They moved from expressing themselves at any cost,holding only the perspective of self, towards a condition where they could notonly recognise others but were considerate of them. This is additionalcomplexity in their daily perception of life. Their mind set had changed to holdmore than one perspective. They were managing their own perception of lifesimultaneously with holding the perspective of multiple others.In the book Spiral Dynamics colours are given to the eight codes identified byGraves. One of Graves ’s fundamental principles was that any individual wasperfectly entitled to be the person they were. There was no inherent pressureto change or progress through the codes of development. Colours are nonjudgemental and non ranking. Blue is neither better nor worse than Red. Itjust is. The colours reflect that entitlement to just be.The research indicates that everybody starts at the same point on theirjourney and progresses through the codes in the same order to a point wherethey are able to deal with the prevailing life conditions with an appropriatecomplexity of thinking. Change is often linked to dissonance or discomfortand sometimes individuals cannot see the way forward to the next code andbecome blocked. They experience increased frustration because they needthe additional abilities to cope but cannot find a way through. Others becomeso attached to a way of thinking that they do not want to change and limit theiractivities so that they can cope. They have become closed to change.Many of us misread some of the indicators and because of distortedperceptions have a dysfunctional experience with a code we are in and18

accelerate out of it as fast as we are able, assuming w

Spiral Dynamics is demonstrating its ability to transform understanding in many areas of the world. 5. Introduction to Spiral Dynamics 1.0 Introduction Spiral Dynamics should not be thought of as a product or service; it is an awareness, a way of thinking which brings a level of understanding and