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1. What, in a nutshell, is Spiral Dynamics?

2. What is the relationship between Spiral Dynamics and NLP?

3. Who was Clare Graves and what is his relationship to Spiral Dynamics?

4. What is 'SDi' - and is it different to Spiral Dynamics?

5. What's the difference between '1st Tier' and '2nd Tier' in Spiral Dynamics?

6. What's the difference between Integrated SocioPsychology and Integral Psychology and where does Integrated SocioPsychology fit in with the concepts of Integrated Spirituality?

1.What, in a nutshell, is Spiral Dynamics?

Spiral Dynamics provides the most advanced map we have to date of how human motivational systems develop. In other words, what makes people do different things in different times and places, and why different things are important to different people.

The model, particularly in the 4Q/8L framework, is an incredibly-powerful diagnostic tool. Because it describes how people are likely to react to change, it enables much more accurate interventions to be designed.

For a brief overview of the model, see 'How the Brain develops the Mind...' in the Children pages.

2. What is the relationship between Spiral Dynamics and NLP?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming provides several linked models developing our understanding of how the brain processes sensory information which the mind attempts to make sense of. It borrows much from the field of Cognitive Psychology in this respect.

Since Spiral Dynamics shows how the mind develops motivational systems or coping mechanisms (vMEMES) in response to Life Conditions, the Integrated approach argues that Spiral Dynamics sits at the heart of NLP. The NLP models add understanding to how the Spiral works.

The Neurological Levels model sets a frame for how internal vMEMES develop Values & Beliefs and influence Identity in relation to the prevailing Life Conditions in the external Environment.

The Meta-States model shows how we interpret our sensory information to produce a first-level meta-state and then interpret the interpretation (2nd level meta-state) and then interpret the interpretation of the interpretation (3rd level meta-state), etc, etc, to give meaning to ourselves in relation to the Life Conditions. In Cognitive Psychology terms, we are forming schemas about schemas! The formation of the meta-state will be influenced by operant vMEMES and the meta-state, once formed, will influence what vMEMES come into play. (See the article 'Can vMEMES cause Clinical Depression?' for more on vMEMES influencing the way we meta-state.)

Meta-Programmes are observable distinctions in mental processing, some of which provide insight into which vMEMES are at work.

NLP also provides a number of very powerful therapies – often described as 'magical! – which provide means of exploring Values, Beliefs and Memories and sometimes changing them. There are no therapies as such in Spiral Dynamics.

There have been attempts to incorporate Spiral Dynamics formally within NLP. The basics of the Graves Model are taught as part of the INLPTA trainer's training programmes.

3. Who was Clare Graves and what is his relationship to Spiral Dynamics?

Clare W Graves was the psychologist from whose groundbreaking work Spiral Dynamics was developed by Don Beck & Christopher Cowan. Other 'builds' of Graves' work have been developed but Spiral Dynamics is the most well-known and, in the view of many, the most powerful.

Beck & Cowan worked closely with Graves during the last years of his life and continued to develop and apply his ideas after his death.

They applied the colour codes to Graves' model and added the concept of the values systems memes or 'vMEMES’ in the 1990s (thus linking in to the new science of memetics) as bio-chemical/neurological drivers to produce the Gravesian worldviews. They also gave their enhanced version of the Graves Model the new popularised title of 'Spiral Dynamics'.

You can learn more about Graves by visiting the 'Graves Model' in the Models pages. For detailed information, visit www.clarewgraves.com.

(Written with input from Chris Cowan.)

4. What is 'SDi' - and is it different to Spiral Dynamics?

SDi - or Spiral Dynamics-Integral - is the overarching concept and brand Don Beck now uses. He sees it as 'the third phase' in the development of the model created from the work of Clare W Graves.

The Graves Model (first phase) has been used and, in some cases, integrated with other models by some very capable academics, coaches, consultants and trainers over the past 25 years. (There are links to some of these on www.clarewgraves.com.) However, it was the Spiral Dynamics 'build' (second phase), developed by Beck & Chris Cowan, which began to popularise the model, made it practical and easy to use, and gave Graves' 'worldviews' theoretical bio-chemical/neurological underpinnings with the addition of the 'vMEME' concept and the link to Memetics. Spiral Dynamics also focussed more on issues of change and transitions between peak vMEMES.

Beck's strategy, for what he views as 'the third phase', is to *integrate* Spiral Dynamics with the work of certain other radical forward-thinkers, building systemic partners and alliances. In particular, he has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Ken Wilber, one of America's leading philosophical theorists, and the wide-ranging Integral Institute, as formed by Wilber. The key outcome of this alliance has been the highly-practical 4Q/8L  adaptation of Wilber's All Quadrants/All Levels concept. (For decades Wilber has been building models to integrate scientific, philosophical and religious concepts across all geographical boundaries and historical eras.)

(It should be noted here that Chris Cowan's recent focus has been to develop greater understanding of the Graves Model within the Spiral Dynamics framework.)

Beck's SDi, which he sees is as growth and expansion of the original theory, is rooted squarely in the Graves Model and the enhancements he and Chris Cowan built on it as Spiral Dynamics.

(Written with imput from Don Beck and Jerry Coursen)

5. What's the difference between '1st Tier' and '2nd Tier' in Spiral Dynamics?

In his research Clare W Graves mapped 7 distinct levels of increasingly complex thinking - A-N (BEIGE), B-O (PURPLE), C-P (RED), D-Q (BLUE), E-R (ORANGE), F-S (GREEN) and the recently-emerged G-T (YELLOW) - with some evidence of a barely-emergent eighth level, H-U (TURQUOISE). The letter pairs signified external conditions-internal mode of thinking; the colours were applied to the levels later by Chris Cowan.

Graves found the difference in problem-solving capability between F-S and G-T was so great - approximately four times greater! - that, when he wrote a feature about it for The Futurist in 1974, he titled the article 'Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap'.

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What we now call YELLOW looked to be of a quite different quality of thinking to the  6 levels - the internal responses are called 'vMEMES' in Spiral Dynamics - which had preceded it in human development. The first 6 levels had a quality of 'subsistence' to Graves; the seventh and what he could make of the eighth seemed to be more about 'being' - having transcended the limited worldviews and patterns of thinking of the first 6 levels.

Since Graves held that the ability of the human brain to develop new coping mechanisms seemed limitless, he speculated that levels of complexity in thinking might develop in tiers (possibly of 6 upon 6) and that the seventh level initiated a second tier.

In his distinction between the quality of the 1st and 2nd Tiers, Graves reflected the thinking of his sometime correspondent, Abraham Maslow. (Graves equated G-T (YELLOW) with the concept of Self-Actualisation put forward by Maslow and others.) Maslow considered the first 6 levels of his Hierarchy of Needs to be about 'deficiency' whereas the 7th and, when he eventually accepted its existence, the 8th were about 'being'.

Some Gravesians such as Don Beck have called for '2nd Tier thinking' as the only way to deal with the messes, tensions and conflicts resulting from '1st Tier thinking'

Others such as Jerry Coursen and, to some extent, Chris Cowan are less sure that Graves' speculation about multiple tiers will hold.

What no one is disputing is that YELLOW (and beyond) does contain a vastly more complex way of thinking than what has gone before.

Interestingly, in 2004 Don Beck posted to his SD-i e-list that he didn't necessarily hold that tiers had to develop in tiers of 6. He proposed that the beginings of the next tier would emerge with the next 'momentous leap' and that, for all he knew, that could come as early as I-V (CORAL) or well after the 6th level of the 2nd Tier.

These thoughts may have been influenced by Ken Wilber. He has been speculating for several years now that there are levels (transpersonal/spiritual) that go way beyond TURQUOISE and that the next level up - INDIGO in his lexicon - effectively triggers off a 3rd Tier. (However, it must be stressed that there is no scientifically-credible evidence for modes of thinking existing beyond the 8th level.)

Whether coping mechanisms do develop in tiers of 6 - or even discreet tiers at all! - '2nd Tier' can be a useful metaphor to draw a definite distinction between the limited thinking of PURPLE-to-GREEN and the complex and transcendant thinking of YELLOW-and-beyond.

6. What's the difference between Integrated SocioPsychology and Integral Psychology and where does Integrated SocioPsychology fit in with the concepts of Integrated Spirituality?

‘Integral Psychology’, as laid out in Ken Wilber's 2000 book of the same name, was a grand attempt - heroic, even! - to create, effectively, a  'theory of everything' to do with human nature. ('A Theory of Everything' was an earlier Ken Wilber title.)

Wilber has drawn upon the philosophical, the metaphysical and the spiritual/religious, in addition to the behavioural sciences, in his attempts to mesh the Premodern and the Modern in fleshing out the Postmodern. Fundamental presuppositions he works with are that there are higher levels of being to do with 'Spirit' and that levels of existence are set within a structured 'Great Nest of Being'. The high ambition of Wilber's concepts is dizzying!

Integrated SocioPsychology, as I conceive it, is rather more more modest in scope, being the overarching approach of aligning and integrating all the different schools, theories and models in the behavioural sciences. It uses the Graves Model and its Spiral Dynamics build to create a skeletal framework for this. (Several NLP models, schema theory, Albert Bandura's (1977) concept of Reciprocal Determinism and Hans Eysenck's Dimensions of Temperament add key concepts to this framework.)

As such, Integrated SocioPsychology limits itself to what might be broadly termed 'scientific approaches' and largely avoids discussion of the metaphysical and the spiritual beyond acknowledging that, for many, these are very real influences on their lives.

Accordingly, Integrated SocioPsychology, while not denying the spiritual, is limited to exploring it as the beliefs and experiences of individuals, groups and systems. Thus, for those who are comfortable with the metaphysical and the spiritual, Integrated SocioPsychology can be seen as a subset of Integral Psychology. For those who want nothing to do with such concepts, Integrated SocioPsychology can serve simply as an overarching aligning approach for the behavioural sciences.

Where the boundaries are between science and philosophy/spirituality is, of course, impossible to define. Thus, thinkers such as Gregory Bateson and Robert Dilts, whose work is key to Integrated SocioPsychology, have attempted to expound on the spiritual.

The difficulty with this is that the more you move towards the philosophy/spirituality end of what might be termed a science-spirituality continuum, the more the phenomena are subjective and about personal experience or the personal experiences of others that you are willing to credit. Of course, what is accepted as ‘science’  is not always objective, as Paul Feyeraband (1975) and Jon Freeman (2008) have clearly demonstrated. (See Psychology as Science.) However, science aims to be objective - at least, theoretically - whereas spiritual experience inevitably is subjective - even, if to a degree shared, in, say, collective worship.

This subjective element shouldn't necessarily negate 'spiritual experiences' or the way people attribute spirituality in their lives. Just because science has yet to find a way to test spirituality objectively, doesn't mean it's not real. Just that science can't 'prove' it.

The problem comes when scientific evidence is contradicted from an unverifiable philosophical/spiritual stance. Which is what Ken Wilber appears to have done with his 2006 book, 'Integral Spirituality'.

While there is much to commend in this work, Wilber's assertions of there being a ‘3rd (spiritual) Tier’ of thinking is simply without any form of verifiable support. Elsewhere his philosophical reduction of vMEMES to a 'values line' disconnected from morality, ego state and needs undermines the criticality of the work of Clare W Graves and works against the very concept of integration. His assertion that progress along all other lines is always dependent on progress along the cognitive line is simply not always true. While Lawrence Kohlberg set forth in his Stages of Moral Development construct (1976) a very convincing argument that cognitive development facilitates moral development,it has been demonstrated in a validated experiment (W Doise, J B Rijsman, J van Meel, I Bressers & L Pinxten, 1984) that emotion and values can drive cognitive development in certain circumstances. So it’s not quite as straight forward as Wilber - or, for that matter, Kohlberg - makes out.

Ken Wilber is one of the most complex thinkers being published today. The 4Q/8L model Don Beck (2000, 2003) built on Wilber's All Quadrants/All Levels construct (1995) is, without doubt, one of the most powerful tools ever devised - and arguably the most complete! - for analysing the whole phenomenon of human society.

The problem with Wilber is that increasingly he mixes science, philosophy and spirituality into his own distinctive blend and then presents it as indisputable fact. It would perhaps be better if Wilber acknowledged clearly which of his assertions are based on ‘scientific fact’ and which are extrapolated from logical premises and subjective experience.

Integrated SocioPsychology fits fine as a science-oriented/spiritually-ambivalent subset of Integral Psychology. However, Integrated SocioPsychology leans towards empirical evidence (where this is available), rather than subjective experience.