Updated: 25 July 2012

Dr Clare W Graves (1914-1986) was the psychologist on whose work Spiral Dynamics and several other powerful and practical conceptual models have been built.

Although he achieved the emminent position of 'Professor of Psychology Emeritus' at Union College, Schenectady, New York State, when he retired through ill health in 1978, he was not particularly well known outside of certain academic and management theory networks and he has been largely ignored since his death.

However, his model and the theory that supports it are without doubt amongst the most powerful and certainly the most cohesive and comprehensive of all attempts to map the development of the human psyche. Those who get to grips with Graves' work tend to become decidedly passionate about it - such is the power of the model! His work is critical and fundamental to Psychology and the other behavioural sciences and is at the core of Integrated SocioPsychology.

Clare W Graves [Copyright © NVC Inc]

Graves was an associate professor at Union when he began his remarkable project in 1952. (He became a full professor in 1956.) At the time Graves recognised the frustration of his students when trying to make sense of the differing theories of personality development and human nature he had taught them - often expressed in terms such as: "Okay, professor. Now we know Maslow and Rogers and Skinner and lots of others. Which theory is right?"

So it was he resolved to carry out his own research project, starting completely from scratch - ie: he didn't use any existing theory as a starting point. Effectively Graves started without a hypothesis and with only the broadest of aims!

In 1984, just over 30 years later, Graves gave his last major presentation (to the World Future Society) on what he had come to call the 'Emergent Cyclical Double-Helix Model of Adult Bio-Pyscho-Social Behaviour'.

                                                                                                 The Methodology - an Insight
Graves began by getting his students to write down their conceptions of the psychological health of biologically-mature human beings. He did this on an annual basis and then had the data collated, assessed and categorised by independent panels of judges.

He tested students in groups categorised according to the independent judges, using a variety of then-standard psychological assessments for measures including:-

He also worked on specific problem-solving exercises with the categorised groups.

He conducted biophysiological tests with light and sound on the categorised groups (Graves, 1971) and tested their galvanic skin response (electrical conductivity of the skin) (Graves, 1971/2002). He even injected some of them with hormones to see what effect this would have on their thinking and behaviour in terms of his model. (Graves, 1978/2005)

Some of Graves' methods would be regarded as rather dubious when set against the heavy emphasis on ethics by today's Psychology academics. He did not tell his students what his intentions were but allowed them to think the various tests and exercises were part of their standard curriculum. He also observed them through 2-way mirrors and secretly tape-recorded them.

In trying to make sense of the immense amount of data he was collecting, Graves initially tried to map it against Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1956), with which he had been much impressed. Besides Maslow, he also conversed regularly with O J Harvey and David E Hunt (of Harvey, Schroeder & Hunt) - Hunt had been one of his students at Union - and Jack Calhoun, among others.

As news of his work and the conclusions he was drawing began to spread in the 1960s and 1970s, Graves received invitations to work in industrial situations, educational institutions and with prison populations which enabled him to collect data from new and quite different population groups.

Unfortunately Graves appears to have entertained some short-sighted C-P (RED) in his own thinking as he threw out a large amount of the original test materials, retaining only the collated results. This has created difficulties in replicating and validating Graves' project - already daunting due to its 30-year length and the sheer amount of data he collected.

                                                                                                      The Results - an Insight

Early on Graves and his judges identified two basic values-oriented systems and 2 sub-systems of each system. Note: Graves did not use the letter-pair combinations until 1970. The initial terms used where variations of those included in the 1966 publication - see below. The 1970 letter pairs and descriptions are used here for ease of understanding.

In 1959 Graves found for the first time a very small number of his students identifying a level clearly beyond G-T as a superior conception of the psychologically-healthy human being: Deny/Sacrifice Self to existential realities (H-U).

This led to some theoretical debate with Maslow. How much Maslow and Graves communicated and how much they influenced each other is a matter of some conjecture. However, Graves is known to have sympathised with Maslow at a mid-1950s American Psychological Association conference when Maslow was brutally barracked and rubbished by a legion of Behaviourists; and in May 1965, when Maslow was ill, he stood in for him and presented his paper in New York City. Shortly before his death in 1970 Maslow finally acknowledged 'Transcendence' as a way of thinking beyond basic Self-Actualisation. The more knowledgeable students of Maslow tend to place Transcendence as the highest level in the Hierarchy, though Maslow died before he could formally revise its structure himself.

A difference between Graves and Maslow that was not resolved, however, was that of the 'ultimate state'. Maslow saw the stages of development as forming a pyramid, with Self-Actualisation - later, succeeded by Transcendence) - forming the apex. Graves, on the other hand, came to believe in the brain-mind's ability to ever expand its repertoire of coping mechanisms by creating new thinking systems as circumstances demanded. This is illustrated in Spiral Dynamics by both the nomination of the hypothetical level I-V (CORAL) beyond H-U (TURQUOISE) and the Spiral 'balloon' graphic - the latter showing how the succeeding mindsets are greater in complexity, thus forming an ever-expanding spiral. (However, there is yet to be any scientifically-reliable evidence of anyone thinking in a way beyond H-U.)

In 1966 Graves published the first version of his 7 levels of thinking model:-

• Pacifist Individualistic (later, H-U)
• Aggressive Individualistic (later, G-T)
• Sociocentric (later, F-S)
• Aggressive Power Seeking (later split into C-P and E-R)
• Awakening & Fright (later, D-Q)
• Animistic (later, B-O)
• Autistic (later, A-N)

Clearly, in attributing individualistic characteristics to what he would later term H-U - though he was working with a very small sample size - Graves had yet to realise the cycling between individualistic and collectivistic motivations. The Autistic (A-N) and Animistic (B-O) levels were sketched in, drawing from the work of leading anthropologists; these levels did not show up as such in the studies Graves conducted.

By the time the first version of his model was published, Graves had identified an Express-Self level less complex than Awakening & Fright (D-Q) yet containing some of the cruder elements of Aggressive Power Seeking. Express Self impulsively at any cost (C-P) became the missing level. Graves correlated this discovery with the arrival of significant numbers of students from blue collar/working class backgrounds at Union due to changes in the funding and admission regimes. (It was the identification of this level which led David Hunt in 1966) - (terming it 'Type Sub-1' - to break from colleagues Harvey and H M Schroeder who were reluctant to acknowledge a level below 'Type 1' (D-Q).(A Developmental Comparison Map illustrates how the work of other developmental psychologists and behavioural scientists like Maslow and Harvey, Schroeder & Hunt (1961) maps to the Gravesian levels.)

By the late 1960s Graves was making substantial revisions to his model from the ongoing collection of data. The basics of the full theory were in place by 1970 when he published a paper on it in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Several key factors had become clear to him by this time:-

• the systems developed in an upward hierarchical manner, cycling between Express Self and Deny/Sacrifice Self
• in the relationship between the internal coping mechanisms (notated N-Z) and the Life Conditions (notated A-M) which could be either internal (biological/psychological) or external (in the environment), the Deny/Sacrifice Self systems work to adapt to the Life Conditions while the Express Self systems work to overcome them
• characteristics of transitions between levels were identifiable
• the B-O to F-S (GREEN) levels in their peak manifestations defended their worldviews as being 'right' in a rather absolutist sense while G-T tolerated other worldviews and H-U regarded less complex worldviews as self-deception

Though he admitted he personally couldn't find enough reliable and significant evidence for it, Graves thought it likely there were relationships between the levels and intelligence and temperament.

                                                                                                    The Freaky Stuff!!!!
In over 30 years of research Clare W Graves discovered some fairly startling information about the way the systems he had identified operated:-

• The O system is stimulated by smooth gradations in light and sound - eg: a sunset - while the P system is stimulated by pulsing light and sound - eg: in a disco
• In terms of hormones, noradrenaline is higher than adrenaline when the P system is active and adrenaline higher than noradrenaline when Q is active
• The T system has 4 times the problem-solving capacity of the S system
  Graves was so struck by these discoveries he wrote an article 'Human Nature prepares for a Momentous Leap' (published in The Futurist, 1974), describing the significant difference in complexity of thinking engendered by the move from S to T
• Fear and compulsion are absent when the T system is activated
• Galvanic skin response varies between systems and increases dramatically when the U (TURQUOISE) system is activated
  "Oh, my God, it becomes so high you can't hardly get it. I'm talking 2-3-4 standard deviations. This thing has really jumped."
  (Graves, 1971/2002, p68)
• Graves also said of the eighth level:
  "The H-U person can turn off other levels of consciousness at will. He can go out of this world and go off into other levels of
  consciousness and come back at will. Instrumentally you have that..."
  (Graves, 1971/2002, p67)

It seemed to Graves that there was a qualitative difference between the first 6 levels - of subsistence - and the seventh and eighth - of being. (In this he paralleled Maslow's distinction between deficiency needs and growth needs.) It also seemed to Graves that the seventh and eighth levels were far more complex reflections of the first and second. From this he began to speculate that the systems developed in tiers of 6, each a more complex reflection of the previous tier. By the early 1980s he preferred to annotate G-T as A'-N' and H-U as B'O' in accordance with his idea of repeating tiers. (It needs to be stated that the concept of repeating tiers of 6 seems to have been pure speculation on Graves' part; there is no known evidence for this.)

                                                                                                The Graves Legacy
Although severe ill health forced his retirement from Union College in 1978, Graves continued to carry out research and to make presentations as best he could. His health problems effectively brought to an end his attempts to write a book about his work and the theory he had developed from it. ('The Never Ending Quest', published in 2005, was an invaluable completion of the abandoned manuscript, using other Gravesian materials.)

Not particularly good at promoting himself in academic circles, Graves had relatively little material published in psychological journals during his lifetime. (He did have several pieces published in management/business-oriented periodicals.)

However, by the time of his retirement, Graves' work was being taken very seriously indeed by a number of small networks across the United States. One particularly important pocket of support was in Texas where Scott & Susan Myers at Texas Instruments introduced the concepts to colleagues Charles Hughes & Vincent S Flowers. Hughes & Flowers soon became the Center for Values Research - but not before Flowers had taken up a position at North Texas State University where he interested Don Beck & Chris Cowan (who eventually became the National Values Center) in Graves' work. Together and separately they championed his ideas both within academia and in applications to industry & commerce and education.

When Graves died in 1986, Don Beck had already established his own remarkable project of applying Graves' model to the deteriorating situation in Apartheid South Africa. Graves and Beck consulted closely during the mission's first few years.

Don Beck & Chris Cowan, of course, developed Spiral Dynamics (1966) from Graves' model.

However, while it is arguably the most powerful development of Graves' work, Spiral Dynamics is far from being the only 'build' on his work. Web sites related to some of the other builds are listed below.

In recent years Chris Cowan has worked closely with Bill Lee, the self-described 'Graves Archivist', to recover, preserve and publish original Graves materials - both online and paperbound.

Graves' model and his theory have yet to be validated to academic standards - although hundreds - if not thousands! - of Gravesians are actively using the model to make a difference in the 'real world'.

Chris Cowan, Clare Graves and Don Beck at Graves’ farm [Copyright © NVC Inc]

Graves Model Links

Clare W Graves

Web site devoted to promoting and publishing Graves’ work - run by Bill Lee, Chris Cowan & Natasha Todorovic

Graves Model Builds

(other than Spiral Dynamics)

Brainmeup (Brain Technologies)
Dudley Lynch's 'Dolphin' version of Graves informs a range of personal and management development tools - especially popular with commercial organisations

Systemic Solutions
The Graves Model is used here as a critical element in a broad-based holistic approach to enhancing relationships in all aspects of life

Graves identified what he later termed the G-T (YELLOW) level with the characteristics of Self-Actualisation, as described by Humanistic psychologists such as Maslow - especially - and Carl Rogers (1959). (Rogers also used the term 'Full Function' for this level.)

emrgnc: research papers on Graves' Levels of Existence
This page containing downloads of a number of papers exploring Graves' concepts is part of the much larger emrgnc site aimed at applying "the many principles of integral practice towards an emergent world"