The Discerning Heart: the Developmental Psychology of Robert Kegan

Book excerpt: This small book is about how, if we are fortunate, we get smarter as we grow older. Smarter not in the sense that our IQ score rises, but smarter in a much more important sense. This book is about the growth of human understanding, a kind of understanding that enables us to see both ourselves and others more clearly and, in the process, leads us to feel more deeply. Its focus is a remarkable new theory of the development of the self by Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan. The ideas contained in this book will enable you to view yourself, others, and the world through new eyes. It will put your experience of living in the world in motion and, I hope, make you both more discerning and thereby more vulnerable to our very human struggle of making sense of our lives.