Learning Outcomes

• Appreciate the qualities of sudden and significant development and change
• Appreciate developmental insights derived from qualitative interview methods
• Understand changes in experience in terms of meaning-making
  • What was one experiencing before, during, and after some experience?

Disintegration, New Consciousness, and Quantum Transformation

Literature Review

-Sudden, significant development change is rare and sometimes overlooked

-William James provides a solid definition of transformation and describes the centralization of ideas

-Maslow’s Peak experiences sometimes have lasting effects but sometimes a “Jonah complex” can prohibit change

-Morse & Perry (1992)’s observe how near-death experiences relate to lasting change when accompanied by an experience with the light or a light review (as opposed to panoramic memory or brief visions of one’s life)

-Miller and C’ de Baca describe “reorganization of reality perception” by way of two types: insightful and mystical. The latter involves qualities that are ineffable, noetic, transient (usually not more than a half hour), and passive

• observed sacred themes: different ways of knowing truth, our day-to-day material reality is but a small part of all that is, having things is not important, love is what we are and what we are meant to be, and all people are somehow intimately and profoundly linked. There is a shifting of values; Wealth changed from number 1 to number 50 for men
• observed the profound role of social support

Calhoun and Tedeschi (2004) observations about post-traumatic growth

Method

1. Attention to the everyday life-world of the participant.

2. Efforts to understand the meaning of the themes in the experience of the participant.

3. Dialogue aimed at qualitative rather than quantitative knowledge.

4. Encouragement of in-depth descriptions of the participant’s experience.

5. Encouragement of descriptions of specific experiences.

6. A deliberate naïveté involving openness to new and unexpected perspectives.

7. Focus on the phenomenon of interest without using restrictive questions.

8. Acknowledgement of possible ambiguities and contradictions in the dialogue.

9. Awareness that the participant may have new insights and come to change his or her descriptions during the course of the interview.

10. Awareness that each interviewer brings varying degrees of sensitivity to different aspects of the participants’ experiences and perspectives.

Findings & Observations:

• Relationship struggles
• Hopelessness
• Holding on
• Control
• Psychological Turmoil
• Choice and response-ability
• The presence of a trusted other
• Subconscious processes

Perhaps most significantly, my research on disintegration, new consciousness, and quantum transformation suggests:

1. People were suffering prior to life-altering insights even more than I anticipated
2. The presence of a trusted other was important for possibility and growth
3. Compassion from “com” and “passion” literally means to “suffer with” or “shared suffering.” Compassion implies suffering from someone because you want to help, bear their burdens because it is usually harder to suffer alone.

Discontinuous v. Continuous Development

The issue of discontinuity versus continuity in developmental psychology may be more about perspective about what development means. The ontology and subject matter of psychology is not unquestionably settled, and waves of psychology have respectively focused on consciousness (structuralism and functionalism), unconscious processes (psychoanalysis), behavior (behaviorism), perception (gestalt psychology), motivation (humanism), cognition, neuroscience, and evolution. As it says in the Disintegration, New Consciousness, and Quantum Transformation article, “Our theories determine what we measure and how we measure.” Different theories about development relate to different kinds of assumptions:

See Developmental stage theories.

Footnote

1. According to Reber and Moody’s Are We Special?  The truth about being special is that we are special to God, children of God.  The lie about being special is that we are special, more important, better than others.  They propose four categories based on our hearts as it relates to whether we accept this truth and this lie:  

   1. Accepting the truth (special to God) and the lie (better) makes people believe that they are better than others because they are children of God. (pharisee) 
   2. Denying the truth (special to God) and accepting the lie (better) makes people arrogant and selfish.
   3. Denying the truth (special to God) and lie (better) makes people nothing special.
   4. Accepting the truth (special to God) and denying the lie (better) makes people disciples.