Faith Development: Stage Four

This article continues a series on faith development, begun several weeks ago.  First time readers are encouraged to read the earlier articles to put today's into context.

Stage 4/Individuative-Reflective Faith:  From this stage forward we begin to lose the connections to the formative ideas of Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson.  Stage 4 requires a departure from the familiar and the safe world of convention.  It may be triggered by a geographic move, such as leaving for college, joining the military or living in a foreign country.  But it is ultimately a psychological departure, an awakening to the ways in which one’s worldview is relative and based, in part, on assumptions that can be challenged by others with different worldviews.  For example, white males have been invited in recent decades to look at the ways in which their dominance in American society both results from and perpetuates a particular set of assumptions that in some ways does violence to themselves and the minorities who serve them.

Not everyone who “leaves home” lets herself be affected in this way.  We’ve all seen the caricature of the American tourist, speaking only English and staying at Hiltons throughout the world.  Similarly, if we are exposed to new perspectives of faith but cannot or will not open ourselves to them, we will stay safe but stuck at the Stage 3 Synthetic Conventional level.  Fowler adds that

Whether a person will really make the move to an Individuative-Reflective stance depends to a critical degree on the character and quality of the ideologically composed groups bidding for one’s joining.  Social fraternities or sororities in colleges often represent conventional ideological communities that in effect substitute one family group for another, making any genuinely individuative move as regards identity and outlook difficult.  Many religious groups similarly reinforce a conventionally held and maintained faith system, sanctifying one’s remaining in the dependence on external authority and derivative group identity of Stage 3.  Marriage, for many young men and women, can serve to create a new Synthetic-Conventional ethos and because the couple are playing adult roles they are able, at least for a time, to evade the challenges of the individuative transition.

According to Fowler, a move to Stage 4 requires both an interruption of reliance on external authority (“the tyranny of the they”) and the development of internal authority.  His research found some people who did one or the other, but not both.  That is, some people are able to see their worldview as a relative part of a larger whole, but because they feel threatened by this they rely even more strongly on external authority.  Others develop an alternative, anti-authoritarian lifestyle but cannot see that it too is relative.  Both these instances result in a stage of equilibrium someplace between Stage 3 and Stage 4.

Stage 4’s sense of community can include the tribal consciousness of “those who are like us and those who aren’t,” but it does this with the added awareness that those who are not like us are living in worlds that make sense and work for them, even though they wouldn’t necessarily work for us.  This awareness tempers and makes relative the Stage 3 tribal tendency to exclude. 

There is also a significant shift in the way symbols function.  It is at Stage 4 that the formal operations “stepping outside” perspective is applied to symbols.  We saw how in Stage 3 the link between the symbol and that which it represents is so close as to make separating the two difficult and threatening.  At Stage 4, a symbol is seen in a broader context.  For example, the Jewish circumcision ceremony is not just a covenant begun between Abraham and God that was carried on by hundreds of generations of Jews to affirm their commitment to this covenant.  It is also contextualized by the knowledge that circumcision has been a common initiation rite for other peoples throughout the world and throughout history.  

Fowler acknowledges there is a loss when these symbols are broken down and analyzed; that with symbols the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.  But there are gains as well when the meanings of symbols are opened up and made explicit.

Fowler found that the “ideal” time for transition from Stage 3 to Stage 4, which he says takes from five to seven years, is in our 20s, when we form our first adult structures.  For many of us it doesn’t happen until our 30s or 40s, when it’s precipitated by a death, divorce or other upheaval.  For others it doesn’t happen at all.

Fowler concludes his discussion of this stage by noting that its strengths include a capacity for critical reflection on one’s identity and ideology.  Its dangers lie “in an excessive confidence in the conscious mind and in critical thought." Many of us can recall the arrogance with which we first learned to apply such understanding to previously sacred topics, dissecting symbols with the gleeful disrespect of a college sophomore fresh out of Anthropology 101. These shortcomings are corrected in the next stage of faith development, Stage 5’s “Conjunctive Faith, which will be described in next week's post.

Do you have a question about your marriage or relationship? Is there a particular topic on relationships or individual psychological issues you would like addressed in this blog? Ask Josh in the comments below or email him at josh@joshgressel.com.

Josh Gressel, Ph.D., is a couples and individual therapist based in Pleasant Hill, CA. Visit his website at joshgressel.com.  He is currently accepting referrals.