An evolving body of scholarship investigating how consciousness develops within and between individuals, groups, and societies
Research & Writing:
Thought in Formation
Foundational and Emerging Thought
My work draws on decades of formal and informal research exploring how individual psychological development connects to sociopolitical transformation.
Key Publications
Awakening Our Faith in the Future: The Advent of Psychological Liberalism
- (Routledge, 2008) – This book contends that we can renew liberalism by integrating its outward political focus with its inward, psychological focus.
“How Do We Transform Our Large-Group Identities?”
- Journal for Jungian Scholarly Studies, 2017 – Exploring the role of emotion in bridging individual development and collective transformation.
“Carl Jung’s Theory of Psychocultural Development”
- In Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory, 2020 – “Carl Jung.” Explore Jung’s theory of the species psychocultural development.
Current Projects
Psychocultural Development: Integrating Healing and Justice through belonging, becoming, and engaging (BBE) groups.
A comprehensive articulation of theory and practice bridging individual development and collective transformation through Belonging, Becoming, and Engaging groups. This paper is written in collaboration with Dr. Camille Jarmie.
Research Studies
Since 2000, I have conducted multiple studies examining how group-based approaches support integration of healing and justice:
Community Leaders Exploring Their “Authentic Face” (2000-2003): Progressive community leaders and activists exploring emotional dimensions of public engagement, finding significant relief in sharing authentic responses to leadership challenges.
Hope and Leadership Group (2012-2018): Bi-monthly meetings over six years with community leaders and psychologically aware citizens, resulting in increased confidence, reduced burnout, and enhanced capacity to navigate organizational conflicts.
Workshops for Liberal and Progressive Activists (2018): Single-day intensives addressing burnout and conflict in organizing work, developing skills for emotional attunement and communication across ideological differences.
International Online BBE Group (2020-Present): Monthly three-hour sessions bringing together psychotherapists, coaches, community leaders, activists, and engaged citizens from multiple countries to explore psychocultural development.
Theoretical Foundations
My work integrates multiple theoretical streams:
Robert Kegan’s constructive-developmental theory of how adults “make meaning” of experience through increasingly complex stages of consciousness. Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s research identifying “deliberatively developmental” organizations.
Yvonne Agazarian’s Theory of Living Human Systems and Systems-Centered Training, supporting the theory and practices that integrate individual and group development.
Aftab Omer’s framework of transformative learning and affective transmutation, showing how emotional sensitivities become leadership capacities and have an over-sized impact on communities.
Jonathan Haidt and Oliver Curry’s overlapping and divergent theories of human moral foundations, recognizing how different ideologies emphasize different combinations of universal values.
Research on emotional communities (Barbara Rosenwein), worldview development (Ken Wilber, Steve McIntosh), and the sociology and politics of emotions (Sarah Ahmed, Aftab Omer, Daniel Goleman, Sally Kohn).
