The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) did not formulate a specific stage theory of the human life cycle as did his mentor Sigmund Freud who theorized about the stages of psycho-sexual development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital). However, throughout his life he gave us hints and insights into the chronological features of the human...Read More

Jean Gebser (1905-1973) was a German philosopher, linguist, poet, and autodidact who wrote The Ever-Present Origin, an interdisciplinary survey of human and cultural consciousness that was decades ahead of its time.  His integral perspective did not deal with the stages of a human life per se (e.g. birth to death), but rather focused on the...Read More

Ken Wilber is known as one of the founders of ”integral psychology” which refers to an attempt to formulate a theory of the psyche that incorporates ideas from both psychology and spirituality.  Perhaps Wilber’s most well-known model of human development, or ”spectrum of consciousness” is rather simple, based as it is on three different levels: ...Read More

Jane Loevinger (1918-2008) was an American psychologist working in the 20th century who focused on the idea of ego development across the lifespan. According to Loevinger (who worked as an assistant to Erik Erikson in graduate school), the ego (originally formulated by Sigmund Freud) was not a ”thing” but rather a ”process.” Loevinger believed that...Read More

My father went to medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in the 1940’s at a time when there were some really distinguished physicians walking in the halls such as Hans Selye (the originator of the concept of ”stress”) and Wilder Penfield, who did a series of amazing experiments with surgery for epilepsy which...Read More