What is Conventional Development?

0:00Hi there, just to say this is a short snippet from this week's main episode which was published on Wednesday as always. If you want the full episode you can find it just below this one. What does conventional development mean? Well, I don't want to go into too much detail about what conventional means because you know that's what we're going to be doing for the next three weeks, but what we can say just high level is basically conventional is when you become like an ordinary citizen that can look after themselves and what we don't necessarily realise is that there's a lot of psychological development that needs to happen until you can can be that way. At conventional the subject object split isn't established which basically means that you feel your body and you sense that your mind and your psychology and your own wants and desires are separate.

1:04These form a self and this self is separate from the world that is around it. And again, that may sound so stupidly simple, but again as we spoke about last week that is not a feature of pre-conventional development. The subject object split isn't really not established at all until conventional development. It also means that your meaning-making, your world view, your values, your motivations are all in line with the bulk of society. It means you're identified with and loyal to your home culture. It means you're socialised, civilised, you've learned of rules, you've learned to control your impulses, you can fulfill responsibilities, you have a functional moral sense and you're just an integrated member of society in a basic way which pre-conventional people really are not. They struggle to look after themselves especially at the early levels,

2:06adults at the very earliest levels are often in full-time care. And even at the opportunistic level, which is a final pre-conventional level, adults are still very unruly, they can't really follow the rules, they don't know how to cooperate, they're not very civilised, they're they cannot really take on responsibilities and they might be embroiled in crime and in addiction and so on and so further. Don't turn into a generalisation, I'm just trying to give you a sense of what conventional means. And of course, listen, conventional, you can be addicted, you can be a criminal, but I'm just saying in general, you have the capacity to be like an integrated member of society. Also, at conventional, you have at least a second person perspective, which really just means that you're no longer purely egocentric, you can consider others in your immediate surround as much as

3:11you do yourself, you can consider their ones and their needs as much as you can consider your own. There is, they can be as important to you as your own, which of course is pretty crucial if you want to have a job, have a family, have friends and so on and so forth. The construction of the self is starting to peak at the conventional levels, so remember I said last week or two weeks ago, I think it was the first episode in this series two weeks ago, the introductory episode. When I said that basically, there's different ways to look at ego development as a whole, and one of the ways to look at it is that first is a constructive process and it's a deconstructive process. And what we're really constructing is our sense of self, our sense of self and other, our sense of knowledge and capability, our sense of being clearly defined as a personality.

4:16That's the construction process, so a conventional, we're starting to really reach the peak of that, and it actually reaches the peak at the third conventional stage, this process, and then you go into the deconstruction phase if you indeed develop further. Hi there, just to say this is a short snippet from this week's main episode, which was published on Wednesday as always, if you want to fill episode you can find it just below this one.