Developmental Learning a Mini-essay

A Developmental Learner is an individual who may have any theoretical orientation, who has developed flexibility of awareness, thought, and action grounded in emotional stabilization. This development is a process of growth unnoticed by the unaided eye. Like a small tree that has planted and burgeoned without detection, it is seen only through consecutive stages. Training is its initial stage.

We may see the leaf, the branch, or the trunk, while the root remains invisible. Each of these separate parts represents an action that we call a living tree. In the absence of any one of these actions, there is no longer a living process. The seed begins with the sprouting of a root, which looks nothing like a tree. Out of the root comes the stem, from the stem the branch, and from the branch the leaf. Each of these successive stages in concert constitutes a whole tree.

Flexibility of awareness necessitates flexibility of thought. Flexibility of thought necessitates flexibility of action. Flexibility of action necessitates flexibility of awareness. These qualities are parts of an indivisible whole that cannot be learned systematically. They operate simultaneously and can be learned only in the course of living one's life. Dogma precludes any of these qualities. A dogmatic adherent to established theories would not be a developmental learner, even if he called himself one.

The materials for learning are unique to each client and to each therapeutic relationship. The client's personality, symptoms, relationships, environment, and background constitute the means for developing the capacity to learn how to learn. Yet, learning depends not only on the characteristics of the client but also on those of the therapist. There is no guarantee that life will be without struggle or pain. However, the struggle becomes coherent.

The therapist is in no way superior to the client. In fact, an important plateau has been reached when the client realizes his or her shared humanity with the therapist. Not everyone who goes through the learning process becomes a developmental therapist. Each individual develops in the context of his or her own life, occupation, and culture. Although apparently having different roles, there is no essential difference between the client and the therapist.

In many systems, training is considered an end in itself. Supercession is the hallmark of developmental learning, and training is thus initiatory activity. Training by means of theory serves to pattern thoughts and actions along predetermined paths. Telling a child that he cannot go into the street is useful at a certain stage. If, however, the prohibition remains into adulthood, mobility would be limited, at the least. Yet, there is no doubt of the necessity for this prohibition at the appropriate stage.

Although listed in a linear fashion, the following "skills" cannot be learned successively or systematically. At the same time, each necessitates the other and operates simultaneously.

  1. Self-observation without self-abasement
  2. Examining assumptions and the assumptions behind those assumptions
  3. Overcoming fixed ideas
  4. Emotional stabilization
  5. Developing flexibility of thought and action
  6. A recognition, but not a creed, that life is a struggle and that one can approach the struggle coherently