Washburn's Pre-egoic and Egoic Stages of Human Development

Washburn describes the development of the psyche using a model of thesis, antithesis, synthesis that he inherits from philosophical thought. He then applies it to the psyche, seen very much through the eyes of a Freudian/Jungian/psychoanalytical model. The dialectical model he uses is very similar to that of Hegel, a German philosopher whose dialectical approach has spanned almost two centuries of philosophical thought. It is interesting to see the dialectical model applied to the psyche in this way, although, as Washburn defines himself, this feels more like a transpersonal philosophical "theory" of the psyche rather than a transpersonal "psychology" grounded in a clinical setting. In this sense the model that Washburn offers is very different from Grof's, that was born not on development of ideas but on deduction from experiential case studies. This feels definitely the work of a thinker rather than that of a clinician.

The theory

Washburn developmental model describes how all life energy stems from an undifferentiated psychic energy that he calls the Ground. At the beginning (possibly from conception) the human life is embedded and at one with the Ground (Original Embedment). As part of the Ground the being is one with the whole and shares feelings of bliss and ecstasy with the Ground. But this stage is short lived. The newborn infant soon moves into the Pre-Egoic stage, a stage during which the connection with the Ground is gradually lost and repressed.

During the pre-egoic stage at first the ground is replaced by the mother, who at this stage is described by Washburn as the Great Mother. The young infant/child is described here as a body/ego, a very body centered state immersed in sensation. Washburn adapts the Freudian concept of the polymorphous perversus, modifying it to polymorphous sensuous to describe this particular stage of development, emphasizing the accentuated sense and body based nature of this phase.

Soon a quest for independence, a natural developmental instinct of differentiation from the mother takes place, and a conflict ensues with the mother and within the child's psyche. The Mother (and the Ground) is no longer seen as blissful and safe but as threatening, scary and engulfing. The Great Mother is split into the Good and Terrible Mother archetypes and the struggle between need for intimacy and independence is born. The end result is the abandonment of the desire for intimacy with the mother in favor of independence, detachment from the mother and the repression of all that mother represents, including the Ground. Washburn calls the repression of the Ground the Original Repression. It precedes all subsequent repression and gives birth to the Egoic stage.

During the Egoic stage the Body-Ego and the Ground are both repressed in favor of the Mental Ego. This is a rational and conceptual stage that lasts until middle adulthood for some, but for many continues for the whole of childhood, adolescence and adult life. In this stage the awareness of the body is minimal and the person operates very much from their mind. The Mental Ego is dissociated from the Ground and fears, on some level, that it might not be real. It engages in a compulsive extraversion, focused on the outer to fill the "nothingness", the void that it feels inside, stemming from the loss of the Ground. The primary project of the mental ego is the construction of identity, the construction of a Self- Concept, set in motion from the desire to escape the feelings of inner void and by the desire to find one's proper place in the world. The mental Ego is also constantly engaging in an inner dialogue, with associated feelings of elation and depression, during which the mental ego tells itself that it has either been successful or has failed in reaffirming his Self-Concept. The inner dialogue can have many voices and here Washburn makes references to sub-personality systems such as Transactional Analysis, and the voices of the child, adult and of the parent.

The Mental Ego is not a happy one. Washburn says that the Egoic stage is an insecure and restless stage and that the Mental Ego suffers from an affective syndrome characterized by unpleasant feelings. Feelings of anxiety, caused by the constant fear of the nothingness; guilt, caused by the tucked away inner knowing of the "sin" of having repressed the ground; the elation and depression, caused by the positive and negative inner dialogues with regards to the success and failures with regards to the Self-Concept; and ultimately, by the despair of never fully managing to erase the feelings of inner emptiness. And it is in such despair that lies the gateway to the next stage of development, the Transegoic stage. During this stage the Ground (thesis), that was repressed during the egoic stage (antithesis), is gradually re-discovered and re-integrated (synthesis) into the being.

My review

I found Washburn's theory and approach at first very dry, difficult to read and a little too abstract for my liking. As I mentioned before, definitely more the work of a thinker than of a clinician and in some moments, I was wondering what the point of all this was, in terms of psychological thought. The material is deep and intelligently written, but at times did not seem to be very "real" and I felt that there were some sweeping generalizations applied here. For example, the comments made on the struggle for independence from the mother seemed to me to be more characteristics of male phases of development than general ones. Also the statements made assume that we know exactly what an infant or a two year old really feels and I am not sure that that is really true, despite developmental theories such as those of Piaget, Erikson and Freud. Also, especially the first stages of this theory seem far too simplistic. It presumes that all children have a universal experience from which develop universal results. I don't think we are that simple, as human beings. I prefer Grof's model, which includes past lives and perinatal experiences as causes of adult differentiation.

Having said this, I did enjoy his description of the Egoic/Mental Ego stage. I thought that the observations of the dynamics of the mental ego and of the affection syndrome very insightful and I am sure that most people can relate to what Washburn describes.


©2004-2011 Katie Gallanti. All rights reserved. http://katiespapers.blogspot.com. This article was an assignment for a class on Theories of Consciousness.