In true academic fashion, they strongly debated the merits of Graves’ system Maslow reportedly argued for eight years before adopting it himself. Graves and Maslow’s relationship was not so simple, however. In Maslow’s system, people are continually evolving, moving from one level to the next. In particular, one can find parallels between his system and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which uses a five-level pyramidal structure to map the evolution of people’s needs: physiological ones, safety, love and belonging, esteem and, finally, self-actualization (later replaced by ‘transcendence’). Just as Graves’ work fundamentally informed what would later be known as Spiral Dynamics, he himself was influenced by others in the field of transpersonal psychology. More than forty years later, this letter system continues to be used, with people reporting that it helps keep in perspective the relationship between people and the culture in which they are embedded. These form the basis of the eight-level system of Spiral Dynamics. To identify these levels, Graves used a lettering system with two helices-Helix 1 identifying ‘life conditions’ and Helix 2 denoting ‘awakened capacities in the mind’-respectively represented by the ranges A-H and N-U. Personalistic (F-S): concern with belonging, concern for others Ĭognitive Existence (G-T): on threshold of true humanity Įxperientialist Existence (H-U): beyond animal needs, drive to make life stable. Materialistic (E-R): authoritarianism, dogma is trumped by pragmatism Saintly (D-Q): recognition of the value of rules, marked by focus on religion Tribalistic (B-O): seeking social stability, use of totems and taboos Įgocentric (C-P): individualism and the use of force to acquire objects of desire
Ethical considerations notwithstanding, Graves (1974) finally published an eight-level system that consisted of two tiers six levels in the first tier (subsistence) and two in the second (being):Īutomatic (A-N): motivated by survival and physical imperatives For instance, he used his students as test subjects, but without telling them that he was doing so, and he spied on them through two-way mirrors and taperecorded them without their knowledge (Rice 2014). The data collection methods that Graves used might be viewed as quite controversial by today’s standards.
In many ways, Graves’ real contribution was his focus on the collection of data and its application his system was not merely theoretical, but based on over thirty years of close observation of subjects.
By 1973, Graves was conducting mind–brain research in terms of mental development shaped by neurological structures and networks, chemical agents and external phenomena. With the continued collection of data over the next decade, there were significant changes in this model. Fourteen years later, he published his first version of a seven-level thinking model. Its goal was to explain why people’s reactions and motivations are so varied. Graves (1914–1986) began work on something he called the ‘Theory of Levels of Human Existence’.