Human Development and the Model of Hierarchical Complexity: Learning from Research in the Psychology of Moral and Religious Development

The Psychology of religious, spiritual, and moral development: conceptual and Empirical relationships

“…In our view these conceptual and empirical problems echo problems common to Piaget's earlier work and to other neo-Piagetian models across a host of domains (Day, 2008a(Day, , 2010b. In the paragraphs that follow we consider some of these problems, and suggest, in the light of recent research using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC), some ways of improving the cognitive-developmental model for the psychology of religious and spiritual development, at once substantiating the claim that religious and spiritual development can be usefully studied in terms of stage and structure, and supplementing our understanding as to how this understanding might be applied.…”

“…This problem has to do with those instances in which younger subjects sometimes perform with greater competence than they would be predicted to do in the models concerned, while some older ones perform less well than they "should" according to the models' logic. In such cases there is a broader spread of competencies in relationship to age and stage than we "should" expect in the models' conceptions of stage and their relationship to development across the life cycle; f ) Piaget's supposition that formal operations should obtain by late adolescence has been unverifiable; some adolescents "make it" to formal operations, while many do not; g) On a related note, Piaget's model did not account for the prospect of post-formal operations, and where post-Piagetian models have tried to do so, there has not been, at least until very recently, a clear consensus among them as to how many have been found, and what their relationships are to one another, and to formal operations; h) Finally, there has been a proliferation of stage models in a variety of domains (ego development, parental development, aesthetic development, emotional development, role-taking development, identity development, intellectual development, moral and religious development) with no clear explication of how models are, or ought to be, related across domains (Commons & Pekker, 2005;Day 2008aDay , 2010b.…”

“…Given that all people must wrestle with and resolve moral dilemmas that confront them throughout life, they will do so whether or not religious beliefs, practices, or belonging to communities of faith are part of their moral experience. Since moral questions figure in religious and spiritual ones, movement in moral judgment will have consequences for the mechanisms and processes in the formulation of religious and spiritual understanding (Day, 2008a(Day, , 2010bDay & Naedts, 2006;Day & Youngman, 2003).…”

Psychotherapeutic Change and Spiritual Transformation: The Interaction Effect

“…Fourth, I have argued on the basis of this case (as well as other research, such as Day, 2008) that for religion to contribute to human well-being today, religious devotees, while remaining committed to their beliefs and practices, must develop a reflective and self-critical stance on the objects of their devotion.…”

“…But, along side this stance of commitment and devotion, they must also develop an outsider's perspective on these commitments so as to reflect critically and analytically on the beliefs and practices to which they remain devoted. In terms of models of cognitive development this is a fairly high level of cognitive complexity and it may not be so widely distributed in the population (Day, 2008). But this is what would be required for the VITA Program's approach to existential/spiritual issues to work-that is, if the program is to draw upon the ability of religious and spiritual practices to contribute to human flourishing without either simply invoking religious beliefs or engaging in purely intellectual discussions of existential or religious philosophies and constructs, which is all that so many so-called religious, spiritual or existential therapies seem to do.…”