IDM Introductory Gateway Course

“Introduction to Applied Developmental Theory”

The IDM Gateway course introduces professionals to applications of Developmental Theory in the service professions, based on the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) created at IDM. It is an introductory and overview course that supports many different kinds of consulting to clients’ mental process (process consultation), such as coaching, mentoring, management consulting, psychotherapy, mediation, and others. Gateway self-study has become the official entry point for all studies at IDM.

IDM Gateway Self-Study is an affordable introduction to the Interdevelopmental Institute and the work of Dr. Otto Laske, comprising 12 hours of recorded teleclasses plus hundreds of pages of supporting materials which you work through at your own pace. It includes a completion interview with Dr. Laske to consolidate your learning and help you decide whether to pursue further studies at IDM.

Register Now

To judge from testimonials over the years, Gateway is likely to “overthrow the apple cart” of your life. The course is a broad introduction to Applied Developmental Theory which helps you revise your view of yourself and your clients. Gateway makes you aware of the fact that the social world in which you live is stratified in the sense that people live on, and act from, different levels of social-emotional meaning making and cognitive sense making, whatever culture they may belong to. By including instruction on levels of cognitive development not found elsewhere, the course broadens students’ knowledge of adult development to what is most likely the core issue in coaching, leadership, and even psychotherapy (present assumptions in the Kohlberg and Integral School notwithstanding).

For 35 years now, the social-emotional and cognitive trajectories of adult development have been thoroughly and unhelpfully muddled in the Loevinger-Kegan tradition. Gateway changes course in this regard, strictly separating both trajectories following Otto Laske’s 1998-99 research on developmental coaching. This distinction made at IDM is a hallmark of the CDF methodology. It is a first step toward understanding more deeply how social-emotional and cognitive adult development actually relate to each other.

Due to this distinction, Gateway helps you adopt a more realistic and crisp view of yourself as well as the social world. In this world, people of different levels of development have to live and live together. (They mostly communicate through misunderstandings.) By taking Gateway, you begin to see your clients and yourself in a developmental light and may begin to ask yourself: “what is my own present developmental level, cognitively and social-emotionally, and what is my balance of levels of social-emotional and cognitive development. (An IDM assessment will readily tell you.)

Gateway lives up to its name. It is a gate to walk through if you want to take responsibility for your continuing professional education.

Gateway Self-Study Course

Now you can learn the principles of adult development at your own pace.

The Gateway Self-Study course includes:

• Set of 6 2-hour audio recordings of a 2008 live Gateway teleclass
• Course handouts – over 200 pages
• Article on methodology
• Access to articles and presentations
• Completion Interview with Dr. Laske to assess your learning

Register for GATEWAY Self-Study: “Introduction to Applied Developmental Theory”