Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

Otto Laske

A Description of IDM’s Program For Acquiring Fluency in Using CDF Tools

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The IDM program that leads to fluency in the use of CDF tools, now 20 years old, has unusual features that set them apart from other professional offerings. Among these features are: (1) professional learning closely linked to personal self-development, (2) comprehensive introduction into developmental and dialectical thinking, (3) exercises set in social contexts that make it easy to transfer them to professional practice, (4) teaching CDF tools in a social-ontology framework that opens participants’ eyes to the social and cultural constraints they encounter in launching life and work projects, (5) unremitting modeling of developmental and dialectical practice in all workshop sessions in which participants enable and coach each other at a high level of awareness of their own internal conversations.

For more details, see the description below:

Description of IDM’s CDF Program

Otto Laske Poetry Publication ‘Silesian Language Smithy’ (Schlesische Sprachschmiede) in a Bilingual Edition at Amazon

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Those who know Otto Laske as a social scientist, composer, and visual artist will be interested to see at Amazon, https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/books/detail/-/art/otto-laske-schlesische-sprachschmiede-silesian-language-smithy/hnum/10792942, that his early German poetry has appeared in a bilingual edition at Frieling Verlag, Berlin, Germany. The translation of the work into English is the author’s own; it carries the title ‘Silesian Language Smithy’. (Those who know his work more deeply realize that it is his poetry that is the foundation of much of his creative work.)

The back cover of the book states:
Otto Laske’s poems originate in a lifelong coping with experiences that led him from Silesia and Northern Germany to the United States, and from poetical to musical composition.

It is the art of composition that is evidenced by these poems which, in compact form, render the tonality and melody of his internal conversations. Over time, these internal conversations were crafted by memory into verses one will not easily forget. They speak with syntactic, gestural, and musical clarity of a life between escape and arrival. The book’s title image is taken from Laske’s digital paintings called ‘Promise’ (Versprechen) and refers to one of the poems in the book.

The three commentaries on the poetry found on the book’s back cover are as follows:

„Otto Laske opens doors not only to the literary forge where he
hammers life into verse but to the experiential crucibles where
remarkable events and responses took place. „
(Martin Ray, photographer)

„Laske’s Gedichte zeigen uns das Helle und Dunkle seiner Seele,
die Farben seiner Wortbilder, die Tonart und Melodie seiner Verse,
die durch die Kraft seines Intellekts in das gedichtete Wort
geschmiedet wurden.“
(Roland Baumgaertel, Schriftsteller)

„Laske’s poetry historically connects to Germany’s search for self-identity
after WWII; it is worth taking note of.“
(Donald Gropman, writer)

Cover_O. Laske’s Sprachschmiede,

Those interested in Otto’s visual work are invited to go to https://www.saatchiart.com/olaske. They will find 50 Collections of art work, produced since 2012.

The latest publication of his work, called ‘Condensations’, in Jaamzin Creative, Hon Kong, is found at https://www.jaamzin.com/condensations

and https://www.jaamzin.com/post/visual-artist-otto-laske-1

Architectural Work as Environment Making: Why Should Architects Acquire Tools Comprised by CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework?

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Professional work is typically viewed as based on ‘expert’, that is, logical knowledge and systems thinking. I show in this blog that such a view is mistaken since it encourages doing professional work within the confines of closed systems geared to efficiency and control. In the blog, I see such systems as self-serving and ideological in that they stand against an ‘open systems’, social-ontology view of human agency as a causal power bringing about societal change. Architectural practice is used as an example. Following Prof. Freek Persyn’s inaugural lecture at the ETH, Zurich, I demonstrate what it looks like to view architectural work as an expression of human agency in the sense of Bhaskar’s and Archer’s  social ontology, thereby consciously placing it within the Social Cube. What in this blog is said about architectural practice can easily be extended to any professional practice one is involved or interested in.

Architectural Work as Environment Making

The Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF) as a Consulting Tool for Solving (Social) Structure/Agency Dilemmas

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In the book and consulting project sketched in this blog, Otto Laske shows how to facilitate societal transformations by elaborating Margaret Archer’s work on “Structure, Agency, and Internal Conversations” (2003). He thereby extends both Bhaskar’s “The Possibility of Naturalism” (1979) and Archer’s work into dialectical practice. To deepen Archer’s logical approach, Laske introduces adult-developmental and cognitive-developmental foundations of the “internal conversations” that, in Archer’s view, mediate Bhaskar’s structure/agency dialectic, introducing three interrelated dialectics:

  1. The ontological dialectic of Moments of the real (being) issuing in generative mechanisms as distinct from actualities and experiences (Bhaskar 1979).
  2. The epistemic dialectic of human thought forms (TFs) operating within individuals’ internal workplace (in contrast to their external workplace), — the mental space in which ‘work’ is done and ‘agency’ is launched (Laske 2008).
  3. The dialectic of generative mechanisms by which human thought forms (TFs) assume and exert causal power as determinants of needs and reasons based on which agents are in unceasing interaction with each other and thus the real world, natural and social (Laske 2021).

Sketch 2 of new Laske book

CDF: The Latest Reworking of the Adult Developmental Literature of the Harvard Kohlberg School

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As time elapses, research findings get updated, consolidated, and what was originally left out or stayed unseen is clarified. An example of this historical process is CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework created by Otto Laske between 1999 and 2000.

25 years after Kohlberg School research began, CDF brought together what this research separated or left standing in isolation. CDF is a synthesis that connects all that this research brought to light about the human self. So far, the CDF synthesis has been treated as separate from, and other than, Kegan’s, Basseches’ and Fowler’s research. The time has come to acknowledge that CDF transcends ideology, however well defended, and is a step beyond the original research of the Harvard School.

Convince yourself by reading the actual texts that constitute CDF, which has three components:

  1. a refined version of Kegan’s research on the social-emotional self
  2. a refined version of Basseches’ research on the cognitive self, with inclusion of Roy Bhaskar’s updating of the notion of adult cognitive development
  3. an integrated component regarding the psychological self as seen by Moris Aderman, student of Henry Murray’s, called ‘Need-Press’ (see www.needpress.com).

Texts on these components of CDF have been made available in pdf form found at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974, at very reasonable prices (US$20 or 30), in three sections:

A. Free publications found under Blogs (https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=4831)

B. ‘Gateway’ (to CDF) Self Study Materials, in English (B1) and German & Spanish (B2)

C. Books on the social-emotional, psychological, and cognitive profiles of the human self, in five languages.

Laske CDF Publications

 

Steps Toward Developing a Dialectical Thinking Practice: The Structure of the IDM Dialectics Practicum

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The way we encounter the world is anchored in our ways of attending to it. They not only change the relationship we have to the world we unceasingly construct; they also fundamentally determine the world we encounter. Thinking in language when untutored in dialectical linking puts us under the control of left-hemisphere, logical, thinking, — a mode of being now rampant that constrains the quality of our life and creative work. For this reason, we are in need of re-socializing ourselves through building up in our mind new ways of listening, speaking, writing, ‘thinking’, reading, communicating, coaching, and facilitating.

To further re-socialization in adults, IDM is launching 5-months long practica of dialectical thinking.  The next Practicum starts at the end of November 2020. For details, see https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=7563 and https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=7641.

Since nobody can learn news ways of being from books but only through supervised practice, IDM Practica are structured in terms of a sequence of activities carried out by members of small cohorts of 4-6 participants mentored by Otto Laske, originator of the Dialectical Thought Form Framework. Have a look at the structure of the Practicum at the first link below and learn about the correspondence of Practicum Activities and Learning Targets at the second link.

Structure Proposal for Dialectics Practicum

Correspondence of Learning Activities & Targets

For viewing the Jaamzin Special Edition of Otto Laske’s dialectics-based visual artwork, go to https://issuu.com/jaamzin/docs/otto_laske. You can place an order for a copy of the print edition by transferring $35 at smediazin@gmail.com via Paypal (which includes shipping to you from an Amsterdam printer).

For additional information on the structure and flow of the Practicum, go to:

From “Organizational Development” to Self-Development: An Insiders’ View of the IDM Dialectical Thinking Practicum

An Intense Five-Month Practicum in Dialectical Thinking