Category: Articles by Otto Laske

The article describes a methodology for teaching dialectical thinking that is based on Laske’s Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF; 2008). It outlines the historical origins of the framework; reasons for its focus on understanding others’ thinking documented in transcribed speech; its capability to assess the phase of dialectical thinking development of individuals; procedures of dialectical thinking rehearsal; and the components of the associated IDM certification program. Download: Laske_2011_Better_Thinking_in_a_Global_World Read More...

A collection of articles [mostly in English] on the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) by IDM Researchers, published on April 1, 2010, in Wirtschaftspsychologie, by Pabst Science Publisher. Download: Laske_ed_2010_Work_Capability_and_Adult_Development Read More...

This article shows dialectical thinking to be a natural outcome of cognitive development, surpassing formal logical thinking in its scope, degree of complexity, and holism. “Good thinking” is understood as thinking aware of its own thought form structure. This view is further substantiated by discussing the three strands of adult development including epistemic position. Integral thinking is seen as failing to maintain preservative negation because of privileging breadth-first over depth-first search. Autonomy_of_the_cognitive_line   Read More...

I explore the history, theory, tools and benefits of dialectical thinking, a way of thinking adults grow into to different degrees after mastering formal logic (Basseches, 1984, Laske, 2009). My goal is to show that dialectical thinking is a natural outcome of adult cognitive development and that, pragmatically speaking, it is learnable. In order to give the broadest possible introduction to dialectical thinking, I detail the reverberations of the dialectical tradition in developmental psychology and introduce a set of hypotheses as to the nature of dialecticism. My outline is based on the notion of Four Quadrants of Dialectic (Laske, 2009) each of which is associated in human thinking with a particular “class of thought forms”, or ways of making sense (rather than meaning) of the world. With regard to Wilber’s work, the Four Quadrants of Dialectic are seen as inhering each of the four integral quadrants. In a short Appendix, I briefly detail how dialectical thinking can be learned today, extrapolating from my work at the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM). Download: Laske_2010_On_the_Autonomy_and_Influence_of_the_Cognitive_Developmental_Line   Read More...

This text is the English translation of my introduction to articles about CDF in the monograph entitled Contributions to an Adult Developmentally Renewed Social Science, published by Pabst Science Publisher in Zeitschrift fűr Wirtschaftspsychologie in 2010. The introduction briefly characterizes each of the individual contributions to the monograph. Download: Laske_2010_An_Evidence-Based_approach_to_Measuring_Managing_and_Supporting_Work_in_Organizations   Read More...

A collection of articles [mostly in English] on the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) by IDM Researchers, published on April 1, 2010, in Wirtschaftspsychologie, by Pabst Science Publisher. Download: Laske_ed_2010_Work_Capability_and_Adult_Development Read More...