Category: Dialectical Thinking

The blog reviews the personal, experiential and historical, roots of the Constructive Developmental Framework as a tool for systematically exploring movements-in-thought through empirical data capture in real time. Its main purpose is to highlight the need for establishing a systematic training sequence geared to educating critical facilitators working in organizations and institutions, for the sake of promoting self-organization and transparency at work. Exploring Movements 8-2019 Read More...

This blog contains a downloadable copy of Laske's Psy.D. dissertation of 1999 (2 volumes). The thesis was submitted to William James College, Newton, MA. Readers were Robert Kegan, Ph.D., of Harvard Graduate School of Education; Samual Moncata, Ph.D., of William James College, Newton, MA. (then called 'MA School of Professional Psychology'); and Tim Hall, Ph.D, of Boston University's Business School. The dissertation is a comprehensive social-emotional and cognitive study of 6 executives from the Boston, MA, area, the first of its kind. The dissertation comprises 2 parts: 1. volume 1 (5 chapters): methodology and findings 2. volume 2 (Appendices A to D, focused on the relationship of executive and adult development, and including interview data as well as  coaching recommendations based on interview scoring outcomes). On this blog, a third part comprises the volumes' figures. In nuce, the dissertation undertakes to show the limitations of theories of executive development given their neglect of the 'vertical development' axis, both in its social-emotional and cognitive dimensions. It introduces the distinction between 'ontic' and 'agentic' development barely acted upon in organizations even today, as well as the issue of the linkage between the social-emotional and cognitive dimensions still unacknowledged in today's developmental research.... Read More...

In this article, Jan De Visch reviews experiences he has made as a Critical Facilitator when working with teams in organizations (see his work at www.connecttransform.be). Jan's gift of deep thinking makes him a very good listener who can intervene in team conversations because he "hears" and "understands" their thought form structure in the sense of DTF, Laske's Dialectical Thought Form Framework (2008). Based on his consulting experience combining both social-emotional and cognitive interventions, Jan is presently building an App in the domain of performance review centered on defining team roles realistically, in line with strategic objectives. He expands such reviews into deep thinking dialogues involving, first, a 'problem owner', and then an entire team, all of whom are changed in the process of reflection he triggers in them. Many managers conceive of thinking as a kind of 'information processing', believing that better thinking consists merely of deleting logical errors. Jan's blog shows that that view of thinking is very limited, and why. JDV - How do you teach managers to think V3   Read More...

In this blog, I draw conclusions from two previous blogs, found at and , both focused on teaching and learning dialectical thinking. I show that teaching dialectical thinking needs to address, and draw practical conclusions from, the distinction between 'thinking' and 'cognition', seen as counter-movements between the four moments of dialectic, CPRT, in the sense of Bhaskar's MELD. I trace DTF dialectical thinking back to Plato's Socrates, respectfully acknowledging Hannah Ahrendt's tremendous insight into 'the thinking ego' as remaining 'absent', which she owes to her  deep knowledge of Greek philosophy transferred to reading I. Kant's work. I tend to think that Roy Bhaskar would have been pleased to have his MELD epistemologically elucidated as happens in this blog. On Letting Thinking Appear   Read More...

In this blog, I problematize the question of how to teach dialectical thinking effectively in a world experienced as 'VUCA'. Specifically, I summarize my experience with teaching DTF at the Interdevelopmental Institute, with a focus on educating Critical Facilitators. Thought Form Theories def Read More...

There is, at the present time, an enormous lack of complex thinkers in the world, especially thinkers who are also doers and have the power to address the predicaments we are presently in as a species. So the idea that it is worthwhile to acquire complex holistic thinking abilities is a natural one for anybody who is a reflective practitioner. I have long written about the fallacies of logical thinking, and its rather pernicious limits. But that rather negative message is not really negative enough. There is also an enormous lack of teachers of complex thinking in the world, and that is big cultural issue, not to speak of the growing denial of the relevance of science. Since what we call 'thinking' precedes 'doing', that lack is truly of staggering importance. In this blog, I describe in some detail counter-measures that can be taken, positively speaking, for the sake of educating dialectically savvy critical facilitators who can act as teachers of  those who have fallen victim to fallacies that logical thinking embodies (such as that A can never be B). I do so by describing in some detail what a cognitive case study is, what kinds of effort it requires,... Read More...