The Theory of Positive Disintegration
An excerpt of my book “The Unfiltered Thoughts of a Pastor in Exile” about a path to overcome and grow.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. - Walt Whitman
A main cause of philosophical diseases - one-sided diet: one feeds his thinking only with one kind of examples. - Wittgenstein
An Oxymoron
This chapter is about something that perhaps seems to be an oxymoron, a paradox, a contradiction: the theory of positive disintegration.
Before I explain the theory, here is another excursion into my history.
All of us experience traumata. It's just a matter of how we deal with them.
A big buzzword today is resilience. It describes our ability to bounce back after falling. It measures how well we can put away setbacks and strokes of fate.
In my view, there are two types of resilience. The first uses 1st-degree change to return to its original state or does not need modification.
The second needs significant change, possibly even 2nd degree, and cannot return to the original state. Its goal is to find a new balance, a new life equilibrium.
We can explain it this way:
Most people want to escape the pandemic, to continue as before. Their idea of a new normal is exhausted by the need to have an annual covid vaccination in addition to the flu shot.
Others, often ridiculed as utopians, see a significant development of our civilization. I am not talking here about the need to wear masks but about things like the reduction of traffic, the abolition of money and nation-states, the colonization of other celestial bodies, and new forms of government such as participatory federal democracies.
But there are also different ways in which we get through a crisis.
Some perceive the crisis as an opportunity or as a slight tremor in the normal state. They will usually emerge from it with remarkable resilience. The degree to which they think openly and are willing to change determines whether this will be the resilience of the first or second kind for them.
Some will break down because of the crisis. They have a little resilience. We are seeing more and more people who are no longer viable but maladjusted to and overwhelmed by our system.
This is not surprising because the speed at which change comes at us exceeds the rate at which we can adapt, even though our adaptation is no longer biological but happens at the software level, at the consciousness level. What takes animals generations, we manage in a short time.
The third kind of people, however, seems to break down first in the crisis, only to emerge renewed like a phoenix from the ashes. This is called positive disintegration.
I have had many traumatic experiences in my life. Some of them I put away as if nothing had happened. Others got under my skin, and they changed me. They became limitations, some of which I still carry with me today. Others almost broke me, and I fought my way back. And then some helped me grow.
I told you that my parents got divorced. I don't know if I have always experienced sensory overload because I can remember extremely little from my youth. However, I remember that it must have been around this time that I stopped tasting and smelling.
To say that I did not smell or taste anything is a bit of an exaggeration. When I put a whole bar of chocolate in my mouth, I perceived something sweet, and something came through with very strong coffee or bitter things. But usually, my food was reduced to texture and consistency.
That changed my attitude toward food. It was essentially about energy intake. Food was not an experience, not a pleasure.
This was only furthered by the dining hall atmosphere at the boarding school. We ate together, about 80 boys, at ten tables. The plates with the food were presented at one end, and the first two plates barely made it to the other end. Eating quickly was essential for survival.
The food was cooked by some sisters of a convent with the help of mentally disabled people. This had consequences. Let's put it this way: the kitchen would not have won a star if an inspector had ever come by.
Later, in college, in my first room of my own, I ate a meal every Wednesday, drank several liters of Coke every day, and ate my fill on weekends at home.
Let's jump back in time.
About five years ago, I was working for a laboratory software company. Many of our clients were food companies, and our consultants and salespeople constantly brought in sweets.
We programmers were all together in an open-plan office and were only allowed to get up from our seats when we took a coffee break or had to go to the bathroom. I ended up drinking 13 espresso shots a day, always with something sweet on the side.
One of our programmers was concerned about our diet and set out fruit every day, neatly cut to bite size, toothpicked, and protected by a fly screen, only to take it home in the evening untouched.
On this particular day, I opted for a piece of mango instead of chocolate, and it exploded with flavor in my mouth. I immediately picked up the phone to let my wife share the experience.
I would not want to miss this, and I have since been able to taste and smell again. My sense of touch is also more pronounced, and I have slowly gained access to my feelings.
Soon, however, I noticed that an open-plan office in the summer smelled somewhat different in the afternoon than in the early morning.
Next, I was on sick leave because of sensory overload. This exacerbated the bore-out I had developed over the previous months.
So, six months later, I resigned and went to work mainly at night for the legally required three months notice period to minimize the stimuli and encounter as few other people as possible.
This initiated a period that continues to this day, which first began as disintegration. My body had been affected by the many years in which I had not perceived my own needs and lived contrary to my personality. So it developed cancer.
In addition to sensory overload, bore-out, and cancer, there was depression and fatigue.
I discovered a few tools that helped me deal with all of this during this time. It's about better understanding your personality, yourself as a whole, and doing yourself better justice.
Some of the tools are the subject of this book. So far, I have been working on Spiral Dynamics. In addition, CliftonStrengths, the Enneagram, and the theory of the two brain hemispheres are a few examples.
But the best way to describe my experience over the last few years is the theory of positive disintegration. And that's what I will talk about in the following pages.
Five Steps of Growth
People react differently to trauma and difficult situations. We see that very well in the context of corona.
Some put it away as if nothing is wrong. This may be due to their personality - introverts see the scaled-down busyness and reduced social pressure as an approximation of the lifestyle they hope for.
It may also be due to their resilience, the ability to get back up after a blow and move on, often as if nothing had happened.
Others break down from trauma and barely recover, if at all. They disintegrate and need professional help.
The third group of people, however, experiences what Kasimirsz Dabrowski called positive disintegration. Initially, this looks like regular disintegration, but like a phoenix from the ashes, the person at the other end rises, totally changed.
Dabrowski describes this process in five steps, which show strong parallelism to the change process of Spiral Dynamics, with one difference: a person goes through this process of positive disintegration only once.
What do these five steps look like? Let's look at my imaginary coachee Frank:
Primary integration: Frank feels comfortable and integrated into society. But what at first sounds like the alpha of Spiral Dynamics is different: it is about Frank seeking integration through his instincts and social imprinting, i.e., unconscious and external motivations. His motto: I fit in.
Unilevel disintegration: Frank's first questions arise, and he experiences his first crises. Frank suddenly sees alternatives to what he previously believed. On closer inspection, these alternatives hardly differ from what he initially thought. Qualitatively, on a moral level, they are equivalent to the original. But their very existence leads to the new guiding principle: I am confused.
Spontaneous multilevel disintegration: Now alternatives appear, one of which has a more excellent value and is qualitatively more desirable. Frank has seen something 1000 times before, yet today it is different for the first time. Spontaneously, Frank realizes the possibility that there could be a higher level of existence, a better lifestyle. He sees behind the scene and recognizes the matrix. But he doesn't know how to deal with it because he doesn't play an active part in this story yet. I am in conflict.
Directed multilevel disintegration: Frank breaks through the proverbial wall and begins to independently and purposefully question, weigh, and shape his values. He takes control of his personality development. In the process, automated decisions and social values and morals are questioned. There is more.
Secondary integration: Frank has changed. His values, worldview, ideal self-image, and current self are again in harmony, but not determined by instincts and social conventions as in primary integration, but by an independently acquired hierarchy of values. I am.
Most people live their whole lives mostly in primary integration and sometimes make a trip to the second level.
Let's go into a little more detail about each step:
A person will make forays into unilevel disintegration from time to time unless they are a sociopath. Only sociopaths can live according to their instincts in the long run, i.e., lead a purely egoistic life. However, there is a second way of experiencing primary integration: constantly adapting to the expectations of others.
But this approach of primary integration leads to disintegration from time to time. It is then often one's egoic drives that struggle with social expectations, producing an uneasy feeling, a conflict.
We heard in the last chapter how such conflicts could be resolved: minor adjustments, compromises with others in the group, perhaps stretching, up or down. In any case, those are first-degree changes.
I don't want to equate the change process of Spiral Dynamics and the theory of positive disintegration because the goal is different. While the change process of Spiral Dynamics intends to lead to a new meme, the purpose of positive disintegration is an independent, mature personality.
Dabrowski even goes so far as to deny personality to people who have not gone through this disintegration. This does not correspond to the usual definition of personality, but it is certainly very understandable. A person in primary integration is either ego-driven or intangible because of her adaptation to her environment. Colloquially, one could well deny her any personality.
A first-degree change can bring one back into primary integration. The conflict is eliminated. Sometimes this has some more consequences: one changes the group or environment.
But this change is usually very superficial. Take, for example, a change of churches. The new church believes the same thing, and the new church functions just like the old one.
What is perceived as a significant change is a reversion to primary integration.
The same thing often happens with mental illness. The goal of psychiatry is to reintegrate a patient into primary integration, into their environment. If necessary, patches like a new job or a new place of residence are used, but they want to make the person function again.
Evil now thinks I equate church members with mentally ill people.
But there are a few who cannot be kept in primary integration. We will see why later, but these people have a power that drives them forward. Suddenly, they perceive that there are solutions and ways of life that are better or perhaps more desirable than the previous ones because they are qualitatively different. They give individuals the opportunity to be themselves.
Egoism, driven by basic instincts and other-directed conformity, is the exact opposite of being oneself.
Because the person sees an alternative possibility substantially different from the others, the third and fourth steps are called multilevel. Multilevel because there are all the ways to reintegrate on one side, and there is the desirable ideal, a qualitatively different way of life.
This third step is spontaneous because the person tends to stumble towards this new way of life but cannot yet contribute any specific measures himself.
The realization of what one could do oneself comes in the fourth step. Now the person moves purposefully toward the ideal to eventually find a secondary integration as a self-directed individual based on their choices and life design.
You can read the full story and more in my book “The Unfiltered Thoughts of a Pastor in Exile”. Other topics include Spiral Dynamics, Community Building, Certainty and Faith.