Immunity to Change (ITC)

Kegan and Lahey (2001) recall something their Harvard colleague, the late William Perry, once said to them; an idea that resonated and strengthened the belief their own research was moving in the right direction: “‘Whenever someone comes to me for help,’ he used to say, ‘I listen very hard and ask myself, ‘what does this person really want—and what will they do to keep from getting it?’” (p. 1). Kegan and Lahey (2001) sought to lay out their understanding of the barriers to change that prevent people from growing and developing:  “If we want a deeper understanding of the prospect of change, we must pay closer attention to our own powerful inclinations not to change. This attention may help us discover within ourselves the force and beauty of a hidden immune system, the dynamic process by which we tend to prevent change, by which we manufacture continuously the antigens of change. If we can unlock this system, we release new energies on behalf  of new ways of seeing and being” (p. 1).

Kegan and Lahey (2009) laid out a road map of sorts for advancing changes to mental complexity rather than leaving those advances to chance. It included the detective work that was explained in detail in their earlier work (Kegan & Lahey, 2001), wherein people are encouraged to uncover the “hidden motivations and beliefs that prevent them from making the very changes they know they should make and very much want to make” (aka their immunities to change) but it went further, explicating a way for people to actually transcend the limitations of their current mindset (Kegan & Lahey, 2009, p xi). Realizing that greater insight, on its own, was insufficient to bring about changes in meaning-making, or shifts in a person’s constructive-developmental perspective, Kegan and Lahey (2009) developed a technology that went beyond insight and understanding. The technology outlined by Kegan and Lahey (2009) combined the insight gained through self-examination and reflection (the diagnostic process) with the activity of behavioral experimentation, a process of pushing back against the current mindset by acting contrary to the fear-based beliefs driving entrenched negative behavior. This process allowed for the accumulation, over time, of data that could be used to debunk the current mindset, eventually bringing about a change to the person’s subject-object relationship, and provoking a move along the constructive-developmental continuum.