An Integral Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

An Integral Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

The following article outlines the major approaches to constitutional interpretation and explains how either approach on its own ultimately leads to a narrow and incomplete understanding of the law, which ignores the rich reality that both interior and exterior perspectives carry. The author will introduce Integral Legal Theory as a method of interpretation that will allow each perspective its day in court while offering coherence to a jurisprudence gone slightly mad.
Using Integral Theory in the Classroom

Using Integral Theory in the Classroom

The first part of this article discusses the need for the application of Integral Theory, a postdisciplinary model, to university and academic culture. The second section examines the need for and current status of character education. It uses the AQAL framework to outline an Integral Character Education, which not only includes inculcating values in an individual but also the requisite behaviors associated with those values, as well as the need to anchor them in social interaction and a common ethos.
An Overview of Integral International Development

An Overview of Integral International Development

International development is a diverse field attempting to address some of the most pressing global problems facing humanity today. Although the field has come a long way over the past five decades, it is far from perfect. In this article, Gail Hochachka discusses how the quadrants, lines, and levels of Integral Theory assist in this ongoing refinement of international development practice.
An Integral Writing Tour: Through the Four Studios of Your Own Awareness

An Integral Writing Tour: Through the Four Studios of Your Own Awareness

Using Integral Theory as my framework, I explore the four quadrants or fundamental perspectives of reality with respect to writing. This consists of inquiry into the use of subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective perspectives to better understand and express writing. My thesis is that together these interrelated perspectives comprise the whole writing space: an Integral writing space. I also identify three developmental levels within each quadrant (e.g., three increasingly complex subjective perspectives, objective perspectives, etc.). This results in a total of twelve unique perspectives that map the horizontal breadth and vertical depth of the territory of writing. I offer experiential...
Integral Mathematics: An AQAL Approach

Integral Mathematics: An AQAL Approach

This article lays the foundations for a comprehensive formulation of Integral Mathematics. I introduce a number of definitions for an Integral Mathematics, including the perspective of Integral Mathematics in the context of a distinct discipline, Ken Wilber’s symbolic Integral Mathematics of primordial perspectives, and Integral Mathematics as a developmental line. I then focus on the perspective of Integral Mathematics as a distinct discipline and show that the “division” between the worlds of pure and applied mathematics is parallel to the distinction between the Left- and Right-Hand quadrants. I give a four-quadrant analysis for Integral Mathematics as a distinct discipline by...
AQAL and the Practice of Law

AQAL and the Practice of Law

For many the practice of law is a dissatisfying experience. By providing a more comprehensive, AQAL vision for the practice of law, I speculate that lawyers can gain more satisfaction and meaning from their profession.
Responding to Suffering and Evil: Integral Principles

Responding to Suffering and Evil: Integral Principles

Suffering and evil challenge us all, but several principles may help Integral practitioners to respond effectively. These include appreciating the role that unrecognized, limited perspectives (and corresponding worldviews) play in creating suffering and evil, and learning to recognize and release such limitations into more integral stances. Doing this skillfully requires taking up effective, authentic psychological and contemplative disciplines, and especially the disciplines of awakening service or karma yoga, whose central elements are described.
Integral Management and the Effective Human Service Organization

Integral Management and the Effective Human Service Organization

Human service organizations aim to address personal and social growth and development in the communities they serve. At the same time, these organizations must respond to increasing client complexity and diversity within a rapidly changing global environment. This includes the ability to respond to the needs of an ever-increasing aging population as well as the spiritual diversity within communities. There is also an increasing emphasis on interorganizational collaboration as a way to better meet the needs of disadvantaged populations. Integral Theory offers a map to guide the human service manager in handling these complex organizational interactions while aligning with the...
The Data and Methodologies of Integral Science

The Data and Methodologies of Integral Science

This essay introduces a methodology for Integral Science called Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). Tracing the development of epistemological and ontological relationships in the writings of Ken Wilber, the paper demonstrates how such a methodology might be applied. I consider Wilber’s elucidations of three core principles of valid knowledge (injunction, apprehension, and consensual validation) along with three essential elements of an IMP (nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment).
Quadrants as a Scanning and Mapping Device

Quadrants as a Scanning and Mapping Device

Defining the problem space has always been a central task of research and problem solving. In this article Susanne Cook-Greuter argues that the Integral or “all-quadrant” (AQ) approach provides a method to define a problem space that is at once elegant, infinitely adaptable, and panoramic. AQ stands for the first two letters of AQAL, the “all-quadrants, all-levels” aspects of Integral Theory created by Ken Wilber. I am choosing to represent AQ separately from the rest of the Integral Theory because it is independently powerful and useful as a means to explore and describe the human territory of experience.
AQAL: Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model

AQAL: Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model

The biopsychosocial model promised a more integrated psychiatric approach to patients. It assumed biological and psychosocial factors were paramount to effectively treat human disease and suffering. It has not, however, influenced conventional psychiatry as George Engel had envisioned. This article describes many of the strengths and weaknesses of the biopsychosocial model, as well as how AQAL and Integral Methodological Pluralism include the model’s partial truths and transcend its shortcomings.
Defending the Importance of the Holarchical-Developmental Scheme for Environmentalism

Defending the Importance of the Holarchical-Developmental Scheme for Environmentalism

According to the late ecologist, Stan Rowe, Ken Wilber’s holarchical scheme confuses important issues in the part-whole relationships belonging to organisms and ecosystems, and Wilber’s developmental ideas echo the anthropocentrism found in the work of many other modernists. In the process of articulating and defending Wilber’s views, I argue that Rowe’s alternative flirts with ecofascism, insofar as Rowe depicts human beings as mere “parts” of Gaia, which considers everything smaller than Gaia as functional units. Despite my disagreements with Rowe, I admire him for grappling with these important and highly complex issues.
An Analysis of Integral Coaching Canada Across Eight Zones and Five Methodologies

An Analysis of Integral Coaching Canada Across Eight Zones and Five Methodologies

This article provides an in-depth analysis of Integral Coaching Canada’s coaching model using Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). The author uses five primary methodologies and the perspectives available through eight zones to evaluate what makes Integral Coaching Canada’s model unique in the field of coaching. This article is based on first-, second-, and third-person approaches to research and an original study and master’s degree thesis that evaluated over 20 coaching models.
Integral Sustainable Development

Integral Sustainable Development

This is a two-part paper that offers an overview of Integral Sustainable Development, explaining the rudiments of a practical framework that integrates the crowded conceptual and operational landscape of sustainable development and enables practitioners to 1) identify the full-range of needs and capabilities of individuals and groups, and 2) tailor the specific developmental response that fits each unique situation.
A Brief Overview of Integral Social Work

A Brief Overview of Integral Social Work

This article seeks to explore Integral Social Work — its meaning and applications. This goal is achieved by exploring the nature of social service in the context of Integral Theory’s AQAL (all- quadrant, all-level) approach. The essence of Integral Social Work is to serve the whole person and the whole of society with the whole of one’s being. This requires that social workers develop themselves, while simultaneously helping others, and society, to develop in as full, complex, and healthy a way as possible.
Social Work as an Integral Profession

Social Work as an Integral Profession

This article introduces the reader to the profession of social work and its evolution over time. By simultaneously attending to both the person and the environment, social work has been a more comprehensive profession. Although social work has been inherently striving for a more integrative approach from the beginning, it has lacked a meta-theory that could address people, their environments, and integrate previously competing theories. Integral Theory is that meta-theory. Social workers are invited to consider this meta-theoretical approach to the service they provide.
Toward an Integral Feminism

Toward an Integral Feminism

This paper studies the development of some of the key schools of feminist thought, exploring the history of the definition of Woman. Ken Wilber's framework of Integral Feminism is then used to move toward the processual creation of a more adequately holistic understanding of women and subjectivity.
The Development of Desire

The Development of Desire

In this article Willow Pearson proposes that desire, as all lines of development, evolves toward greater complexity and is an all-quadrant phenomenon. For this reason, she situates desire and sex (from preconventional to conventional to postconventional and beyond) within an Integral framework. Integral Theory offers a unique view of desire and a possibility to understand all levels of desire as embodied wisdom, however partial each view might be.
An Introduction to Integral Science

An Introduction to Integral Science

This paper argues for an Integral approach to science, which consists of interior, exterior, individual, and collective dimensions, all of which must be included in the various knowledge quests of science. A basic methodology consisting of injunction, apprehension, and communal consensus is elaborated to help create a broad umbrella for distinguishing valid scientific endeavors. Distinctions are drawn between contemporary science and Integral Science, with the conclusion that an Integral approach allows for a greater opportunity for transdisciplinary learning and cohesiveness in the overall scientific endeavor.
Jane: An Integral Psychotherapy Case Study (Depression, Identity, and Intimacy in Young Adulthood)

Jane: An Integral Psychotherapy Case Study (Depression, Identity, and Intimacy in Young Adulthood)

To illustrate the value of the AQAL model for therapists, Paul presents a case study that demonstrates some features of Integral Psychotherapy. He introduces the client and explore three treatment episodes of various lengths. By following the unfolding journey of one client working with an integrally informed psychotherapist, the reader gains a felt sense of at least one way the AQAL model can be clinically applied. Lastly, the client’s situation and progress are explored through an AQAL analysis using the five elements of Integral Theory.
Integral Psychotherapy: An Introduction

Integral Psychotherapy: An Introduction

In this article Bert introduces and explores some of the diverse schools of psychotherapeutic thought. He then argues that Integral Theory or the “all-quadrant” approach provides a method of organizing and uniting these competing schools of psychotherapy into a coherent whole. The result, as we will see, is a more inclusive, adaptive clinical assessment and treatment.
20th Century Background for Integral Psychology

20th Century Background for Integral Psychology

This paper introduces Integral Psychology (IP) as a mature embrace to the question of what is human nature and how do we best explore it. Historically, wave after wave of various trends and movements have attempted to give psychology a focus and scientific status. After decades of specialization and segmentation (APA has over 50 divisions), IP aims at a mature synthesis of the field. IP mines and integrates the lasting contributions to our understanding of human nature and potential from all psychological schools of thought, disciplinary divisions, and methods of investigation—paying attention to both research and applications. In this paper...
An Introduction to Integral Psychology

An Introduction to Integral Psychology

This article explores how Integral Theory can serve the discipline of psychology in its current, parochial state by offering a framework for unification. While psychology has evolved as a science, the trend toward specialization has rendered it fragmented. Numerous efforts at unification have failed to draw the many specializations together. Until now, no unification theory has offered a sufficiently broad and deep framework to include all aspects of psychology. This paper offers a view of how Integral Theory can serve as a uniting framework for psychology as well as its individual disciplines.
Integral Psychiatry: Five Elements of Clinical Theory and Practice

Integral Psychiatry: Five Elements of Clinical Theory and Practice

Pharmacological treatments are the mainstay of current psychiatric practice as effective treatments for a variety of mental disorders. Many recognize the inadequacy of a purely biological treatment for most patients. The psychiatric field appears to be shifting into a more integrative stance with biological and psychosocial treatments. With the vast array of therapies, the Integral approach attempts to embrace all schools of treatment into a coherent whole. Two elements of the AQAL framework — quadrants and levels — are introduced as relevant aspects for Integral Psychiatry.
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