Clare Graves
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Clare W. Graves (December 21, 1914 – January 3, 1986) was a professor of psychology and originator of a theory of adult human development. He was born in New Richmond, Indiana.
Graves graduated from Union College in New York in 1940 and received his master's degree and a PhD. in psychology from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
In the mid-twentieth century, Clare W. Graves taught psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. There he developed an epistemology model of human psychology. Graves claimed that the inspiration for so doing came from undergraduate students in his introductory psychology courses. He acknowledged that he was unable to answer the frequently-asked question as to who, from among the many competing psychology theorists, was ultimately "right" or "correct" with their model, since there were elements of truth and error in all of them.
Graves created an epistemological theory that he hoped would reconcile the various approaches to human nature and questions about psychological maturity. He collected pertinent data from his psychology students and others (in total a diverse group of around 1,065 men and women aged 18 to 61) in the seven years from 1952 to 1959. He gathered conceptions of the mature personality and conducted batteries of psychological tests using recognized instruments. His analysis of this data became the basis for a theory that he called, among other titles, "The Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory" (ECLET).
Graves theorized that in response to the interaction of external conditions with internal neuronal systems, humans develop new bio-psycho-social coping systems to solve existential problems and cope with their worlds. These coping systems are dependent on evolving human culture and individual development, and they are manifested at the individual, societal, and species levels. He believed that tangible, emergent, self-assembling dynamic neuronal systems evolved in the human brain in response to evolving existential and social problems. He theorized "man's nature is not a set thing, that it is ever emergent, that it is an open system, not a closed system." This open-endedness set his approach apart from many of his contemporaries who sought a final state, a nirvana, or perfectibility in human nature. His inclusion of the bio-, psycho-, social, and systems theory as vital co-elements also described an inclusive point of view that continues developing today.
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