Our developmental model is a theoretical synthesis drawn from the field of developmental psychology and the research of pioneers such as Jean Piaget, Maria Montessori, Erik Erikson, and John Bowlby and his students, Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main. We created a map to track the process of individual attachment and separation through four stages of development:
We came to understand through our years of personal work and professional research and training that people who are able to give and receive unconditional love are able to move forward in their development and evolve.
Love + Evolution = LOVEvolution
It was this understanding that helped us coin the term LOVEvolution, which describes the process that people experience when they are able to successfully complete all four stages.
We also discovered that couples, families, groups, organizations, communities, and nation-states and the human species as whole, follow these same four same stages of development. The essential developmental processes in each of the four stages must be completed in order for an individual, couple, family, group, organization or nation-state to evolve. The most critical factor in our model is making sure that children are able to complete these processes in a timely and appropriate manner in a healthy family environment.
When children experience relational breaks (developmental trauma) with parents and other adult caregivers, they are not able to complete these critical developmental processes in a timely and appropriate manner. Consequently, they get routed to the Trauma Track of development with a residue of trauma and unmet needs. These developmental deficits show up later in life as addictions, codependency and counterdependency issues, relational instability, twisted beliefs, post-traumatic stress disorder and a susceptibility to con artists.
For additional information and resources regarding our developmental model, please visit our other two websites:
These posts contain more information about our developmental model.