structures of knowing

One pattern is forever repeated in the evolution of our structures of knowing, whether we are looking at mental development in infancy or the highly elaborated order of consciousness that underlies postmodernism. That pattern can be described like this: DIFFERENTIATION ALWAYS PRECEDES INTEGRATION. How could it be otherwise? Before we can reconnect to, internalize, or integrate something with which we were originally fused, we must first distinguish ourselves from it.


--- Robert Kegan