Susanne Cook-Greuter

Susanne Cook-Greuter (born January 28, 1945) is a prominent Swiss-American psychologist and author on adult development. Cook-Greuter is internationally-known for writing and lecturing in this area as well as training others to use developmental approaches in business and life.

Biography

Career

Cook-Greuter was born in Switzerland and educated at the University of Zurich where she received her licenziat degree in 1974 in linguistics. During that time, she also taught foreign languages at several Swiss gymnasiums (academic high schools). In 1976, she emigrated to the U.S. and entered Harvard University where she received a master’s degree in 1979 in human development and psychology. At that time, she also began her long-term research career as an independent scholar in ego development theory and measurement. Her work is an extension of ego development theory and the Washington University Sentence Completion test originally developed by the late Jane Loevinger.

Cook-Greuter received her doctorate in 1999 from Harvard University. Her thesis, Postautonomous Ego Development (1999), is a landmark study in the characteristics and assessment of highly developed and influential individuals and leaders. Dr. Cook-Greuter is a founding member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, where she contributes to the Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Business Practice branches. She is cited as one of the leading developmental psychologists in the Integral movement.

Cook-Greuter is also a member of the American Guild of Papercutters and has exhibited her work in both the U.S. and Switzerland. She explores papercutting (creation of silhouettes) as a form of visual literacy in human communication.

Cook-Greuter is currently the principal of the consulting firm Cook-Greuter & Associates.

Personal

Cook-Greuter grew up in north-central Switzerland and attended a humanistic gymnasium in Aarau focusing on liberal arts education and foreign languages. Her upbringing in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society gave her a broad perspective on language and meaning making. She remains fluent to this day in several languages. Cook-Greuter is married to Craig Cook, a retired computer scientist, and is the mother of two adult children.

Theories

In the vein of her compatriot, Piaget, Cook-Greuter has extended and further developed stage-development theory and the relationship between self-story and meaning making. Given her linguistic training in semantics, it is not surprising that the “language habit” or the uses of language plays prominently in her theorizing though she acknowledges the language instinct as equally formidable. She has added to the constructive developmental psychology by identifying the rarer, later stages of adult development and defining criteria for measuring them based on empirical data. Her theory includes meaning making stages through the different levels of vision logic (Wilber) into ego transcendence. Her stage assessment, the SCTi-MAP, represents an extension of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (1970, 1996) that does justice to these rarer, postconventional perspectives and ways of reality interpretation.

Selected Publications

Books

M. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Mature thought and transcendence in adulthood: The further reaches of adult development. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. 1994

M. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Creativity, spirituality, and transcendence: Paths to integrity and wisdom in the mature self Greenwich, CT: Ablex. 2000

Articles

Travis, F, Cook-Greuter S, et al: High Levels of Brain Integration in World-class Norwegian Athletes: Towards a Brain Measure of Performance-Capacity in Sports (07-07--ME-01) the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. Submitted 7 07

Cook-Greuter, S. and Soulen, J. The developmental perspective in integral counseling. Counseling and values. pp. 180-192, Vol.51, No. 3, April 2007

Ingersoll, E. and Cook-Greuter, S. The Self-system in integral counseling. Counseling and values. pp. 193-208, Vol.51, No. 3, April 2007

Cook-Greuter, S. 9 levels of increasing embrace. www. cook-greuter.com, 4.2006

Cook-Greuter, S. 20th Century background for Integral Psychology. AQAL: Journal of integral theory and practice. pp. 144-184, Vol. 1, No.2., 2006. Integraluniversity.org

Cook-Greuter, S. AQ as a scanning and mapping device. AQAL: Journal of integral theory and practice pp. 142-157, Vol. 1, No 3., fall 2006. Integraluniversity.org

Cook-Greuter, S. Measuring ego development: An advanced field guide to scoring sentence completions and other text. Unpublished manuscript registered with the Library of Congress, 2004. (Currently only available to students in the scoring certification track).

Cook-Greuter, S. Making the case for a developmental perspective. Industrial and Commercial Training. October 2004. Bradford, UK: Emerald Group.

Torbert, W., Cook-Greuter, S., Fisher, D. Foldy, E., Keeley, J., Rooke, R., Ross, S., Royce, C., Rudolph, J., Taylor, S., and Tran , M. (2004). Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco

Cook-Greuter, S. The development of action logics in detail. www.cook-greuter.com 7.2002

Cook-Greuter, S. & Miller, M. (Eds.). (2000). Special journal issue honoring the life work of the late psychologist Charles (Skip) Alexander. The Journal of Adult Development, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2000. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.

Cook-Greuter, S. (2000). Mature ego development: A gateway to ego transcendence? Journal of Adult Development (pp. 227-240). Vol. 7, No. 4, 2000. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.

Miller, M. & Cook-Greuter, S. (Eds.). (2000). Creativity, spirituality, and transcendence: Paths to integrity and wisdom in the mature self. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Cook-Greuter, S. & Miller, M. (2000). Creativity in adulthood: Personal maturity and openness to extraordinary sources of inspiration. In M. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Creativity, spirituality and transcendence: Paths to integrity and wisdom in the mature self (pp. xv-xxxiv). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Miller, M., & Cook-Greuter. S. (2000). Edith Kramer - Artist and art therapist: A relentless search for integrity, beauty and truth. In M. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Creativity, spirituality, and transcendence: Paths to integrity and wisdom in the mature self ( pp. 99-124). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Cook-Greuter, S. (1999). Postautonomous ego development: its nature and measurement. Doctoral dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education. UMI Dissertation Information Services UMI #9933122.

Cook-Greuter, S. (1995). Comprehensive language awareness: A definition of the phenomenon and a review of its treatment in the postformal adult development literature. Qualifying paper. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Cook-Greuter, S. (1994). Rare forms of self-understanding in mature adults. In Mel Miller and Susanne Cook-Greuter (eds.). Transcendence and mature thought in adulthood: The further reaches of human development (119-146). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Miller, M. & Cook-Greuter, S. (1994). From postconventional development to transcendence: visions and theories. In M. Miller & S. Cook-Greuter (Eds.), Mature thought and transcendence in adulthood: The further reaches of adult development (pp. xv-xxxii). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cook-Greuter, S. (1990). Maps for living: Ego-development stages from symbiosis to conscious universal embeddedness. In M. L. Commons, C. Armon, L. Kohlberg, F. A. Richards, T. A. Grotzer and J. D. Sinnott (Eds.) Adult development vol. 2, Models and methods in the study of adolescent and adult thought (pp. 79-104). New York: Praeger.


 
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