Clare W. Graves (December 21, 1914 – January 3, 1986) was a professor of psychology and originator of the emergent cyclical theory of adult human development, aspects of which were later popularised as Spiral Dynamics.
In the early mid-twentieth century, Graves decided to conduct experiments that he hoped would reconcile the various approaches to human nature and questions about psychological maturity,[7] as he saw elements of truth and error in all theories known at the time.
[9] Based on data collected over the next several decades, Graves observed that the emergence within humans of new bio-psycho-social systems in response to the interplay of external conditions with neurology follows a hierarchy in several dimensions, though without guarantees as to time lines or even direction: both progression and regression are possibilities in his model.
Graves saw this process of stable plateaus interspersed with change intervals as never ending, up to the limits of the brain of Homo sapiens, something he viewed as far greater than we have yet imagined.
Graves was reportedly distressed by the poor reception given to Abraham Maslow at an American Psychological Association seminar in the mid 1950s[25] and determined not to publish his full theory until he was confident he could defend it.
[29] Additionally, an edited transcription of a seminar given by Graves at the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1971, along with a reprint of his 1970 article in the Fall 1970 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, were collected and published in book form in 2004 as Levels of Human Existence.