[3][page needed] The development of the human mind is complex and a debated subject, and may take place in a continuous or discontinuous fashion.
[1] While some theories focus primarily on the healthy development of children, others propose stages that are characterized by a maturity rarely reached before old age.
These connections provide a behavior in the young child that is heavily affected and relied on throughout the entire lifespan.
[12] These include the theories of Robbie Case, Grame Halford, Andreas Demetriou and Kurt W. Fischer.
The description of stages in these theories is more elaborate and focuses on underlying mechanisms of information processing rather than on reasoning as such.
James W. Fowler (b.1940), and his stages of faith development theory, builds off of both Piaget's and Kohlberg's schemes.
[14] Inspired by Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner (b.1861) had developed a stage theory based on seven-year life phases.
It was popularized by Don Beck (b.1937) and Chris Cowan's as spiral dynamics, and mainly applied in consultancy.
Ken Wilber (b.1949) integrated Spiral Dynamics in his integral theory, which also includes psychological stages of development as described by Jean Piaget and Jane Loevinger, the spiritual models of Sri Aurobindo and Rudolf Steiner, and Jean Gebsers theory of mutations of consciousness in human history.