Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.
Robert KeganIt is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety.
Robert KeganWhen we see that we are not made up by the other's experience, we then have the capacity not to take responsibility for what is now genuinely and for the first time not ours. And as a result, we can get just as close to the other's experience (even the other's experience of how dissapointing, enraging, or disapprovable we are!) without any need to react defensively to it or be guiltily compliant with it.
Robert Kegan