Overview

The theory of ego development, as it applies to adult personal growth and change, is not well-known in mainstream clinical psychology but is deeply researched and well-established in academic developmental psychology.

This on-demand activity covers how experiences of anxiety and depression are sometimes linked to the "wearing out of our old stage" (that is - we no longer feel so confident in our old ways of being and our habitual assumptions). Anxiety and depression may also be prompted by feelings of uncertainty, as a person begins to review their old self-and-world assumptions.

These experiences often precede, or are part of, a paradigm shift into a new and more complex stage of ego development.

Level of Learning

Foundational. This activity is targeted to those new to the topic.

Duration of access

Access to the recording and presenter slides is for 12 months from the date of confirmed registration.

APS CPD-Approved

This activity has been assessed against the APS Standards for CPD activities and approved for its education quality. Learn more about the APS CPD Approval process.

CPD Frequently Asked Questions

Refer to the APS CPD Frequently Asked Questions for general and technical information when undertaking APS Professional development activities.

Activity details

On-demand webinar recording

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this on-demand activity, participants should be able to:

• recognise that, sometimes, anxiety and/or depression may be part of a paradigm shift taking place in a person's sense of self (that is, progressive changes in their ego development stage),

• discuss the research that has established the progression of stages of ego development, and

• recognise how modern psychology has now reached a point where it converges with some ancient wisdom understandings about advanced stages of human development.

Presenter(s)

Dr Margo Orum MAPS

About the presenter(s)

Dr Margo Orum has been a psychologist for 24 years, and is the Founding Director of Open Sky Psychology - a private psychology practice in Ryde, which has 10 practitioners. She has written an online course which explains in accessible language, the surprising research about how adults continue to develop as they grow older. At the time this webinar was recorded, Margo was launching her online course (initially called “Know Yourself”), which was then priced at $299. However, since the recording of this webinar, the cost of the course has been significantly reduced to make it accessible for all who want to access and understand this rare knowledge about how adults develop. Now called “Adult Ego Development: Stages on the Path to Personal Growth”, her online course is now available for $39.99 from www.margoorumcourses.com. Margo's autobiography, "Fairytales in Reality", published by Macmillan, details her journey through, and management of bipolar disorder. Her learnings from her experiences with bipolar disorder in the earlier part of her adult life, fuelled her intellectual curiosity about how we update our minds and sense of self. It was for this reason that she decided to become a psychologist and researcher into how the mind works - and especially to investigate how we update our "sense of self", or ego. Her PhD, completed in 2003, looked into whether sudden change in ego development, via epiphanies, was possible.