Convergence

Multiple Independent Discovery, or Simultaneous Invention

The framework presented in this book emerged over forty years of clinical practice, personal reconstruction, and sustained attention to how minds actually behave. Although I have always been aware of Erikson’s stages of development through my medical training, I developed this framework largely in isolation from academic psychology and philosophy, working from direct observation rather than existing theory.

When a person independently develops a theory only to discover that others have already created something very similar, they are experiencing convergent evolution in thought (often called simultaneous discovery or multiple discovery). This is incredibly common in research. It does not devalue the work; instead, it serves as a powerful validation that the logic is sound and aligned with reality.

Consistent with the framework’s own account of its development, these resemblances are treated as convergence, not derivation: the framework was built independently through clinical observation before these parallel traditions were encountered, and the convergence stands as confirmation rather than borrowed authority.

These nine research maps were commissioned in August 2026 — after the framework was finished — to find out who else had arrived at the same ground, and to say plainly where they and I part company. Each one names its departures as carefully as its agreements. Erikson, named above, is the single exception: I took the vocabulary and rejected the crisis framing.

Click on the topic you would like to explore the convergence:

• THE SPHERE OF ORDERED EXPERIENCE
  The structure of what you have ordered into experience: its centre, its boundary, the horizon, and what lies past it. Converges with Kant, Husserl, William James and Friston’s free energy principle.
• THE BINARY OUTCOME FRAMEWORK
  A discipline against self-deception at the moment of decision: why a large upside cannot cancel a harm that cannot be undone. Converges with prospect theory, Rawls, Taleb and the precautionary principle.
• THE PROCESS METHOD
  The Next True Step, the Containment Window and the Review Moment: how to move when clarity, confidence and motivation are not available. Converges with behavioural activation, ACT, Kaizen and the Zeigarnik effect.
• THE NAVIGATION LOOP
  Sense, Interpret, Act, Reflect, Update, Orient: the mind’s self-correcting engine, and the difference between a circle and a spiral. Converges with Boyd’s OODA loop, Wiener’s cybernetics, Kolb and Schön.
• THE INNER HOUSE
  The mind as seven Residents with seven questions, where leadership rotates. Converges with Internal Family Systems, Assagioli’s psychosynthesis and William James’s multiple selves — and with Erikson, the one body of work I already knew.
• THE RHYTHM OF EXISTENCE
  Capacity, Meaning, Identity and Connection, rising and falling like weather; synchronisation rather than stability as the goal. Converges with Heraclitus, Buddhist anicca, chronobiology and Frankl.
• GUARDRAILS FOR UNCERTAINTY
  Articulation, Anchors and Rules: what holds when the ground moves and the Loop cannot run. Converges with Gendlin’s focusing, affect-labelling research, Winnicott and psychological first aid.
• DIRECTION
  Orientation, Vector and Slope: how a mind is already pointed before any thought, plan or decision. Converges with Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gibson’s affordances and dynamical systems.
• COLLAPSE & REBUILD
  Collapse as the most intelligent thing a mind can do, and rebuild as renovation rather than a return to baseline. Converges with allostasis, Winnicott’s fear of breakdown, post-traumatic growth and Prigogine.