and a reversal of the losses of freedom, ending with
total freedom and unrestricted choice. These stages
can be conceptualized as seven equidistant points
on a V shape (see Figure 15–2). Beginning at the
uppermost point on the left is the first stage,poten-
tial freedom.The next stage is binding. In this stage,
the individual is sacrificed for the sake of the col-
lective, with no need for initiative because every-
thing is being regulated for the individual. The
third stage,centering,involves the development of
an individual identity, self-consciousness, and self-
determination. “Individualism emerges in the self ’s
break with authority” (Newman, 1994b). The
fourth stage,choice,is situated at the base of the V.
In this stage the individual learns that the old ways
of being are no longer working. It is a stage of self-
awareness, inner growth, and transformation. A
new way of being becomes necessary. Newman
(1994b) describes the fifth stage,decentering,as
being characterized by a shift
from the development of self (individuation) to ded-
ication to something greater than the individual self.
The person experiences outstanding competence;
their works have a life of their own beyond the cre-
ator. The task is transcendence of the ego. Form is
transcended, and the energy becomes the dominant
feature—in terms of animation, vitality, a quality that
is somehow infinite. Pattern is higher than form; the
pattern can manifest itself in different forms. In this
stage the person experiences the power of unlimited
growth and has learned how to build order against the
trend of disorder. (pp. 45–46)
Newman (1994b) goes on to state that few expe-
rience the sixth stage,unbinding,or the seventh
stage,real freedom,unless they have had these
experiences of transcendence characterized by the
fifth stage. It is in the moving through the choice
point and the stages of decentering and unbinding
that a person moves on to higher levels of con-
sciousness (Newman, 1999). Newman proposes a
corollary between her theory of Health as
Expanding Consciousness and Young’s theory of
the Evolution of Consciousness in that we “come
into being from a state of potential consciousness,
are bound in time, find our identity in space,
and through movement we learn ‘the law’ of the
way things work and make choices that ultimately
take us beyond space and time to a state of ab-
solute consciousness” (Newman, 1994b, p. 46) (see
Figure 15–2).
EXPANDING CONSCIOUSNESS
Ultimate consciousness has been equated with love,
which embraces all experience equally and uncondi-
tionally: pain as well as pleasure, failure as well as
success, ugliness as well as beauty, disease as well as
nondisease.
—M. A. Newman (2003, p. 241)The process of expanding consciousness is
characterized by the evolving pattern of the person-
environment interaction (Newman, 1994a). Con-
sciousness is much more than just cognitive
thought. Margaret Newman (1994a) defines con-
sciousness as
the information of the system: The capacity of the
system to interact with the environment. In the
human system the informational capacity includes
not only all the things we normally associate with
consciousness, such as thinking and feeling, but also
all the information embedded in the nervous system,
the immune system, the genetic code, and so on. The
information of these and other systems reveals the
complexity of the human system and how the infor-
mation of the system interacts with the information
of the environmental system. (p. 33)To illustrate consciousness as the interactional
capacity of the person-environment, Newman
(1994a) draws on the work of Bentov (1978), who
presents consciousness on a continuum ranging
from rocks on one end of the spectrum (which have
little interaction with their environment), to plantsCHAPTER 15 Margaret A. Newman’s Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness and Its Applications 223Centering De-centeringBindingPotential Freedom Real FreedomUnbindingChoice
FIGURE 15–2 Young’s spectrum of the evolution of
consciousness.