Cooperation and competition

This stage is not reached by everyone and arises only when the autonomy of the previous stage is sufficient to allow questioning or defiance of the authority which one has come to respect. There is a need to break away from the conventional and to discover one's own identity. Paradoxically this occurs more fruitfully in cooperation with others who have also reached this level of autonomy.

This is the third of three stages of belief described by Michael Jacobs and which relates the genital stage of Sigmund Freud with the genital religion of Heije Faber and the levels of individuative-reflective faith and conjunctive faith faith of James Fowler. It is also related to the post-conventional or self-accepting moral judgement of Lawrence Kohlberg, with a transition stage and subsequent world view of Paul Tillich concerned with broken myth and the use of symbols, and with three levels of Erik Erikson - although not necessarily with the physical ages they are said to represent - initiative/guilt, identity/confusion and integrity/despair.