In the previous post, I was investigating ethics - and I came across the Wikipedia article on Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

What struck me, as regarding Wilber theory, was the following Further Stages entry:

In his empirical studies of persons across their life-span, Kohlberg came to notice that some people evidently had undergone moral stage regression. He was faced with the option of either conceding that moral regression could occur, or revise his theory. Kohlberg chose the latter, postulating the existence of sub-stages wherein the emerging stage has not yet been adequately integrated into the personality.[8] In particular Kohlberg noted of a stage 4½ or 4+, which is a transition from stage four to stage five, sharing characteristics of both.[8] In this stage the individual has become disaffected with the arbitrary nature of law and order reasoning. Culpability is frequently turned from being defined by society to having society itself be culpable. This stage is often mistaken for the moral relativism of stage two as the individual considers society's conflicting interests with their own choices relatively and morally wrong.[8] Kohlberg noted that this was often seen in students entering college.[8][11]

The question I have is this - if "regression" can happen, what does this do to Wilber's understanding that "you can't go backward" in terms of development?" 

Kohlberg seems to see this as "sub-stages", before "full" integration into the next stage.  I suppose that fits with the Wilber claim, but it also leaves one adrift in analyzing any PARTICULAR person - which again, seem to me to show that using stages to analyze an individual person is a non-starter.

Also, if you look at the bottom of this article, the See Also section, notice that there is a list of other theorists of development - cognitive, faith, ego, and psychosocial. 

This, for me, throws into clear relief how much "integral" theory is in alignment with, and dependent on, developmental theories.  So should integral theory be considered, in the main, a meta-developmental theory?