![]() Some people never develop a sense of inner, vertical conflict between who they are now (how their lives are now) and who they want to be (how they want their lives to be) so, they don’t see a mountain to climb (this was Dabrowski’s Level 1). In Living with Intensity, Daniels and Piechowski liken Dabrowski’s “multilevel journey” of self-actualization to the process of climbing a mountain. ![]() POSITIVE DISINTEGRATION: A MULTILEVEL JOURNEY However, some people – and some gifted people – are more primed to experience more tension than others, because their intensities (whatever they happen to be) cause them to reflect more on what needs to change, within themselves or within the world, in order for an equilibrium between themselves and the world to be found. To some degree, it is a basic mechanism of learning and growth. Obviously, anyone can experience this vertical tension – one need not be gifted or even “uncommonly intense” to experience it. This phrase “according to our own ideals” is a capital distinction in Dabrowski’s theory: by “personality ideal”, he wasn’t referring to the self as conformed to social or cultural norms, or any external authority, but the self as based on a self-chosen ideal. Through introspection, a sort of “vertical tension” – an inner disharmony between what we are and what we believe we “ought to be” according to our own uncommonly intense ideals – arises. So why would heightened experience be the groundwork for self-actualization? Dabrowski felt that intense ways of being caused a sort of “inner conflict”, and this inner conflict generated a need for introspection. Here is a good explanation of how they differ, and why that difference is important to understand: Giftedness & Overexcitabilities. I want to note here that giftedness and overexcitabilities have often been conflated with giftedness in the giftedness literature. This is the start of the journey to self-actualization, or in Dabrowski’s terms, the journey toward our personality ideal. ![]() Given that a gifted people have a heightened intellectual experience compared to the norm (intellectual overexcitability), the reasoning goes that a gifted person may be more likely to go through a “positive disintegration”. To put Dabrowski’s theory in very simple terms, he believed that innately heightened – or intense – experience in these areas of overexcitability (particularly those of emotional, imaginational and intellectual) forms the basic groundwork for the complex process of working toward our personality ideal. Surplus of energy, such as intense physical activity, competitiveness, rapid speech, restlessness, nervous habits and tics, and impulsiveness. Sensual expression of emotional tension (i.e. Appreciation of beauty, need for desire or comfort. Tendency toward feelings of guilt, anxiety, loneliness, depression and somatic expression of emotions.ĭetailed visualization, vivid dreams, love of fantasy, creativity, inventions, love of music and art, good sense of humor, preference for the unusual and unique, fear of the unknown.Įnhanced sensory experience of visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile stimulus. Profound curiosity, love of knowledge and learning, love of problem solving, probing questions, search for truth, understanding, knowledge, and discovery, keen observation, reflective thought, introspection, avid reading, sustained intellectual effort, love of theory and analysis, and independent thinking.ĭepth and intensity of emotional feelings and relational attachments, wide range of complex emotions, strong memory for feelings, high concern for others, heightened sense of right, wrong, injustice and hypocrisy, empathy, responsibility, and self-examination.
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