background preloader

Overexcitabilities

Facebook Twitter

COLLABORATION. Overexcitability and the Gifted. Overexcitability and the Gifted by Sharon Lind A small amount of definitive research and a great deal of naturalistic observation have led to the belief that intensity, sensitivity and overexcitability are primary characteristics of the highly gifted. These observations are supported by parents and teachers who notice distinct behavioral and constitutional differences between highly gifted children and their peers. The work of Kazimierz Dabrowski, (1902-1980), provides an excellent framework with which to understand these characteristics. Dabrowski, a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist, developed the Theory of Positive Disintegration as a response to the prevalent psychological theories of his time. He believed that conflict and inner suffering were necessary for advanced development – for movement towards a hierarchy of values based on altruism – for movement from “what is” to “what ought to be.” Show how to find the answers to questions.

Accept all feelings, regardless of intensity. Intellectual Giftedness and Overexcitabilities | a life of the mind. Overexcitabilities Used to Predict Giftedness. Dabrowski's. By Stephanie S. Tolan Written for Hoagies' Gifted Education Page, February, 1999 Dabrowski talked about OE's - over-excitabilities ("superstimulatabilities"), and how the gifted were extremely sensitive in a variety of areas.

It's a stimulus-response difference from the norms. The five areas are: Psychomotor This is often thought to mean that the person needs lots of movement and athletic activity, but can also refer to the issue of having trouble smoothing out the mind's activities for sleeping. Sensual Here's the "cut the label out of the shirt" demand, the child who limps as if with a broken leg when a sock seam is twisted. Imaginational These are the dreamers, poets, "space cadets" who are strong visual thinkers, use lots of metaphorical speech. Intellectual Here's the usual definition of "giftedness.

" Emotional This includes being "happier when happy, sadder when sad, angrier when angry," etc. Dabrowski’s Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults. Webb, J, Ph.D. When people undergo a great trauma or other unsettling event—they have lost a job or a loved one dies, for example—their understanding of themselves or of their place in the world often disintegrates, and they temporarily "fall apart," experiencing a type of depression referred to as existential depression. It's very hard to keep your spirits up. You've got to keep selling yourself a bill of goods, and some people are better at lying to themselves than others. If you face reality too much, it kills you. ~ Woody Allen When people undergo a great trauma or other unsettling event—they have lost a job or a loved one dies, for example—their understanding of themselves or of their place in the world often disintegrates, and they temporarily "fall apart," experiencing a type of depression referred to as existential depression.

Background But long before I knew about Dabrowski’s theory, I knew about and understood existential depression. Existential Issues and Giftedness Life Meaning. Positive Disintegration. The Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) by Kazimierz Dąbrowski is a theory of personality development. Unlike mainstream psychology, Dąbrowski's theoretical framework views psychological tension and anxiety as necessary for growth. These "disintegrative" processes are therefore seen as "positive," whereas people who fail to go through positive disintegration may remain for their entire lives in a state of "primary integration. " Advancing into disintegration and into the higher levels of development is predicated on having developmental potential, including overexcitabilities, above-average reactions to stimuli.

Unlike some other theories of development such as Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, it is not assumed that even a majority of people progress through all levels. TPD is not a theory of stages, and levels do not correlate with age. Dąbrowski's theory[edit] Dąbrowski's theory of personality development emphasized several major features including: Overexcitability.

Overexcitability. Overexcitabilities are sometimes used to help predict "giftedness" in both children and adults: The more "excited" or the more stimulated a sense is in a person, the more susceptible or prone his brain is to react in an extreme manner to anything that triggers it, thus the possibilities of expansion in ways of learning are increased in this person.

Gifted people appear to be very in touch with their 5 senses possibly making them, in a sense, more 'global' than others.