Dabrowski’s Theory: A Model for Understanding the Sensitivity of the Gifted Student

1. Dabrowski’s Theory: A Model for Understanding the Sensitivity of the Gifted Student Pam Clark, Ph.D. Converse College

2. “We’re killing bugs on the windshield, and I’ve already seen too much death for someone my age!” (Webb et al., 2007, pg.13)

3. Kazimierz Dabrowski • Polish psychiatrist and psychologist • Born in 1902 in Klarowo, Lublin, Poland • As a child, studied with Catholic priests and then in Lublin at the university studying psychology, philosophy, and literature

4. Completed an MA in 1924 in Warsaw • Although his plans were to become a professional musician, after a friends suicide he decided to become a physician • Received his medical degree from the University of Geneva in 1929 • Studied psychoanalysis in Vienna in 1930 • In 1931, studied child psychiatry and obtain a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Poznan • In 1933 went to Harvard University to study public health • In 1934, returned to Switzerland and was a lecturer in child psychiatry at the University of Geneva

5. Returned to Poland and established the Polish State Mental Hygiene Institute in Warsaw where he was the director from 1935 to 1948 with an interruption from the German invasion • 1939 the Germans closed the Mental Hygiene institute and Dabrowski shifted his focus to a second institution that provided services to over 200 children and youth • The institution also sheltered and saved many war orphans, priests, Polish soldiers, members of the resistance, and Jewish children • In 1942 Dabrowski was imprisoned by the Germans for suspicion of involvement with the Polish underground • After his release, he resumed his position as director of the Mental Hygiene Institute • 1949 – Stalin closed the Institute and declared Dabrowski a persona non gratis • He was imprisoned for 18 months, “rehabilitated,” and then released • 1960 – Jason Arsonson traveled behind the Iron Curtain to invite psychiatrist to contribute to his journal, International Journal of Psychiatry, where he met Dabrowski

6. 1964 Dabrowski accepted a position at a hospital in Montreal, Canada • 1965 he became a visiting professor at the University of Alberta • He spent the 70’s writing and refining his theory • 1979 he suffered a serious heart attack and, in 1980, he returned to Polar and died in Warsaw

7. Theory of Personality • Dabrowski’s theory is essentially a theory of personality development • It emphasizes emotion and the role emotion plays in personality, intelligence, and behaviors • Negative emotions are frequently evidence of psychological growth and development and essential for the development of personality • The theory has become an important aspect of understanding the psychology of gifted individuals

8. Definitions • Personality – is shaped and created by an individual to create his or her unique character • Positive disintegration – process by which personality is achieved • Disintegration of initial mental organization based on biological needs and conforming to social norms • Re-integration at a higher level transcending biological needs and resulting in autonomy

9. Developmental potential – person’s constitutional make-up that shapes positive disintegration that results in personality • Overexcitability – high level of reactivity of the central nervous system • Dynamisms – autonomous inner forces • Human development not in stages • Movement from a lower, primitive level of organization to a higher, advanced level of organization • Fueled by strong anxieties and often depression • Re-integration characterized by an individual’s creation of a hierarchy of values • Embracing those characteristics and values important to the individual “more self” and rejecting those that are “less self” • Results in achieving a unique and autonomous personality

10. Assumptions • Multilevelness • Human development proceeds from lower, simple structures to higher, complex structures • We share some instincts with the animals (self-preservation, sex, etc.) and others are uniquely human (creativity, self-perfecting) • Emotions range from lower levels to higher, e.g. satisfaction at eating when hungry to satisfaction in one’s sense of understanding or growth • Conflict ranges from lower to higher, e.g. sexual frustration to frustration at not living up to one’s personal values

11. Conflict and even psychopathology essential for development • Transition from lower to higher levels can only be accomplished through conflict • Integration results in inner harmony and peace • Primary integration – lack of inner conflicts; motivated by biological needs and conformity • Secondary integration – harmony achieved through achievement of personality; characterized by authenticity, acceptance of self and others, and a daily life directed by a hierarchy of values • Anxiety, depression, and other negative emotions result from the conflict between self and ideal self and act upon primary integration as a motivation toward growth

12. Emotions are the directing forces of development • Emotions drive the transition from lower levels to higher levels • Intense negative emotions have a disintegrating power that is necessary to dismantle the primary integration and assist the move to secondary integration

13. Components • Personality • Product of a person’s struggle to toward an ideal • Sounds a lot like self-actualization • Positive value systems drive the behavior of individuals who have achieved personality

14. Factors of Development • Biologically determined • Includes conformity to social environment • Behaviors are regulated in response to biological drives • Social norms control drive gratification • Autonomous mental • Inner mental forces combine with positive values • Transcends dictates of biology and society • Characterized by frequent disintegration and reintegration at a higher level • One-sided • Structures are reintegrated in an egocentric, antisocial way • Negative maladjustment - mental states such as criminality or paranoia • A developed individual is one who has transcended biologically determined stages and achievement in response to society norms and has achieved a level of development characterized by autonomy, authenticity, and altruism

15. Developmental Instinct and Developmental Potential • Developmental instinct – the drive that pushes us to transcend biological drives • Developmental potential – seen in the “overexcitebilities” or the “higher than average response to stimuli due to heightened sensitivity of nervous system receptors” • Perceive reality in a more intense manner

16. Overexciteabilites • Psychomotor • High energy, need constant change of scenery, and are generally restless • Workaholism, nervous habits (biting fingernails), rapid speech, and love of movement • Sensual • Highly sensitive to sensory perceptions such as sights, sounds, tastes, and tactile stimulation • Keen aesthetic appreciation and may enjoy being the center of attention

17. Imaginational • Daydreamers, rich fantasy life, inventive and creative • Often have poetic, dramatic, or artistic abilities • Intellectual • Abilities of analysis and synthesis, ask probing questions, and love learning • Emotional • Intense connectedness with others; the ability to experience things intensely; fears of death, embarrassment, and guilt • Empathic toward others and feel a strong need for exclusive relationships • The Big Three: intellectual, imaginational, and emotions forms considered essential for advanced psychological development

20. Social Environment • Effects depend on the amount of endowed developmental potential • If an individual’s developmental potential is strong, the environment is of secondary importance • Innately resilient and transcend environment • If development potential is innately weak, doesn’t matter about the environment – development won’t occur • Environment becomes important when developmental potential lies between these two extremes

21. Dynamism • Force by which individuals become self-determined • Once activated, individual can transcend biological and social needs • Individual becomes intentional and self-directed

22. Integrations and Disintegrations • Integrations: primary and secondary • Disintegrations – movement from primary to secondary is the result of positive disintegration • Positive disintegration involves two processes • Dissolution of lower mental structures and functions characterized by intense external and internal conflicts • Creation of higher forms arising from self-awareness, self-direction, and autonomy • A new, higher form of integration that resolves the inner conflict and anxiety created by dissolution of the primary integration

23. Negative disintegration • Occurs when individuals only experience the dissolution phase • Experiencing conflicts and anxiety with no resolution and inability to return to previous state of primary integration • Usually result in chronic psychotic illness or suicide • Partial disintegrations • Can result in a return to the lower level of functioning, a partial re-integration at a higher level, or a transformation into global disintegration • Quality of social environment impacts both negative and partial disintegrations

24. Dynamisms – forces that drive development • Dissolving dynamisms weaken, disrupt, and destroy primary integration • Ambivalence – fluctuating feelings of like and dislike, inferiority and superiority, and approach-avoidance conflicts • Ambitendenices – conflicting courses of action, indecision, desiring incompatible goals or things • Astonishment with oneself, disquietude with oneself, feelings of inferiority toward oneself, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of shame and guilt, and creativity, and positive maladjustment

25. Developing dynamisms create the new mental organization • Self-awareness and self-control • Subject and object in oneself • Syntony (sympathy and resonance to others) • Identification • Empathy • The third factor: inner self that coordinates mental life • Inner psychic transformation • Education and psychotherapy of oneself

26. Highest levels of development dynamism • Responsibility for oneself and for others • Autonomy • Authentism • Disposing and directing center • Personality ideal

27. Levels of Development • Not stages of development: not sequential, age-related, or universal • Represent a movement from egocentric to altruistic mode

28. Level I: Primary integration • Cohesive mental organization based on gratifying biological instincts, drives, and needs including social • Attributes focus on self-interest and self-gratification • Often driven by a need for approval and can be highly successful individuals, “salt of the earth”

29. Level II – Unilevel Disintegration • Triggered by onset of conflict which can be developmental (puberty or menopause) or crisis related (failure, death, etc.) • Creates intense emotions such as frustration, anxiety, or despair • Can result in regression to previous level or transition to further disintegration

30. Level III: Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration • Loosening occurring in Level II becomes a full-blown examination of beliefs, values, and emotions • Ideal/real self discrepancies • Self-critical attitudes occur when individuals see themselves succumb to biological needs or social norms that they no longer believe in

31. Level IV: Organized Multilevel Disintegration • Individuals become self-organizing • Rise of autonomy, authenticity, etc. • Third factor begins selecting higher values and actions and rejecting lower • Sense of social justice and empathic emotional connection with others • Beginning of second integration as one becomes self-educating and self-correcting

32. Level V: Secondary Integration • Experience harmony and are at peace with themselves • Conduct lives by enacting personality ideal • Behavior is regulated by hierarchy of values

33. References • Mendaglio, S. (2008). Dabrowski’s thoery of positive disintegration: A personality theory for the 21st century. In S. Mendaglio (Ed.), Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, pp. 12-40. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press. • O’Connor, K. (2002). The application of Dabrowski’s theory to the gifted. In M. Neihart, S. M. Reis, N. M. Robinson, & S. M. Moon (Eds.), The social and emotional development of gifted children, • Silverman, L. (2008). The theory of positive disintegration in the field of gifted education. In S. Mendaglio (Ed.), Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, pp. 157-174. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press. • Tillier, W. (2008). Kasimierz Dabrowski: The man. In S. Mendaglio (Ed.), Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, pp. 3-12. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press.