Dabrowski’s Over-ExcitabilitiesThe link between a heightened capacity for feeling emotional

overexcitability and high intelligence

“You live with a lot of complicated emotions as an actor, and they whirl around you and create havoc at times. And yet, as an actor you're consciously and unconsciously allowing that to happen. .... It's my choice, and I would rather do it this way than live to be 100. .. Or rather than choosing not to exist within life's extremities. I'm willing to fly close to the flame.” 

--- Nicole Kidman     ... [Interview, Oct 2003] 

Dabrowski's Concepts of Over-Excitabilities /

Excitabilities

• The original Polish word can be translated more literally as "super-stimulatabilities." 

Dabrowski’s Theory

• Dabrowski presents a theory of personality development based on an interplay of potentials,disintegrations of lower functions and re-integrations of higher features marked by a multilevel, hierarchical view of life.

• Personality development is largely the result of the impact of forms of developmental potential (DP), notably, overexcitability (OE).

Difference from the Norms

• It's a stimulus-response difference from the norms. It means that in these 5 areas a person reacts more strongly than normal for a longer period than normal to a stimulus that may be very small. 

• It involves not just psychological factors but central nervous system sensitivity.

Psychomotor• PSYCHOMOTOR -- this is often thought to

mean that the person needs lots of movement and athletic activity, but it can also refer to the issue mentioned on the loop of having trouble smoothing out the mind's activities for sleeping. Lots of physical energy and movement, fast talking, lots of gestures, sometimes nervous tics.

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. 

• Also a love for sensory things -- textures, smells, tastes etc., or a powerful reaction to negative sensory input (bad smells, loud sounds, etc.) The kids tend to be sensitive to bright lights (squinting in all the family photographs, etc.), harsh sounds.

• A baby who cries when the wind blows in his face, for instance; a toddler who cries at the feel of grass on bare legs and feet. Another important aspect of this is aesthetic awareness -- the child who is awed to breathlessness at the sight of a beautiful sunset or cries hearing Mozart, etc.

IMAGINATIONAL • These are the dreamers, the

poets, the "space cadets" who are strong visual thinkers, use lots of metaphorical speech. They daydream, remember their dreams at night (and often react strongly to them), believe in magic (take a long time to "grow out of" Santa, the tooth fairy, elves and fairies, etc.).

INTELLECTUAL • Here's the usual definition of "giftedness." Kids

with a strong "logical imperative," who love brain teasers and puzzles, enjoy following a line of complex reasoning, figuring things out. A love of things academic, new information, cognitive games, etc.

EMOTIONAL

• This includes being "happier when happy, sadder when sad, angrier when angry," etc. Intensity of emotion. But also a very broad range of emotions. Also a need for deep connections with other people or animals. 

• Unable to find close and deep friends (Damon and Pythias variety), they invent imaginary friends, make do with pets or stuffed animals, etc. 

• Empathy and compassion. A child who needs a committed relationship will think herself "betrayed" by a child who plays with one child today and another tomorrow and refers to both as "friends." This is also the OE that makes the kids susceptible to depression.

Which is central?

• Dabrowski believed emotional OE to be central -- the energy center from which the whole constellation of OEs is generated.

• Highly gifted people tend to have all 5 of these, but different people lead with different OEs. The engineer types lead with Intellectual, the poets with Emotional and Imaginational, etc.

• These five describe the unusual intensity of the gifted as well as the many ways in which they look and behave "oddly" when compared to norms.

John Gartner’s The Hypomanic Edge

• In developing his book The Hypomanic Edge : The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America, John D. Gartner, Ph.D. [clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School] created a list of hypomanic traits he had synthesized from the psychiatric literature, as typical of an entrepreneur:

Intriguing Parallels with Dabrowski

• "..filled with energy... flooded with ideas... driven, restless, and unable to keep still... often works on little sleep... feels brilliant, special, chosen, perhaps even destined to change the world... can be euphoric... becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles... is a risk taker... overspends in both his business and personal life... acts out sexually... sometimes acts impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful consequences... is fast-talking... is witty and gregarious... his confidence can make him charismatic and persuasive..."

An Accolade Written by Dabrowski:Be greeted psychoneurotics!

. . . for you see sensitivity in the insensitivity of the world, uncertainty among the world's certainties.

. . . for you often feel others as you feel yourselves.

. . . for you feel the anxiety of the world, and its bottomless narrowness and self-assurance.

. . . for your phobia of washing your hands from the dirt of the world, for your fear of being locked in the world's limitations, for your fear of the absurdity of existence.

. . . for your subtlety in not telling others what you see in them.

. . . for your awkwardness in dealing with practical things, and for your practicalness in dealing with unknown things, for your transcendental realism and lack of everyday realism.

. . . for your exclusiveness and fear of losing close friends, for your creativity and ecstasy. 

. . . for your maladjustment to that "which is" and adjustment to that which "ought to be."

. . . for your great but unutilized abilities.

. . . for the belated appreciation of the real value of your greatness which never allows the appreciation of the greatness of those who will come after you.

. . . for your being treated instead of treating others, for your heavenly power being forever pushed down by brutal force; for that which is prescient, unsaid, infinite in you.

. . . for the loneliness and strangeness of your ways.

Be greeted!