Thinking about OE in terms of "dosages" landed so flawlessly for me... like, YES, here's an inner apothecary of pinches of this n that to alchemize and bring best self forward... Then of course I went to recipe.
A lot of my mental imagery for OE and dynamisms looks like a sound engineering board, knobs and sliders to balance different effects, frequencies, etc. I can't believe it took me this long to bring it to food 🍳🤣
But then, it makes sense because my other metaphor is a pinball machine, and these mechanical objects might represent the outer structure, the casing, of the world. And the positive maladjustment shows up in a mortar & pestle... Ok I'm gonna doodle this out now. Thanks for the inspiration and your rigorous work, Chris!
Bee, I love this so much. The image of an inner apothecary—pinches and dashes calibrated by inner wisdom. 🙌
Your metaphors are layered and evocative: the pinball machine as the outer casing of the world (with all its collisions and flashing signals), the mortar and pestle of positive maladjustment grinding the ingredients down so something new can be formed… please do doodle it out! I want to see what comes through.
Thank you for meeting this work with such imagination and depth. You make these ideas feel alive. ✨
This is dense stuff. Thanks for striving to bring clarity in contemporary language to Dabrowski and Piechowski. Your reflections interspersed with their writing is a helpful approach.
I’m currently working on getting a better understanding of Dynamisms as a category. Is it that could be said Overexcitabilities represent a class of qualities and Dynamisms are specific instances or manifestations of them?
Thank you so much for reading and reflecting on this one, Eric. You’re right that this material is dense, and I’ve really struggled with how to make it more accessible. That’s why I’ve started sharing my own experiences with the dynamisms, to try to bring them to life in a way that’s easier to grasp. I’ve got many posts planned for the coming months (and years, no doubt) that will continue unpacking them.
To your question: overexcitabilities and dynamisms are related, but not quite in a class/instance way. The OEs are like the raw fuel, the heightened sensitivities that make deep experience possible. The dynamisms are the psychological structures that evolve out of that fuel over time. So, for instance, emotional OE might manifest first as overwhelming feelings, but it can give rise to dynamisms like dissatisfaction with oneself, guilt, empathy, and eventually authenticity. The dynamisms are more organized, directional forces for growth.
That’s the connection I was trying to show in this post. That OEs are the original equipment, and dynamisms are the derivatives, the forces that move development forward. Dabrowski and Piechowski both emphasized this relationship, but it often gets lost when OEs are treated as personality traits rather than developmental potential.
I’ll attach another piece from my Interesting Quotes series, one that draws on Eleanor Roosevelt, since I think it also illustrates how I’m trying to make these ideas more concrete.
Thanks again for engaging with this work and for striving, alongside me, to bring clarity in contemporary language to Dabrowski and Piechowski. Your reflections are deeply appreciated.
Thinking about OE in terms of "dosages" landed so flawlessly for me... like, YES, here's an inner apothecary of pinches of this n that to alchemize and bring best self forward... Then of course I went to recipe.
A lot of my mental imagery for OE and dynamisms looks like a sound engineering board, knobs and sliders to balance different effects, frequencies, etc. I can't believe it took me this long to bring it to food 🍳🤣
But then, it makes sense because my other metaphor is a pinball machine, and these mechanical objects might represent the outer structure, the casing, of the world. And the positive maladjustment shows up in a mortar & pestle... Ok I'm gonna doodle this out now. Thanks for the inspiration and your rigorous work, Chris!
Bee, I love this so much. The image of an inner apothecary—pinches and dashes calibrated by inner wisdom. 🙌
Your metaphors are layered and evocative: the pinball machine as the outer casing of the world (with all its collisions and flashing signals), the mortar and pestle of positive maladjustment grinding the ingredients down so something new can be formed… please do doodle it out! I want to see what comes through.
Thank you for meeting this work with such imagination and depth. You make these ideas feel alive. ✨
This is dense stuff. Thanks for striving to bring clarity in contemporary language to Dabrowski and Piechowski. Your reflections interspersed with their writing is a helpful approach.
I’m currently working on getting a better understanding of Dynamisms as a category. Is it that could be said Overexcitabilities represent a class of qualities and Dynamisms are specific instances or manifestations of them?
Thank you so much for reading and reflecting on this one, Eric. You’re right that this material is dense, and I’ve really struggled with how to make it more accessible. That’s why I’ve started sharing my own experiences with the dynamisms, to try to bring them to life in a way that’s easier to grasp. I’ve got many posts planned for the coming months (and years, no doubt) that will continue unpacking them.
To your question: overexcitabilities and dynamisms are related, but not quite in a class/instance way. The OEs are like the raw fuel, the heightened sensitivities that make deep experience possible. The dynamisms are the psychological structures that evolve out of that fuel over time. So, for instance, emotional OE might manifest first as overwhelming feelings, but it can give rise to dynamisms like dissatisfaction with oneself, guilt, empathy, and eventually authenticity. The dynamisms are more organized, directional forces for growth.
That’s the connection I was trying to show in this post. That OEs are the original equipment, and dynamisms are the derivatives, the forces that move development forward. Dabrowski and Piechowski both emphasized this relationship, but it often gets lost when OEs are treated as personality traits rather than developmental potential.
I’ll attach another piece from my Interesting Quotes series, one that draws on Eleanor Roosevelt, since I think it also illustrates how I’m trying to make these ideas more concrete.
Thanks again for engaging with this work and for striving, alongside me, to bring clarity in contemporary language to Dabrowski and Piechowski. Your reflections are deeply appreciated.
https://www.positivedisintegration.org/p/interesting-quotes-vol-16
Yes, that drive to keep growing is hard to define but it is certainly sensed. 💜
It feels good to finally give myself permission to appreciate things even when they aren’t easily defined or measured. 💕