Interesting Quotes, Vol. 2

My introduction to Michael’s work.

I’m publishing this post from camp, and I’m glad I got it started before I left home last week. Otherwise, I would have missed this week because I can tell you that I’m very tired at the moment.

I’ve mentioned on our podcast (and on other pods, such as Gifted Unleashed) that my introduction to the theory in March 2014 was a 1997 chapter by Dr. Michael M. Piechowski. So, I thought I’d share some excerpts from that chapter while I’m with him at Yunasa this week.

The title is “Emotional Giftedness: The Measure of Intrapersonal Intelligence,” and you can download it here from the Piechowski Archive. It’s from the second edition of the Handbook of Gifted Education, edited by Nick Colangelo and Gary Davis.

Four years ago this month, in July 2019, I returned to the chapter and copied down the words that had impacted me most during the first reading. This first selection was shocking to me because I, too, searched for answers in the DSM when I was a teenager:

“Seeing themselves so different from “normal,” they doubt themselves and ask, “What is wrong with me?”; they realize the discrepancy between their feelings and those of others, and to account for the lack of fit they judge themselves wanting. In fact, some intellectually precocious youngsters actually look in the catalog of mental disorders to find a label that could apply to them.” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 366)

After writing that in my journal, I wrote, “That has always been me… That whole paragraph was troubling to me when I first read it back in 2014.”

Here’s another very familiar one:

“Inner forces were at work that often generated overstimulation, conflict, pain, but also—and this is significant—a search for a way out of it. An escape route may lead to addiction, or to inner growth and transformation.”

First, I took the addiction route, but eventually, there was inner growth and transformation. It happened slowly, over many years.

Talking about positive disintegration, Michael wrote,

“By this paradoxical name he [Dąbrowski] emphasized the dismantling and tearing down that takes place in one’s inner being once the process of emotional growth is launched in earnest. What is experienced as “lower” gradually is removed and replaced by what is “higher.” Self-evaluation and self-judgment play a strong part.” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 372)

This is the work of inner transformation, and he went on to say more about this process:

“Dabrowski outlined a typology of personality development with special attention to inner growth in which the split between “what is,” the current state of one’s being, and “what ought to be,” the call to an ideal higher state, is so acutely felt that it spurs further growth. The process of self-correction becomes inner transformation in multilevel growth. Inner transformation is also the process of creating a new self or realization of the higher, transpersonal, or transcendental self.” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 373)

The next excerpt was surprising to me because I had never considered self-injury from this perspective:

“Dabrowski’s (1937) early study of self-mutilation led him to examine this phenomenon among writers, artists, and other highly creative people and to conclude that their self-aggression represents a psychologically higher level than aggression against others. Individuals who experience great inner turmoil, the result of the tension created by the combined forces of several overexcitabilities, may be pushed toward self-mutilation.” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 367)

Some aspects of the chapter were relevant from my perspective as a parent:

“The intensity of emotional reactions, especially in children, may sometimes be difficult to understand, especially when they strike seemingly out of the blue, when the child seems terribly upset over “nothing” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 367).

It was clear to me in Michael’s work that I had not done well with my son, in multiple ways.

“Intense individuals feel their emotions very strongly; they soar high and plunge into black glooms with sometimes rapid and bewildering succession” (Piechowski, 1997, pp. 367-369).

After that one, I wrote, “That is me, and it’s the basis for my early belief that I had bipolar disorder.”

“By multilevel, Dabrowski meant the type of inner growth in which a split between the higher and lower in oneself is strongly felt. The split is healed by concerted emotional labors of aligning one’s life with the ideal of becoming a better human being.” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 370)

“In multilevel development, the goal is to confront the whole truth about oneself as a prelude to a far-reaching inner transformation” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 370).

“Periods of intense emotional growth can bring on such sudden inner shifts as to produce moments of disequilibrium and estrangement. One feels at odds with the surroundings, as if suddenly alien to what was familiar before. Such feelings of unreality are not necessarily a cause for concern” (Piechowski, 1997, p. 376)

When I put together these excerpts to share, I did my best to come up with accompanying thoughts before leaving for Yunasa, but I couldn’t get through them all. I left these last three feeling sure that I would have the capacity for a few more paragraphs this week. Alas, the camp routine takes so much of my energy and attention that this is the best I can do for now.

Next week, I’ll be back home recovering, and I’ll put together a new post for this series. I appreciate your patience, and I’d like to thank everyone who’s reading this for being a paid subscriber. I know I speak for Emma when I say we’re both deeply grateful for your support.

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Reference for the quotes in this post:

Piechowski, M. M. (1997). Emotional giftedness: The measure of intrapersonal intelligence. In N. Colangelo & G. A. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (2nd ed., pp. 366-381). Allyn & Bacon.