Interesting Quotes, Vol. 7
Excerpts from the work of Dr. Marlene Rankel
In Interesting Quotes, Volume 4, I shared excerpts from Dr. Dąbrowski’s unpublished manuscript, Developmental Psychotherapy, which was written with the assistance of Dr. Marlene [King] Rankel. It occurred to me that I’ve written out some quotes from her work that are worth sharing in this series.
The quotes I’m sharing today come from a paper she delivered at the 1980 International Conference on the Theory of Positive Disintegration in Miami. The paper is titled, “The Dis-ease of Troubled Children: How Can We Help Them Grow?”1
In the opening sentence, she said, “The point I am trying to make in this paper is the need to examine the treatment of ‘emotionally disturbed’ children, both in and out of institutional settings” (p. 369).
I first read this paper in late June 2019, and it blew my mind a little because I had never seen a paper about overexcitability from the perspective of behavior disorders. In my journal, I kept using exclamation marks when making notes with my thoughts, “I’m amazed by what she wrote on p. 380! She compared the OEs to dimensions of behavior disorders in children. This is such a perfect thing for me to find right now.”
Sometimes, it has felt like I’m a detective or an archaeologist, uncovering clues and artifacts in my search for a deeper, fuller understanding of Dąbrowski’s theory and its constructs. In 2019, I was digging into the past because I sensed that we needed to understand the theory of positive disintegration from a neurodiversity standpoint.
Back to Dr. Rankel’s paper, she categorized children who were classified with behavior disorders into two types:
Behaviorally Disturbed and not at all necessarily ‘emotionally disturbed’ by the outcome of their behavior, though we may be, and,
‘Emotionally Disturbed,’ that is, disturbed, themselves, emotionally, by apparent discrepancies between what they do and what they know themselves capable of doing.
She said the second group of children appear to “have a capacity or complexity that the first lack” (p. 369).
When I read this, I thought of the work of Dr. Ross Greene, which has been life-changing for so many families. In 2023, we have a much better understanding of what’s really going on in children who were once labeled as “troubled” because so much good work has been done to understand them since 1980. Dr. Greene’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model encourages us to remember, “Kids do well when they can.”
Next, Dr. Rankel writes,
“Primarily then, I see the need for differential treatment models for ‘emotionally disturbed’ children, one which takes into account the concept of 1) multi-levelness of instinctive and emotional functions (or multi-levelness of realities) and 2) varying degrees of overexcitability (psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional) in different individuals, be they adults or children.” (p. 369)
After reading so much about overexcitabilities in the gifted, this was an eye-opening paper about applying OE in other populations. Much of my early experience as a social worker was with adolescents in the juvenile justice system, including a prison for adolescent girls in California. Reading what Marlene wrote about OE in children diagnosed with behavior disorders made sense.
The paper also includes insights beyond the OEs that are worth sharing, especially for those new to the theory. The first several pages introduce the theory and its constructs.
“The Theory of Positive Disintegration, a theory in which the author, Dr. K. Dabrowski, views so-called normal behavior as sub-normal, and psychoneurosis as healthy maladjustment to a sick society” (p. 369).
“Only within Dabrowski’s theoretical framework can we perhaps make sense of therapeutic approaches which, while multidimensional in complexity, only touch upon one level of sometimes multilevel human beings” (p. 370).
She discusses the three factors of development on page 370, but I am not going to describe them in detail. Some aspects of the theory feel so antiquated to me that they, in my humble opinion, should be considered relics of the past. In modern times, we know that all humans are impacted by their genetics and the environment. There’s no such thing as a person entirely dominated by their heredity or biology (first factor), with no influence from the social environment (second factor).
The three factors likely became a part of the theory because Dąbrowski needed a way for people to understand the third factor of development as set apart from the first two. While everyone experiences the first two factors, the autonomous forces that make up the third factor are not automatic and emerge from the first two factors and other aspects of one’s developmental potential.
Moving on, she addresses the impact of multilevelness on our perceptions:
“Dabrowski, in the Theory of Positive Disintegration, has posited the multilevelness of reality, with individuals functioning at different levels. Within his framework, individuals at lower levels of reality, (unilevel) cannot perceive the realities of higher functioning individuals” (p. 370).
Later, she adds,
“The higher the level, the more subtle the reality. Lower level realities are apparent to higher level realities, but not vice versa” (p. 378).
In the paper, she talks about the limits of the three main approaches to clinical work at the time and describes them in terms of the three factors. For instance, she said behavior therapy reflected the first and second factors but not the third factor. She saw other approaches as more in line with Dąbrowski’s thinking:
“It seems to me that Maslowian and Jungian therapists, having respect for the third factor of development and man’s emerging spirituality, can best aid the client functioning at the upper end of Dabrowski’s third level. At this stage, and having passed through what Dabrowski called the ‘long dark night of the soul,’ the client, through the use of such integrating dynamisms as self awareness and self control, chooses life with all its pain and becomes his own best therapist. We have, at this level, authentic, autonomous therapists assisting increasingly authentic and autonomous clients.” (p. 373)
What about the issue of an appropriate developmental matchup between client and therapist? If you’ve been reading my posts, you know that I’ve seen many clinicians in my time, and I can say that there was a huge range in developmental levels from a TPD perspective.
“If we were to attempt to fit therapist and client together for the well being of the client, it would be wise, in my opinion, to create a test that would ascertain developmental level to be given to both therapist and client. If, as Dabrowski claims, we all seek friends and mentors who exist developmentally at a stage slightly higher than ourselves in an effort to facilitate our own development, it seems furthermore, that it would be wise to select a therapist in a like fashion.” (p. 373)
Indeed. It does seem wise to select a therapist who can help us grow because they have the experience and capacity from their own journey—beyond their education and training—to guide us well through positive disintegration.
Here’s an interesting excerpt that introduces the partial death instinct:
“[Dabrowski] claims that during the third level of development, with the emergence of the third factor, neurophysiological changes take place in the brain which prevent the individual from falling back as he previously did when under stress. That is, he may fall back to wanting to fall back, but there are some primitive behaviors which he will no longer be able to engage in. The disintegration and abolition of these lower behaviors is brought about by the activation of the dynamism referred to as positive partial death instinct. The putting to death in oneself of ‘that which is’ and the preparation for and creation of ‘that which ought to be.’” (p. 374)
In this paper, Dr. Rankel gives us some statistics that Dąbrowski considered reflected the number of people operating at the different levels, with 60% at Level I. She said that our own societies create this through socializtion.
“Another 20%, through the influence of their social milieu, break the primitive structure and exist at the second level of development, that of unilevel disintegration. Although the forces of growth are operating in these individuals, they are ambivalent, and their continued growth is not a certainty. Disintegration in this level results in great tension… The final 20% go on to the third and fourth levels of development, both because of and in spite of social milieu, their environmental realities. In these individuals we find creative, sensitive, suffering psychoneurotics. They contain and maintain their own high level of tension, using it creatively in their own development.” (p. 375)2
She points out that the way we use our energy points to our developmental levels and shares three possibilities:
Destructive use of energy, e.g., psychopaths and sociopaths.
Neutralizing energy back to a point of no tension.
Creative use of tension, “which is what psychoneurotics do with their excessive energy.”
“After prolonged periods of psychoneurotic anxiety and depression, there often exists a work of art, writing, painting, etc. something new which is added to the world—something which is born out of the suffering of the psychoneurotic.
It seems clear, even from a superficial analysis, that psychoneurotics, through their own understanding, administer to themselves wisely in terms of what we call human development. Realizing that life is full of conflict, that tension is necessary—even beneficial for development, they seek to strengthen themselves rather than eliminate problems.” (pp. 375-376)
On page 376, she tells us that Dąbrowski defined overexcitability as “a consistent tendency to over-react.”
Dr. Rankel makes the connection between developmental energy and its manifestation as overexcitability, which she said Dąbrowski considered an “absolute necessity” for development to take place.
On page 377, she talked about the importance of higher emotions in this theory:
“Dr. Dabrowski is not arguing for the valuing of emotion, per se, but for the necessity of acknowledging and using our emotions so that they, like our intellect, may develop. For Dabrowski, the finest human decisions are made by individuals who exhibit both intelligence and a high level of emotional functioning in their decision making processes. For Dabrowski, high level emotion is even more human than high level intellect—that is, an individual with a high intellectual ability may or may not, be a man of scruples, whereas one with a high level of emotional capacity is certain to be principled.”
During my close reading of the works of Dąbrowski and Piechowski in 2017, I often felt excited by making discoveries and connections. One, which seems obvious in retrospect, is that the dynamisms emerge from what Dr. Rankel calls the “developmental overexcitabilities,” meaning emotional, imaginational, and intellectual.
The connection between the OEs and dynamisms is addressed on page 387:
“The undifferentiated energy of the overexcitability is, over time, refined and transformed into and through the dynamisms of development, i.e. anxiety, guilt, depression.”3
In the next section of the paper, Dr. Rankel includes quotes from the book Education of Exceptional Learners by Frank M. Hewett and Steven R. Forness (1977).
In the following excerpt, we can see why the three factors have been used to help clarify what’s special about the third factor and what sets Dąbrowski’s idea of multilevel development apart from other theories:
“From the Dabrowskian perspective, the behavioristic perspective reflects the influence of the first factor, biological determinism, and the ecological perspective takes into account the second factor, social determinism, as well. Neither approach deals with the third factor, mental determinism. If, in fact, parents and teachers and even counsellors live their lives under the influence of the first two factors, they are going to be very alarmed when they come up against the third factor in their growing children. Dabrowski says the seeds of multilevelness can be seen as early as two years of age, when a child first exerts its will, and certainly during adolescence. One can understand that if an adult has closed himself off to higher realities, it will be his or her tendency to restrict his child’s growth. The emerging autonomy and authenticity of multilevel children would indeed be a threat to a family whose structure is, and has been for a long time, socially determined.” (Rankel, 1981, p. 379)
I’d love to share page 380 in its entirety because I think readers will recognize neurodivergent children in what she’s saying here. We now have different language for describing these behaviors, but the challenges remain. Here are the three dimensions of behavior disorders that Hewett and Forness came up with from their factor analysis.
Next, she suggested that we could compare the classifications of behavior disorders with Dąbrowski’s overexcitabilities. To do that, she first shared the questions that would arise from such an analysis:
Are there levels of behavior disorders?
May behavior disorders (i.e. emotionally disturbed children) reflect a clash between two levels of reality, either within the child himself, or between the child and his environment?
Might different combinations of overexcitability give rise to different types and levels of ‘behavior disorders’?
Might different combinations of overexcitability in the parent/teacher/counsellor give rise to different perceptions of what might be considered a ‘behavior disorder’?
Could a low level caretaker exhibit behaviors which would emotionally disturb a child?
Are we in need of differential treatment models for psychopathic, neurotic, and psychoneurotic individuals, children and adults alike? (p. 380)
When reading this, it occurs to me that we are thankfully in an age where we recognize neurodivergent individuals as having different needs. And we’re making some progress in accommodating them without making the person feel broken.
Dr. Rankel saw conduct problems as the predominance of psychomotor and sensual overexcitability and felt that intelligence determined whether this individual would become “a criminal within or outside of the system.” She saw this child as potentially becoming a psychopathic or sociopathic adult.
I already mentioned Ross Greene above, and there are others who have provided frameworks that give us a more compassionate and understanding lens for children’s behavioral challenges. For instance, instead of seeing certain behaviors as “attention-seeking,” we can think of them as “connection-seeking” and realize that this child wants to connect but lacks the skills to do it effectively. When we change our perspective and understand behaviors as reflecting lagging skills, it helps.
Remember that Dr. Rankel presented this paper in 1980, which was the year that DSM-III was published. Attention-deficit disorder (ADD) with or without hyperactivity was introduced in DSM-III, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was not included until 1987 in DSM-III-R.
Our modern terminology, which many of us understand as flawed and coming from a pathologizing, deficit perspective, wasn’t even available yet. In 1980, people were still trying to name and wrap their heads around these conditions. But Dąbrowski had differentiated the overexcitabilities into types decades before and placed them at the heart of his theory as part of one’s developmental potential. This is a different way of understanding a variety of intense experiences of reality.
Earlier in the paper, Dr. Rankel made clear that Dąbrowski saw the three developmental OEs—emotional, imaginational, and intellectual—as essential to multilevel development. And of those three, emotional OE must be the strongest in order to reach the highest level of development in his theory. She also said, “An individual with emotional overexcitability is born with an excessive capacity to “love and worry” (Rankel, 1981, p. 381).
Of the three categories of “behavior disorders,” Dr. Rankel saw the one called “personality problems” as reflecting more prominent emotional overexcitability than the other two types. She saw the groups in terms of the strength of their developmental potential.
“Whether the category of personality problem reflects all three overexcitabilities is open to question but it seems to me that it does. Certainly there is strong evidence of emotional overexcitability in this category, with anxiety and depression indicating multilevelness and evidence of the third factor. This individual, with the highest developmental potential of all three categories, would constitute the greatest threat to a primitively integrated society.” (p. 383)
She said that different treatment models are necessary for these groups of individuals, regardless of age.
Dr. Rankel argued that the very symptoms leading to the label ‘emotionally disturbed’ reflect not an illness “but are part of the process of the cure, as the individual, ill-at-ease with his former primitive mode of functioning, moves toward a higher and better way of being in the world. His dis-ease with his lower self will aid him in eliminating the unhealthy elements of his structure. He will then be at ease with his new self until it too must be disintegrated in the interest of development.” (p. 383)
In the final paragraph before her conclusions, she shares thoughts on how to help these individuals:
“During these stormy developmental periods in our lives, we benefit more by good guidance than by an elimination of the crises. The prolonged use of drugs as a substitute for therapy is, in the long run, a-developmental. If an individual were caught in a storm while crossing a lake in a rather small boat, we would not put him to sleep until the storm was over. Rather, he needs help in learning how to row, how to overcome tiredness, how to go with the waves, and how to maintain an attitude of good cheer in spite of his difficulties.” (Rankel, 1981, p. 383)
In 2023, think of how much more common it is to be prescribed medication and expected to change on one’s own without a therapist than it was in 1980.
When I originally conceived of this installment of Interesting Quotes, I wanted to include quotes from this paper as well as Marlene’s chapter in Sal Mendaglio’s 2008 edited book Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. But since this post is so long, I’ll save them for another day.
Rankel, M. D. (1981). The dis-ease of troubled children: How can we help them grow? In N. Duda (Ed.), Theory of Positive Disintegration: Proceedings of the Third International Conference (pp. 369-385). Xerox.
Please remember that we don’t have adequate data to support these numbers in 2023, so it’s best to consider them as estimates Dąbrowski believed to be true in the 1970s based on his research.
This is supported by the following excerpts from Dąbrowski and Piechowski:
“What is the source of the phenomenon of positive maladjustment? It arises from psychic hyperexcitability particularly emotional, imaginational, and intellectual, from the nuclei of the inner psychic milieu, and from the instincts of creativity and self-perfection” (Dabrowski, 1970, p. 39).
“A person manifesting an enhanced psychic excitability in general, and an enhanced emotional, intellectual and imaginational excitability in particular, is endowed with a greater power of penetration into both the external and the inner world. He has a greater need to see their many dimensions and many levels, to think and reflect upon them. These forms of overexcitability are the initial condition of developing an attitude of positive maladjustment to oneself, to others, and to the surrounding world.” (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 65)
“Autonomous and accelerated development is always associated with multiple forms of overexcitability. They can be detected in children aged 2-3. It is thus logical to assume that they constitute a major portion of the original endowment. The dynamisms should then be the derivatives of overexcitability. If this is assumed to be true, then the forms of overexcitability become the elements of the original structure of DP. Thus at the start of development DP can be equated with the complement of five forms of overexcitability.” (Piechowski, 1975, p. 255)
“In general, we may suppose that in the sequence of development dynamisms are the product of differentiation of forms of overexcitability. Certainly, such dynamisms as dissatisfaction with oneself, inferiority toward oneself, disquietude with oneself, feelings of guilt, responsibility, empathy, are primarily derivatives of emotional overexcitability. They are its varied and more evolved forms.” (Dabrowski & Piechowski, 1977, p. 243; Piechowski, 1975, p. 292)
Well, there’s enough available on this issue of dynamisms arising from OEs to write a whole post. I’ve added it to my list of future topics.