Interesting Quotes, Vol. 8
Linda Silverman on Giftedness as Asynchronous Development
In the third part of my series of posts on Overcoming the Self-Stigma of Mental Illness, I mentioned the impact of psychologist Dr. Linda Silverman on my journey.
In retrospect, the story of meeting Linda for the first time feels astonishing. That I could be so nervous about meeting her is hard to imagine now, but it’s true. In Episode 31, I talked with my friend Celi Trépanier about attending SENG 2015 and having a panic attack in my car before going inside.
The goal for that conference was simple—meet Linda Silverman and talk with her.
Earlier that month, I’d been to Confratute, at the University of Connecticut, where I’d had a good conversation over lunch with Dr. Susan Baum. Attending her strand on the topic of twice-exceptional students was an incredible experience for me as an adult trying to integrate my identities. The other attendees were all educators, mostly teachers, and it was mind-blowing for me to feel so seen and appreciated by this group of people. By that point, I’d been immersed in the gifted literature for a year, and I could speak to it well.
Susan asked me if I’d talked with Linda since I live in Colorado, and I said no. What was I supposed to do? Ask her to talk with me because I was trying to figure things out? I didn’t know how to initiate such a conversation. She said that SENG was in Denver that year, in just a couple of weeks, and that I should go and meet Linda.
I didn’t admit this to myself then, but I feel sure that self-stigma was part of the problem. My story was about being gifted and disabled—mentally ill—and I was always ready for people to reject me because they didn’t want to take the risk that I was still crazy.
The other part of why I was so nervous about meeting Linda is that it felt so high stakes. At that point, I was searching for a direction forward with my work. I needed to finish my dissertation. I was still deep in my own personal journey of trying to understand and accept myself. I had a child who appeared to be twice-exceptional, and we didn’t have the financial resources to bring him in for private testing.
I didn’t want to take any chances on having to find and meet Linda spontaneously at the conference. I registered for admission to SENG and a workshop that Linda was co-facilitating on Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of the Gifted.
I could write a whole post about meeting Linda, and perhaps I will. When you read these quotes, remember that when I tried to say hello, I choked up and told her, “Your work changed my life.”
I’ve chosen to pull quotes from two of Linda’s papers that made a strong impression on me when I first discovered the gifted literature: “The Construct of Asynchronous Development” (1997) and “Through the Lens of Giftedness” (1998). Note that asynchronous development is a phenomenological definition of giftedness put forth by the Columbus Group in 1991.
When I first read these papers, I had no idea there were factions and huge philosophical divides among academics or that there was still a push to deny giftedness as a meaningful psychological difference. All I knew was that I’d lived the things she described and was still living them personally and as a parent. I had been a child that no one understood or knew what to do with, and now I was the parent of such a child.
So, without further ado, enjoy these excerpts from Linda’s work that were most meaningful to me when I was early in my adult giftedness/neurodivergence integration journey.
The following excerpts are from:
Silverman, L.K. (1997). The construct of asynchronous development. Peabody Journal of Education, 72(3&4), 36-58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1493035
Silverman, L.K. (1998). Through the lens of giftedness. Roeper Review, 20(3), 204-210. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199809553892
If you would like a copy of these papers, feel free to reach out. They’re not currently in our Dabrowski Center archive online.
Familiar challenges and the need for awareness
These first excerpts shocked me because they felt so familiar from my experiences.
“Gifted individuals often experience their “gifts” as distinct disadvantages that make life more difficult” (Silverman, 1997, p. 37).
“It is not easy being gifted. Achievements and talents tell only a small part of the story. They are just the tip of the iceberg. To really understand the phenomenon, one must plumb the depths of the gifted experience.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 38)
“An unusual mind coupled with unusual emotions leads to unusual life experiences throughout the life cycle. A gifted mind is a relentless idea generator that creates more things to do than there are hours in the day. Controlling an unmercifully creative mind is like trying to lasso a bull in an open field: it basically goes wherever it wants! It rarely stops to listen to what it already knows. However, when engaged, it has the capacity to observe or reflect with profound concentration. And the emotions of the gifted person are just as unruly. Anything worth feeling is worth feeling intensely. The lens through which the gifted Self sees the world is at once complex and vividly intense. Nothing is simple, bland, or colorless. Everything is electrically charged with rich, multicolored layers of meaning.” (Silverman, 1998, p. 204)
“Some behaviors that would signify disorder in the rest of the population are typical characteristics for the gifted. Without the lens of giftedness, the gifted Self is in danger of being misunderstood, misdiagnosed and mistreated.” (Silverman, 1998, p. 206).
“It is easier to extract the symptoms of disorder from the symptoms of giftedness when the gifted are compared with their own group. Currently, therapists receive no training in giftedness that would enable them to sort out these complex variables. The gifted Self experiences indescribable injury when its gifts are distorted into defects, and lives can be lost when serious disorders are masked by giftedness.” (Silverman, 1998, p. 206)
“If two standard deviations below the mean is sufficient to qualify a child or adult as significantly below average, then two standard deviations in the opposite direction should also be recognized as significantly different from the norm. Significant differences are not simply statistical artifacts; the life experience, the awareness, the Self of anyone who differs significantly from the norm will be qualitatively different from that of the average person.” (Silverman, 1998, p. 207)
The politics of giftedness
It’s depressing to acknowledge that many of the challenges from gifted education 25 years ago remain unresolved. It’s still controversial to say that giftedness is a real individual difference. We still don’t talk about how heritable it is, meaning that parents who weren’t educated about the implications of their own giftedness are often ill-prepared to help their children.
“Asynchrony is certainly not a source of envy, and it is unlikely to generate the kind of vitriolic public debate that exists within our current views of giftedness as high potential for success in adult life” (Silverman, 1997, p. 38).
“Developmentally advanced children, like the developmentally delayed, are at risk in a society that prizes sameness… The value of the gifted to society often depends on the shifting winds and priorities of their culture.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 38)
“It has gradually become politically incorrect to think of giftedness as inherent within the child and safer to talk about its external manifestations” (Silverman, 1997, p. 39).
“Although the construct of asynchrony emphasizes qualitative differences, qualitative differences do not make a person “better” than others. It is only within a competitive, success-oriented framework that this misunderstanding occurs” (Silverman, 1997, p. 52).
"When we look for talents instead of giftedness, the lens is focused on what individuals can do rather than on who they are in their totality" (Silverman, 1998, p. 204).
“It is little wonder that few children or adults—even the most brilliant—identify with the term "gifted." From the achievement perspective, giftedness brings with it pressure to succeed, anxiety about performance, despair at the odds against becoming famous, shame and guilt attendant with the fear of failure.” (Silverman, 1998, p. 204)
Asynchronous development
I recommend the book Off the Charts: Asynchrony and the Gifted Child by Neville, Piechowski, and Tolan for more on the Columbus Group and asynchronous development.
“The following definition was put forth by the Columbus Group (1991): Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 39)
“The greater the degree to which cognitive development outstrips physical development, the more out-of-sync the child feels internally, in social relationships, and in relation to the school curriculum. Age is not an appropriate ruler for a gifted child’s social or academic needs; degree of asynchrony must also be taken into account.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 40)
“The most asynchronous child is one who is both highly gifted and learning disabled. A remarkable number of gifted children have either recognized or undetected learning disabilities, such as auditory processing weaknesses, writing disabilities, visual perception difficulties, spatial disorientation, dyslexia, and attentional deficits (Silverman, 1995). Marked discrepancies between strengths and weaknesses continue into adult life.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 41)
“Uneven development is only part of the picture. Giftedness is not mere precocity—getting there sooner. Asynchrony implies greater complexity. Complexity affects all aspects of one’s life” (Silverman, 1997, p. 41).
“There are varying degrees of giftedness… and the child becomes more and more out-of-sync the more he or she diverges from the norm or the greater the discrepancies within his or her own developmental profile.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 51)
“The construct of asynchrony offers a child-centered perspective on giftedness. It enjoys a rich global heritage, from the insightful work of Hollingworth in the United States, Terrassier in France, Dabrowski in Poland, and Vygotsky in Russia. Its strong theoretical foundation is deeply rooted in the field of psychology. This is where the study of giftedness originated, anchored in the investigation of individual differences. The field has lost its psychological roots and is currently adrift in a sea of confusion. Is giftedness simply a “social construction”? Is it adult achievement? Can one only be “potentially gifted” in childhood? Should we forget about giftedness and try to develop talents in all children? From the perspective of asynchronous development, the answers to all of these questions is a resounding “No.” These children are at serious risk for alienation if we do not begin to recognize their unique needs in early childhood and support their developmental differences.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 55)
"[Asynchrony] is a phenomenological rather than a utilitarian perspective; that is, it focuses on the conscious experience of the gifted rather than on their usefulness to society" (Silverman, 1998, p. 205).
Overexcitabilities and emotional intensity
“Intelligence is insufficient as a predictor of advanced development; there must be built into the personality an extraordinary capacity to respond emotionally and creatively. This is where overexcitabilities enter the picture…Moral potential needs to be cultivated for it to blossom into higher level development in adulthood.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 45)
“Gifted children have age-appropriate emotional needs and age-appropriate emotional reactions. But their emotional development is qualitatively different from their age-mates due to the impact of their greater cognitive awareness. Individuals who are highly emotional are often considered “immature” in societies in which emotion is typically repressed. Sensitive gifted boys, for example, cry easily; this is often seen as a sign of “emotional immaturity” and used as a reason to hold them back in school.” (Silverman, 1997, pp. 49-50)
“These extraordinary levels of sensitivity and compassion do not disappear with maturity. A capacity for rich, intense emotions remains in the personality throughout the life span. Many adults, as well as children, who have deep feelings are called “too sensitive.” This capacity for emotional responsiveness makes gifted individuals of all ages feel very vulnerable. Emotional intensity may even be seen as aberrant and in need of medication. It is important for therapists to recognize that emotional sensitivity and intensity come with the territory of giftedness; they are not dysfunctional.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 51)
Struggling to fit in
When I talked with Linda later that summer in 2015, she told me to stop trying to be “normal” and fit in because it was never going to happen. That was something I’d needed to hear my whole life.
“Gifted students do have the inclination to adapt to the group, but at what price? If one works very hard at fitting in with others, especially when one feels very different from others, self-alienation can result. In their desperation to belong, many “well-adjusted” gifted youth and adults have given up or lost touch with vital parts of themselves.” (Silverman, 1997, p. 49)
“When too much emphasis is placed on the child's fitting in with others, being normal is elevated to the number one goal in life. And the only alternative to normal appears to be abnormal. The dread of abnormality can be so overwhelming that the gifted may feign normalcy, deny their differences, and hide their rich inner worlds from ridicule. It is not safe to name their differences giftedness, because it is not permissible to say—even to one's Self—"I am gifted." Parents are told not to tell their children they are gifted for fear that they will feel superior to others, leaving children on their own to interpret their experiences: "I'm not like everybody else. I'm strange." "I must be crazy." (Silverman, 1998, p. 205)
"Trying to fit in at the expense of the Self leads many gifted people to feel like aliens from a different planet (Wallach, 1995)" (Silverman, 1998, p. 205).
I’ve chosen to make this a free post because I believe it’s important to make this information widely available. If you would like to read the paid posts in the Interesting Quotes series and can’t afford to upgrade your subscription, please send me an email: chris@dabrowskicenter.org.