Thanks for your take on this Chris. I know you're incredibly knowledgable about Dabrowski and appreciate you sharing the true meaning of his work.
I share with all my clients that OEs are not a gifted framework, they're a useful lens for some common neurodivergent experiences, but the data on correlation with giftedness is very mixed (and frankly hard to interpret) because of the myriad ways we define giftedness and the fact that we have too many tiny studies with insufficient sample sizes.
I appreciate you calling attention to how identifying gifted kids by OEs and asynchronous development props up a circular logic about the centrality of these things to the gifted experience. Very astute point.
From having known James Webb when he was still alive, I think his central goal was to de-pathologize giftedness and the gifted experience. He wanted more bright folks (and neurodivergent folks) to feel they belonged and weren't "problems" to be solved. Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis definitely needs updating. But I think his work, the Columbus group's definition, and others who focus on the phenomenological aspects of giftedness advanced the idea that giftedness is a unique way of being in the world that needs recognition and support without condemnation. I am indebted to them for this reason. Their ideas gave me compassion for myself, my students, and my clients—much like Dabrowski's theories have helped you.
I appreciate you sharing this and how Dabrowski's work aligns with our current understanding of neurodiversity. He was so ahead of his time and these ideas continue to resonate. Thank you!
Thank you, Emmaly. I appreciate the care in this response, and I can tell you've been thinking about these issues for a while.
I want to honor what you said about Webb. I believe his intentions were good, and the desire to de-pathologize was important. The problem is that de-pathologizing through giftedness created a new kind of harm by validating intensity for one group while leaving similar intensity in other populations subject to the same pathologization he was trying to fight. The framework protected some people by drawing a line that excluded others.
I'd gently push back on one thing. Dąbrowski's theory didn't help me in the way the Columbus Group's work helped you. It did something different. It gave me the tools to see that the framework I'd been given (by the gifted field) was incomplete. That's a harder gift to receive, and it took years to appreciate it.
Thank you for sharing this work with your clients the way you do. The fact that you're already telling them OEs aren't a gifted framework matters.
Thank you so much Chris for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate being able to discuss this in a safe way with someone so knowledgable.
I definitely see the issues you're calling out with Webb's views: intensity is good in one place, but not another. It's an ableist dichotomy. We've got to advance our understanding of giftedness, neurodivergence, and neurominorities to a place where there isn't an ableist hierarchy. Thank you for your work around this.
I'm so glad Dabrowski's framework has had such a positive impact for you. I thank you again for helping correct misunderstandings, as well as the space to push my thinking on this!
Elain Aron also noted that the highly sensitive child performed poorly under observation but did well alone .... we always seem to be coming up with new ways of explaining sensitivity and intensity ... the book "Highly Sensitive Person" started me exploring the possibility of my own neurodivergence .... the world wants to label good or bad, pathological or advanced, useful or harmful instead of listening and understanding... thank you for this
Thank you, Chris. The Aron connection is a good one. Dąbrowski was writing sixty years before Aron, and she was working independently, but they were looking at the same phenomenon. I have always found it so interesting to explore these connections.
I hear you on the labeling problem. One thing I’ve come to appreciate about Dąbrowski’s original approach is that he started with the experience of intensity itself and let the developmental implications follow from that. He wasn’t sorting people into categories. He was trying to understand what it means to live with a nervous system that takes in more than the environment is set up to handle. When we lead with listening instead of labeling, I think we end up much closer to what he was actually doing.
This really resonated. “intensities as developmental material rather than markers of superiority” feels important. It also reframes something I’ve long associated with the “gifted kid” label. Making mistakes feel heavier than they should. Appreciate this perspective.
Thank you, Natalia. That reframe is at the heart of what Dąbrowski was actually saying: intensity as raw material for growth, and available to anyone who experiences it. The gifted label has a way of turning that material into an identity, which is exactly where the weight comes from.
"When preparing a lesson, for example, of a native language, an individual with the above type of attention will start writing an essay that will interrupt in the middle, then start preparing literature, to review it briefly or partially, he finally takes to another task. In other cases, some individuals interrupt their work every 10-15 minutes to take a few steps around the room, or to deal with something else, even give in to the free current of involuntary associations.”
Nuerodivergent folks are going to be systems thinkers and engage in stimming behavior to subdue distress.
"OE is exclusive to the gifted" oe is exclusively for the gifted population but the nuerodivergent gifted folks are the folks dabrowski studied. These 2e's were likely not recognized as gifted, especially if they were obviously disabled.
“In many children and adolescents, I observed a great ability to focus attention in solitude, at home in their room, but great difficulty to focus it in the presence of other people.”
This is the gifted population but the divergent gifted people who are were largely disabled.
"In 1935, Kazimierz Dąbrowski published Nervousness in Children and Youth1, a comprehensive textbook documenting his work with 250 children and adolescents who had a “normal mental level."
This is the 2e population. 2e's typically score in the average range on giftedness assessments precisely because of their intensity. My g-score is 95 because of my nervousness.
Historically, nuerodivergent research and giftedness research have been separate discourses but it's time to unify disparate groups to form a complex picture of giftedness and disability.
Dabrowski WAS STUDYING THE GIFTED POPULATION BUT A VERY MARGINALIZED GROUP OF GIFTED PEOPLE.
Researchers still need to unlearn ableism Sanism and NT hegemony so marginalized gifted people can be recognized.
Dabrowski was not studying nongifted people. I'm very confident on this.
You'll be interested to know I just learned this week that a paper of mine has been accepted at Gifted Child Quarterly: "Overexcitability Reconsidered: Domestication of a Developmental Theory." Two passages from it that address this directly:
"Dąbrowski studied what he called nervous individuals—people with heightened neurological sensitivity—across a wide range of populations. His early clinical work examined institutionalized children, adults with psychoneuroses, and others in psychological crisis, most of whom fell outside any definition of giftedness."
And: "He emphasized that such intensity was common among nervous or maladjusted youth, independent of intellectual ability—and warned against suppressing it."
2e folks were absolutely among the populations Dąbrowski worked with. But the full population he worked with was broader, and the paper describes the history in detail.
I've got a piece coming later this month that I think you'll appreciate as well. It's about Dąbrowski's play "Nothing Can Be Changed Here," which dramatizes how psychiatric institutions pathologize moral sensitivity. It engages Mad Studies and critical psychiatry directly.
I'm an autistic addher who was in an orphanage and because I scored average on iq assessments and didn't meet the definition of gifted, I know pretty confidently that dabrowski studied populations not meeting Giftedness standards but were gifted. I'm pretty confident on this
Emotionally, I was triggered by the article because I was not recognized as gifted simply because of my g-score. So when I see people implicitly dichomotize gifted people and nuerodivergent folks, I feel incredibly erased.
Thank you for sharing this. The erasure you're describing is real, and the experience of being denied recognition because of test scores is exactly the kind of harm the work is trying to address. The frame I'm pointing toward is integrative. It argues that intensity exists across populations, including 2e folks whose disabilities have depressed their measured IQ, and including others gifted ed never recognized. I can assure you that we're on the same side of the erasure question.
Presuming he was studying nongifted nuerodivergent folks as well, dabrowski must have seen that nuerodivergent folks experienced distress in their environments and saw this nervousness manifest as a result of not fitting in hegemonic molds.
I admit, that broadens OE for me. So dabrowski saw nuerodivergent folks deconstructing from hegemonic norms but this resulted in nervousness and idiosyncrasies
"He found that 165 of his 250 subjects had literary abilities—and in the older classes, philosophical ones—with a strong preference for the humanities over mathematics and sciences. These children struggled in traditional educational settings, not due to deficits but because of mismatches between their neurological needs and environmental demand"
I'm quite philosophical and yet I was one of those nervous kids. Dabrowski was studying the 2e population.
This, from my standpoint as not-a-researcher, is a brilliantly clear article Chris. I think I have a strong sense of the pressures around only-gifted ownership of both OEs and asymmetrical development. As Emmaly commented one such was for giftedness to be seen as non-pathological. Yet this, of course, leaves neurodivergence still in the area of being a problem rather than a difference. I feel illuminated on this. My understanding now is of OEs and asymmetrical development as part of some people's experience, and for some asca very significant part.
And some of these people can also be designated 'gifted' but not exclusively.
Thank you, Davina. You've put your finger on the core issue: de-pathologizing giftedness left neurodivergence still framed as the problem. That's the harm I'm trying to name.
And, yes, some of these people can also be designated gifted. The point is that the intensity came first, and it was never exclusive to that group.
I'm glad this was illuminating! That's exactly what I'm trying to do with these pieces.
Thanks for your take on this Chris. I know you're incredibly knowledgable about Dabrowski and appreciate you sharing the true meaning of his work.
I share with all my clients that OEs are not a gifted framework, they're a useful lens for some common neurodivergent experiences, but the data on correlation with giftedness is very mixed (and frankly hard to interpret) because of the myriad ways we define giftedness and the fact that we have too many tiny studies with insufficient sample sizes.
I appreciate you calling attention to how identifying gifted kids by OEs and asynchronous development props up a circular logic about the centrality of these things to the gifted experience. Very astute point.
From having known James Webb when he was still alive, I think his central goal was to de-pathologize giftedness and the gifted experience. He wanted more bright folks (and neurodivergent folks) to feel they belonged and weren't "problems" to be solved. Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis definitely needs updating. But I think his work, the Columbus group's definition, and others who focus on the phenomenological aspects of giftedness advanced the idea that giftedness is a unique way of being in the world that needs recognition and support without condemnation. I am indebted to them for this reason. Their ideas gave me compassion for myself, my students, and my clients—much like Dabrowski's theories have helped you.
I appreciate you sharing this and how Dabrowski's work aligns with our current understanding of neurodiversity. He was so ahead of his time and these ideas continue to resonate. Thank you!
Thank you, Emmaly. I appreciate the care in this response, and I can tell you've been thinking about these issues for a while.
I want to honor what you said about Webb. I believe his intentions were good, and the desire to de-pathologize was important. The problem is that de-pathologizing through giftedness created a new kind of harm by validating intensity for one group while leaving similar intensity in other populations subject to the same pathologization he was trying to fight. The framework protected some people by drawing a line that excluded others.
I'd gently push back on one thing. Dąbrowski's theory didn't help me in the way the Columbus Group's work helped you. It did something different. It gave me the tools to see that the framework I'd been given (by the gifted field) was incomplete. That's a harder gift to receive, and it took years to appreciate it.
Thank you for sharing this work with your clients the way you do. The fact that you're already telling them OEs aren't a gifted framework matters.
Thank you so much Chris for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate being able to discuss this in a safe way with someone so knowledgable.
I definitely see the issues you're calling out with Webb's views: intensity is good in one place, but not another. It's an ableist dichotomy. We've got to advance our understanding of giftedness, neurodivergence, and neurominorities to a place where there isn't an ableist hierarchy. Thank you for your work around this.
I'm so glad Dabrowski's framework has had such a positive impact for you. I thank you again for helping correct misunderstandings, as well as the space to push my thinking on this!
Elain Aron also noted that the highly sensitive child performed poorly under observation but did well alone .... we always seem to be coming up with new ways of explaining sensitivity and intensity ... the book "Highly Sensitive Person" started me exploring the possibility of my own neurodivergence .... the world wants to label good or bad, pathological or advanced, useful or harmful instead of listening and understanding... thank you for this
Thank you, Chris. The Aron connection is a good one. Dąbrowski was writing sixty years before Aron, and she was working independently, but they were looking at the same phenomenon. I have always found it so interesting to explore these connections.
I hear you on the labeling problem. One thing I’ve come to appreciate about Dąbrowski’s original approach is that he started with the experience of intensity itself and let the developmental implications follow from that. He wasn’t sorting people into categories. He was trying to understand what it means to live with a nervous system that takes in more than the environment is set up to handle. When we lead with listening instead of labeling, I think we end up much closer to what he was actually doing.
This really resonated. “intensities as developmental material rather than markers of superiority” feels important. It also reframes something I’ve long associated with the “gifted kid” label. Making mistakes feel heavier than they should. Appreciate this perspective.
Thank you, Natalia. That reframe is at the heart of what Dąbrowski was actually saying: intensity as raw material for growth, and available to anyone who experiences it. The gifted label has a way of turning that material into an identity, which is exactly where the weight comes from.
Beautiful article. Insightful, helpful, and wise.
Thank you, Richard! 🙏
"When preparing a lesson, for example, of a native language, an individual with the above type of attention will start writing an essay that will interrupt in the middle, then start preparing literature, to review it briefly or partially, he finally takes to another task. In other cases, some individuals interrupt their work every 10-15 minutes to take a few steps around the room, or to deal with something else, even give in to the free current of involuntary associations.”
Nuerodivergent folks are going to be systems thinkers and engage in stimming behavior to subdue distress.
He's talking about the 2e population.
"OE is exclusive to the gifted" oe is exclusively for the gifted population but the nuerodivergent gifted folks are the folks dabrowski studied. These 2e's were likely not recognized as gifted, especially if they were obviously disabled.
"The conversation addressed a common assumption: that OE is exclusive to the gifted, as though intensity comes with a cognitive threshold."
Indeed but dabrowski was still literally studying gifted people who have been erased from giftedness research.
Historically, Giftedness research was probably sanist and ableist and so dabrowski studied marginalized gifted people.
He studied people like me who displayed disabilities in a nueronormative culture.
“In many children and adolescents, I observed a great ability to focus attention in solitude, at home in their room, but great difficulty to focus it in the presence of other people.”
This is the gifted population but the divergent gifted people who are were largely disabled.
"In 1935, Kazimierz Dąbrowski published Nervousness in Children and Youth1, a comprehensive textbook documenting his work with 250 children and adolescents who had a “normal mental level."
This is the 2e population. 2e's typically score in the average range on giftedness assessments precisely because of their intensity. My g-score is 95 because of my nervousness.
Historically, nuerodivergent research and giftedness research have been separate discourses but it's time to unify disparate groups to form a complex picture of giftedness and disability.
Dabrowski WAS STUDYING THE GIFTED POPULATION BUT A VERY MARGINALIZED GROUP OF GIFTED PEOPLE.
Researchers still need to unlearn ableism Sanism and NT hegemony so marginalized gifted people can be recognized.
Dabrowski was not studying nongifted people. I'm very confident on this.
You'll be interested to know I just learned this week that a paper of mine has been accepted at Gifted Child Quarterly: "Overexcitability Reconsidered: Domestication of a Developmental Theory." Two passages from it that address this directly:
"Dąbrowski studied what he called nervous individuals—people with heightened neurological sensitivity—across a wide range of populations. His early clinical work examined institutionalized children, adults with psychoneuroses, and others in psychological crisis, most of whom fell outside any definition of giftedness."
And: "He emphasized that such intensity was common among nervous or maladjusted youth, independent of intellectual ability—and warned against suppressing it."
2e folks were absolutely among the populations Dąbrowski worked with. But the full population he worked with was broader, and the paper describes the history in detail.
I've got a piece coming later this month that I think you'll appreciate as well. It's about Dąbrowski's play "Nothing Can Be Changed Here," which dramatizes how psychiatric institutions pathologize moral sensitivity. It engages Mad Studies and critical psychiatry directly.
I'm an autistic addher who was in an orphanage and because I scored average on iq assessments and didn't meet the definition of gifted, I know pretty confidently that dabrowski studied populations not meeting Giftedness standards but were gifted. I'm pretty confident on this
Emotionally, I was triggered by the article because I was not recognized as gifted simply because of my g-score. So when I see people implicitly dichomotize gifted people and nuerodivergent folks, I feel incredibly erased.
Thank you for sharing this. The erasure you're describing is real, and the experience of being denied recognition because of test scores is exactly the kind of harm the work is trying to address. The frame I'm pointing toward is integrative. It argues that intensity exists across populations, including 2e folks whose disabilities have depressed their measured IQ, and including others gifted ed never recognized. I can assure you that we're on the same side of the erasure question.
I don't meet normative definitions of giftedness; I exist outside traditional parameters of giftedness and yet I know I'm gifted.
I had to unify my disability and giftedness experiences to see a complicated phenomenology
I get so intense when disabled gifted people get erased.
Indeed, it sounds like dabrowski was studying people who didn't fit within the Sanism and ableism enshrined by law. Hmm.
Presuming he was studying nongifted nuerodivergent folks as well, dabrowski must have seen that nuerodivergent folks experienced distress in their environments and saw this nervousness manifest as a result of not fitting in hegemonic molds.
I admit, that broadens OE for me. So dabrowski saw nuerodivergent folks deconstructing from hegemonic norms but this resulted in nervousness and idiosyncrasies
"He found that 165 of his 250 subjects had literary abilities—and in the older classes, philosophical ones—with a strong preference for the humanities over mathematics and sciences. These children struggled in traditional educational settings, not due to deficits but because of mismatches between their neurological needs and environmental demand"
I'm quite philosophical and yet I was one of those nervous kids. Dabrowski was studying the 2e population.
This, from my standpoint as not-a-researcher, is a brilliantly clear article Chris. I think I have a strong sense of the pressures around only-gifted ownership of both OEs and asymmetrical development. As Emmaly commented one such was for giftedness to be seen as non-pathological. Yet this, of course, leaves neurodivergence still in the area of being a problem rather than a difference. I feel illuminated on this. My understanding now is of OEs and asymmetrical development as part of some people's experience, and for some asca very significant part.
And some of these people can also be designated 'gifted' but not exclusively.
I continue to read and learn.
Thank you, Davina. You've put your finger on the core issue: de-pathologizing giftedness left neurodivergence still framed as the problem. That's the harm I'm trying to name.
And, yes, some of these people can also be designated gifted. The point is that the intensity came first, and it was never exclusive to that group.
I'm glad this was illuminating! That's exactly what I'm trying to do with these pieces.