Chapter 3

"Passion of Growth":

Giftedness and Creativity in the Theory of

Positive Disintegration

Wieslawa Limont

44 Wieslawa Limont

To Franz Monks, a Man of Passion

Searching for a subject for the chapter in honor of Franz Monks that would address issues of development, life-long challenges, giftedness, and passion, I had no doubt that it had to include Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration. Passion of Growth is the title of Dabrowski's last book, a small one, just 64 pages, that he dictated. Dabrowski's theory is well known thanks to, among others, Michael M. Piechowski who assisted Kazimierz Dabrowski in his research and translated several of his books into English. Researche(S of giftedness and creativity "discovered" Dabrowski' s theory in the 1980s (Daniels & Piechowski, 2009; Limont, 2010a, 2010b, 2012; Limont et al., 2009; Mendaglio, 2008; Piirto, 1998).

The word "passion" stands for strong, intense absorption in something, the great love of something, but also anger and fury, passion liturgy, and works of art devoted to Christ' s agony. "Growth" or "development" is a process of change and transformation, moving into more complex states and, in some ways, more perfect ones (Szymczak, 1979). Though short, the last of Dabrowski's work, presents a summary description of the theory of positive disintegration. He intended it, in his words, as a "mental strike" in order to bring to a wider audience the knowledge of multilevel development and of higher emotions (Dabrowski, 1988, p. 7). The title Passion of Growth serves as a metaphor for the "drama of human development," of going through what Jaspers called "the passion of night" and return to "the norm of the day," but also as "the narrow path upward." Metaphors of this kind serve Dabrowski in explaining personal development through positive disintegration.

1. Eminent Creators and Psychological Disturbances

Dabrowski formulated the theory of positive disintegration as a theory of personality development. He analyzed numerous biographies of creative people, such as Franz Kafka, Michelangelo, Otto Weininger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and systematically collected data on his patients, children and youth that led him to identify traits and developmental forces (dynamisms) characterizing gifted and creative individuals. The basic tenet of the theory is that the process of disintegration is something positive and leading to development on a higher level. It proceeds through numerous inner conflicts. It is multisided and multilevel and its goal is a mature personality. Dabrowski and his collaborators analyzed 200 retrospective biographies of eminent creators and artists. In Warsaw, in1962, he made psychometric investigations of intellectually and artistically gifted students. The results showed that 85 percent of the students and 97 percent of eminent creators gave evidence of increased sensitivity together with neuroses and psychoneuroses of varying degrees of severity. The eminent creators were characterized by heightened intellectual, imaginational, and emotional excitability (Dabrowski, 1975c, 1983).

"Passion of Growth" 45

Many researchers have been interested in the link between creativity and mental illness. Dean Simonton (1994) described eminent creators as "mad geniuses" because many become mentally ill and some end up committing suicide. The intensity of symptoms varies depending on the greatness of the talent, the creative domain, and gender. Retrospective investigations based on biographies show that 87 percent of poets experienced mental illness, but only 28 percent of famous naturalists, while among leaders the index of mental disturbances is higher for social activists (48 percent) than for military leaders (30 percent) (Ludwig, 1995).

Among writers and artists, more artists exhibit mental problems, especially bi­polar (manic-depressive) disorder with suicidal tendencies (Jamison, 1993; Ludwig, 1995) than scientists (Simonton, 1994; Rothenberg, 1990). Among poets decidedly more women than men succumb to mental illness and suicide (Kaufman, 2001). Psychometric investigation of personality of great creators showed that they have higher scores on several scales associated with mental illness, but the scores are not at the extreme end of the scale but rather toward the middle indicating that these disturbances do not constitute mental illness (Barron, 1963; Eysenck, 1995). High scores on the psychoticism scale correlate with independence and nonconformism - traits that are an asset in creativity (Eysenck, 1993).

Dabrowski was one of the few who did not see mental disturbances, the nervousness and psychoneuroses of highly gifted and creative individuals, as an illness. He saw them as signs of inner transformation, of the emergence of the inner psychic milieu in a development toward a full and harmonious personality (Dabrowski, 1937, 1959, 1961, 1967, 1968, 1979c).

2. Theory of Positive Disintegration in Brief

Dabrowski envisioned individual development as taking place in an inner psychic milieu. It progresses "upward" and includes successive levels: 1. primary integration, 2. unilevel disintegration, 3. spontaneous multilevel disintegration, 4. organized and systematized multilevel disintegration, 5. secondary integration. Except for primary integration, dominated by external conflicts and absence of inner conflict, each level has specific developmental forces (dynamisms). Ambivalences, ambitendencies, and relativism of values dominate level II. Level III is where multilevel development starts in earnest with positive maladjustment, creative instinct, and a hierarchy of values. At level IV takes place a deliberate shaping of one's own personality, directing one's own inner development, striving for a synthesis, and. equilibrium. Realization of the essence of individual and social ideal leads to an inner integration. Level V attains a harmonious unity of personality, equilibrium and inner synthesis without conflict - the realization of the personality ideal.

Positive disintegration is a process of forming an integrated personality of highly gifted and creative individuals. The process is multisided and multilevel.

46 Wieslawa Limont

By multisided is meant the all-around nature of intellectual, emotional, and instinctual development. The rejection of values of lower level and acceptance of values of higher level creates a movement from lower to a higher level of inner development that imparts to multilevel disintegration a hierarchical aspect. Values representative of a given level are determined by the disposing and directing center that steers the individual toward development of personality. The hierarchical nature of levels generates inner conflicts of high intensity -powerful experiences of emotional nature.

In unilevel disintegration there is only one level, consequently conflicts between values have a horizontal character observable as the opposing trends or, on the one hand, striving toward a goal and, on the other hand, seeking satisfaction of a drive. Certain individuals, endowed with multilevel developmental potential, may advance to spontaneous multilevel disintegration. This is the beginning of hierarchization of values and inner conflicts. At this level appears positive maladjustment that intensifies the developmental process and signals turning away from "that what is" and turning toward "that what ought to be." The creative instinct appears, too. Heightened intellectual, imaginational, and emotional excitabilities force the individual into a constant maladjustment toward what is "lower" and seeking the personality ideal in oneself and around one. The individual suffers numerous psychoneurotic and depressive periods.

In organized multilevel disintegration the hierarchization of values is deliberate and the individual is capable of conceiving of the personality ideal more precisely. A dynamism of determined choice, called third factor, operates through deciding on a positive or negative stance in regard to external influences or inner processes. Inner conflict and struggle attenuate while the "passion and joy of growing" intensify step in step with striving for self­perfection (Dabrowski, 1979b, 1979c; Piechowski, 2008).

3. Theory of Positive Disintegration and Creativity

Dabrowski believed that one can speak of creativity only in the context of personality development through multilevel and multisided disintegration (also known as "accelerated development"). Creativity is associated with the creative instinct and instinct of self-perfection:

Creative dynamisms: Different abilities and talents finding their expression in a search for "otherness", for non-stereotyped facets of reality. All developmental dynamisms are creative by their power of transforming the individual and his perception of reality.

Creative instinct: An assembly of cohesively organized forces, often of great intensity, oriented toward a search for the new and different in the external and internal reality. Creative instinct is associated with accelerated development.

bn

"Passion of Growth" 47

(Dabrowski, 1972, pp. 292-293, quoted in Amend, 2008, p.131)

Individuals endowed with creative instinct seek the new and reject the stereotyped and narrow understanding of reality. Here Dabrowski included great artists, scientists, inventors whose aim above all was to create great works, ideas, and theories.

The second instinct, called by Dabrowski the instinct of self-perfection, is evident in persons of high level of moral and spiritual development. Instinct of self-perfection aims for full personality development that engages all inner developmental dynamisms. Under the influence of the creative instinct, development of the inner psychic milieu may evolve into spontaneous multilevel disintegration. However, under the influence of the instinct of self­perfection, the process of inner psychic transformation reaches beyond spontaneous to organized multilevel disintegration and even secondary integration. Individuals who are exceptionally talented and all-around are likely to aim for full personality development and achievement of the essence of their individual and social ideal. When the two instincts join together in complete integration, as if melding the creative instinct into that of self-perfection, then an authentic, rich, and full development of personality and creativity becomes possible (Dabrowski, l 979b ).

Personality, being the aim of development through positive disintegration, is a self-aware, self-chosen, self-affirmed, and self-determined unity of essential individual psychic qualities. So defined, personality embodies its own concrete personality ideal with individual and social essence. Personality does not appear until the level of secondary integration. Creativity and the creative processes are associated with intense seeking, discovering, and creating of a new reality on a higher level.

Creativity, the creative process, appearance of new values and ideas always involve the conflict of the "old" with the "new". The resistances form "lines of tension" that shape the creative process. In its essence, the creative process is about transformation and creation of new realities, but on the way opposing processes have to be resolved (Dabrowski, 1983, l 979a).

Dabrowski believed that imaginational, intellectual, and intuitive processes with a strong emotional component take part in the creative process regardless of creative domain. The creative process begins with a spontaneous urge to create, a kind of inspiration, mounting inner tension, and restless search for new solutions and means of expression. The course of the creative process takes place in "suspension" of normal consciousness while anchored in ·a higher level of development. That consciousness is as if "forced" on the creator who temporarily inhabits a state, or, in a sense participates "standing by" and observing everything at some remove. This allows the creator to look at the problem from a different perspective that often culminates in an intuitive

48 Wieslawa Limont

solution. At higher levels of development the creative process is associated with a state of joy and passion of development.

Great creativity in art and science leads to creation of new realities. They first arise in the creator's imagination, then emerge and acquire concrete forms as ideas, theories, or works of art. In many famous writers, poets, painters, sculptors, scientists' one can perceive a gradual change in how they operate at different levels of reality. Ordinary reality becomes distant while the worlds of imagination become closer, more real, saturated with color and another dimension of space and time. The subjective world becomes more objective. Ideas are seen with the "eyes" of imagination, fantasy, and in creative inspiration are more real than everyday reality. At times the creative process, and the world of thought and vision, becomes more important than the work the individual has produced (Dabrowski, 1983).

The mental states described by Dabrowski are close to the process called "identification" with the problem or its "personification." As a function of the intensity of experiencing, the creator can identify deeply with the problem by becoming the problem, by entering the problem space, or by a leap into an imagined reality. Such states involve imagination as a mental process of metaphorical transformation of information. This process, with a strong affective component, utilizes rich, multimodal images (Limont, 1996).

4. Developmental Potential and Giftedness

In Dabrowski's writings, the concept of ability appears in the context of developmental potential (DP) and "individual essence". Individual differences in DP may appear in different periods of life. Strong, positive DP is noted in early manifestation of overexcitabilities and interests and abilities. Outstanding abilities in music, dance, mathematics, athletics, painting, or stage are readily recognized in children and youth. Some children show exceptional social abilities and compassion for the poor and victims of injustice. Others from early feel an urge to seek truth and probe philosophical questions.

Individuals with a strong, positive DP and outstanding abilities, or with potentials toward a multisided accelerated development, have the passion for development at all costs. They forcefully seek problems to solve, they have feelings of inferiority toward themselves and others. They are always short of time, they are in a hurry to learn more, to acquire skills and experience. They strive for perfection in order to discover and create new realities. Their hard to control impatience, intensity of experiencing and taking action, unbridled passion for knowledge and development, hampers some individuals in achieving their goals. This applies in particular to persons striving for personality development (Dabrowski, 1979a).

Dabrowski referred to three sets of factors that subsume many conditions and influences on development. The first encompasses everything in the individual's constitution and heredity, the second, all the influences of the

"Passion of Growth" 49

individual's social environment, and the third, the inner "own forces" - the multilevel dynamisms that empower the individual to consciously decide his or her own development. Interests, special abilities, and talents plus overexcitabilities (OE) represent constitutional factors. Overexcitability defines a specific manner of responding, processing and transforming information. As a property of the nervous system it has characteristic forms of stimulation, reaction, and expression. Emotional tension is channeled through forms of overexcitability in ways that may vary from individual to individual.

Dabrowski identified five types of overexcitability: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional (Dabrowski, 1938, 1979c). Psychomotor, denoting surplus of energy, is manifested as rapid speech, marked excitation, intense physical activity (e.g., fast games and sports), pressure for action (e.g., organizing), marked competitiveness. Sensual, denotes enhanced sensory and aesthetic pleasure in seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, and sex; delight in beautiful objects, sounds of words, music, form, color, balance. Intellectual describes an intensified activity of the mind observable as curiosity, concentration, capacity for sustained intellectual effort, avid reading; keen observation, detailed visual recall, detailed planning. Imaginational involves free play of the imagination as well as frequent use of image and metaphor, facility for invention and fantasy, facility for detailed visualization, poetic and dramatic perception, animistic and magical thinking. Emotional manifests itself in intensified feelings and emotions, strong positive and negative feelings, extremes of emotion, complex emotions and feelings, identification with others' feelings, awareness of a whole range of feelings, and so on (Piechowski, 2006, pp.24-25).

Dabrowski felt that psychomotor OE together with emotional and intellectual may favor designing talent (Dabrowski, 1938). The term psychomotor, captures the great mental energy that is evident in the work of great creators (Galton, 1874; Piechowski, Silverman, & Falk, 1985). Individuals with dominant sensual OE display talents for ballet or visual arts. Sensual OE in combination with emotional, imaginational, and intellectual allows an all around, and even multilevel, apprehending of reality that includes concrete sensory experience. Characteristic for individuals with emotional OE is the affective response to a variety of stimuli and an emotional reaction out of step with the stimulus. Emotional OE in combination with sensual and psychomotor inclines a person toward development of tenderness, sympathy, compassion, a deepened and creative experiencing, especially when the imaginational and intellectual OEs are also in evidence. Imaginational OE is the essential component of creativity, however most strongly associated with the creative process in poetry, painting, music, and ballet (Dabrowski, 1938).

In biographies of great creators one can find numerous examples of reliance on imaginal thinking for the creative process, regardless of domain. For example: Albert Einstein relied mental images (thought experiments) to work on

50 Wieslawa Limont

problems in physics. Nikola Tesla invented machines and tested their prototypes in the mental space of his imagination (Limont, 1996).

Intellectual OE, combined with other OE forms, enriches experience, deepens the drama and conflicts of personality development. Persons with intellectual OE are inclined toward deep reflective thought and to exploring the meaning of life, immortality, and so on. Dabrowski believed that emotional, imaginational, and intellectual OEs are most important in the person's mental and creative development. They form the basis for existential and essential experiences that play a major role in a person's life. They are also important for literary, artistic, and philosophical creativity.

In the case of strong positive developmental potential the influence of social envrionrnent is not critical. Its influence becomes significant, and can be stimulating, when the potential is average or weak.

The third set of factors, the autonomous "own forces,'' refers to the capacity for self-directed emotional growth, self-determination, and autonomy. It comes into play at the level of spontaneous multilevel disintegration as a whole constellation of dynamisms work out the tension of inner conflicts between the higher and the lower in oneself, between "that what is" and "that what ought to be." As development progresses, in effect of persistent exercise of choice and decision, positive influences arising in one's inner and outer environment are increasingly chosen while the negative ones are rejected (Dabrowski, l 979c ).

5. Overexcitability and Giftedness

High abilities and creativity occupy a prominent place in the theory of positive disintegration. Stimulated by it research on giftedness has been developing with growing momentum for more than thirty years. Michael M. Piechowski has played a major role in the application of the theory to gifted education and research on abilities and talent. He suggested that overexcitability (OE) may be a better indicator of ability and creativity than the majority of identification methods in use (Piechowski, 1979; Silverman, 2008). He initiated a systematic analysis of the five forms of overexcitability and developed the first Overexcitability Questionnaire (OEQ) consisting of 46 open-ended items (Piechowski, 1979). A revised version has 21 items (Lysy & Piechowski, 1983).

Research instruments for the study of OE are open-ended questionnaires, inventories, or structured interviews (Falk & Miller, 2009; Lysy & Piechowski, 1983; Piechowski, 1979, 2006; Piechowski & Miller, 1995). Early studies compared OE profiles of gifted individuals with those of average abilities (Gallagher,1985; Piechowski & Colangelo, 1984). The results confirmed Dabrowski 's thesis of the significant role of the five types of OE and especially of intellectual, imaginational, and emotional OEs in the development of gifted individuals (Dabrowski, 1975a).

"Passion of Growth" 51

Research carried out so far showed positive correlation between exceptional abilities and types of OE. People with high cognitive abilities demonstrate higher levels of either intellectual, imaginational, and emotional overexcitability than the control group (Gallagher, 1985; Piechowski, Silverman, & Falk, 1985), or only of intellectual and imaginational OEs (Yakrnaci-Guzel & Akarsu, 2006). However, in younger gifted primary school pupils intellectual and psychomotor OEs were the strongest (Ackerman, 1997; Bouchard, 2004).

Similarly to people with high cognitive abilities, creative students demonstrate a higher than the control group level of imaginational, emotional and intellectual OEs (Schiever, 1985). However, Dabrowski believed that emotional and imaginational OEs are essential to creative abilities. Slightly different OE profiles were reported in a comparative study between people with both cognitive and creative abilities and people with only cognitive abilities. Creative people scored significantly higher on imaginational and emotional OEs, as compared with intellectually gifted people (Falk et al., 1997; Gallagher, 1985; Schiever, 1985; Yakrnaci-Guzel & Akarsu, 2006). This suggests that creative abilities are associated most strongly with imaginational and emotional OEs. Research on creative youth showed that they represented a higher profile on all OE dimensions as compared with the control group (Yakrnaci-Guzel & Akarsu, 2006). A study of creative attitude of Polish gifted students showed strongest correlation of imaginational and intellectual OEs with nonconformist qualities and heuristic strategy. Creative attitude is a configuration of strong nonconformist (personality) and heuristic (cognitive) dimensions (Limont et al., 2009).

Research on artistically gifted persons showed higher scores on all OEs, but especially on imaginational and emotional (Piechowski & Cunningham, 1985; Piechowski, Silverman, & Falk, 1985). In a comparative study across cultures -Venezuela and USA - artists had higher scores on emotional, imaginational, and intellectual OEs (Falk et al., 1997). Gifted musicians in Poland, ages 19-30, showed higher scores on all OEs than the control group, but statistically significant differences were present just for sensual, imaginational, and emotional OEs (Hurnievic, 2012).

Polish students, ages 13-15, showed a positive correlation between musical talent and psychomotor OE, between talent in fine arts and sensual OE, and between cognitive talent and intellectual OE. Scores of 17-year old students in specialized career-oriented classes showed a positive correlation between athletic talent and psychomotor OE, between educational and humanistic­artistic abilities and emotional OE, between humanistic-fine arts �bilities and sensual, emotional, and intellectual OEs. The results may indicate the existence of specific relations between various specific abilities and the types of OE as well as the influence of OE profile on the development of specific abilities (Limont, 2010a, 2010b, 2012).

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In most studies, cognitively gifted people demonstrate a characteristic profile of elevated scores on imaginational, intellectual and emotional OEs. Persons with high artistic ability obtained higher scores in all types of OE, but statistically significant results only for sensual, imaginational, and emotional OEs. The existence of such patterns was pointed out by Dabrowski in his perusal of biographies of outstanding creators. Irrespective of age, cognitively gifted people demonstrate a high level of intellectual OE. However, in creative adults the levels of imaginational and emotional OEs are higher than in the cognitively gifted.

6. Conclusions

The attempt to view the theory of positive disintegration as a theory of creativity and talent development shows that the theory has provided a strong stimulus to research. Furthermore, though developed in the past century, the theory can serve as a means of linking together results of current and future investigations. And inversely, one can find in the theory answers to questions raised by researchers of creativity and talent. One example is the problem of "evil genius" and "evil" creativity. Was Hitler creative or not? Robert Sternberg (2010) writes that the opposite of the "dark side of creativity" is the "bright side of creativity." The bright side is associated with wisdom and the development of morality and ethics on a high level.

What causes some eminently talented and creative persons to realize their potential on the "dark side"? What determines that other eminent creators produce works, ideas, and theories on the "bright side" for the benefit of mankind? The answer may lie in the difference between one-sided and multi­sided (and multilevel) development as described by Dabrowski.

Another example is the "Sylvia Plath effect"-the assertion that women poets and writers succumb to mental illness more often than their male counterparts (Kaufman, 2001). Isn't it possible that this difference may be associated with different overexcitability profiles of women and men poets? Answers to such questions may be sought in Dabrowski's theory. It is perplexing that the theory theoretically so rich and fertile in research questions is still not fully assimilated

by researchers of creativity and the creative process.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Michael M. Piechowski for reading an early version of this chapter, for his many valuable comments and hours of discussion via e-mail, and for translating this chapter.

"Passion of Growth" 53

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