Book: Living with Intensity

I really enjoyed reading and studying the book, Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults, edited by Susan Daniels and Michael Piechowski. I say "studying" because although it's well written, for me it wasn't just a quick read. Many passages gave me great pause, and I found myself reading them three or four times before moving on.

This book is a compilation of pieces by a group of experts in the social and emotional aspects of giftedness. More specifically, it is a treatment of the gifted experience through the lens of Kazimierz Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration, a theory of personality widely accepted as particularly relevant to gifted people. The "intensity" of the title can be expressed in several ways, categories discussed by Dabrowski as "overexcitabilities."

Actually, the word "overexcitabilities" is frequently labeled a misnomer, a poor translation from the original Polish in which Dabrowski wrote. It is often said that "superexcitabilities" would be a better term, without the "too much" implied by the word "over" in English. Yet "too much" is how many gifted people have heard themselves described all their lives. Such people surely have extreme sensitivities, or overexcitabilities, in one or more of the areas Dabrowski described: intellectual, psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, and emotional. Sometimes spiritual overexcitability is also included in the perspectives of professionals who study this theory and its implications for gifted childen, adolescents, and adults.

Dabrowki's theory includes much more than the observation and description of overexcitabilities of highly gifted people. His Theory of Positive Disintegration describes human developmental potential and the process through which that development may take place in people who have the capacity for advanced development. I haven't read Dabrowski and few lay people have; the concepts as I understand them are difficult to fully comprehend, although one can get an overview from a Web site devoted to his theory. A great value of this book, Living with Intensity, is that it helps explain Dabrowski's ideas and shows why many gifted professionals today find them extremely relevant to understanding what makes gifted people tick.

That is, giftedness is so much more than advanced intellectual abilities (that would be intellectual intensity or overexcitability in Dabrowskian terms). In the person with an increased capacity for intellectual ability, one frequently finds other overexcitabilities or intensities. This is the "more" child, more of everything -- emotionally intense, extremely imaginative, highly sensual (for both good and bad), and very driven and often physically active (psychomotor intensity). Not all children have all these overexcitabilities together, but frequently two or three may be very evident in a highly gifted child. And, setting aside the nature vs. nurture debate about giftedness for now, Dabrowski considered these traits, when an individual has them, to be "original equipment."

Another great insight this book offers is that this original equipment doesn't go away as the child matures into adolescence and then adulthood. Adults continue to have these intensities and they affect everything about their lives, in their chronological life phases as well as in advanced personality development, which doesn't necessarily correspond to chronological age.

Despite ten years of studying giftedness on behalf of my daughter, I found new insights into myself through reading this book. I realized that almost everything I have read previously concerned gifted children. Although other readings reminded me of many experiences of my childhood, this book has presented me to myself as an adult and shown me what may lie ahead. The "lifespan intensity" sections of this book were the most riveting and eye-opening to me.

Just as important to me, however, was the excellent section on adolescence, as my daughter nears 13. I strongly related to the discussion that some highly gifted children (my daughter was one of them) experience "adolescent" issues at ages as young as 8 or 9. It made sense to me then: Why should a child so advanced intellectually not be years ahead socially and emotionally as well, even if the world still sees her small body? Even so, this book confirmed for me and reassured me that her inner experience is what it is, even if that is completely different from what most young people her age experience.

Anyone with a gifted child, especially a highly gifted child, could benefit from this book -- and will likely find insights about himself or herself as well.