1:23am May 3, 2013

➸ The Big Five Overexcitabilities — SanSerafin: Many parents of gifted children and others are now aware of Dabrowski’s theory of overexcitabilities...

youneedacat:

shanhammer:

fuckyeahintellectualgiftedness:

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Many parents of gifted children and others are now aware of Dabrowski’s theory of overexcitabilities (often shortened to OEs). According to Dabrowski, people with a high potential for personal development will have at least some of these five areas of overexcitability (Piechowski, 2006):

Intellectual OE. Not the same as intelligence or academic ability, intellectual overexcitability is a passion for and drive toward learning, problem-solving, and reflective thinking. As an adult, you may misunderstand intellectual OE simply as having been good at school or being smart, unaware of how much it drives you on a daily basis. Or you may mistakenly think that if you weren’t good at school (i.e., you didn’t get good grades), you can’t have intellectual OE.

Emotional OE. More than just strong feelings, emotional overexcitability is a great capacity for emotional attachments, mind-body connections, and complexity of feelings, both positive and negative. Perhaps you have been told you are too emotional. You may feel that you wear your feelings not only on your sleeves, but all over your body like a tattoo. Or maybe have you learned to hide your strong emotions deep inside, so that others think you are cool or even distant, while inside you feel everything, all the time.

Imaginational OE. People with imaginational overexcitability experience unusual imaginative and fantastical thought, play out emotional tension through imagery, and have little tolerance for boredom. You may be shy, self-conscious, or have a tendency toward depression. You worry about issues of life and death more than other people. Or you seem to absorb the emotions of people around you and may have trouble setting personal boundaries and separating your own feelings and needs from those of others.

Psychomotor OE. Distinct from athleticism or physical talent, psychomotor overexcitabiltiy is what Michael Piechowski (2006) calls personal energy, and it is experienced as surplus energy, or physical manifestations of emotional energy. Your psychomotor intensity might be expressed more strongly when your emotions run high, such as pacing the room when you are stressed or needing more physical release of energy when you are worried about an illness in the family, or are intensely involved in learning something new.

Sensual OE. Sensual overexcitability shows itself in heightened sensitivity to sounds, smells, tastes, tactile experiences, and beauty, leading both to aesthetic pleasure and to sensory discomfort. People with this OE have a heightened reaction to the sensual side of life, which, as with emotional intensity, may lead to being criticized for being too sensitive to your environment.

Check, check, check, check, and check.

The last time I heard about this it was from an author who dismissed that children identified as gifted or very gifted or whatever could also be autistic. :-/

I hadn’t seen this list before.

I’m currently reading a book about giftedness in children who have ADHD, Asperger syndrome, NvLD, and other learning disorders. This sort of thing is actually accepted now, at least in some circles. (Though I haven’t yet seen this theory presented in the book I’m reading.)

While I identify with nearly all of these “OE”s, I also recognize that a number of them are easily identifiable as ADHD symptoms or as ASD symptoms or as… well… symptoms of any number of other disorders.

EDIT: Er, I mean, I hadn’t seen it before I reblogged it the first time.

On. Yeah. I know a lot of people believe in the potential for both.

But there’s this very weird community formed around the idea that the “profoundly gifted” are an entirely separate kind of human being from all other human beings. And they’re very find of this stuff for explaining why so many people who are considered highly or profoundly gifted will also be seen as having neurological conditions.

(Couldn’t be that being a hyperlexic kid predisposes you to testing that way if you’re tested at an age before most people can read, could it? No that would be too simple.)

Frankly that entire community gives me the creeps for a wide variety of reasons. That’s only one of many. They put a lot of store in iq testing, as the whole idea of profound giftedness is an iq measurement, and it’s… Just weird. They also often like people to use archaic iq tests that allow for higher scores just so that their kids will test that high. I can’t even describe the strange unpleasant quality it has.

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