Abstract
Dabrowski recognized that the creative process is important in the personality development of the gifted and talented. Given the intrinsically creative nature of learning in an arts- infused context, we hypothesize that interdisciplinary approaches to curriculum address the unique needs of the gifted. First, we will summarize Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration, providing a theoretical context to discuss an ongoing research project that engages gifted students in arts-based learning. We then briefly describe the implications of positive disintegration in the middle school context, and how art education can support this process. Finally, we describe how two arts integrated projects addressed the process of positive disintegration. In 2013, University of Calgary students in ART 307, “Applied concepts in art with children ages 6-12,” worked with gifted middle school students on an integrated art–social studies–science project called “When Fisher went to Skyland.” In this project, one class of Grade 6 students explored Iroquois culture and sky science through printmaking. In 2014, four classes of Grade 5 students worked with ART 307 students to enhance their understanding of electricity and magnetism through explorations using theatre games, creative movement and animation. We suggest that engaging gifted middle school students in the arts can be a means to facilitate alternative learning methodologies in all subject areas, and provide necessary support in personality development.
Introduction
Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration (TPD) has three fundamental qualities differentiating it from other personality theories. First: emotions are equally, if not more important, than intelligence in the development of personality. Dabrowski rejected the notion that negative emotions signal mental illness, and reframed them in a positive context. He asserted that these emotions are necessary for and catalyze personality development.
Second: personality itself is not a universal given; it is developed through self-education, self-help, and self-work, and is realized based on autonomous value structures. Development in TPD is not only a transcendence of biological imperatives and the need to conform to social norms, but a sublimation of these drives toward autonomous, authentic, and altruistic living.
Third: not everyone can or will do this work; only those who do will realize the true nature of their characters. TPD is best known in the field of gifted education because the gifted exhibit above-average capacities to achieve, and operate at, higher levels of personality disintegration, and reintegration. Educators of the gifted are in an excellent position to facilitate this process, and arguably have a responsibility to do so. We will use Sal Mendaglio’s (2008: Ch. 2) interpretation of TPD as the basis of this discussion. We begin by defining some key terms that Dabrowski uses idiosyncratically. Then we will outline the four main elements that form the basis of TPD, focusing on the element of overexcitability as key to the work in which we are engaged.
Definition of terms
In part because Dabrowski held different views of personality to other theorists, and in part because his last learned language was English (Tillier, 2008), the meanings of the terms he uses diverge from common understanding. We use Mendaglio’s interpretation of five of these instances that pertain to our discussion (Mendaglio, 2008: 18). Personality is individual, and needs to be realized. Positive disintegration is the process by which the personality is realized.
First, an individual experiences disintegration of primitive mental constitutions aimed to satisfy biological needs, and to conform to societal norms. This is followed by reintegration into a higher level of functioning, in which the individual becomes not only autonomous, but also capable of contributing to society in new, creative ways. Developmental potential is an individual’s capacity to shape personality beyond primitive imperatives. Two primary factors in developmental potential, overexcitability and dynamism, are defined respectively as a high level of reactivity in the central nervous system and a combination of instincts, drives, and emotions that guide behavior. Emotional reactions are defined as the phenomena that guide an individual to the creation and realization of a personality ideal, the internally motivated standard that becomes the goal for an individual’s personality development. The personality ideal is important in our discussion because it is only through awareness of the dichotomy between where one is and where one feels one ought to be, that personality disintegration and reintegration can begin to occur.
Levels of integration
Proper knowledge and use of this terminology is necessary for a complete understanding of multilevelness, conflict, psychopathology, and emotions—the four key assumptions that TPD rests on (Mendaglio, 2008: 19). Dabrowski believed in multilevelness on several fronts: he considered individual instincts, classes of instincts, emotions, and conflicts, levels of mental functioning, and human development and experience as a whole to be multilevel or hierarchical. Fundamental to TPD is his assertion that instincts to create and to self-develop or self-perfect are among the highest, and are unique to humans. Also fundamental to TPD is the idea that inner conflict is necessary for the realization and manifestation of these instincts. The absence of inner conflict, or the presence of harmony and peace within the self, characterizes integration of the personality, either at the primary or secondary level.
Primary integration describes motivation to act only by biological imperatives and societal norms, and this lacks the awareness of higher potentials of behavior and development. Secondary integration, much more rare than primary integration, occurs only following the resolution of the various inner conflicts presented by the three phases of disintegration, and the final achievement of personality. Psychoneuroses, or psychoneurotic symptoms, dismantle the primary state of integration, initiating the disintegration process, and serve the transition from lower to higher states.
These symptoms only start to surface with awareness of the dichotomy existing between where one is and where one ought to be. It is the distress caused by this growing awareness that precipitates the strong emotions necessary for development. Dabrowski believed that anxiety, guilt, shame, despair, and depression actually create an ideal environment for advanced development. Despite being incredibly painful, they have the power to loosen the knots in tightly integrated mental organizations that do not serve the highest purpose, nor allow space for the highest expressions of self.
Main components of TPD
These four foundational concepts inform and support the six main components of TPD, as outlined by Mendaglio (2008: 21): personality; factors of development; integration; disintegration; dynamisms; and levels of development. We will now turn to a discussion of these concepts.
In TPD, development is critical and complex. Dabrowski defined three kinds of development: biologically determined, associated with the biological lifecycle of the human species; autonomous mental development, in which an individual’s mental forces begin to combine with positive values; and one-sided development, where mental functions and structures integrate in an egocentric and antisocial way, resulting in negative maladjustment. Dabrowski focused his theory on autonomous mental development. This kind of development depends on three factors: overexcitability, an essential indicator of developmental instinct and developmental potential; social environment; and third-factor dynamism. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus only on the first of these factors, examining how overexcitability can be used as a positive force in learning in the gifted.
Overexcitability
Overexcitability influences how people experience internal and external reality. Individuals with overexcitability perceive the world not only in different, but also in more intense and multifaceted ways than others; they are much more prone than others to experience surprise and puzzlement at events in their daily lives. This is the aspect of TPD that has most appealed to gifted educators, because it has been suggested that overexcitability is “a basic component of giftedness shared by many types of gifted and creative individuals” (Kreger Silverman, 2008). Dabrowski outlined five kinds of overexcitability: psychomotor; sensual; imaginational; intellectual; and emotional. Dabrowski concluded that individuals can inherit some, none, or all of these five overexcitabilities, and in varying degrees. In TPD, the presence of imaginational, intellectual, and emotional overexcitabilities are paramount in advanced development. Specific characteristics of each of these will be elaborated below in our discussion of how the arts engage overexcitabilities constructively.
By placing central importance on emotions in the process of personality development, and by stating how emotions direct development, TPD provides a comprehensive conceptual framework that inspires examination of our current assumptions about human functioning (Mendaglio, 2008: 39). The theory, and its emphasis on overexcitability, broadens understandings of giftedness itself and the emotional development of gifted individuals. Moreover, it continues to motivate creative approaches to the education of gifted students.
Dabrowski and middle school students
We now turn to a discussion of how Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration manifests in the lives of middle school students, and how art education can be a vehicle to support personality development in gifted students. We will focus our discussion on the ways in which using arts-infused pedagogies with middle school students can engage overexcitability productively, to contribute to personality development.
We work with middle school students in grades 5–8, ranging in age from 9–14 years old. Dabrowski’s theory is useful in understanding the developmental issues of this group. In their previous years in elementary school, students start to develop relationships with their peers. Middle school students are becoming more aware of their role in the social environment. In addition, the onset of puberty experienced by most middle school students results in heightened emotions. Further, in middle school, personality development gains momentum. With their amplified emotions, working with same-age peers can be a challenge; gifted students need to be provided with social tools to ensure successful relationships.
For middle school students, everything is in flux as they move from childhood into adolescence, preparing them ultimately for adulthood. Since this is a time of transition, there is an organic disintegration in children of this age. Moreover, students have heightened sensitivities as well as overexcitabilities in their interactions with each other. Therefore, this is an ideal stage and social environment for positive disintegration to be initiated; middle school teachers are able, if they have the tools, to guide their students toward positive personality development.
Dabrowski and art education
The arts provide a natural context for the gifted to engage in the processes of positive disintegration in a safe and supportive way. While we believe that engagement in the arts can catalyze and support students’ positive disintegration, the art educator is not a therapist, and is not qualified to support an individual in therapeutic interventions. The importance of working with qualified professionals to support the individual in her/his growth must be recognized. Teachers are trained to teach, artists to make art; they require the support of other professionals in order to navigate a student through a process like TPD. What we will describe here are the intrinsically therapeutic aspects of art-making that can support an individual’s journey.
The role of emotions and affect in art-making
Turning now to Dabrowski’s theory, we have noted three qualities that differentiate the theory from other personality theories. The first of these is the importance of emotions in the development of personality. We often call emotions “feelings.” We suggest that this common nomenclature describes the way that most of us understand emotions: like sensual feelings, emotions are associated with sensations in our bodies. They result when our environment stimulates us in some way. Emotions are reactions. In this way, emotions are related to the affective realm in which the arts function. Psychologists define affect as “the experience of feeling or emotion” (Hogg et al., 2010: 646). The affective realm is what Deleuze might have called “pre-cognitive” (Ford, 2005: 42). Before words articulate an experience, before we feel anything about it, we experience at a deep visceral level. What Deleuze called an affective experience, we suggest is the aesthetic experience.
When we experience the effect of a set of sensual data, we are engaging in the aesthetic realm. It is wordless and emotionless; it is full of awe and wonder. In this state there is no good or bad; hence, the experience can be accepted for what it affords ones’ development, neither embraced because it is “good for you,” nor shunned because “it is bad.” Experiences just are.
In this state, free of pre-conceptions, free of judgment, we are able to take risks. What if this were green instead of yellow? What if this were square instead of round? How hard do I have to push on this chisel to make this kind of mark? What if I brush water over this charcoal, what will happen? Our being is consumed by exploring the sensual nature of materials, and the formal construction of an image. We play. In play, there is little risk. In play we are trying things out, exploring roles, examining possibilities. Play is a chaotic system that evolves as the play proceeds. There is no foreordained conclusion to the play, but each act determines the outcome. As there is no set end goal, the risk in playing is low. Hence, engaging in aesthetic experience provides the individual with opportunities to explore and experiment with different aspects of their own understandings, goals and values without the risks that might be associated with such experimentation in “the real world.”
Contemporary visual art and the performing arts are highly social realms. Collaboration among creators is necessary for the completion of the work. Students engaged in collaborative art projects have the opportunity to learn how to negotiate the complexities of interpersonal relationships, to take on different roles in these relationships, to confront difficult situations, and to work their way through them to successful resolutions (with the support of their teachers). Skills developed while engaged in collaborative art-making are fully transferrable to other realms of one’s development. The struggle to come to consensus on the blocking of a scene in a play cannot be avoided if the play is going to be performed. Students can learn to embrace the conflict often inherent in interpersonal relationships as opportunities for growth.
Supporting autonomous, authentic and altruistic living through art
The second quality unique to Dabrowski’s theory is that personality is developed in tandem with the objective of achieving autonomous, authentic and altruistic living. Engagement in the arts supports this journey. The reflective, self-critical skills taught in art education provide students with basic skills toward self-correction in other areas of their lives. Further, because emotions and beliefs become objectified in a work of art (that is, they are removed from oneself and contained in an object on which one acts, or that one perceives as apart from oneself), one can examine both positive, and negative traits of that object without moral judgment, as elements in a working whole. For example, one projects anxiety into a drawing. When one is drawing, one is actually concentrating on the qualities of the line, analyzing and critiquing the value, the breadth, the movement in order to ensure that the line is, in fact, expressing that anxiety. One is focused on the drawing, not the emotion. Thus, one comes to understand the emotion, and its effect, objectively. With practice, one can transfer these analytic and critical skills to oneself in other contexts.
Instrinsic motivation and art-making
The third quality that Dabrowski identifies as unique to his theory is that one has to want to engage in personality development; one must choose to engage in this work. He suggests that the gifted are best suited to this kind of work because their penchant for overexcitability may provide the capacity for it. The arts provide intrinsic motivation to delve into the kind of intense self-examination that is required for positive disintegration.
Overexcitability and art-making
Dabrowski observed that giftedness is characterized by what he called “overexcitability.” He defined five kinds of overexcitability; individuals might possess all, some, or none of these. Dabrowski’s identification of overexcitability as an important factor in developmental potential is particularly well addressed through the arts. Whereas, in more academic disciplines overexcitability might be an obstacle to learning, in the arts it is this very factor that can allow one to succeed. In reviewing the five kinds of overexcitabilities identified by Dabrowski, one can perceive how what might be believed to be learning obstacles can become rich and rewarding pathways in the process of art-making.
The first kind of overexcitability that Dabrowski identifies is psychomotor. Of the characteristics he outlines, curiosity, high energy and need to change become assets in art-making. In order to engage meaningfully in the art-making process, one needs to be curious. One needs to ask “What if?” Art exists in questions and questioning, not in finding answers. Therefore, one is always shifting one’s position; one is always in a state of change. One is restless, looking for different solutions. The amount of sustained concentration required to complete a work in a meaningful way requires high levels of energy. When one becomes engaged in the work, the fidgeting usually subsides. The physical nature of any art endeavor channels the energy that, in academic studies, can be distracting.
Sensual overexcitability is identified by Dabrowski as a factor in personality development of the gifted population. Art can help gifted students to come to terms with this overexcitability. We would also suggest that an extreme sensitivity to the sensual properties of the world, to the feel, the sound, the taste, the smell of the physical world and its visual properties is actually an important characteristic of artists. Without this acute awareness, their images would not provoke the dissonances that lead to new understandings, encourage viewers into new realms of experiences, or stimulate the imagination. Rather than trying to change or de-emphasize sensual overexcitability, the individual who is engaged in art-making can give free reign to their sensual awareness.
Dabrowski perceives that the gifted are imaginatively overexcited. Daydreaming, fantasizing, and other creative approaches to problem-solving that might be hindrances in academic study become important activities in art-making. Divergent thinking is the cornerstone of creativity. One must be able to explore many possibilities in addressing a situation, imagining the outcomes of each of these myriad potential approaches. Without imaginative overexcitability, there would be no art.
The gifted have acute abilities of analysis and synthesis, ask deep and probing questions, and possess a love of learning for its own sake. Dabrowski characterizes these abilities as signs of intellectual overexcitability. The layperson often exclusively associates art-making with the affective realm, or as a form of expression. The cognitive skills required to create a successful work of art are often overlooked, by those who are not themselves engaged in arts-based inquiry. On a superficial level, creating pictures, singing or dancing, for example, can be seen as recreational activities, or a way of expressing oneself.
When art is used as a form of inquiry, one engages with materials and process in order to explore fundamental questions about the nature of human existence, social structures, communally held values and norms, etc. It is a human science. As such, the artist-researcher engages in profound cognitive activity. Artist-researchers engage with materials and process to analyze, to synthesize, and to ask deep and probing questions. Artist-researchers engage in these inquiries from a love of learning for its own sake.
Dabrowski identified that the gifted are emotionally overexcited; they tend to have intense emotional lives and have the potential to be empathetic. Art education can provide gifted students with opportunities to explore the intensity of their emotions in ways that are safe for themselves and for others. In the “real world,” intense emotional expressions can cause anxiety to others, and may even be emotionally abusive of another. In a work of art, intense, even extreme, emotional states can be explored without harm to self or others. In the work of art that explores these extreme emotions, artist and viewers can come to better understand the nature of intense fear, rage, anxiety, joy, or ecstasy. Think of the fear and anxiety we witness in Munch’s The Scream, the rage and violence that is described by Picasso’s Guernica, or the deep peace and contentment of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. If these artists did not have intense emotional lives, we would not have these rich explorations of human emotion. Without deep empathy, works of art like the Pietà by Michelangelo or Kathe Kollowitz’s haunting images of human struggle would not exist. When emotional and intellectual overexcitabilities are combined, great works of art are created. Gifted students can use art to externalize their intense emotional lives in order to channel these feelings to positive ends; they can explore the lives of others through their heightened empathy.
While the language of overexcitability may be seen as cautionary, and the traits that Dabrowski describes as problematic, one can perceive that when students are engaged in the arts, these traits become avenues for personality development. Dabrowski emphasizes that in this process, “good” and “bad” must be put aside. In the process of positive disintegration, that which might be understood as negative (and therefore to be avoided) could, in fact, be the very avenue to development. The key is how that quality is channeled. When students learn to combine the skills afforded them by their overexcitabilities, they are able to move toward the autonomous, authentic and altruistic living that characterizes the successfully reintegrated individual.
Applications to practice
Summary of projects
We have worked on two arts-integrated projects with the students: “When Fisher went to Skyland” in 2013, and “Arts and electricity” in 2014. “When Fisher went to Skyland” was a collaborative learning experience that engaged undergraduate students in “Applied concepts in art with children ages 6–12” (hereafter referred to as ART 307) and gifted Grade 6 students in an interdisciplinary exploration of pattern and color symbolism through study of sky science from an Iroquois cultural perspective. “Arts and electricity” was a collaborative learning experience that engaged students in ART 307 and gifted Grade 5 students in an interdisciplinary exploration of creative movement, dramatic play, animation, painting, and basic principles of electromagnetism.
In these projects, one can perceive how arts-integrated study can address issues of positive disintegration. We will first discuss how our work addressed the three fundamental qualities of positive disintegration outlined by Dabrowski: the importance of emotion; that personality is developed, not given; and the willingness to do the necessary work. Then we explore how art education uses the affordances of overexcitability to support personal development.
Addressing the three qualities of positive disintegration
Importance of emotions
The integrated arts projects engaged students’ emotions, provided an environment for personality development, and therefore provided motivation for learning. In order to engage students emotionally, affective experiences were offered to introduce the phenomenon under exploration in both the sky science and electro-magnetism inquiries. For example, the electro-magnetic phenomenon of attraction and repulsion was studied through dramatic tableaux that provided students with opportunities to explore the qualities of these forces kinesthetically, engaging their affective faculties before engaging them cognitively in the scientific theories. Figure 1 below illustrates how children created a dramatic tableau that required them to use the movement (or stillness) of their bodies to explore the concept of “ions.”
Students created a dramatic tableau to explore the attraction of ions in a molecule.
Personality development
In order to provide support for personality development, it was very important that we established safe environments in which the students could take risks. For example, printmaking in “When Fisher went to Skyland” provided students with the opportunity to express their unique perspective on a contemporary social issue (“Idle No More,” a political protest movement of the aboriginal peoples of Canada). Through playing with pattern and color in printmaking, students were able to explore a variety of possibilities before achieving closure. The printmaking medium, which requires experimentation through multiple pulls of the plate, encourages play and is low risk, as each individual print is less precious. Thus, personality development was supported.
Willingness to do the work
We believe that arts integration can motivate students to challenge themselves and to transcend biological imperatives and social norms, to move toward autonomous, authentic and altruistic selves. For example, students were motivated to move beyond the normative developmental capacities of their age to engage in altruistic thinking by using art to explore the social issues associated with the Idle No More movement investigated in “When Fisher went to Skyland.” Students were engaged in discussion about the problems and concerns of others, rather than their own personal issues. Engaging students in dramatic play in “Art and electricity” challenged them to work together, rising above the normal social insecurities of middle school students to create successful works of art.
Addressing the overexcitabilities
Pyschomotor
Through engaging students in the arts, we tapped into the potential afforded by the pyschomotor overexcitability of the students. Prior to the development of “Art and electricity,” we observed that these groups of students were particularly active and fidgety. Therefore, we designed the arts integration around performing arts in order to take advantage of these students’ need to move. We engaged the students in kinesethetic experiences for at least half of each session, thereby using this overexcitablility to the students’ advantage.
Sensual
We engaged students in sensual exploration of the science concepts in both projects. For example, in “When Fisher went to Skyland” students carved linoleum tiles to create the printing blocks for their images. Learning to use the appropriate pressure, feeling the slicing of the carving tool through the surface, and hearing the sound of the lino pulling away from the block engaged the students blocoverexcitability Figure 2 below documents students’ images. This was further developed when the students printed the blocks. The sound of the ink rolling onto the block, its smell, and the tension when one pulls the paper from the block’s surface are all integral parts of understanding how to pull the print.
Carving the printing blocks engaged students’ sensual overexcitability.
Imaginational
Imaginational overexcitability was encouraged and activated through an exploration of the “Fisher” myth. Students became aware that other cultures have different theories about the origins of the constellations through study of this Iroquois story. Students were asked to play with the observed configuration of constellations, transforming them into abstract patterns in open play. Thus, they were using their imaginations to move beyond the “real world” into an abstract world of fantasy. Figure 3 below pictures students engaged in creating patterns from the Iroquois constellations that they chose to explore, using their imaginational overexcitability, combined with their understanding of the mathematical concepts of translation, rotation and reflection in patterning.
Student engaging in imaginational overexcitability by creating a pattern based on an Iroquois constellation.
Intellectual
The intellectual potential of the gifted students was challenged in both projects. In “When Fisher went to Skyland” students were required to research, analyze and synthesize understanding of the Idle No More movement, and express their understandings and feelings about this. In “Arts and electricity” students were able to hypothesize alternative energy forms as a direct result of the comprehensive exploration of electricity they undertook.
Emotional
The need to channel students’ emotional overexcitabilities was addressed in “When Fisher Went to Skyland” by engaging students in the use of traditional Iroquois colour symbolism to represent students’ feelings about the Idle No More movement. In “Arts and Electricity”, an abstract painting experience provided students with an opportunity to express their emotions in a non-objective way.
Future work
We have not yet engaged the great capacity that the gifted middle school students seem to have for empathy. During the 2014–2015 academic year we are engaging students in an arts–math–social studies integrated study of homelessness, “Calgary homeless.” The arts will provide students with space in the usually normative discipline of math to engage knowledge in the affective domain, to play, to develop strategies to engage in mathematics through group work. The overexcitabilities often become problematic in traditional mathematics pedagogies. We suspect that through art–math integration, these overexcitabilities will enhance students’ learning in math, making the discipline more engaging and meaningful in their overall development. Further, “Calgary homeless” is providing the students with an opportunity to move into the world beyond the classroom walls, engaging their heightened empathetic skills to understand the phenomena of homelessness in our community.
Conclusions and implications for future work
Art integration is an important pedagogical strategy to engage gifted students in the process of positive disintegration necessary for their personal development. Curricula in academic disciplines that may limit gifted students’ opportunities to use their intrinsic characteristics, like the overexcitabilities, when taught through the arts can provide space for their inclusion. In our work with gifted middle school students, we have learned that education in, and with the arts, can engage students affectively, and can support and motivate them in the growth and development of their personalities. We have learned how to evolve instructional opportunities that channel overexcitabilities into positive avenues of inquiry for the students. This occurs when the teacher uses engagement in the arts as an opportunity for students to learn about themselves, each other, and the world around them, and not simply as decorative or superficially expressive activities. We assert that through working with curriculum creatively, engaging students in collaborative learning, and by engaging them in the wider community, educators can find the means to encourage and support positive disintegration.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.