Created in 1995.
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Born: 9/1/1902 Klarów, Poland Died: 11/26/1980 Warsaw.
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2024 Denver Congress.
Here is the
LINK.
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Mendaglio S. (2022).
Dynamisms, Development, and Dispositions:
Essays in Honor of Kazimierz Dąbrowski.
Gifted Unlimited.
Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration redefines established psychological constructs, especially the construct of psychopathology. Current views of what constitutes disorders is so engrained in western cultures that they are seen, implicitly, as immutable. Any codification of what comprises psychiatric disorders or abnormality is a social construction, subject to change, as indicated by some changes in the DSM over the years. Dąbrowski’s theory questions the very foundation of the approach to psychopathology that existed in his time and is evident today. The critical message of the theory of positive disintegration is that what are deemed symptoms of mental disorder may be, instead, signs of personal growth. Dąbrowski does not simply proclaim his position, he provides a coherent explanation for it. While Dąbrowski addresses substantive issues of mental illness and mental health, most of the research literature purporting to investigate his theory dwells on one component of his theory: overexcitability. The essays in Dynamism, Development and Dispositions: Essays in Honor of Kazimierz Dąbrowski have a common aim: to draw attention to the fullness of the theory with the hope of encouraging researchers to move beyond their singular atomic focus. A word on the subtitle of the book is in order. Sal Mendaglio’s essays honor a great theorist with a scholarly, not effusive, treatment of the theory of positive disintegration.
Here is the LINK.
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▣
1.1
This website allows the reader to fully explore The Theory of Positive
Disintegration (TPD). This theory of personality development was
formulated by Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1902-1980), a Polish psychiatrist
and psychologist.
≻ This website collects, preserves and disseminates the works of
Dąbrowski.
≻ Disseminating the theory informs therapeutic strategies and
encourages research to help us better understand and apply
Dąbrowski’s work.
≻ The archive of Dąbrowski’s works consists of all of his
English publications, approximately half of his Polish books and a few of
his many Polish articles.
≻ The archive also contains materials related to the theory,
including some 1000 articles and books.
≻ All of the materials in the archive are available to download at
no cost.
≻
A variety of links, many focussed on the application of the theory, and
on discussions aimed at a largely non-academic audience can be found:
▣ 1.2 A short presentation giving an overview of the theory by Zeke Degraw, used with permission.
▣ 1.3 Brief overview of the theory.
⧈ 1.3.1 Dabrowski believed that socialization curtails
individual growth.
≻ Mental health involves more than merely adopting and adapting to
societal norms or expectations. Instead, mental health emphasizes
self-transformation in creating and pursuing higher ideals that shape a
unique, authentic, and autonomous personality.
≻ Disintegrating the initial socialized psychological structures is
necessary to create opportunities for the individual to take growth into
their own hands.
≻ Lower structures are replaced by integrations into new, higher
structures.
≻ Higher structures are consciously chosen to reflect the values and
essence of the individual.
≻ At the highest level, a unique and autonomous personality comes to
guide behaviour.
≻ Disintegration requires a constellation of factors Dąbrowski
called developmental potential.
⧈ 1.3.2 Here are several key concepts of the theory:
⚀ 1.3.2.1 Multilevelness and multidimensionality:
≻ Dąbrowski’s approach to analyzing human behaviour emphasized
multilevelness – essentially comparisons of qualitative differences
between the “lower, intermediary, and higher” levels of
reality.
≻ Multilevelness also reflects an observable hierarchy of mental
functions.
≻ This approach leads to a hierarchical description and analysis of
psychological structures.
≻ Unilevel perceptions of reality characterize the lower levels,
while multilevel perceptions reflect a deep awareness and breadth of
perception. This schema is analogous to Plato’s description of the
levels of reality.
≻ Multilevel analysis applies to all kinds and types of mental
functions and, when combined with a multidimensional approach, creates a
powerful descriptive and analytic tool.
⚀ 1.3.2.2 Levels of Development:
≻ Dąbrowski proposed a hierarchy of five levels of development,
beginning with a “primary” level of integration that is
unilevel, egocentric and based on instinctual and social influences.
≻ In ideal development, three levels of disintegration culminate in
a “secondary,” multilevel integration characterized by a
highly autonomous, self-defined, self-chosen, and self-aware self: a
“true personality.”
⚀ 1.3.2.3 Positive disintegration:
≻ Disintegration is necessary for multilevel psychological growth.
≻ Disintegration is positive when it ultimately leads to growth.
≻ Disintegration involves breaking down “lower” existing
psychological structures founded upon external mores, beliefs, and
behavioural expectations that become incompatible with higher,
self-evaluated, self-defined values, ideals, and potentials.
≻ Disintegration unfolds through psychoneuroses; comprised of strong
internal conflicts, crises, and moral dilemmas.
≻ Role models of exemplary development also point the way.
□ 1.3.2.3.1 Psychoneuroses:
≻ The principal vehicle of positive disintegration.
≻ A positive, creative developmental process leading to the
formation of the conditions necessary for growth.
≻ Psychoneuroses are symptoms of disharmony and conflicts within
one’s inner psychic milieu (one’s internal psychological
environment) and with the external environment triggered and driven by
strong positive developmental potential.
≻ Psychoneuroses and neuroses reflect and are analyzed based on a
hierarchical representation of functions.
≻ Higher psychoneuroses are more psychic – psychological and
mental forms of disorder, in comparison to lower neuroses which are more
somatic and nervous in nature.
⚀ 1.3.2.4 Developmental potential:
≻ Dąbrowski identified various “constitutional”
(hereditary) factors that determine the character and extent of mental
growth possible for a given individual.
≻ Developmental potential includes instincts, dynamisms, the third
factor, overexcitabilities, and special abilities and talents.
≻ Dąbrowski said developmental potential can be
assessed
based on overexcitabilities, special abilities and talents, and the third
factor.
□ 1.3.2.4.1 The Third Factor:
≻ The third factor represents “the totality of all autonomous
forces” expressed as a feeling one must discover, evaluate, and
develop one’s deep essence or character. This evaluation leads to an
image of one’s personality ideal – of one’s ideal self.
≻ The third factor moves the individual towards values and
behaviours that reflect how things “ought to be” based on this
unique self-evaluation and personality ideal.
≻ The third factor is central; “Along with inborn properties
and the influence of environment, it is the ‘third factor’
that determines the direction, degree, and distance of man’s
development” (Dąbrowski, 1964, p. 53).
□ 1.3.2.4.2 Dynamisms:
≻ The theory seeks to understand the forces – the dynamics
that motivate behaviour.
≻ Dąbrowski defined dynamisms as biological or mental forces that
control behavior and its development.
Instincts
, drives, and intellectual processes combined with
emotions
are dynamisms.
≻ Dąbrowski described some 20 dynamisms that influence development
and behaviour.
□ 1.3.2.4.3 Overexcitabilities:
≻ Dąbrowski identified five types of overexcitability (psychomotor,
sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational) predisposing
individuals to experience life more intensely.
≻ Overexcitabilities contribute to disintegration by heightening
sensitivity and awareness.
≻ “The prefix ‘over’ attached to
‘excitability’ serves to indicate that the reactions of
excitation are over and above average in intensity, duration, and
frequency” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 7).
□ 1.3.2.4.4 Special abilities and talents:
≻ Another component of developmental potential – IQ plus
things like musical talent or artistic ability.
⚀ 1.3.2.5 Hierarchization:
≻ Hierarchization is the process of differentiating higher from
lower levels in oneself and developing and activating these levels –
this primarily involves emotions and values.
≻ Hierarchization is the beginning of the development of the inner
psychic milieu.
⚀ 1.3.2.6 Inner psychic milieu:
≻ The internal mental environment. The totality of mental dynamisms
of a low or high degree of consciousness.
≻ The inner psychic milieu may be hierarchical, as in multilevel
disintegration, or ahierarchical, as in unilevel disintegration.
≻ The development and differentiation of the inner psychic milieu is
the distinctive feature of autonomous development.
≻ At the level of primary integration, there is no inner psychic
milieu. At the second level, unilevel disintegration, psychological
factors begin to play a role, and therefore, an inner psychic milieu
appears. It is, however, ahierarchic, or without structure. The
intrapsychic factors are not transformative, only disintegrative in
respect to the cohesive structures of primary integration.
≻ With the appearance of multilevel transformative dynamisms, a
hierarchically structured inner psychic milieu is formed.
⚀ 1.3.2.7 Summary:
≻ The central thesis of the theory is that driven by developmental
potential, internal conflicts produce psychoneuroses – strong
anxieties and depressions that confront conventional rationales and
explanations and force self-examination.
≻ This often leads to loosening unilevel structures, allowing the
individual to take development “into their own hands” and
begin the developmental process.
≻ Developing a hierarchy of values and personality ideal helps shape
the self away from ego and toward a unique and autonomous personality that
comes to be expressed in a secondary multilevel integration.
⧈ 1.3.3 The contemporary relevance of the theory.
≻ The conventional goal of psychological therapy is to ameliorate
dis
– ease, anxiety, and crisis, restoring stability.
≻ Dąbrowski took a radically different view, emphasizing that
periods of disequilibrium, upset, depression, anxiety, and ultimately even
chaos and crisis are necessary elements in the process of growth.
≻ For Dąbrowski, positive disintegration does not merely lead to
resilience; rather, it creates a higher level of function than before.
≻ The theory predates and reflects the contemporary approach of
posttraumatic growth.
▣ 1.4 Six seminal quotes set the stage.
⧈ 1.4.1 “Personality: A self-aware, self-chosen, self-affirmed, and self-determined unity of essential individual psychic qualities. Personality as defined here appears at the level of secondary integration” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 301).
⧈ 1.4.2 “The propensity for changing one’s internal environment and the ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the capacity of the individual to develop. Almost as a rule, these factors are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences—all symptoms which the psychiatrist tends to label psychoneurotic. Given a definition of mental health as the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals who present active development in the direction of a higher level of personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy” (Dąbrowski, 1964, p. 112).
⧈ 1.4.3 “Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality. According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses, without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values (to what ‘ought to be’), and without conflicts with lower level realities as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond with reality of higher level” (Dąbrowski, 1972, p. 220).
⧈ 1.4.4 “Psychoneuroses ‘especially those of a higher level’ provide an opportunity to ‘take one’s life in one’s own hands.’ They are expressive of a drive for psychic autonomy, especially moral autonomy, through transformation of a more or less primitively integrated structure. This is a process in which the individual himself becomes an active agent in his disintegration, and even breakdown. Thus the person finds a ‘cure’ for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of oneself and of an inner psychic transformation. One of the main mechanisms of this process is a continual sense of looking into oneself as if from outside, followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both the inner and outer milieus—an individual goes through ever higher levels of ‘neuroses’ and at the same time through ever higher levels of universal development of his personality” (Dąbrowski, 19102, p. 4).
⧈ 1.4.5 “In order to account for differences in the extent of development we introduce the concept of the developmental potential (Dąbrowski, 1970, Piechowski, 1974). The developmental potential is the original endowment which determines what level of development a person may reach if the physical and environmental conditions are optimal” (Dąbrowski, 1996, p. 10).
⧈ 1.4.6 “…in our conception of development the chances of developmental crises and their positive or negative outcomes depend on the character of the developmental potential, on the character of social influence, and on the activity (if present) of the third factor (autonomous dynamisms of self-directed development). One also has to keep in mind that a developmental solution to a crisis means not a reintegration but an integration at a higher level of functioning” (Dąbrowski, 1972, pp. 244-245).
▣ 1.5 Be Greeted Psychoneurotics.
⧈ 1.5.1 From the Filmwest movie, Be Greeted Psychoneurotics.
⚀ 1.5.1.1 “Suffering, aloneness, self-doubt, sadness, inner conflict; these are our feelings that we have not learned to live with, that we have failed to appreciate, that we reject as destructive and completely negative, but in fact they are symptoms of an expanding consciousness. Dr. Kazimierz Dąbrowski has spent 45 years piecing together the complete picture of the growth of the human psyche from primitive integration at birth; the person with potential for development will experience growth as a loosening of the stable psychic structure accompanied by symptoms of psychoneuroses. Reality becomes multileveled, the choices between higher and lower realms of behaviour occupy our thought and mark us as human. Dąbrowski called this process positive disintegration, he declares that psychoneurosis is not an illness and he insists that development does not come through psychotherapy but that psychotherapy is automatic when the person is conscious of his development.”
⚀ 1.5.1.2 “To Dąbrowski, therapy is autopsychotherapy; it is the self being aware of the self through a long inner investigation; a mapping of the inner environment. There are no techniques to eliminate symptoms because the symptoms constitute the very psychic richness from which grow an increasing awareness of body, mind, humanity and cosmos. Dąbrowski gives birth to that process if he can.”
⚀ 1.5.1.3 “Without intense and painful introspection and reflection, development is unlikely. Psychoneurotic symptoms should be embraced and transformed into anxieties about human problems of an ever higher order. If psychoneuroses continue to be classified as mental illness, then perhaps it is a sickness better than health.”
⚀ 1.5.1.4 “Without passing through very difficult experiences and even something like psychoneurosis and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher and higher levels.”
▣ 1.6 Dąbrowski captured the essence of psychoneuroses and development in his poem: Be Greeted Psychoneurotics.
Posłanie do nadwrażliwych by Jarosław Wasik.
▣ 1.7 Depiction of the levels of the theory by E. Mika.
⧈ 1.7.1 Based on Dąbrowski’s theory, there are two
qualitatively different life experiences — unilevel and multilevel
— which are characterized by five levels.
≻ The heteronomous level, also known as unilevel or Level I, is
influenced by biological and social factors (first and second factor).
≻ On the other hand, multilevel life is autonomous, which comprises
Levels III and above, reflecting varying degrees of self-conscious,
self-determined, and self-controlled mental development.
≻ Level II is typically a short transitional phase marked by intense
unilevel crises that challenge one’s character, resulting in either
regression or progression.
Also see: link
⧈ 1.7.2 Dr. Mika has suggested that, in today’s era, it would be clearer to describe the levels using the terms “unilevel integration” instead of “primary integration” and “multilevel integration” instead of “secondary integration.” I fully support this suggestion in future neo-Dąbrowskian works.
▣ 1.8 Depiction of the construct network of the theory by W. Tillier.
⧈ 1.8.1 Download as PDF.
▣
1.9
Much of the focus of this webpage is on Dąbrowski’s work in
Canada.
≻ In 1965, Dąbrowski moved his family to Edmonton and took a
visiting professorship at the University of Alberta. He also held a
similar position at Laval University in Québec.
≻ In the years leading up to his death in 1980, he divided his time
between Poland and Canada.
≻ Dąbrowski accomplished this work with the help of a number of
dedicated people, including Michael Piechowski, Lynn Kealy, Norbert Duda,
Marlene Rankel, Dexter Amend, Lorne Yeudall, Francis Lesniak, Leo Mos,
Andrzej (Andrew) Kawczak, Tom Nelson, Joseph R. Royce, Peter Jensen, Paul
McGaffey, Earle Bain, P. Joshi, J. Sochanska, and P. J. Reese.
≻ From 1976 to 1980, I had the privilege of being a student of
Dąbrowski. He asked me to preserve his theory.
≻ After his passing, I was given the archive of materials he had in
Edmonton. I established this website in 1995.
▣ 3.1 To gain a thorough understanding of this complex theory, one must read Dąbrowski’s original materials found in tab 2: Archive.
▣ 3.2 For a brief overview, watch this short film (also linked in tab 1.2)
▣ 3.3 Overviews. (Article by Tylikowska, (2000) and Dąbrowski’s Key Constructs)
▣ 3.4 Dąbrowski’s unique terminology. (Terms and Glossary)
▣ 3.5 Tillier’s initial presentation of the theory.
▣ 3.6 Tillier’s second presentation of the theory.
▣ 3.7 Watch the films of Dąbrowski linked in section 8.7 below.
▣ 3.8 References.
▣ 4.1 A full bibliography of Dąbrowski’s work and works related to Dąbrowski’s Theory.
▣ 4.2 Synopsis of Dąbrowski’s major English books.
▣ 8.1 Wikipedia Page.
⧈ This is an open webpage that anyone can alter or contribute to.
▣ 8.2 The Kazimierz Dąbrowski Medal.
▣ 8.3 Eugenia Dąbrowski (PDF download).
▣ 8.4 Dąbrowski’s Grave (PDF download).
▣ 8.5 Dąbrowski in Canada.
▣ 8.6 In Memoriam.
▣ 8.7 Videos of Dąbrowski.
⧈ One of Dąbrowski’s early students, P. J. Reese, made two half-hour movies of Dąbrowski. These have been digitalized and posted to YouTube.
The Java Shoppe Interview, Edmonton, October 1975, P. J. Reese.
Be Greeted Psychoneurotics: A look at Kazimierz Dąbrowski, Edmonton, October 1975, P. J. Reese.
⧈ In about 1965, Leo Mos was asked to host a graduate seminar asking Dąbrowski questions about the theory. This turned into three 2 hour videotaped sessions. Depending on your Internet connection you may or may not be able to see these videos online. They are also included in the free archive download.
▣ 8.8 Polish website.
⧈ The Polish website dedicated to Dąbrowski.
▣ 8.9 Dąbrowski Related Web Links.
▣ 9.1 Debates.
▣ 9.2 Dąbrowski’s Levels.
▣ 9.3 Dr. Dąbrowski and Dr. Piechowski.
▣ 9.4 TPD Myths.
▣ B.1 Contact:
⧈ This site was first posted October 26, 1995, and is maintained by Bill Tillier, e-mail: btillier [ at ] shaw.ca
▣ B.2 Other:
⧈ Website credits and copyrights:
⚀ The contents of this website and its subpages are protected by copyright, which is owned by the author, William Tillier. Please be aware that the material on this website is safeguarded by Canadian laws, policies, regulations, and international agreements as stipulated in the Copyright Act. If you wish to use any of the resources available on this site, please contact us via email to obtain permission.