Dabrowski I think had some good thoughts. I remember reading about him when I was doing an essay on education. I didn't know positive disintegration had that much to do with overexcitabilities. I thought overexcitabilities were a function that influenced mostly gifted people and that positive disintegration was sort of an all inclusive theory, anyone could achieve a certain level regardless of ability.
Giftedness is exclusionary.
You can see this with a part of giftedness, IQ.
IQ does not measure quantity, it measures rarity. So the normal person, and that is almost everyone, is about 100.
And the person at 160 is equally as rare as someone at 40.
And oddly enough this is why the gifted are often sympatico with those of low IQ. Both are different from the normal. Both are not understood by the normal. And both are socially excluded by the normal.
And because we all live under the Bell Curve, the percentage of gifted and those of low IQ is very, very low. So low you may not meet a 160 or a 40 in your entire life.
And positive disintegration is painful and disorientating, and is avoided by those who have achieved a normal integration.
I mean a normal person can't see the distinction between positive disintegration and chaos.
And we perceive by making distinctions - and the more distinctions, the more we see - and the more distinctions we perceive, the higher the IQ.
So the gifted see more distinctions - you might say, they see more pixels in the same picture - and so they find it easy to see the distinction between positive disintegration and chaos.
So you might say the gifted see a brighter, clearer picture.
So you can see the gifted don't see the same thing as the normal.
And interestingly, they don't feel the same thing as the normal.
So sympathy, which means feeling the same as, it not much use to the gifted or to those of low IQ.
And it is by positive disintegration that the gifted are able to move from sympathy to empathy.
While for the normal, sympathy works.
And the normal, in spite of what they say, can't see the distinction between sympathy and empathy.