Learn About Positive Disintegration
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The History of Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory
Dabrowski lived during an era when most psychological theories were based on pretty fixed ideas of human personality. Even today, the Myers-Briggs personality test (which is still highly popular) is designed to say “this is who you are”. It explains your personality as it is, not how your personality grows.
This posed a problem for Dabrowski, who was working with patients who were dealing with self-harm and suicide. He saw personality as something which can change dramatically over time – shifting due to trauma, and evolving differently for each individual.
The psychological theories common at the time also didn’t explain the extreme variation in how people behaved during World Wars 1 and 2. The same tragic events could make heroes of some, and villains of others. This led him to develop his own theory, which could properly describe what he had observed and experienced – The Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD).
At the heart of TPD is values. Values are critical to informing our behaviour towards each other, and also shaping our identity. TPD describes how our personality grows as values, disintegrate (or fall away), reshape, and we consciously rebuild them.
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Overviews of the main parts of Dabrowski’s Theory
Positive Disintegration
Dabrowski believed that we are all heavily influenced by our instincts, and how society tells us we should behave and think. Basically, both “nature and nurture” are working against us.
The average person adopts the rules, roles and expectations of their culture. We are taught from childhood how to behave, feel and think from our parents, religion, media and school. Even the government and legal system tells us what we should and should not do.
Contrary to conventional wisdom in psychology and psychiatry, Dabrowski did not feel that following rules always a positive thing. He went as far as to say that following without questioning represented the opposite of mental health.
Simply “fitting in” without thinking about it, was not authentic development. Learned behaviours and values from the outside world had to be broken apart and “disintegrated” in order to allow you to create your own unique personality.
Overexcitabilities
Dabrowski believed that strong potential to develop, existed in some people, who were more likely to develop a unique personality than their peers.
He called out “Overexcitability” as a key factor in developmental potential. Overexcitability is a heightened ability to receive, and respond to, stimuli. In short, everything coming in from the outside world, and everything going on inside your head has the ‘volume turned up’. It is often found in creative and gifted individuals (although not all gifted people have overexcitability).
There are five areas of overexcitability – psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational and emotional.
Dabrowski called overexcitability a ‘tragic gift’. The intense experience of the world is more likely to lead to a process of disintegration as you feel extremes of emotion, are more prone to reflection and thinking, and imagining possibilities.
Importantly, Dabrowski tells us that it is OK to think, and be, different.
The five levels of personality development
Dabrowski created this theory with five levels, which described the mechanics of how you move away from your old values and “who you were”, and grow to become “who you ought to be”.
Dabrowski’s five levels should be viewed not as a progression, but as types of personality development, which are based on the various forms of disintegration and integration.
Disintegration is the loosening and falling away of your old values, and provides us with a chance to “sort” our values into those we want to keep and those we want to throw away.
Eventually, when we have figured out our values, and who we know we “ought to be” we can start realigning our behaviours to match our new values. The more we behave in alignment with our values, the more authentic we become.
Psychoneurosis
Dabrowski saw the difference between “neuroses” and “psychoneuroses”. Psychoneuroses are a different type of experience, where feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress, are normal reactions to a harsh world. They are the catalysts which motivate us to question ourselves, and our values, and as a result, implement change.
It was a pretty wild sentiment back in Dabrowski’s day, and we are just starting to embrace the seriousness of this concept decades later.
Dabrowski felt ‘psychoneuroses’ were not only normal, but they were necessary for growth. These feelings tell us when we are not behaving in a. way which is true to ourself. It is this ability to question the way we are, which motivates us to make changes and grow. These feeling may be painful, but they are necessary, and certainly not an illness.
Values
The theory of positive disintegration (TPD) describes how personality develops. At the centre of it is human values, and how they move and change. Dabrowski described how we need to determine our authentic values for ourselves and act in alignment with them.
Values are our principles, or standards of behaviour, driven by what we see as important in life. Our values give us meaning and direction, guiding our actions and decision making. Because values are so pervasive through all parts of our life, they shape who we are, giving us a sense of identity. It is this sense of identity which is shaken up during a disintegration.
When we act in alignment with our values, we feel good about ourselves. But when we don’t act in alignment with them, we can feel bad about ourselves, and when we’re unsure about our values, we get anxious. This misalignment is what gives rise to the uncomfortable emotions he calls “psychoneurosis”.