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Theory of positive disintegration as a basis for research on assisting development.

Article Excerpt
In his approach to human development, Kazimierz Dabrowski (1996a) emphasized multilevelness as the principal concept of his theory, which has numerous consequences. Above all it is a way of thinking about development as a process largely independent of biologically programmed stages and perceiving it as transcending cultural and environmental influences. Multilevel development goes beyond adaptation to social expectations. Despite individual differences of development potential--that is, the potential readiness for development--the essence of development through positive disintegration is a deliberate effort to advance in an increasingly mature manner through successively higher levels of experiencing outer and inner realities.

The concept of multilevelness has been described by Michael M. Piechowski (1975), Dabrowski's long-standing collaborator, as: "a new paradigm of human development." He noted that it is

less meaningful to consider, for instance, aggression, inferiority, empathy or sexual behavior as unitary phenomena, but it becomes more meaningful to examine their different levels. Love and aggression at the lowest level of development differ less than the lowest and the highest level of love, or the lowest and highest level of aggression. (p. 246)

Because a qualitative change of that sort can take place or become intensified at any stage of adult life, it is not directly linked to developmental tasks typical for a given stage. The chance for development in Dabrowski's sense does not diminish with age. However, there are certain conditions that must be met. They are tied to the individual developmental potential and the ability to recognize and engage it.

Contemplating individual developmental potential and ways to engage or strengthen it, we must start with the basic assumptions of the theory of positive disintegration (TPD). Dabrowski (1996a) linked developmental potential with five forms of psychic overexcitability (psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional) that are primarily biologically based. Although there are cases when the biological endowment in the form of emotional and intellectual overexcitability, not being suitably channeled, becomes the cause of "negative disintegration," the overexcitabilities can be shaped through education. According to the author of TPD, it is also possible to strengthen the development potential by the "sensitizing" influence of art, religion and philosophy (Dabrowski, 1996b). The configuration of overexcitabilties determines for each individual a different way of assisting development.

We must also bear in mind the fact that apart from the aforementioned overexcitabilities, another important part of individual developmental potential is the group of developmental dynamisms. They are at once a developmental achievement and the instruments of advancing it further (cf. Piechowski, 1981). The first developmental level of primary integration lacks developmental dynamisms. According to Dabrowski, they first emerge at the second level and are associated with the states of depression, ambivalence, and ambitendence that accompany it. The subsequent levels (the third, fourth, and fifth) are characterized by the emergence of developmental dynamisms linked with the possibility of a conscious shaping of the process of one's own development, which is associated with the transformation of a uni-level structure of values into a multilevel hierarchical one with the personality ideal at the top. Such a qualitative change in the psyche characterizes the third level of development, whereas the subsequent two levels are focused on the perfection and clarification of the new possibilities of experiencing the world and one's own self.

By defining the five levels of development and their characteristic dynamisms, Dabrowski (1986, 1996a, 1996b) outlined the direction and the nature of development in sufficient enough detail that one can apply it in clinical and educational practice. At the same time, the theory opens new avenues to research on the conditions of personality development.

The starting point for a specifically individual program of educational or therapeutic work is an evaluation of the biological potential of the individual, his or her developmental history (including the role of the social milieu), and the current state of personality development. Dabrowski (1996b) stressed that "These three groups of factors must be thoroughly elaborated for each individual in order not to weaken them, still less eliminate, but to make full use of them in development and psychological prevention" (p. 105).

In the framework of TPD, the developmental process has an individual and deliberate character. One must take note of the specific meaning of the term personality and its practical and theoretical implications. Personality exists as the ideal goal of an individual's development; its vague outline first appears, together with multilevel inner milieu, at the level of spontaneous multilevel disintegration (level III).

The transition from the second to the third level is the greatest qualitative change in the individual's consciousness called by Dabrowski (1984) "the most unexpected developmental change" (p. 39). This is the transition from unilevel to multilevel inner milieu. Through continued development an individual strives to realize the personality ideal, which...

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