Developing Creativity: Excitabilities – Our Teeming Brains

What are Excitabilities?

One of the key concepts of Polish psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, MD, PhD (1902 – 1980) is that individuals with strong “overexcitabilities” are good candidates for higher level development.

In this video are quotes by writer Stephen King, and actors Amanda Bynes and Sandra Bullock about having “teeming brains” – comments that seem to me are about the experience.

Stephen King has said: “I’ve taken off two months, three months at a time, and, by the end, I get really squirrelly. My night life, my dream life, gets extremely populated and crazed. It’s as though something in there is running all the time.”

Amanda Bynes, talking about going to college, commented, “I have such a busy mind and it’s really hard for me to do one thing at a time. … It’s hard for me to sit still.”

Sandra Bullock recently commented, “I am a big ball of high energy and organization and structure. I’m controlling, and I want everything orderly, and I need lists. My mind goes a mile a minute.” [The photo of Bullock in the video is from her new movie The Blind Side.]

These OEs or Excitabilities are considered to occur in five areas: psychomotor, intellectual, imaginational, emotional and sensual. Many writers and educators consider the concept to be particularly relevant for gifted and talented people.

The title for this post (and video) is partly a reference to the book My Teeming Brain: Creativity in Creative Writers, by Jane Piirto, Ph.D., who notes in her article Themes in the Lives of Successful U.S. Adult Creative Writers, that her book title comes from the poet Keats who knew the experience well, writing in a sonnet about his “fears that I may cease to be / before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain…”

See more in my post: Pumping our teeming brain.

Giftedness consultant Lesley Sword describes Overexcitabilities as “an abundance of physical, sensual, creative, intellectual and emotional energy that can result in creative endeavours as well as advanced emotional and ethical development in adulthood. Overexcitabilities feed, enrich, empower and amplify talent.”

From her article Overexcitabilities in Gifted Children.

Book about these topics: Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults.

You can see larger versions of the video at YouTube and Blip.tv

overexcitability , excitability , Dabrowski, gifted adult personality, psychology of giftedness, high ability, high aptitude