On giftedness

Questions by Sabrina Karasová, answers by Monika Stehlíková, or what didn't fit into the magazine Psychologie Dnes.

Sabrina Karasová is a journalist who spent twenty years as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine.

What is the difference between giftedness, talent, intelligence, hypersensitivity, or simply a deep interest in a particular field? Does a high score on an intelligence test automatically mean giftedness? How would you yourself, based on your findings, define giftedness, or a gifted child?

Giftedness is the combination of above-average skills or abilities and creativity. By creativity we mean here openness of mind, inventiveness, the desire to seek out the new. Talent is already the concrete realization of giftedness. Giftedness may remain hidden, and then we do not speak of talent. Intelligence is something other than what we usually picture at first glance in connection with school success. Intelligence carries within it precisely that inventiveness, that openness of mind, but also, for instance, attention and perceptiveness. There is not just one intelligence, there are several kinds of intelligence, for example emotional, social, creative, practical, analytical (IQ), but also, say, naturalistic or existential. Hypersensitivity is a high degree of sensitivity that tends to be part of giftedness, for there is no giftedness without creativity and no creativity without sensitivity. A high IQ by itself does not necessarily mean giftedness.

Based on my experience, I would define a gifted individual as a highly perceptive person who notices a great many stimuli in the outside environment and processes them sensitively, who thinks in broad contexts and reacts creatively, that is, not in a learned or automatic way, but always freshly and with regard to the current context. In highly intelligent children I have encountered a great delicacy of the nervous system, an eye for detail, sensitivity, the ability to concentrate for long periods, sharpness of judgment and unconventional thinking. But at the same time, a hiding of all these traits in an environment that is not friendly and respectful towards such a child.

When Alice Miller wrote about the gifted child, she linked this category to abuse by parents and authorities, to misunderstanding, to trauma and drama. Why is it actually a good idea to identify gifted children? Which of their peculiarities could drive them into trauma and drama if they remained unidentified? How would you describe their inner experience, behavior, feelings, differences?

She wrote about it beautifully. Unfortunately, that is what sometimes happens. It depends on the motivation with which I approach identifying a child's giftedness. Either, as a parent, I want to "sell" my child's giftedness or otherwise appropriate it for my own interests and ambitions, or I wish for the gifted child to understand who they are, in what ways they are different, how they function, with a single aim: that they accept themselves and be content. If I do not accept myself, I cannot be content, and that also applies to giftedness: if I do not accept myself as a gifted individual, I cannot be fully content with myself. That is, in my view, one of the few reasons why it is good to identify gifted children. And then also because of their different educational needs.

It all begins with thinking, which is complex and works in interconnections. You could say the child goes about things in a complicated way. And it is also very abstract. So the child may not understand what is being asked of them in an ordinary school and an ordinary classroom. Their inner experience is strong, intense, sometimes almost overwhelming. Behavior depends very much on the surroundings and context. In a harmonious environment the child is calm; in an environment where it perceives injustice, and it perceives injustice almost everywhere, it may behave in various ways, sometimes even beyond the boundary of what we accept socially.

What steps should follow on the part of parents and schools once giftedness has been identified? How should gifted children be treated, what should they be allowed, so that they grow up without trauma, find a good place in life and live a happy one? What options do parents have in this respect, and what options does the school have?

Parents should immerse themselves in the specialist literature on the subject and find out as much as they can about giftedness, not only when it comes to abilities but also precisely when it comes to personality needs. They should create for these children an environment of trust, harmony and acceptance. Set firm boundaries, yet allow plenty of freedom, because freedom is a strong need of the gifted child; it wants to do its own things its own way. School should likewise give more freedom and more challenge at the same time: challenge for thinking and creativity, not a mass of encyclopedic skills to memorize. It should also assign complex personal projects arising from the child's inner motivation. Let the child think, work and create, ideally with a benefit for the world beyond school.

How do you recognize that you have a gifted child in front of you? Should the child learn from authorities that it is gifted, that it is different? Should the people around them know?

The child should know it about themselves, above all what exactly it means in terms of their personality, so that they can understand and accept their difference (giftedness is also defined as a neuropsychological and neurophysiological atypicality) and live contentedly with others. The people around should know only if it will not harm the child. Unfortunately, there are still people who have prejudices, and that could hurt the child more than help; you need to consider whom to tell and where.

During primary school, does giftedness manifest more in girls or in boys?

It shows more in boys. In kindergarten it is still more or less the same for boys and girls, but at primary school gifted girls quickly begin to hide. They want more to fit in and be accepted. These are very sad stories, because a person can never completely hide who they are, and when they try, psychological problems can develop over time: first lower self-esteem, then perhaps anxiety, depression and more.

What percentage of the population are we talking about when it comes to the gifted? Is their share increasing, or does it remain rather constant in every society and epoch?

There are two main approaches. The first defines exceptional giftedness as an IQ of 130 and above; such people make up 2.3% of the population (it is a purely statistical figure). The second understands giftedness as a neuro-atypicality, a difference, and mild giftedness is already seen from an IQ of 115; in that case one person in six is gifted. It remains rather constant. However, I myself notice that there are more sensitive children today than there were in previous generations.

Will today's gifted children, who know about their giftedness and to whom their difference, their exceptionality, is presented, grow up into a conceited elite, into outsiders, or will they find their place in the world without any pathological change of personality? What conditions do you think prevail in today's society for coming to terms with personal exceptionality? Are we living in an epoch of narcissists, psychopaths, all-embracing correct tolerance, hidden envy, a proclaimed demand to blend into the average?

If it is handled in a balanced and realistic way, they will grow into healthily self-confident personalities who will find their place in life, discover their potential and their life values and pursue them. From my observations it follows that the truly gifted with a truly (notice that I have to keep using the word truly) high potential often get a good knock from "fate" if they become conceited. On the other hand, there are psychopaths among the gifted too (if one can put it that way, because, for example, one possible approach holds that we define giftedness only in healthy individuals). I believe that the gifted are here, among other things, to point out and kindly correct people's missteps in the form of uncritical hyper-correct tolerance, hidden envy and the like, in the name of common sense and authenticity.

Is a gifted child more sensitive? And in what way, exactly? Can you give examples?

It is more sensitive. But it does not always have to behave that way. This physiological sensitivity has been demonstrated by research. A child may have sensory sensitivity (auditory, tactile and so on), emotional sensitivity or moral sensitivity (to what is unequal and unjust), or even all three at once. It is very hard, though, to bear high sensitivity in a world that does not really count on it, which is why a gifted child may suppress it or hide it in various ways. Often the child has also been scolded for the "inappropriateness" of its intense emotional experience and has itself come to regard it as "wrong" and deserving of suppression. Then it happens that an emotionally wounded child, on the contrary, suppresses its emotions so much that the people around perceive it as cool, cold, distant and so on. You can't win either way. :)

Is the category of giftedness we are talking about here related to autism?

Until now I have not spoken about autism. An individual may have only giftedness, or only ASD (for example Asperger's syndrome), or may be gifted and have Asperger's syndrome at the same time.

Can we say that giftedness, sensitivity and intelligence influence and stimulate one another, or is a person born with a certain dose of these ingredients and that's that? Can a person's degree of giftedness increase, for example through learning?

A person is born gifted and can hardly become gifted in the course of life if they were not born that way. But I honor one principle, namely never to say anything with 100% certainty: Jung, for example, believed that if someone is a sensing type (S), it is fixed for their whole life and they cannot become intuitive (N); yet it was later demonstrated that in a few rare cases the change from S to N is possible. Everything is apparently possible, even if it is not frequent or probable. The universe is infinite and there is an infinite number of possibilities, or is there not? :)

Every person develops over the course of life, so intelligence develops as well, though rather the other kinds than the analytical one (IQ does change, but rather less, by a few points). With higher intelligence it is about that openness of mind, attention and perceptiveness, and these can even be trained today (for example through the method of mindfulness), so I would not rule out the possibility that someone identifies as gifted even though they would not have said so of themselves in the past.

How does a gifted person approach a work task compared with a routine worker?

Completely differently. :) I like this question very much. I cannot speak for all gifted people, each one is unique, but I will model one example. A gifted person will first measure the task against their inner motivation, and also whether it makes sense to them, whether there is something interesting in it to "crack". If not, they will most likely procrastinate and shrug it off. If yes, they will start pondering it. They will look at the task from various angles. Then their intuitive thinking sets off on its own and will pursue them wherever they go: into the bath, to the toilet, to the table, or while washing the dishes. It will sweep them up. The thinking will keep running in the background. And the solution may come at any moment, perhaps while grating carrots. If they tried to write lists of partial steps and implementation plans, they would unconsciously run away from it. When they let their thinking wander along spontaneous paths, the answer arrives unexpectedly. Then all that remains is to "put it down on paper", and here there may be more procrastination. Finishing things off tends not to be a strong point, but a strong motivation may appear, for example the anticipated praise from others and so on.

The identification and acceptance of gifted children has become a topic in society in recent years. How did the unidentified gifted Husák-era children grow up, and how did they come of age? What do they look like today, how is life treating them? Do they know about their giftedness? Or do they consider themselves weird, misunderstood, wronged, loners? Are they more prone to substance abuse? Do they seek out the help of therapists or spiritual guides in adulthood?

Some gifted Husák-era children went through self-denial, self-suppression, doubts about their abilities and about the legitimacy of their very being, through a false self, traumas, or even anxiety and depression. There was, and still is, a great deal of emotional pain in them. Often it was only in adulthood that they went through a demanding journey of personal development, and today, I hope, their lives are better. Many discovered their potential, albeit late, and began to devote themselves to the work of their dreams. There are certainly still those who have not yet stepped over their own shadow and still consider themselves weird, misunderstood, wronged or outsiders. I believe there are fewer and fewer of them. I myself have already helped dozens of gifted adults to step over their shadow and start again, to understand who they are and what their potential and purpose in life is.

In your lectures and books you speak about gifted children with the support of facts drawn from academic studies and research, yet with such deep empathy, as if your experience of the subject sprang from you yourself, from your own lived experience. Are you yourself a gifted child? Did you know about your exceptionality? In what ways did it show positively, in what ways negatively? What was it like growing up with it? Did it motivate you in your later work?

You have found me out. :) Yes, I also draw on my own experience, which I compare with research, or I look for support for that experience in research. According to my parents, who only told me in adulthood, I was a gifted child, but I did not know it. Well, I suppose I partly sensed that I learned things with ease and perceived things with an almost plastic vividness, but I did not connect it with giftedness. Based on my life experience, I rather connected it with a problem caused by being different. Growing up with it was hard for me; I was not very content, and up to the age of 20 I was confused inside, mildly depressed, highly anxious (though without any psychological diagnosis). It showed positively in determination and diligence. Today I am content. Yes, it motivated me for my current work.