Finished reading it and have to turn it back tomorrow so here's my quick review. It's 15 chapters and each chapter is written by a contributing author. You may recognize some of the authors like Edward Amend, Michael Piechowski, Annemarie Roeper, Linda Silverman, & Stephanie Tolan. Each chapter looks at giftedness through the lens of Dabrowski's OEs and theory of positive disintegration. I liked that it wasn't focused exclusively on gifted children but includes development throughout a gifted individual's lifetime.
Chapter 8 was very useful: "Overexcitabilty, Giftedness, and Family Dynamics." It discusses the themes that have emerged from Parent Interviews: accepting and accommodating differences; adult recognition of giftedness; big ideas and healthy grandiosity; emotional flooding; grief for lost vision of a "normal" child; moral and ethical awareness; relationship of parenting style, communication and discipline approaches; resources and resiliency; and adult well-being and self-care.
Chapter 10 "Advantages and Challenges of Lifespan Intensity" describes how Gifted Middle Aged Adults feel far greater internal pressure to change things for the better and move toward this stage at much earlier ages than the general population.
Chapter 11 was about Annemarie Roeper's amazing life from her childhood temper tantrums to leaving Germany as a refugee and establishing the Roeper School and Roeper Review.
Chapter 13 "What Dabrowski's Work Can Do for Gifted Adults" helped me with some spiritual questions I've been wrestling with:
The body could not function with only blood cells, only skin cells, only brain cells. Just so, diversity is essential to the functioning of the universe. There are, indeed, universal values of love and compassion, but there are as many ways to live those values as there are individual humans. As wonderful, for instance, as the task of immune cells might be, they are only one small part of a fully functional organism...When we perceive a particular task as the "right thing to do" no matter who we are and no matter what else we may be doing, we are listening to external voices, not the inner guidance of the actualized self.
Wish I didn't have to give it back to the library.
