Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration

[Rudolph Mondal]

Anyone here familiar with Kazimierz Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration?

If so, what do you think of it. Also, where can I learn more about it?

 

[Jennywocky]

I mainly just googled stuff online when I was first learning about Dabrowski.

I could relate to a lot of it, personally. And I think distintegration is essential to reconstruction; it's a sound idea.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Schopenhauer had this down way before yao

def trve anyway

 

[nanook]

not very familiar Dabrowski but using the word disintegration irks me as odd.

you let go of your identification with the current level, while you identify with a new level, which integrates the essence of the former level. that integration is usually unconscious, because nobody keeps track of the essence of stages until they are very mature. usually we perceive stages only in terms of their superficial appearance. what you did, what you used to believe in. such surface structures of the former level will be completely replaced with surface structures of the new level, so there is something falling apart, in deed a whole world. but i'm not sure i would use the word disintegration for that.

if i remember correctly the most detailed technical description of how development unfolds is in the book "collected works of ken wilber, volume 4". highly recommend it.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

not very familiar Dabrowski but using the word disintegration irks me as odd.

you let go of your identification with the current level, while you identify with a new level, which integrates the essence of the former level. that integration is usually unconscious, because nobody keeps track of the essence of stages until they are very mature. usually we perceive stages only in terms of their superficial appearance. what you did, what you used to believe in. such surface structures of the former level will be completely replaced with surface structures of the new level, so there is something falling apart, in deed a whole world. but i'm not sure i would use the word disintegration for that.

if i remember correctly the most detailed technical description of how development unfolds is in the book "collected works of ken wilber, volume 4". highly recommend it.

Thank you. I'll look into it. For now I'd like to ask whether it's possible to regress to former levels or does one always continue moving forward through the levels?

 

[Reluctantly]

Sounds pretty interesting. I'd be willing to read a book next weekend on it, if there is one. Unfortunately, wikipedia says

The reader interested in Dąbrowski has faced a serious scarcity of resources, especially of Dąbrowski’s English works. His books are long out of print and rare, and his papers are held by a few people but not circulated. There are also many excellent Polish works by Dąbrowski (about 20 books) on the theory, on psychotherapy, on education and on philosophy that await translation into English. Several efforts are underway to remedy this scarcity, including the Dąbrowski website (see below), a current initiative to reprint Dąbrowski’s English books (they are currently available as pdf files on a CD) and ongoing conferences and workshops.​

I don't speak Polish.

 

[nanook]

parts of your personality may remain stuck in former levels. this is quite ordinary. in the case of social anxiety and other neroses a part (at least a part) is stuck on the conformist level. in the case of borderline, a part is stuck on the impulsive level (one level before conformist), in the case of psychosis a part is stuck even one level before that. a dissociated part that is stuck will be enacted as a shadow and it can be conceptualized as regression if it happens suddenly and occasionally (for instance in the case of a psychotic break), but often people are consistently acting from different stages in different contexts of their life, for instance someone may act rationally in his profession and conformist in his family, this isn't so much a regression, it's just that the person has not developed to a rational level in his intra and interpersonal lines of intelligence, so he can't do it in personal contexts, but he has developed rationality in other cognitive lines of intelligence, so he can do rational business.

as i mentioned, there are lines of intelligence and it's natural that some are less developed then others. a poorly developed line shouldn't even be conceptualized as stuck or as 'developmental arrest'. we should only speak of a stuck part, if there is a psychological conflict, a particular psychological attachment to a stage, an unwillingness to move on.

for instance INTP have poorly developed Fe which means they often enact a borderline quality (impulsive stage) of Fe. this can lead to a diagnosis of borderline, but it seems unfair to me to pathologize this case. but imagine if someone had their dominant function ripped into parts (due to conflict) and some of those parts remain on the impulsive stage. that would be a broken personality and a diagnosis of borderline is appropriate.


you never loose a stage that you had before, but you may choose to abandon it, when you find that living on that stage becomes too difficult in your life. you give yourself up and it causes eternal grieve because you are no longer a wholly honest person.

whether you continue to develop forward depends on how much you are still invested in various old stages. almost everyone appears to ge get stuck on some level.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

parts of your personality may remain stuck in former levels. this is quite ordinary. in the case of social anxiety and other neroses a part (at least a part) is stuck on the conformist level. in the case of borderline, a part is stuck on the impulsive level (one level before conformist), in the case of psychosis a part is stuck even one level before that. a dissociated part that is stuck will be enacted as a shadow and it can be conceptualized as regression if it happens suddenly and occasionally (for instance in the case of a psychotic break), but often people are consistently acting from different stages in different contexts of their life, for instance someone may act rationally in his profession and conformist in his family, this isn't so much a regression, it's just that the person has not developed to a rational level in his intra and interpersonal lines of intelligence, so he can't do it in personal contexts, but he has developed rationality in other cognitive lines of intelligence, so he can do rational business.

as i mentioned, there are lines of intelligence and it's natural that some are less developed then others. a poorly developed line shouldn't even be conceptualized as stuck or as 'developmental arrest'. we should only speak of a stuck part, if there is a psychological conflict, a particular psychological attachment to a stage, an unwillingness to move on.

for instance INTP have poorly developed Fe which means they often enact a borderline quality (impulsive stage) of Fe. this can lead to a diagnosis of borderline, but it seems unfair to me to pathologize this case. but imagine if someone had their dominant function ripped into parts (due to conflict) and some of those parts remain on the impulsive stage. that would be a broken personality and a diagnosis of borderline is appropriate.


you never loose a stage that you had before, but you may choose to abandon it, when you find that living on that stage becomes too difficult in your life. you give yourself up and it causes eternal grieve because you are no longer a wholly honest person.

whether you continue to develop forward depends on how much you are still invested in various old stages. almost everyone appears to ge get stuck on some level.

That is interesting to me because I been formally diagnosed with a particular variety of schizophrenia and my primary symptom is ambivalence. Does this mean that parts of my primary function is stuck in the impulsive stage? What would it mean for parts of introverted feeling (I think I'm INFP) to be stuck at the level of impulsiveness?

 

[nanook]

I was together with someone who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and her test result was INFP (even though i think she is ISFP with Ni+Se overdrive, as a result of having weak judgement, she has what appears to be Ni visions and tends to be a very active and adventurous globetrotter without much of a fear of risk of possibilities, which appears Se to me, she also loves to do garden work and similar handy things).

My father is probably ISTP and schizophrenic. Same setup, perception wise, technically.
Even though he is a very different character, due to different judgement.

What i see in both of them is that they compensate for the weakness on the 'psychotic stage' by being overly attached to the conformist stage. Being religious, seeking community, seeking a reliable world-view that can give worldly meaning to their lives, which seem so unreal to them, due to all the depersonalisation and derealisation that is involved in the 'psychotic stage'.

My understanding is, that the 'psychotic stage' is not the impulsive stage, but the ones before that. It could be magenta (i think so) or even beige, i am not sure. I think beige is involved in autism.

It appears typical for characters to have a tandem-attachment to two stages that are two stages apart, there appears to be something like a muscial octave that makes all even and all odd stages resonate with each other, some stages are more communal in principle, some are more introverted. That would mean that if a part of you is stuck on the second stage (magic), it would be statistically likely that the rest of you gets stuck on the fourth (conformist) or sixth stage (pluralist). Due to that resonance. This concept is concerned with how you live your life, with outward display of stages, more than with what you have inside.

What does it mean for Fi to be split? Well this is just intuitive way of conceptualizing any psychological conflict and what i was trying to say by that is that perhaps judgement (ego, which appears to encompass the dominant and auxiliary function) is somehow causing the problem. In my view a function contains the personal story. The unique differentiation. It's quite difficult to locate the whole story, it might as well be located in all functions. Well what i was trying to say is that there IS a story, that causes a particular developmental arrest (as opposed to the upper level of current development at a particular point in time). Arrest means, as i understand it, that a part in your memory (the overall structure within all functions) will, when activated by circumstances, activate a particular circuit between the functions, on a particular level of the functions, similar to a flashback. Suddenly you see red, so to speak. Your perspective is shifted to 'red' aspects of a particular stage, due to your storyline. Red for example. Or any other stage. It's hard to understand if the perspective is guided by judgement, or perception itself.

I'm afraid i have no clue how to help with developmental arrest. From a purely objective perspective it could be seen like a complicated brain-damage. I mean imagine a fruit that is grown in a funny way, a little bit mutated. You can understand it all you want, but that may not inspire change. I have developmental arrest too (i appear to have schizoid parts and i'm not sure where they are located in terms of stages) and i do crazy stuff with altered states of mind in the hopes of achieving change. But people are always like "don't even allow schizophrenic people to meditate, it makes it all worse".

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

I was together with someone who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and her test result was INFP (even though i think she is ISFP with Ni+Se overdrive, as a result of having weak judgement, she has what appears to be Ni visions and tends to be a very active and adventurous globetrotter without much of a fear of risk of possibilities, which appears Se to me, she also loves to do garden work and similar handy things).

My father is probably ISTP and schizophrenic. Same setup, perception wise, technically.
Even though he is a very different character, due to different judgement.

What i see in both of them is that they compensate for the weakness on the 'psychotic stage' by being overly attached to the conformist stage. Being religious, seeking community, seeking a reliable world-view that can give worldly meaning to their lives, which seem so unreal to them, due to all the depersonalisation and derealisation that is involved in the 'psychotic stage'.

My understanding is, that the 'psychotic stage' is not the impulsive stage, but the ones before that. It could be magenta (i think so) or even beige, i am not sure. I think beige is involved in autism.

It appears typical for characters to have a tandem-attachment to two stages that are two stages apart, there appears to be something like a muscial octave that makes all even and all odd stages resonate with each other, some stages are more communal in principle, some are more introverted. That would mean that if a part of you is stuck on the second stage (magic), it would be statistically likely that the rest of you gets stuck on the fourth (conformist) or sixth stage (pluralist). Due to that resonance.

What does it mean for Fi to be split? Well this is just intuitive way of conceptualizing any psychological conflict and what i was trying to say by that is that perhaps judgement (ego, which appears to encompass the dominant and auxiliary function) is somehow causing the problem. In my view a function contains the personal story. The unique differentiation. It's quite difficult to locate the whole story, it might as well be located in all functions. Well what i was trying to say is that there IS a story, that causes a particular developmental arrest (as opposed to the upper level of current development at a particular point in time). Arrest means, as i understand it, that a part in your memory (the overall structure within all functions) will, when activated by circumstances, activate a particular circuit between the functions, on a particular level of the functions, similar to a flashback. Suddenly you see red, so to speak. Your perspective is shifted to 'red' aspects of a particular stage, due to your storyline. Red for example. It's hard to understand if the perspective is guided by judgement, or perception itself.

I'm afraid i have no clue how to help with developmental arrest. From a purely objective perspective it could be seen like a complicated brain-damage. I mean imagine a fruit that is grown in a funny way, a little bit mutated. You can understand it all you want, but that may not inspire change. I have developmental arrest too (i appear to have schizoid parts and i'm not sure where they are located in terms of stages) and i do crazy stuff with altered states of mind in the hopes of achieving change. But people are always like "don't even allow schizophrenic people to meditate, it makes it all worse".

So what hope is there for me to be able to make something out of my life? Or is there no more hope.

 

[nanook]

You will have "something" of a life, like everybody else.

If you resonate with the conformist stage as much as the aforementioned individuals, you may end up with a family and many happy kids and hopefully your psychotic breaks will be bearable to them and to you. For aforementioned individuals this appears to be exactly what they want.

There is no need to hate yourself, all people are limited somehow.

There is no objective standard for what is desirable, it's certainly not to grow for ever or to reach the highest stage, because there is no highest stage, evolution goes on and on, but not within a single lifetime.

But where do we want to go with this life? Are our goals realistic?
Is our wanting intrinsic motivation or a conditioned lack of self-acceptance?

I would like to live a lifestyle on higher stages, at least green, but my attachment to security (beige) and my complete suppression of power (red) and my general incompatibility with neurotypical people appears to prevent me from function outwardly on any stage of society, including the easiest stage, the conformist stage, due to the fact that i find those stages disagreeable. For me it's obvious that i have to reclaim my red powers before i can actualize my self in my lifestyle. The aforementioned individuals do not have the same red inhibition, they are quite driven to do what they want. I don't know what you need.