Theory of Positive Disintegration

The theory of positive disintegration, abbreviated TPD, is a theory of personality development created by the Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski. Unlike mainstream developmental psychology, it treats psychological tension and anxiety as necessary for real personal growth, describing the disintegrative processes that produce this tension as positive rather than pathological. In Dabrowski's account, a person who fails to go through this disintegration remains at a stage of primary integration, holding a distinct individuality but lacking an autonomous personality and remaining easily influenced by others. Entry into disintegration and into the higher stages of development that can follow it occurs through what Dabrowski called developmental potential, which includes heightened forms of sensitivity and responsiveness he termed overexcitability. Unlike stage theories such as Erik Erikson's account of psychosocial development, the theory of positive disintegration does not assume that most people progress through every level, is not organized as a fixed sequence of stages, and does not tie its levels to a person's age. In education, the theory is drawn on mainly in the study of gifted learners, whose heightened overexcitabilities Dabrowski's framework treats as a developmental asset rather than a behavioral problem to be managed.