Related to the developmental instinct but different from it is developmental potential, or individual potential for personal development. A strong developmental instinct helps us instead to choose a life that is more in keeping with the person we want to be, rather than who we are or who we were, especially when who we should be is in conflict with more primitive instincts.
In other words, Dabrowskian development is one of learning not to be controlled by social and biological forces. The “sidetrack” in the above quotation is the path of personal development, the drive to diverge from the road laid out before us by biology and society, and the creating of ourselves anew, into the person we know we should be.Īccording to Dabrowski, we can think of a usual “cycle of life” as our being led mainly by basic instincts such as instincts of self-preservation, sexuality and reproduction, possessions, and social belonging. These instincts, however, can be transformed by what Dabrowski called the developmental instinct, which “transcends the narrow biological aims and exceeds the primitive drives in strength” and is “in opposition to the limited, common life cycle.” “here are people, not few in number, in whom, besides the schematically described cycle of life, there arises a sort of ‘sidetrack,’ which after some time may become the ‘main track.’” ~ Kazimierz Dabrowski, Personality-Shaping Through Positive Disintegration “Sidetrack” by Fintrvlr ( CC BY-NC 2.)
#Dabrowski positive disintegration series
Dabrowski, a clinical psychologist and psychiatrist, developed the theory to explain why and how some people are driven toward personal growth and self-chosen ideals, and the role that disintegration-falling apart-plays in this growth.ĭabrowski’s theory is richly layered and not easy to unpack, and I learn something new with each revisitation. This post is the first in a series about the Theory of Positive Disintegration (hereafter TPD), my current in-progress understanding of it, and why the theory is particularly useful today. I have been fascinated by Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration since first being introduced to it almost 20 years ago.
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