High Cognitive Minds

I just came across an article about the difficulties of growing up gifted and, as usual, found that it was a series of hits and misses. Elaine Aron, the author of several popular books on the highly sensitive person, is a Jungian and a clinical psychologist. Both are powerful filters, and the article demonstrates the limitations of both.

The article was an outcome of her learning about the sudden and unforeseen suicide of a gifted boy in early adolescence. Much of what she has to say is fairly general, and well worth reading, though I do think that her Jungian outlook is less than valuable in considering the problems of the gifted. What caught me up short was that, after talking about mood swings and the many sources of such mood shifts in adolescence, she said "One certain factor in the case of the suicide of this gifted boy was that he was too young to have much experience with sudden mood shifts in the direction of the unbearable emotions I’ve also written about in this issue."

Not only is she wrong; she's dangerously wrong.

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