High Ability

Internal barriers, personal issues, and decisions faced by gifted and talented females

by Sally M. Reis, Ph.D.

"It is obvious that the values of women differvery often from the values which have been made by the other sex. Yet, it is the masculine values that prevail." -- Virginia Woolf (in A Room of One's Own)

"Research with talented females has revealed a number of internal barriers, personal priorities, and decisions that have consistently emerged as the reasons that many either cannot or do not realize their potential."

Natalie Portman continues to grow stronger and as an actor. But beyond that, it is intriguing to read how exceptional she is in other ways.

Natalie Portman is fluent in Hebrew, French and Japanese…she told the New York Post that she’s considered leaving show biz to become a vet or a clinical psychologist.

Before graduating from Harvard with a psychology degree in June 2003, Portman was credited — under her given name, Natalie Hershlag — as a research assistant to Alan Dershowitz’s “Case for Israel” and had a study on memory called “Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence” published in a scientific journal.

Even people with exceptional talents can feel insecure and struggle with low self-esteem. Many think they are a fraud who will be found out.

Meryl Streep, for example, has said, “I have varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing…. “You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent… Or that you’re boring and they’re going to find out that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

This is not an isolated feeling or an issue for only a few talented people.

Over the many years of researching creative people and reading many interviews with high ability people, I have seen quotes like Streep’s showing up often.

It seems to be an innate behaviour of XIPs [eXtra Intelligent People] to downsize their own qualities when comparing them to others.

By Willem Kuipers, author of the book Enjoying the Gift of Being Uncommon: Extra Intelligent, Intense, and Effective. http://amzn.to/EnjoyTheGift

Linda Silverman, Ph.D. (Director of the Gifted Development Center) notes in her Foreword to the book: There are five defining characteristics of eXtra intelligent/eXtra intense people (XIPs):

* Intellectually able
* Incurably inquisitive
* Needs autonomy
* Excessive zeal in pursuit of interests
* Contrast between emotional and intellectual self-confidence

Multipotentiality is having many exceptional talents and potential careers, but being a multipotentialite can be a source of debilitating stress.

One of the myths of high ability, multitalented people is they can choose whatever personal and career paths they want, and realize their abilities without hindrance.

It doesn’t always work out that way.

Facebook page on High Ability topics.

Does knowing your IQ really matter? By Jonathan Wai, Ph.D....

David Hambrick’s recent New York Times opinion piece—“I.Q. Points for Sale, Cheap”—warns that we should be skeptical of the recent studies that claim to show that intelligence can be improved through training. The title itself suggests that these IQ points can be bought cheaply simply because these gains are likely hollow. The truth is that at this point the scientific community as a whole just isn’t sure whether genuine intelligence can be increased through training.

Video excerpts from the SENGinar (a webinar by SENG): "Understanding Overexcitabilities – The Joys and the Challenges" - presented by Susan Daniels, P...

Description from the SENG site:

Overexcitabilites – psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational and emotional – are often presented as personality traits and behaviors to be managed in terms of interactions at home and at school.

An ambitious new study suggests a surprising link between a child's IQ and his use of illegal substances as an adult...

In my article "Gifted, Talented, Addicted," I speculate that a number of people with exceptional abilities have used drugs and alcohol as self-medication to ease the pain of their sensitivity, or as a way to enhance thinking and creativity.

http://talentdevelop.com/articles/GTA.html

A number of people with exceptional abilities have used drugs and alcohol as self-medication to ease the pain of their sensitivity, or as a way to enhance thinking and creativity. Sometimes they risk addiction.

Beethoven reportedly drank wine about as often as he wrote music, and was an alcoholic or at least a problem-drinker. Among the many other artists who have used drugs, alcohol or other substances are Aldous Huxley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allen Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Allen Ginsberg, composers Beethoven and Modest Musorgski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, Eugene O'Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, and Tennessee Williams.

At least five U.S. writers who won the Nobel Prize for Literature have been considered alcoholics.