The Neural Architecture of Transformation: Bridging Dąbrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration and Hyperneuroplasticity

By Dr. Patty Gently on October 25, 2025

Bridging the Gap

Bright Insight Support Network founder and president Dr. Patricia Gently supports gifted and twice-exceptional adults in their own autopsychotherapy through identity exploration, structured reflection, and alignment with inner values. A writer, educator, and 2e adult, Dr. Patty centers depth, integrity, and complexity in all aspects of her work.

Enjoy this and other posts by @thegentleheretic on Substack!

For decades, Kazimierz Dąbrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) has offered a revolutionary framework for understanding personality development, particularly among those capable of advanced psychological growth. His observation that psychological crisis and disintegration could be catalysts for transformation rather than signs of pathology challenged conventional psychiatric thinking (Dąbrowski, 1964, 1967). Now, emerging neuroscience research on neuroplasticity may provide a biological foundation for what Dąbrowski observed clinically.

What I propose is that some nervous systems possess an enhanced capacity for fundamental personality reorganization, a quality I call hyperneuroplasticity. This enhanced capacity may be the neurological substrate underlying the developmental potential Dąbrowski described. By examining TPD through the lens of contemporary neuroscience, we can begin to explore how the interplay of overexcitabilities, the third factor, and multilevelness might reflect fundamental differences in how certain brains process, integrate, and transform experience at the deepest levels of personality structure.

Understanding Dąbrowski's Framework: A Theory of Personality Development

Dąbrowski developed TPD through decades of clinical work with individuals who experienced profound psychological crises and emerged transformed rather than diminished. Critically, TPD is a theory of personality development, not merely emotional regulation or moral reasoning (Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006). It describes how the fundamental structure and organization of the self can undergo complete reorganization toward greater authenticity and autonomy.

Central to this process is what Dąbrowski called developmental potential, and crucially, not everyone possesses it in the form Dąbrowski spoke to. Developmental potential consists of three essential components working together: overexcitabilities, specific talents and abilities, and the third factor, an autonomous inner drive toward self-perfection that cannot be reduced to either heredity or environment (Ackerman, 2009).

Dąbrowski described overexcitabilities as “heightened physiological experience of stimuli resulting from increased neuronal sensitivities” (Dąbrowski, 1964, p. 7). Those displaying overexcitability show “strength and perseveration of reactions incommensurate to their stimuli” (p. 8). He identified five forms: psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional. Importantly, Dąbrowski emphasized that overexcitabilities involve “not just psychological factors but central nervous system sensitivity” (Dąbrowski, 1967, p. 65). His notion of overexcitability is anchored to the sensitivity of the nervous system and is seen as above-average/typical responsiveness to stimuli. From a biological perspective, overexcitability has been described as a property of the central nervous system, with stronger overexcitability related to heightened physiological experience resulting from more sensitive neurons.

However, overexcitabilities alone do not drive advanced development. They provide the raw material: the heightened sensitivity and intensity. Without the third factor's autonomous force and the capacity for multilevelness, however, they may lead only to suffering or creative expression without fundamental personality transformation.

The Third Factor: Autonomous Self-Direction

The third factor is one of the most essential and least understood elements of Dąbrowski's theory. It represents an autonomous inner force that enables individuals to evaluate themselves, make conscious choices about their own development, and direct their growth independent of both genetic programming (first factor) and environmental pressures (second factor).

The third factor achieves independence through conscious differentiation and self-definition. It is what makes conscious self-examination, self-education, and self-directed psychological work possible. Dąbrowski (1967) called this process autopsychotherapy, which provides a context for understanding and helping ourselves. This work is only possible when the third factor is active and the individual can stand apart from their own patterns and consciously work toward reorganization.

In neuroplasticity terms, the third factor may represent the system’s inherent capacity for self-directed neural reorganization. Where typical neuroplasticity involves learning and adaptation driven by external demands or automatic processes, the third factor might enable intentional transformation of personality structure. The individual becomes both observer and architect of their own neural reorganization.

Without the third factor, enhanced neuroplastic capacity might enable impressive learning, creative achievement, or intense emotional experience, but not the fundamental personality transformation that Dąbrowski described.

Multilevelness: The Architecture of Internal Conflict

Equally crucial to advanced development is the concept of multilevelness or what Dąbrowski referred to as the capacity to experience the same function, feeling, or value at different developmental levels simultaneously. Dąbrowski described numerous “functions” that have different content and quality at each developmental level (Dąbrowski, 1967; Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006). Multilevelness is the ability to perceive and compare these different levels within oneself.

This capacity creates the essential internal conflict that drives positive disintegration. Without multilevelness, there is no comparison, no dissatisfaction with lower-level functioning, and no pull toward higher development. The individual who experiences anger, for example, at only one level simply experiences anger. The individual with multilevelness can simultaneously experience anger while also observing that anger from a higher vantage point, evaluating it, recognizing it as inconsistent with their emerging values, and feeling dissatisfaction with that lower-level response.

Those with heightened sensitivity and overexcitability, especially when imaginational, intellectual, and emotional overexcitability combine, “have an intense and multilevel perception of the world” (Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006, p. 72). This multilevel perception is not merely intellectual. It reflects a fundamental capacity to hold multiple frameworks simultaneously and recognize hierarchies of value within one’s own experience.

From a neuroscience perspective, multilevelness would require extraordinary neural architecture. The brain must maintain multiple representations simultaneously, dynamically shift between them, compare and evaluate across levels, and recognize patterns about its own patterns. This is meta-cognitive function at the highest level, where a person is not just thinking, but thinking about thinking, evaluating one’s own evaluations, and choosing consciously among competing values and impulses.

Hyperneuroplasticity: A Proposed Biological Framework

Hyperneuroplasticity refers to an unusually high capacity for neural adaptation, symbolic integration, and cross-system transformation. It differs from typical neuroplasticity where the all brains have a general ability to form new neural connections that allow for adaptation and learning. Where neuroplasticity describes a universal capacity for adaptation, hyperneuroplasticity describes what may be a propensity for transformation.

Like developmental potential, hyperneuroplasticity would not be universal. It may represent a specific neurological profile characterized by enhanced plasticity across brain systems involved in integration, abstraction, and self-referential processing. And as addressed in other articles and in my upcoming book, it is seen most readily in a cross-section of individuals.

Recent neuroscience provides evidence for enhanced neuroplastic capacity in populations Dąbrowski studied. Studies using theta-burst stimulation indicate excessive neuroplasticity in the form of heightened long-term potentiation in autistic adults (Weyandt et al., 2020). Gifted children exhibit larger subcortical structures and more robust white matter organization in memory-associated regions (Navas-Sánchez et al., 2013). Gifted adolescents demonstrate increased interhemispheric connectivity, while trauma research reveals that therapy can reverse hippocampal and prefrontal impairments through new neural growth (Ma et al., 2017; Nusbaum et al., 2017; Weyandt et al., 2020).

These findings suggest that certain nervous systems may possess enhanced neuroplastic capacity across sensory, cognitive, emotional, and symbolic domains. This capacity creates both vulnerability and potential. The same heightened sensitivity that enables profound learning and transformation, though, also increases susceptibility to overwhelm.

Overexcitabilities as Windows into Neuroplastic Potential

Each overexcitability can be read as a domain-specific expression of heightened neural sensitivity and learning efficiency within particular circuits. In Dąbrowski’s frame, they supply the energy and nuance that make multilevel appraisal possible; in a neural frame, they indicate where plastic change may be most available. The following is an expanded explanation of each overexcitability (OE) and how it may present neurologically:

Psychomotor OE — surplus energy, rapid speech, motor restlessness. Likely reflects enhanced responsivity and plastic changeability of motor and premotor cortices and basal ganglia loops, enabling rapid skill acquisition and fine sequencing and vulnerability to arousal dysregulation.

Sensual OE — intensified perceptual vividness and discomfort. Maps to higher gain in primary and associative sensory cortices, producing richer encoding and susceptibility to overload from unfiltered inputs.

Imaginational OE — vivid imagery, metaphor, symbolic recombination. Suggests flexible coupling within the default-mode and associative networks, supporting generativity, simulation, and counterfactual thinking.

Intellectual OE — analytic drive, problem-finding, sustained inquiry. Aligns with robust frontoparietal integration and cross-module participation (Ma et al., 2017), supporting rapid abstraction and systems reasoning.

Emotional OE — depth, empathy, value-sensitivity, complex feeling tones. Points to strong limbic-prefrontal coupling and efficient affect-cognition exchange, enabling moral salience detection and self-referential appraisal.

Crucially, no single overexcitability predicts transformation. It is their convergence, especially with intellectual, imaginational, and emotional OEs, that scaffolds multilevelness: the capacity to hold competing representations, compare them evaluatively, and experience internal tension as a cue for reorganization (Dąbrowski, 1964, 1967; Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006).

Positive Disintegration as Neuroplastic Reorganization

Before mapping Dąbrowski’s five-level trajectory to neuroscience, it helps to introduce the concept of attractor dynamics. In complex systems theory, an attractor is a stable pattern or state toward which a system tends to evolve; these can represent habits, emotional set-points, or behavioral tendencies within neural networks. The term attractor dynamics describes how such stable patterns form, destabilize, and reorganize under pressure or new information. This is a principle mirrored in neuroplasticity, where patterns of synaptic activity shift through learning or crisis.

Dąbrowski’s five-level trajectory can be interpreted neurally as staged shifts in attractor dynamics:

Level I – Primary Integration: This level represents psychological uniformity and conformity; individuals function according to social norms and biological drives without inner conflict. Neurologically, this corresponds to stable, low-complexity attractor basins where neural patterns are highly efficient but rigid, maintaining equilibrium through external reinforcement and habitual responses.

Level II – Unilevel Disintegration: Dąbrowski described this as a period of horizontal conflict-anxiety, ambivalence, and oscillation among equal-value choices without higher-level differentiation. In attractor terms, this stage reflects the competition of multiple same-level attractors vying for dominance, causing instability and vacillation in neural networks without hierarchical regulation.

Level III – Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration: Dąbrowski identified this level as the awakening of higher values and vertical appraisal. Individuals experience intense inner conflict between what is and what ought to be, often accompanied by existential questioning, guilt, and emotional upheaval. Neurologically, this corresponds to a destabilization of earlier attractor basins as emerging higher-order neural representations challenge established lower-level patterns. Increased activation in prefrontal and limbic integration networks reflects the system’s attempt to reconcile moral and emotional dissonance.

Level IV – Directed Multilevel Disintegration/ Reintegration: At this stage, conscious self-direction strengthens, and the individual deliberately works toward inner harmony and authenticity. Dąbrowski described it as the transition from spontaneous inner conflict to purposeful reorganization guided by the third factor. Neurologically, higher-order control networks, particularly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate regions, begin to reshape subcortical emotional circuits, stabilizing new attractor states through reconsolidation and metaplastic change (Weyandt et al., 2020).

Level V – Secondary Integration: This highest level represents the realization of a fully autonomous, authentic, and value-consistent personality. Here, conflicts are resolved through inner harmony, and behavior aligns with chosen ideals rather than external norms. Neurologically, this represents the emergence of high-coherence, value-aligned attractor states with flexible stability, and an integrated system capable of absorbing perturbations without losing coherence or direction.

Autopsychotherapy and Intentional Transformation

Autopsychotherapy names a process, not a technique. It is a deliberate form of attention, reflective stance, and value-guided choice acting on malleable circuits. Mechanistically, it likely recruits metacognitive control for monitoring and appraisal of thoughts and affects, selective attention and reappraisal for prefrontal shaping of limbic outputs, extinction learning and reconsolidation for updating stored emotional meanings, and practice-dependent plasticity in which repeated value-consistent actions reinforce new pathways. Evidence across contemplative practice, cognitive therapies, and skill learning shows structure and function change consistent with these mechanisms (Weyandt et al., 2020). In TPD terms, this represents the third factor operationalized.

Connection to Chronic Illness and Systemic Sensitivity

As discussed in previous articles, heightened neural gain can propagate through autonomic, endocrine, and immune axes, blurring mind-body boundaries. When developmental movement is blocked by hostile ecology, misfit environments, or unintegrated trauma, the same sensitivity that enables transformation may manifest as dysautonomia, fatigue syndromes, pain amplification, or inflammatory cascades. This framing neither psychologizes nor trivializes illness; it highlights an interoceptive/autonomic substrate that co-varies with developmental forces and may improve when conditions for safe, value-aligned reorganization are established.

Implications: A Framework for Understanding Neurodivergence

In education, clinical practice, and community systems, this framework emphasizes designing low-friction environments with autonomy, depth, and meaningful choice to engage third-factor agency. Educational contexts should assess mastery through transfer and synthesis rather than rote output. Clinically, effective support pairs stabilization—through rest, autonomic regulation, and paced exposure—with reflective practices that explicitly target meaning-making and values, measuring progress by increased multilevel discernment and value-consistent action. Within communities and systems, reducing punitive norm pressures and providing scaffolds for experimentation and narrative reconstruction during disintegration phases foster conditions for growth. The aim is not to mute intensity but to cultivate it into coherent agency. Hyperneuroplasticity supplies capacity, multilevelness provides structure, and the third factor supplies direction (Dąbrowski, 1964, 1967; Mendaglio & Tillier, 2006; Ma et al., 2017).

Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration anticipated what neuroscience now begins to affirm: certain nervous systems are built for transformation. Hyperneuroplasticity may provide the biological foundation for developmental potential, with the third factor as its governing mechanism and multilevelness as its structural expression. Intensity is not pathology. It is potential. And crisis is not failure. It may just be opportunity. The work of autopsychotherapy, engaging consciously with the nervous system’s innate capacity for reorganization, represents one of the highest forms of self-directed evolution and hyperneuroplastic potential may explain how and why it is accessible.

References

Ackerman, C. M. (2009). The essential elements of Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration and how they are connected. Roeper Review, 31(2), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783190902737607

Dąbrowski, K. (1964). Positive disintegration. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.

Dąbrowski, K. (1967). Personality-shaping through positive disintegration. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Company.

Ma, J., et al. (2017). Network attributes underlying intellectual giftedness in the developing brain. Scientific Reports, 7, 11593. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11593-3

Mendaglio, S., & Tillier, W. (2006). Dąbrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration and giftedness: Overexcitability research findings. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 30(1), 68–87. https://doi.org/10.4219/jeg-2006-246

Navas-Sánchez, F. J., et al. (2013). White matter microstructure correlates of mathematical giftedness and intelligence quotient. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 187. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00187

Nusbaum, F., et al. (2017). Hemispheric differences in white matter microstructure and enhanced brain connectivity in math-gifted adolescents: An fMRI study using mental rotation. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 11, 173. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2017.00173

Weyandt, L. L., et al. (2020). Neuroplasticity in children and adolescents in response to environmental and behavioural interventions: A systematic review. Adolescent Research Review, 5, 161–179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-019-00128-3