[8] Op. cit.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE CHILD OF VERY SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE AS A SPECIAL PROBLEM IN SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT [1]
This discussion is limited to the problems that arise from the combination of immaturity and superiority. Thus the problems considered pertain chiefly to the period in the life of the gifted child before he is twenty years of age; for the problems of the person of superior intellect tend to be less numerous as he grows older and can use his intelligence independently in gaining control of his own life.
It should be stated emphatically at the outset that children of very superior intelligence are not, as a group, socially annoying. The problems presented are those of the child, not those of society, as ordinarily understood. That this is so is sufficiently proved by the scant attention that organized society has bestowed upon the study of gifted children. Society studies that which is socially annoying. The school attends to those who give it trouble. Thus feeble-minded children ("minus deviates," as they are called in modern laboratories) have long been studied. Millions of dollars have been spent in considering them, and a voluminous literature has grown up through prolonged investigation of their maladjustments. Gifted children, on the other hand, have been studied hardly at all. Such investigations as we have are the result of intellectual interest on the part of a few educators and psychologists, who in the course of mental surveys became interested in those children who test always at the top.
THE QUALITY OF GIFTED CHILDREN
Such data as we now possess, from the scientific study of the gifted as organisms, show us that children of very superior intelligence are typically superior in other qualities also. They are superior in emotional stability and control. The old idea that the very bright "child prodigy" is likely to be nervous has been widespread, and popular fallacy inclines to mention "bright and high-strung" in the same breath. In fact, we not infrequently hear people claiming to be "high-strung" as a kind of compliment to themselves, implying that they are therefore also bright. Psychological researches of recent years have shown these ideas to be merely superstitions, founded on nothing more substantial than the human craving for a just nature that will somehow penalize the lucky and equalize biological wealth.
The researches of Terman [2], particularly, and of Hartshorne and May [3], have shown that highly intelligent children are more stable emotionally than are unselected "controls" age for age, and are superior to "controls" in their resistance to temptation. The researches of Burt [4], and of Healy and Bronner [5], show among delinquents few children of the high degree of intelligence with which this paper deals.
The studies cited do not, of course, exhaust the recent scientific literature, but they do fairly exemplify the results of concrete, impersonal investigation, as distinguished from the results of popular "wishful thinking." The child who tests above 130 IQ [6] is typically (though of course not invariably) large and strong for his age, healthier than the average, contributes far less than his quota to juvenile misbehavior as socially defined, and is emotionally stable in superior degree.
Starting with these facts as to generally superior adjustment, let us inquire whether there are, therefore, no special perplexities in the life of a gifted child. Is it possible that a child may vary as far in a "plus" direction from the average performance of his contemporaries as an imbecile varies in a "minus" direction, and find no special problems created for him by this wide difference in mental power between himself and the average child of his age?