By Dr. Fabiano de Abreu Agrela Rodrigues
Psychology, as a field of study and practice, was born with the goal of understanding human behavior in its most diverse manifestations. However, paradoxically, the traditional training structure of Psychology tends to repel, rather than welcome, gifted individuals. In other words: truly gifted psychologists are rare, not because of a lack of interest in the mind, but because of the epistemological limitations of the training itself.
Giftedness, especially when of an intellectual nature, requires an environment that promotes high abstraction, divergent reasoning, encouragement of interdisciplinarity and creative freedom. The undergraduate degree in Psychology, on the contrary, is anchored in pillars of normativity, conceptual repetition and historical validation of generalist models. The consequence is a dissonance: a system that trains good technicians in human behavior, but that drives away the more complex minds that could reformulate their own paradigms.
The first obstacle lies in the normative and clinical-pathologizing bias of the training. Most courses still operate based on diagnostic manuals, behavioral typologies, and average population constructs. The gifted individual, by definition, is not average. He or she is the statistical exception who thinks in systems, not in fixed categories. When forced to memorize classifications that do not reflect his or her own mental structure, this individual is subjected to a process of cognitive self-sabotage.
The second factor is methodological. The pedagogy of psychology is linear and not very plastic, or is it neuroplastic? It encourages repetition, fidelity to authors, and the acceptance of established theories. For the gifted individual, who has hyperconnectivity between cortical areas and a neurobiological drive to explore hypotheses, this structure is limiting. With no room for creative transgression or to propose alternative models, such as the example of DWRI Intelligence itself, which I developed based on functional brain mapping and genomic integration, many drop out of the course or become silent subversives within the profession.
Not only that, there is an implicit prejudice against high intellect within part of academic psychology. High IQ is confused with pride, and critical thinking with arrogance. This creates a paradox: a science focused on humans that rejects what most characterizes the human mind in its fullness, the ability to transcend patterns. This is why most of the gifted psychologists I know were trained outside the traditional circuit, or migrated to hybrid areas such as neuroscience, philosophy of mind or artificial intelligence. And, I would have to do a study on this, but most of the few I know, both gifted and psychologists, are autistic. It must be because the combination of giftedness and autism, especially in the mild spectrum, favors analytical hyperfocus, the search for human patterns and the need to understand behavior as a way to compensate for difficulties in social interaction, which naturally attracts them to psychology.
Another neglected point is the impact of emotional and social hypersensitivity, often associated with giftedness. The university experience, with its informal competition, group validations and demand for conformity, can be hostile to the sensitive and analytical profile of the gifted. This incompatibility between advanced cognition and an environment of low intellectual density drives away talents that could revolutionize contemporary psychology.
Finally, the epistemology of the field itself is still in its infancy in integrating with cutting-edge areas such as genomics, neurobiology, epigenetics and artificial intelligence. It is in this convergence that the future of mental understanding lies, and it is in this territory that the gifted naturally settle. When psychology neglects this movement, it automatically marginalizes its most advanced potential thinkers.
Therefore, gifted psychologists are rare not for lack of vocation, but because the path to professional fulfillment in this area is tortuous, ill-adjusted to their brain functioning. And as long as psychology continues to operate as a closed system, based on fixed averages and protocols, it will continue to drive away those who think outside the normative spectrum, precisely those who have the greatest potential to transform it.
Psychology urgently needs to open itself up to exception, complexity and genius. Not as something to be treated, but as something to be understood and integrated. Only then can it be a truly human science, in all its possibilities.
