Lessons from Precious: Intensity of the Imagination

How much untapped power exists in our imaginations?

Last night, I saw the movie Precious (based on the novel Push by the writer and performance artist Sapphire). Because of its wide critical acclaim (the movie received four stars from Roger Ebert), I was hoping this wouldn’t be a case of going into a movie with such high expectations that my experience would inevitably fall short.

I wasn’t disappointed, in part because one aspect of the film took me by delightful surprise: the role and strength of the main character’s intensity of imagination.

What Is Intensity of the Imagination?

The theories of Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychologist and psychiatrist, have greatly informed our understanding of the social and emotional aspects of giftedness. He proposed five different kinds of intensities—his term is usually translated as “overexcitabilities”—that many people experience: intensity of the intellect, intensity of the emotions, psychomotor intensity, intensity of the senses, and intensity of the imagination. Some people have nearly all of these intensities, while, in other people, one or two seem to predominate.

The authors of Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults, explain:

“[G]ifted children are particularly prone to experience these overexcitabilities. The idea is that gifted children’s passion and intensity lead them to be so reactive that their feelings and experiences far exceed what one would typically expect. It can be compared to the difference between receiving information with rabbit-eared antennae versus a satellite dish. These children either experience or respond to stimuli in a much more intense way.”

Michael Piechowski has worked extensively on Dabrowski’s theories. In “Mellow Out” They Say: If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright, he writes that intensity of the imagination means “free play of the imagination, capacity for living in a world of fantasy, spontaneous imagery as an expression of emotional tension, and low tolerance of boredom.” He lists these ways that intensity of the imagination is manifested:

• Frequent use of image and metaphor, facility for invention and fantasy, facility for detailed visualization, poetic and dramatic perception, animistic and magical thinking

• Predilection for magic and fairy tales, creation of private worlds, imaginary companions, dramatization

• Animistic imagery, mixing truth and fiction, elaborate dreams, illusions

• Need for novelty and variety

What Precious Can Teach Us

The character of Precious not only taps into her imaginative power and intensity to deal with the circumstances around her, she also keeps this part of her life private (at least on film—I am curious to read the novel to see how it may differ). Whereas, in the course of the story, she slowly learns to trust and confide in others, we do not see her talk about this most inner part of her experience.

Who can blame her? Overexcitabilities or intensities are not always seen as positive, especially in young children who need to move to think (in the phrase of Ken Robinson) or, like the main character in Precious, whose power and drive of imagination take her away from the world around her to a completely different place, time, and reality. In very young children, intensity of the imagination is, if not always valued, at least tolerated. A five year old having an imaginary friend is seen as normal. However, a seventeen year old’s is not.

At the same time, Precious shows no embarrassment or shame regarding her flights of imaginative intensity, and this is, I think, one of the the movie’s most important messages: Our imagination can help to save us, if we allow it to. Even for children or adults in less heart-breaking circumstances than those of Precious, intensity of imagination can be used, as we learned yesterday from Jonah Lehrer, to think about our futures, which might make it more likely to delay gratification today. While I was watching the movie, I was taken back to my own teenage years, when I imagined myself doing and being in ways that I now push aside as childish fantasy, when, in the inspiring words of a reader who commented yesterday, I allowed myself “to dream and dream big.”

• Did you have a strong and vivid imaginary life as a child?

• Did it ever wane? Why or why not?

• Do you ever stop yourself now from tapping into intensity of imagination?

• Do you ever use your imagination consciously as a way to grow, or even to escape momentarily?

More Resources

Sapphire’s Story: How “Push” Became “Precious”

Katie Couric Interviews Sapphire

Overexcitabilities, by Michael Piechowski

Related Post: Intensities as Personal Energy (Psychomotor Intensity)