Lives of Positive Disintegration

Abstract

Cases of advanced development are necessary to understand the theory of positive disintegration. Individual cases are also a test of the theory. Examples of advanced development suggest that Level V may not be as stratospheric as we tend to think.

Full text

Lives of Positive Disintegration1
Michael M. Piechowski
Michael M. Piechowski, PhD, collaborated with Kazimierz Dąbrowski
while at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is
Professor Emeritus of Northland College. A Senior Fellow at the Institute
for Educational Advancement and faculty member for the Yunasa summer
camp for gifted youth, he is the author of a number of papers on the theory
of positive disintegration and of Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could:
Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright, coeditor with Susan
Daniels of Living with Intensity, and coeditor with Christine Neville and
Stephanie S. Tolan of Off the Charts: Asynchrony and the Gifted Child.
Email: spirgif@earthlink.net
ABSTRACT: Cases of advanced development are necessary to understand
the theory of positive disintegration. Individual cases are also a test of the
theory. Examples of advanced development suggest that Level V may not
be as stratospheric as we tend to think.
KEYWORDS: advanced development, positive disintegration, secondary
integration, Eleanor Roosevelt, Etty Hillesum, Peace Pilgrim, Bret Dofek
Dąbrowski developed his theory of positive disintegration to
explain a certain kind of development, which he called multilevel
development. But in order to know what this development is, it is not
enough to know only the theory and the terms of the theory. We also
need to know where it came from and what it is about; we need to
know lives and cases of multilevel development. Cases can be found
that illustrate what the theory is about, but there are also cases that
challenge the theory (Grant, 1990, 1996). Those of you who know the
theory and know about Level V most likely think about it as something
exceedingly rare and stratospheric, but a study of exemplars of
advanced development shows that maybe the high peaks are not that far
away. And then there is the task of filling in parts that the theory left
out. We have to look elsewhere for knowledge that can fill those gaps,
like Bandura’s ways of circumventing our conscience or Perry’s levels
of intellectual and ethical development (Bandura, 2016; Perry, 1998;
Piechowski, 2014, 2017). Psychological work at an advanced level is
going on but we don’t always know about it, so when you do know
about such work, bring it to light. One example is Robert Enright’s
(2012) research on forgiveness that represents a high level of empathy.
Fifty Years Ago
Fifty years ago I was driving with Dąbrowski to California to the
Esalen Institute in Big Sur located on the coast. Esalen was founded
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1Based on a keynote at the Dabrowski Congress, Naperville, IL, in 2018.

in the 1960s to support work for exploring human consciousness, a
forerunner of transpersonal psychology. Dąbrowski was invited for a
whole week of sessions and seminars on his theory, but he was often
unsure of his English so he asked me to present the theory there. At
that time we were working on Mental Growth Through Positive
Disintegration (Dąbrowski, 1970).
At Esalen I delivered the theory as a student delivers what the
teacher taught him. Does it mean that I knew the theory? No, of
course not. Learning the theory truly began for me when the
Multilevelness Project got started with the goal of selecting cases
that would illustrate the levels from a great number of
autobiographies that people were asked to write. In this project
Dexter Amend and Marlene King were Dąbrowski’s assistants. The
cases were selected and the material was given to me to analyze. I
looked at it, thought about it, and started chopping it up into little
sections. In each section I tried to identify the terms of the theory—
the dynamisms and the overexcitabilities. Then, I tried to reconstitute
the levels. Each level has a characteristic profile of a constellation of
dynamisms, except Level I that has none. Level II has three; Levels
III and IV have more (see Mendaglio, 2017, and Appendix). When
these instances of dynamisms were collected, they fairly closely
recreated the level profiles. I mention this because I had to identify
the dynamisms and overexcitabilities in what people wrote about
their own experience—I was attaching terms of the theory to
expressions of experience (Piechowski, 2008).
The whole collection of autobiographies had cases representing
Levels I through III, but did not have cases of Level IV, so Dąbrowski
chose the French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the
author of The Little Prince, to represent Level IV. But we did not have
a good example of Level V. Some years later I was introduced to the
life of Eleanor Roosevelt when I was studying self-actualization.
Maslow nominated her to his roll of self-actualizing people and I was
interested. She wrote a book You Learn by Living, and if we didn’t
have this book we wouldn’t know much about her inner life, which
was one of growth and inner transformation (Roosevelt, 1960;
Piechowski, 1990; Piechowski & Tyska, 1982). Gradually additional
cases started to appear. Tom Brennan did a dissertation on people of
advanced level and then Anna Mróz did a profound dissertation on
people at an advanced level of development (Brennan & Piechowski,
1991; Mróz, 2008). Other advanced cases appeared, like Etty
Hillesum’s diaries (Hillesum, 1981/1996, 1986/2002), Peace Pilgrim’s
talks (Peace Pilgrim, 1982; Piechowski, 2009), Nixon’s mystics
(Nixon, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2010), a portrait of a teacher of the gifted
(Frank, 2006), and cases of moral leadership (Cathcart, 2015).
Theory of Positive Disintegration in a Nutshell
The theory of positive disintegration is a difficult theory, very
complex, but in essence very simple because the dynamisms are
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processes of self-evaluation (Figure 1). Every dynamism in Level III
that you can bring to mind is a way of looking at oneself, of
examining oneself that becomes a dynamism of self-correction and
fundamental change in personality. Dynamisms of Level IV carry out
positive action of the process of inner restructuring. Driving the
process is the will to do it.
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Eleanor Roosevelt
Figure 1
The Process of Self-Evaluation

Early Characteristics
If you read Lash’s (1971) Eleanor and Franklin or the three
extraordinary volumes of Cook’s (1992a, 1992b, 2016) Eleanor
Roosevelt, you know that she did not have a very happy childhood.
She had physical vigor, emotional awareness and sensitivity, capacity
for intense feelings, vivid imagination, curiosity and alertness to
events around her, eagerness to learn, and strong will. When she was
about five years old, her father took her on a climb on Vesuvius; she
was painfully tired, and she fought her tears in order not to
disappoint him. Already at that age, her will was strong. One
recognizes here the psychomotor, imaginational, intellectual, and
emotional overexcitabilities. Sensual was also present in her
aesthetic sensitivity and appreciation of the French cuisine.
A Need to Belong
Eleanor Roosevelt lost her mother when she was eight, but did
not grieve her. She lost her father, who doted on her, when she was
nine. She cherished his letters to her and always kept them close. Her
grandmother, who was rather stern, was raising her and her two little
brothers, but Eleanor did not feel it was her home. She was sent to
Allenswood, a school for upper class girls in England, and that’s
where her intellect was nurtured; she gained self-confidence and self-
worth. She was not allowed to continue past her third year though
she very much wanted to. It was her time to enter society, as her
family was one of the upper crust 400 in New York. Again she felt
awkward and did not feel she had a home where she belonged.
How Does Positive Disintegration Start?
In 1895 Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin Roosevelt, who
prized her mind. The United States entered WWI in 1917 and she
was part of the war effort, working with a variety of people, and
taking in what was going on in the world. Because she so much
wanted to belong, she tried to assimilate: “I was simply absorbing
the personalities of those about me and letting their tastes and
interests dominate me” (Roosevelt, 1937, p. 162). What does
Dąbrowski’s theory say about what was motivating her? She was
motivated by the second factor—being always affected by the
opinion of others and trying to please them. But if someone has a
strong developmental potential, that is potential for multilevel
growth, the second factor will not work the same way as in people
who just want to please others and get along. Gradually Eleanor
Roosevelt began to rebel against the unquestioned self-confident
beliefs of her class, a clear example of positive maladjustment:
“They all in their sureness and absolute judgment on people and
affairs going on in the world make me want to squirm and turn
bolshevik” (Lash, 1971, p. 245). (You may remember that was the
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time of the Russian revolution and the term Bolshevik was in the
news.) This signals a turning point, the start of spontaneous
multilevel disintegration—“far less sure of my own beliefs and
methods of action” (Roosevelt, 1937, p. 259). Far less sure and yet
beginning to gain in confidence:
I learned then that practically no one in the world is entirely
bad or entirely good, and that motives are often more
important than actions. . . . Out of these contacts with human
beings during the war I became a more tolerant person, far
less sure of my own beliefs and methods of action, but I
think more determined to try for certain ultimate objectives.
I had gained some assurance about my ability to run things
and the knowledge that there is joy in accomplishing a good
job. I knew more about the human heart. (Roosevelt, 1937,
pp. 259–260)
The Courage to Know Oneself
The ultimate objectives were not just to be a wife to Franklin and
his political career. In You Learn by Living (Roosevelt, 1960), she
offers insight into her inner work. One of the principles she stressed
was the courage to know oneself. Look at the terms she uses: “along
the line of development,” “personal development,” “we shape
ourselves,” “inner adjustments,” “to progress inwardly,” “harsh self-
knowledge,” “readjustment is a private revolution,” “tortures of the
damned,” and “painfully acquired self-discipline.”
If you resonate with multilevel disintegration, you would be
drawn to what she says, which is inner transformation through
subject-object in oneself and self-awareness:
You must try to understand truthfully what makes you do
things or feel things. Until you have been able to face the
truth about yourself you cannot be really understanding in
regard to what happens to other people. But it takes courage
to face yourself and to acknowledge what motivates you in
the things you do. (Roosevelt, 1960, p. 63)
Self-knowledge develops slowly and it is apt to come in flashes
of sudden insight—what is Dąbrowski’s term for that? Prise de
conscience de soi-même or subject-object in oneself, among other
things. Then she says that “An important part of self-knowledge is
that it gives one a better realization of the inner strength that can be
called upon, of which one may be quite unaware” (Roosevelt, 1960,
p. 65).
This self-knowledge develops slowly. You cannot attain it all
at once simply by stopping to take stock of your personal
assets and liabilities. In a way, one is checked by all that
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protective veiling one hangs over the real motives so that it is
difficult to get at the truth. But if you keep trying honestly
and courageously, even when the knowledge makes you
wince, even when it shocks you and you rebel against it, it is
apt to come in flashes of sudden insight. (Roosevelt, 1960,
pp. 63–64, emphasis added)
Self-Discipline
What Eleanor Roosevelt says about self-discipline is a clear
example of the dynamism of self-control:
We have all the time there is. The problem is: How shall we
make the best use of it? There are three ways in which I have
been able to solve that problem: first, by achieving an inner
calm so that I can work undisturbed by what goes on around
me; second, by concentrating on the thing in hand; third, by
arranging a routine pattern for my days . . . remaining
flexible enough to allow for the unexpected. There is a
fourth point which, perhaps, plays a considerable part in the
use of my time. I try to maintain a general pattern of good
health so that I have the best use of my energy whenever I
need it. (Roosevelt, 1960, p. 25–27, emphasis added)
Methods of Coping With Conflict
and Emotional Pain
Eleanor Roosevelt coped with conflict and emotional pain with
her own methods. There was a lot of emotional pain in her life, not
only because of her father but also from her husband. Ten years into
their marriage, Eleanor Roosevelt discovered by accident that
Franklin had an affair with her social secretary. She was utterly
devastated and she was prepared to divorce him. But Franklin’s
mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt, said a divorce would ruin his
political ambitions. Eleanor and Franklin developed a partnership.
One of her methods of coping with heartbreak was absorption in
work. Her other method was coping by transcending the conflict.
She discovered that she could make friends of people who were
unfriendly to her.
Readjustment is a kind of private revolution. Each time you
learn something new you must readjust the whole framework
of your knowledge. It seems to me that one is forced to make
inner and outer adjustments all one’s life. The process never
ends. (Roosevelt, 1960, p. 78)
One of the most remarkable of Eleanor Roosevelt’s methods was
contemplating an image of self-mastery beyond pain and beyond
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joy—a beautiful example of autopsychotherapy. She found such an
image at the Adams Memorial in the Rock Creek Cemetery in
Washington, DC—a sculpted figure inspired by Kannon, the
Buddhist embodiment of compassion. The artist, Augustus Saint-
Gaudens, intended it to express a serenity and divine peace. This is
what Eleanor Roosevelt said about it many years later to a friend:
Sometimes I’d be very unhappy and sorry for myself. When
I was feeling that way, if I could manage it, I’d come out
here, alone, and sit and look at that woman. And I would
always come away somehow feeling better. And stronger.
I’ve been here many, many times. (Hickok, 1962, pp. 91–92)
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Adams Memorial
The following excerpt illustrates the work of the third factor, the
executive power of choice and decision in one’s inner life. Here it is
combined with a will, no longer divided but unified. Dabrowski’s
term for it is disposing and directing center at a high level.
The encouraging thing is that every time you must meet a
situation, though you may think at the time it is an
impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned,
once you have met it and lived through it you find that

forever after you are freer than you were ever before. If you
can live through that you can live through anything. You
gain strength, courage, and confidence . . . You must do the
thing you think you cannot do. (Roosevelt, 1960, pp. 29, 30)
Eleanor Roosevelt was fond of a line from American journalist
David Grayson: “Back of tranquility lies always conquered
unhappiness” (Cook, 1992a, p. 337). She also learned nonpossessive
love—empathy combined with responsibility.
The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so
often to let go of those we love, so they can do
things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with
an even richer, deeper love. (Lash, 1982, p. 499)
The Inner Ideal
Eleanor Roosevelt had an inner ideal that clearly represents what
Dąbrowski called personality ideal. Very few of her friends knew
what her inner guiding light truly was. In 1940 she wrote a book The
Moral Basis of Democracy in which she said that the necessary
condition of progress toward true democracy is for everyone to
follow a Christ-like way of life—that is, any kind of a high spiritual
ideal. For example, she wrote that “government administration are
only the results of the way people progress inwardly, and that the
basis of success in a Democracy is really laid down by the people. It
will progress only as their own personal development goes forward”
(Roosevelt, 1940, p 62). She also wrote:
If we believe in Democracy and that it is based on the
possibility of a Christ-like way of life, then everybody must
force himself to think through his own basic philosophy, his
own willingness to live up to it and to help carry it out in
everyday life. (p. 81)
Here we have a very clear expression of the inner ideal that
Dąbrowski defined as the highest dynamism—the dynamism of
secondary integration.
Eleanor Roosevelt had her own evening prayer that she carried
with her. The idea in the line “keep us at tasks too hard for us” makes
it remarkable:
Our Father, who has set restlessness in our hearts and made
us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid
us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from
base content and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us at
tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for
strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make
us sure of the good we cannot see and the hidden good in the
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world. Open our eyes to the loveliness men hide from us
because we do not try to understand them. Save us from
ourselves and show us a vision of the world made new.
(Roosevelt & Brough, 1977, pp. 151–152)
An extended description of Eleanor Roosevelt as a self-
actualizing person, her development, and its examination in the light
of the theory of positive disintegration, can be found in Piechowski
and Tyska (1982) and Piechowski (1990).
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Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman living in the
Netherlands. She was a student of Russian literature and a
housekeeper to an older man. Her parents’ personalities were poorly
matched. The father was a scholar and headmaster of a high school.
The mother was Jewish, a difficult person given to emotional
outbursts, whose family fled Russia. There was frequent conflict.
One brother, a highly gifted pianist, was suffering from psychiatric
problems; a second brother was hospitalized several times for mental
illness. Her childhood lacked the consistency and order of a well-
functioning family. She was 27 in 1941 when she started her diary.
She was enjoying life, had passionate love affairs, and then in the
midst of all this, a sudden realization struck her:
So many inhibitions, so much fear of letting go, of allowing
things to pour out of me, and yet this is what I must do if I
am ever to give my life a reasonable and satisfactory
purpose. . . . I am accomplished in bed, just about seasoned
enough I should think to be counted among the better lovers,

and love does indeed suit me to perfection, and yet it
remains a mere trifle, set apart from what is truly essential,
and deep inside me something is still locked away. . . . I
seem to be a match for most of life’s problems, and yet deep
down something like a tightly wound ball of twine binds me
relentlessly and at times I am nothing more or less than a
miserable, frightened creature, despite the clarity with which
I can express myself. (Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 4)
What have we here? Isn’t it a spontaneous awakening into multilevel
disintegration? What dynamisms do you see here? Astonishment,
dislike maybe, inferiority, dissatisfaction with oneself. And also
hierarchization and disquietude.
Etty Hillesum started her inner work with the help of a man who
was a very unusual therapist—he wrestled with his patients—highly
intuitive, a warm person, and in full possession of himself. She
sought to give her life a “reasonable and satisfactory purpose.” It was
probably his suggestion that she begin a diary. At the start of the
work she said “I have just become a little stronger again. I can fight
things out within myself” (Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 62). She uses
almost the same words as did Eleanor Roosevelt: “It is a slow and
painful process, this striving after true inner freedom” (Hillesum,
1986/2002, p. 134). And then her very personal spiritual life began:
“There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God.
Sometimes I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the
well and God is buried beneath. Then He must be dug out again”
(Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 91). The God within becomes her guiding
light—her personality ideal.
From Etty Hillesum we get an inner diary so rich with the work
she was doing within herself that I am trying to entice you to read it.
It exists in an abridged edition centered on her inner growth (376
pages including letters, Hillesum, 1981/1996) and in a complete one
(800 pages, Hillesum, 1986/2002). It is an exceptionally detailed and
very absorbing account of the toil, struggles, and triumphs of inner
transformation toward inner peace. She was puzzled by the process
and understandably so. We grow up with much advice and
exhortation to be good, but little light on how to fight our inner
battles to become good.
I’d like to know how I did it, how I managed to break free. . . .
And the lesson I learned is this: thought doesn’t help; what
you need is not causal explanations but will and a great deal
of mental energy. (Hillesum, 1986/2002, pp. 62–63)
In the passage above we can identify the third factor and her will—
her disposing and directing center moving to a higher level.
Because it was WWII, concentration camps were filling with
Jews and other people and everyone hated the Germans, a natural
response. She faced the problem of hatred directly.
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Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large
areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace and to
reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us,
the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.
(Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 535–536)
She realized with absolute clarity that hating the Germans would
make her just like them. With determined inner work she overcame
the impulse to hate: “Each of us must turn inward and destroy in
himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And
remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still
more inhospitable” (Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 529).
And then a remarkable thing happened to her. Though she was
Jewish and Jews do not kneel to pray, Etty Hillesum began
spontaneously to feel the impulse to kneel.
A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body,
or rather it is as if my body had been meant and made for the
act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude,
kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply
bowed, hands before my face. It has become a gesture
embedded in my body. (Hillesum, 1986/2002, p. 320)
The impulse to kneel in a moment of connection with the divine is
not unique to Etty, but it suggests that it comes from outside the
person. It can be seen as a good illustration of what William James
argued is the change in a person brought about by the energy that
flows from the spiritual universe into this one (James, 1902/1936).
Etty Hillesum volunteered to help people at Westerbork, a transit
camp from which the inmates were being transported on a regular
schedule to concentration camps in Poland, though that was not
known at the time. Eventually she became an inmate, too, as did her
parents and her brothers. They all died in Auschwitz. Because she
overcame hatred and found inner peace, she assisted the inmates and
lifted their spirits. Her life of prayer and her inner ideal inspired her
with profound empathy and sense of responsibility. On July 3, 1943,
she wrote from Westerbork to her friends:
The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when
the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often
walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And
then time and again, it soars straight from my heart . . . the
feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day
we shall be building a whole new world.” (Hillesum,
1986/2002, p. 616)
Woodhouse (2009) describes Etty Hillesum’s family of origin
and her life prior to starting the diary and follows with a close look at
her inner transformation. Spaltro (1991) and Piechowski (1992),
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Born to a family of poor farmers in New Jersey, Mildred Norman
had a happy childhood: “I had a woods to play in, a creek to swim in,
and room to grow” (Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 1). She had one brother
and one sister. She was a precocious child with an inquisitive mind
and could recite long poems at age three. She learned to read at age
four or five before starting school. She taught herself to play the
piano over the course of one summer. She was a dare devil in her
youth and liked to dive off a bridge to do a somersault, jack knife,
and the swan dive. In high school she was a bright, articulate, strong-
willed student. Academically she maintained the highest grade point
average and headed the debating team. Together with her high level
of energy, there was plentiful evidence of her high developmental
potential (Piechowski, 2009). She joined the pacifist movement and
when she got the inspiration to walk for peace, she changed her name
to Peace Pilgrim.
It was January 1, 1953, during the Korean War and at the height
of the McCarthy era, when Peace Pilgrim started to walk for peace
wearing a tunic with a sign that read on the front “Peace Pilgrim”
and on the back “25,000 Miles On Foot for Peace.” In this way, she
indicated that those who were interested could approach her and then
she could talk to them about the ways of peace—as if to say, I don’t
have to proselytize, I am just a witness. She carried nothing with her
except writing paper, a pencil, a few stamps, and a toothbrush. She
each from a different angle, trace her inner development in the light
of the theory of positive disintegration. Bosma (2014) traced the
expansion of her consciousness as developing sensitivity.
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depended on others to give without asking. This is what she said
when she came to this point:
I became increasingly uncomfortable about having so much
while my brothers and sisters were starving. Finally I had to
find another way. The turning point came when, in
desperation and out of a very deep seeking for a meaningful
way of life, I walked all one night through the woods. I came
to a moonlit glade and prayed. I felt a complete willingness,
without any reservations, to give my life—to dedicate my
life—to service. “Please, use me. Take all of me!” I prayed
to God. And a great peace came over me. . . . I tell you, it’s a
point of no return. After that, you can never go back to
completely self-centered living. (Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 7)
If you write to Friends of Peace Pilgrim, you can get a DVD of
her talks. You can watch her giving a talk and drawing the graph of
her inner development (Figure 4).
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Phase 1 indicates the ups and downs of ordinary living, or in her
words “the ups and downs of emotion within self-centered nature”
(Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 137). It’s all one level here—it is unilevel
living. Phase 2 is the turning point described in the excerpt above.
Phase 3 is where the struggle between the lower or self-centered
nature and the higher self begins, what Dąbrowski called the conflict
between “what is” and “what ought to be.” The interesting thing is
that in this phase the ups and downs have an upward slant and are
much greater than in ordinary living because the awareness of the

contrast between the higher and lower self is so much greater.
She said:
During the spiritual growing up period the inner conflict can
be more or less stormy. Mine was about medium. The self-
centered nature is a very formidable enemy and it struggles
fiercely to retain its identity. . . . It knows the weakest spots
of your armor and attempts a confrontation when one is least
aware. (Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 8)
This graph is a wonderful representation of inner growth that fits so
well with Dąbrowski’s theory. It illustrates the multilevel process
through Levels III, IV, and V.
Eventually at point 4 a higher level of consciousness arrived with
the first experience of inner peace, and then she was in inner peace,
out of inner peace, in inner peace, and out of inner peace.
Then in the midst of the struggle there came a wonderful
mountaintop experience—the first glimpse of what the life
of inner peace was like. . . . I knew before that all human
beings are one. But now I knew also a oneness with the rest
of creation. . . . And most wonderful of all, a oneness with
that which permeates all and binds all together and gives life
to all. A oneness with that which many would call God. . . . I
have never felt separate since. (Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 21;
italics in original)
In phase 5, inner peace was with her more and more steadily and
at point 6 came a morning when she knew that inner peace was hers
for good, but there is nothing static about it. Though it is hard to
imagine, inner growth continues together with a growing expansion
of consciousness. She gives an idea of what inner peace is.
There is a feeling of always being surrounded by all of the
good things, like love, and peace, and joy. It seems like a
protective surrounding, and there is an unshakeableness
within which takes you through any situation you may need
to face. . . . There is a calmness and a serenity and
unhurriedness—no more striving or straining. (Peace
Pilgrim, 1982, pp. 22–23)
Peace Pilgrim gave meaning to her life by dedicating herself to
service and work for peace. Her driving dynamisms were empathy
(especially when she prayed for healing) and responsibility. Her
work of inner transformation started when she turned away from
self-centered living: “I begin to live to give what I could, instead of
to get what I could, and I entered a new and wonderful world”
(Peace Pilgrim, 1982, p. 7). From the image she gave us, we cannot
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say whether the multilevel dynamisms of the spontaneous Level III
were distinctly operating. Rather we see a strong determination and
powerfully focused will to live according to her ideal. We could say
that with the first glimpse of inner peace she reached Level IV. And
then she only slipped out of it occasionally—secondary integration
becoming firmly established. Her experience of oneness gives us a
glimpse of the power of her guiding force within—a unified
personality ideal. She encountered violent men several times and met
them with compassion. A teenager attacked her with fists and then
stopped, bewildered, and said “You don’t fight back!” Walking at
night on a highway when it was getting cold, she accepted the offer
of a stranger to spend the night in his car; in the morning when she
woke up, he confessed that he had had designs on her but could not
touch her. Perhaps her compassion was like a force field of such
strength that it neutralized any negative intent.
Peace Pilgrim’s example poses the question of what standard
should guide decisions regarding secondary integration in other
cases. What she called inner peace is a state so profoundly anchored
in a higher dimension of spiritual reality (just recall her descriptions
of unshakeableness, unending energy, oneness with all creation and
all human beings)—just as it was for Christ and Saint Francis,
Buddha and Yogananda—that it goes beyond Dąbrowski’s
requirements for attaining secondary integration (Piechowski, 2009).
An extended description of Peace Pilgrim’s development and its
examination in the light of the theory of positive disintegration can
be found in Piechowski (2009).
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Michael M. Piechowski
Bret Dofek

I met Bret Dofek thanks to Frank Falk. At the time, Bret Dofek
was writing the story of his life and asked Frank’s help because
writing in English was difficult for him. Eventually he finished his
book and got it printed: Unconquerable Soul: One Man’s Thorny
Path to Freedom. The book describes how he achieved inner peace
under the most crushing circumstances.
Bret Dofek was born in Czechoslovakia in a close-knit family of
five. He was particularly close to his older brother. Czechoslovakia
was taken over by the Germans in 1938–39. After the war the
country came under communist rule. As a teenager, Bret Dofek saw
clearly that communism was evil. He sought ways to fight it. He
started carrying documents for the underground. When he was 19, he
was caught and imprisoned. “I left everything I loved—my parents,
my brothers, my sister, my native country—and broke through the
sealed border to join the resistance in the hopes of restoring my
country’s freedom” (Dofek, 2010, p. 18).
He was charged with espionage and sentenced to 13 years of
prison, which was later extended to 15 for his resistance: “I remained
someone with a stubborn will that they could not break nor tear
apart” (Dofek, 2010, p. 80). Not long after Bret Dofek’s
imprisonment, his father and brother were also arrested and
imprisoned. The prison was very, very harsh. The guards were brutal.
Political prisoners were mixed with hardcore criminals. He was
placed in solitary confinement more than once, for up to four weeks.
One summer, he was squeezed with 14 others into a bunker.
There was not enough room in the bunker for all of us. It had
a concrete floor and walls. The ceiling consisted of metal
beams covered with tar. The heavy metal doors were
windowless and, therefore, allowed no outside light or air.
We could hardly make out the contour of the person standing
next to us. Half of us rested on the floor while the other half
stood. The air was not fit to breathe. Drops of tar leaked
from the roof and found a home in our hair and on our
clothing. Every third morning they brought us a little coffee
with a crust of brown bread. Showered throughout the day
with drops of asphalt from above, we suffered through two
weeks in hot summer. (Dofek, 2010, p. 61)
Bret Dofek and two others organized an escape. They were
caught. They were forced to stand still three days and two nights
between barb wires in just their underwear as punishment for trying
to escape. “The guards were ordered to shoot me for trying to escape
if I moved my hands, sat, or made the slightest motion” (Dofek, 2010,
p. 66). Then he had to endure two weeks of solitary confinement.
He was forced to work in uranium mines without any protection.
While other prisoners kept themselves going by hating the guards
and the communist system, Bret Dofek realized that holding on to
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hatred would mean losing his dignity and integrity. How did he know
this at that young age? He said that it took several years of intense
struggle to not give in. Through a deep exploration of his inner self,
he found inner peace. He said,
My own struggles, through fifteen years of incarceration
within Russian prisons, taught me that the underlying cause
of all human misery and suffering can be found within our
inner being. . . . we are, indeed, like fish tangled in a net. . . .
fashioned by the self-destructive elements of our own
personalities.” (Dofek, 2010, p. 12)
The communists tried hard to break him down because he
resisted all their efforts to crush his spirit—so they tried and tried,
even extending his sentence. Other prisoners were released but not
him and a few others. It was fifteen years from the time he was taken
as a youngster to a man of 35, in broken health, until he was
released. It took four years of his mother’s care to regain some of his
health. Eventually he met a woman and got married. By a clever ruse
he was able to get his wife and child out of Czechoslovakia to
Austria and eventually they all made it to the United States.
A few passages from his book illustrate how Bret Dofek, being
totally unprepared for the prison and the onslaught of communist
propaganda, collected his inner strength to resist depression,
despondency, and feeling powerless. He developed his own mental
training, which included prayer: “The three essential components of
self-therapy: spirituality, mental exercise, and exploring our
potential” (Dofek, 2010, p. 19). By spirituality he means prayer that
connects with a higher power and the inner self; mental exercise is
the practice of eliminating all negative thought; exploring our
potential consists of discovering that the pressure of external
conditions can be met with counter-pressure of our own self. It took
years to hone this practice.
During my years in communist prisons, I was helpless,
powerless, and defenseless. I desperately sought those
aspects of my potential that were, like my physical body,
buried. I desperately sought to understand my own human
nature and the role of my spirit in helping me to maintain my
physical and mental health, even while in prison. . . . For a
long time, I was unable to avoid confusion and reconnect
with my own internal process of development, even when I
was trying as hard as possible. It was a constant struggle. But
through mental training, I was gradually able to explore my
potential, gradually able to accept the internal guidance of
my spirit, and gradually able to hold firmly to an important,
fundamental set of positive values in my mind. (Dofek,
2010, p. 20)
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Michael M. Piechowski

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In essence Bret Dofek is describing his struggle between the lower
and the higher self. He makes a brilliant point that the “enemy”—the
lower self—is invisible, which makes fighting it much harder than if
it were clearly visible.
I developed a deep relationship with my own soul. I learned
how to determine, through deep reflection, what was healthy
and what was not. I prayed to God daily for my “spiritual
bread.” I practiced deep relaxation to dispose of anything
negative. Whenever a momentary lapse of depression or
hopelessness disturbed my inner peace and threatened to
drain my energy into a negative, vulnerable direction, I made
a conscious effort to adjust my thinking. When I struggled to
regain my equilibrium, my misleading and self-destructive
thoughts were rooted out and replaced with focused
perspective and purpose. . . . Years of practicing the inner
discipline of concentration, years of following the guiding
light of spirituality, allowed me to compete in the field of
psychological warfare. I began to notice an inability to hate
even the vicious prison guards. My developmental process
would not be trapped by these destructive elements.
Amazingly, my feelings were under control in any situation.
My soul carried no scars. Usually I felt stronger after
spending days in a dark hole without food or drink.
Everything within me was in harmony and everything in the
world was in harmony with me. I was indescribably happy to
be part of life and to understand it. There was no need to
search for inner peace because it was right there, within me.
(Dofek, 2010, pp. 99–100)
Though young, unprepared, and without a mentor, by self-
reflection and remarkable determination and will, Bret Dofek
achieved inner peace under the harshest conditions of extreme stress.
He wrote, “It is difficult to explain that the years spent between
prison walls were not years of suffering. . . . These years were spent
belonging to a family of two hundred brave and wise men. (Dofek,
2010, p. 73)
I lived those years of my life with pure inner joy. . . . Each
day, I washed away temptations [i.e., to give in to a weaker
side of himself] with my mental exercise practices and deep
relaxation, I released and disposed of stress, becoming
refreshed and ready to confront the next day’s events. . . . I
never felt exhausted or tired while in Leopoldov [highest
security prison]. . . . Some might say I had probably reached
the state of “nirvana.” There was no feeling of spiritual
ecstasy, but I achieved contentment, inner harmony, and
peace of mind through my actions. (Dofek, 2010, p. 75–76)

And yet despite this state of contentment, he was not free of sorrow
and feelings of loneliness. He wrote:
Often I cried in my soul. I had received no news from my
mother for many years. According to a prison standard, I did
not deserve any news. It took only one small sign of
reconciliation—going along, working harder, or signing
some communist document—and I could receive a letter
from my family. I could not do it. No matter how painful the
consequences, I continued to stand up for my beliefs.
(Dofek, 2010, p. 80)
Though he tried, not being able to share his mental training with
others made him feel lonely. “My attempts at transferring my inner
vision, peace, and spirituality to even my closest friends were
unsuccessful” (Dofek, 2010, p. 80).
Despite his limited education, Bret Dofek sounds like Hillesum
when she wrote of the deep pit within herself from which God has to
be dug up again and again:
The majority of society—eighty-five percent—have some
belief in a higher power, some belief in God. However, it is
the communication with the inner self and God that is the
weak point. The soul is still hidden somewhere behind the
high walls of lethargy and monotony, behind heavy deposits
of negative, deteriorating energy that come from the weak,
vulnerable side of one’s potential. (Dofek, 2010, p. 97)
We get a glimpse of his developmental potential—his high level
of energy, imagination, and positive emotions:
My youth also provided some advantages. I had imagination,
vitality, adventurousness, enthusiasm, and a creative mind
which, even in this difficult situation, worked overtime. With
these qualities, I was able to find a small crack, a small
opening into the natural process of life. I knew that the stress
of my situation, both the internal and external pressure,
could tear me down. I understood that isolation, loneliness,
depression, and indifference were the enemy.” (Dofek, 2010,
p. 36)
Out of his experience Bret Dofek (2010) developed a passionate
concern about education, how to introduce spiritual values into
education, because, as he said, “The old, formal education system . . .
did not prepare me to deal with the extreme pressures I had to endure
in a harsh, brutal, communist prison” (p. 20). Like Buddha, he
discovered on his own the source of human suffering: “the
underlying cause of all human misery and suffering can be found
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Michael M. Piechowski

within our inner being,” and “We are . . . like fish tangled in a net . . .
fashioned by the self-destructive elements of our own personalities”
(p. 12). He said “the difficulty is that the enemy—the lower self in
Peace Pilgrim’s terms—is invisible: “We must . . . understand the
inner of causes of our behavior, and prevent the negative
consequences of an unexamined life” (p. 15). He is describing the
arrival at self-knowledge through the dynamisms of subject-object in
oneself and third factor.
Conclusion
It is important to recognize that Dąbrowski’s theory gives us the
tools with which to identify individuals of advanced development
and those who have reached secondary integration. The four
examples of advanced development above show that they converge
on a life of prayer and inner discipline through which they attained
inner peace.
The inner peace varies from a center of calmness of Eleanor
Roosevelt to Peace Pilgrim’s cosmic consciousness. This range
should give us some idea of the vast universe of secondary
integration—not a summit plateau but continued growth and
expansion of consciousness. There is no commonality in their
development as two of them had a happy childhood—Peace Pilgrim
and Bret Dofek—and two had an unhappy one—Eleanor Roosevelt
and Etty Hillesum. Their developmental potential included a high
energy level (psychomotor overexcitability), except for Hillesum
whose energy tended to be low.
Examination of these lives is helpful toward understanding the
terms of Dąbrowski’s theory. If you have come across people who
say that the theory is elitist and puts those who have achieved
secondary integration so high and the rest of us so low, all you need
to say to them is this: try to do what these exemplars have done in
their inner work, and then you will see what it takes.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Bret Dofek for permission to cite excerpts from
his book and Dr. Christiane Wells for providing the framed photos of
Eleanor Roosevelt, Peace Pilgrim, Etty Hillesum, and Bret Dofek.
The photo of Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, “Adams
Memorial,” by greyloch is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.
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Appendix
Dynamisms of Positive Disintegration
Level I: Primary Integration. Dominant concern with self-
protection and survival; self-serving egocentrism;
instrumental view of others. No dynamisms.
Level II: Unilevel Disintegration. Lack of inner direction; inner
fragmentation—many selves; adopting to the values of
one’s environment without questioning; relativism of
values and beliefs.
Ambivalences—fluctuation between opposite feelings,
mood shifts.
Ambitendencies—changeable and conflicting courses
of action.
Second Factor—social opinion rules; inferiority toward
others.
Level III: Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration. Sense of the
ideal but not reaching it; moral concerns; higher versus
lower in oneself. Multilevel dynamisms are processes of
critically perceiving and evaluating the world, others, and
oneself, leading to the work of inner transformation
Dynamisms of Hierarchy of Values and
Social Conscience
Hierarchization—what is contrasted with what ought to
be: individual values and universal values leading
to authenticity.
Positive Maladjustment and Empathy—protest against
violation of ethical principles.
Dynamisms of Self-reactions and Self-judgments
Dissatisfaction with oneself—anger at what is
undesirable in oneself.
Inferiority toward oneself—anger at what is lacking
in oneself, at not realizing one’s potential.
Disquietude with oneself—alarm at the disharmony
in one’s inner state of being.
Astonishment with oneself—surprise in regard to
what is undesirable in oneself.
Shame—shame over one’s deficiencies.
Guilt—guilt over moral failures, a need to repay
and expiate.
Level IV: Organized Multilevel Disintegration. Self-actualization;
ideals and actions agree; strong sense of responsibility
on behalf of others’ well-being and inner growth.
Dynamisms of this level carry out the work of inner
restructuring.
Subject-object in oneself—the process of critical
examination of one’s motives and aims; an instrument of
self-knowledge.
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Third Factor—the executive power of choice and decision
in one’s inner life; active will in self-regulation and self-
determination.
Responsibility—taking on tasks for the sake of one’s own
and others’ development, empathic responsiveness to
social needs.
Inner Psychic Transformation—inner restructuring at a
deep level, with lasting consequences beyond return to
lower level functioning.
Education-of-oneself—a program of change with specific
methods like meditation.
Autopsychotherapy—self-designed psychotherapy and
preventive measures.
Self-control—regulating development and keeping in
check interfering processes; leads to Autonomy.
Autonomy—confidence in one’s development; freedom
from lower level drives and motivations.
Level V: Secondary Integration. Life inspired by a powerful
ideal, such as equal rights, world peace, universal love
and compassion, or sovereignty of all nations.
Personality Ideal—a unifying dynamism and ultimate
goal of development; the essence of one’s being.
Dynamisms Continuing Across Levels
Creative Instinct—becomes the dynamism of perfecting
oneself.
Empathy—connectedness, caring, helpfulness.
Inner Conflict—initially a clash of drives, then it becomes
emotional turmoil (unilevel) and conscious
(multilevel).
Identification—identification with higher levels and
Personality Ideal.
Dis-identification—distancing from lower drives.
Disposing and Directing Center—the status of will:
I. Identified with the main motive or drive.
II. Multiple, fragmented, shifting direction.
III. Ascending and descending as a consequence of
whether it is identified with “what ought to be”
or with “what is.”
IV. Unified.
V. Personality Ideal.
Adapted from Piechowski (2003).
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