Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development. Leta Stetter Hollingworth

heterodoxy that if told at all should be told only by those who performed the actions. Perhaps autobiographies may some day be written by these persons, telling whatever they may wish to tell.

      In the matter of the attitude of people in general toward gifted children, there are, of course, a majority who are kindly and understanding and helpful, but it is a melancholy fact that there are also malicious and jealous people who are likely to persecute those who are formally identified as being unusual. It may prove a handicap rather than a help to a gifted youngster to have been identified in book or article or school as extraordinary. Some of the children herein described have suffered considerably from the malice of ill-mannered persons, even their instructors, who have felt the impulse to "take them down a peg." Specific instances of such persecution can be cited from public prints, and reference will be made to them in the course of this monograph.

      It would be of interest to present a photograph of each child herein observed, to show how in personal appearance they are diametrically opposite to the popular stereotype of the highly intelligent child; but photographs would tend to identification.

      These questions of what is right and what is wrong, what is permissible and what is forbidden, in reporting the origin and development of the gifted cannot be fully determined here. The policies pursued in this study have been discussed from time to time with gifted children and their parents, and I have been guided by their advice. Everything has been presented that is consistent both with scientific interest and with the preservation of personal privacy. The work as it stands has taken hundreds of hours of the time of these children and of their parents and teachers, over a period of twenty years. They are all very busy people, yet they have given time and energy for tests, measurements, and interviews as requested. It is obvious that without this coöperation no study could have been made.

      Leta S. Hollingworth

       Teachers College

       Columbia University

       New York City

      [1] EDITORIAL NOTE. The larger and better sampling of subjects tested for the 1937 Stanford Revision showed a wider variability than the 1916 group and indicates that the true PE of the IQ distribution of unselected children is in the neighborhood of 11 IQ points, according to Terman.

      [2] All such records have been deposited in the psychological laboratory of Barnard College, Columbia University.

PART I ORIENTATION

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE THE CONCEPT OF INTELLECTUAL GENIUS

       Table of Contents

      It would be an ambitious project to find and discuss all the definitions of genius that have ever been offered in writing. To do this is beyond our present purpose, which is, rather, to illustrate the various concepts that have been formulated and to take guidance from them in the consideration of children of great ability. It will perhaps be many years before it will be apparent whether the children studied herein are geniuses or not. Perhaps this can never be determined, as the word "genius" may eventually be found to have no meaning that can be agreed upon. All we know about the status of the subjects of the present study is that they test above 180 IQ (S-B) and are thus more than +10 PE removed from mediocrity in general intelligence. [1] It may be possible to arrive at some comparison between their characteristics and performances on the one hand, and the concepts of genius that have been offered on the other.

      CONCEPTS OF THE ANCIENTS

      The concept of the genius is very ancient. Ovid (12), [2] referring to Caesar and his preparations to complete the conquest of the world, notes the manner in which a genius acts in advance of his years:

      Though he himself is but a boy, he wages a war unsuited to his boyish years. Oh, ye of little faith, vex not your souls about the age of the gods! Genius divine outpaces time, and brooks not the tedium of tardy growth. Hercules was still no more than a child when he crushed the serpent in his baby hands. Even in the cradle, he proved himself a worthy son of Jove.

      The Greeks called that person's "daemon" which directed and inspired his creative work. Dictionaries refer to the Roman concept of genius as "a spirit presiding over the destiny of a person or a place; a familiar spirit or a tutelary." The genie was one of the powerful nature demons of Arabian and Mohammedan lore, believed to interfere in human affairs and to be sometimes subject to magic control.

      Thinkers in any and every field, no matter how remote from that of psychology, have confidently discussed the nature of genius. Philosophers, poets, litterateurs, physicians, physiologists, psychiatrists, anthropometrists, lexicographars, encyclopedists—all have offered definitions, each according to his light. It has been deemed a subject on which anyone might legitimately express an opinion. The result is, as might be expected, an interesting miscellany of contradictions.

      DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

      By derivation the word "genius" means to beget or to bring forth, coming from genere, gignere. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary—from which Galton took his point of departure in choosing the word "genius" for the title of his work on ability—defines a genius as "A man endowed with superior faculties."

      Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary offers the following definition: "Very extraordinary gifts or native powers, especially as displayed in original creation, discovery, expression, or achievement."

      Webster's New International Dictionary defines "genius" as "Extraordinary mental superiority; esp. unusual power of invention or origination of any kind; as, a man of genius."

      The Dictionary of Psychology defines "genius" in part in terms of IQ, but at the same time denies the word any special meaning as a recognized scientific term: "Genius—a very superior mental ability, especially a superior power of invention or origination of any kind, or of execution of some special form, such as music, painting, or mathematics. … It has no special technical meaning, but has occasionally been defined as equivalent to an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 140 or above."

      Generally speaking, then, dictionaries define genius as a superior or superlative degree of intellectual capacity, and avoid claiming it for any concept of an added, different, or abnormal element in human faculty.

      CONCEPTS OF GENIUS

      As a manifestation of abnormal psychology. A number of thinkers in fields allied to psychology have laid emphasis upon a supposed connection between genius and nervous instability or insanity. This idea is embodied in the statement by Pascal: "L'extrême esprit est voisin de l'extrême folie." Lamartine refers to "la maladie mentale qu'on appelle génie." Lombroso (10) is perhaps the most widely quoted among those who have held or who hold this point of view.

      As constituting a different species. The idea has been expressed by thinkers other than professed psychologists—and at times by psychologists themselves—that men of genius are a separate species, partaking of qualities not shared in any degree by persons at large. This concept is at one with that which would regard the idiot and the imbecile as distinct in kind, not in degree only, from the mass of mankind. Genius would thus be not merely more of the same but a different sort altogether. Thus Hirsch (7) specifically declares:

      The genius differs in kind from the species, man. Genius can be defined only in terms of its own unique mental and temperamental processes, traits, qualities, and products. Genius is another psychobiological species, differing as much from man, in his mental and temperamental processes, as man differs from the ape.

      As a hypertrophied and highly specialized aptitude for specific performance. The thought has been advanced that intellectual genius is a matter of specialization; that the mind of a genius will not, typically, work on all data with superior