Kazimierz Dąbrowski: biography of this Polish psychologist

Kazimierz Dąbrowski's life, though prolific, is marked by war and censorship. However, and despite this, his work has managed to leave his native Poland, cross the iron curtain and have the popularity it deserves.

This Polish psychologist, psychiatrist and doctor always looked for a way to continue expanding his knowledge, in addition to contribute to the dissemination of them dedicating themselves to teaching and giving conferences around Europe and North America.

His theory of positive disintegration has been seen as a true 360º turn when it comes to understanding how personality develops. Let's see in more detail the life of this researcher through a biography of Kazimierz Dąbrowski, in which we will also know his particular theory.

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Biography of Kazimierz Dąbrowski

Although marked by some misfortunes, both personal and lived in his native Poland, Kazimierz Dąbrowski did not stop contributing to psychology and psychiatry. His life is extensively interesting, and we are going to see it below.

early years

Kazimierz Dąbrowski was born on September 1, 1902 in Klarów, Poland. He was the second of four children he had in a family of farm managers.

Already in his early childhood he had to experience the loss of a close being, his little sister, who died of meningitis at the age of three.

But not only the death of his sister marked him, since He lived through the First World War at a very young age., being a town close to where he lived one of the battlefields.

At just twelve years old, he was able to see with his own eyes the hundreds of corpses of soldiers killed during the war, scattered through the streets and places where he played.

Already at that time he was able to observe firsthand how capable humanity was of committing the most heinous acts.

Training and professional beginnings

Dąbrowski's academic life is characterized by being very prolific and extensive, without having had direct contact with violence impeding him from being one of the great minds of the last century.

Although at first he was educated by his family at home, he later ended up enrolling in the Stefan Batory private school in Lublin, going to the center between 1916 and 1921.

In 1921 he entered the Catholic University of Lublin, now the John Paul II University, enrolling in the faculty of Polish studies. There too he attended lectures on philosophy and psychology.

Between the years 1924 and 1926 he studied philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Later, he would study at the medical faculty of the University of Warsaw.

Later he was able to obtain the opportunity to study at the School of Educational Sciences and, later, to be able to go to the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, an institution created by the neurologist Édouard Claparède. Claparède, along with Jean Piaget and Pierre Bovet, participated in Dąbrowski's instruction during his stay in the Swiss country.

In 1929 Kazimierz Dabrowski he completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva on suicide, titled 'The psychopathological conditions of suicide'.

After extensive training while in Switzerland, upon his return to Poland Dąbrowski took over the foundation of several centers focused on the treatment of people suffering from some type of disorder psychological.

in 1931 he created a clinic focused on treating neurotic patients and people with intellectual problems. In 1933 he was invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to go to the United States and study at Harvard University. Then, in 1934, he returned to Poland to found the Polish League for Mental Hygiene, himself the organization's secretary.

Wartime and postwar

If the First World War was already a hard stage for Kazimierz Dąbrowski, the times of the second are not were better, especially considering how the Third Reich treated Poland during the conflict.

It is striking that of the nearly 400 Polish psychiatrists who practiced before the conflict, only 38 were still alive when the war ended. Dąbrowski suffered on a personal level, as his younger sister was murdered and his older sister was interned in a concentration camp.

However, despite the difficult times, he had the opportunity to found in 1942 the College of Mental Hygiene and Applied Psychology, although it was also that year that the Gestapo arrested him.

At the end of the war, and having already been released, Dąbrowski returned to Warsaw and became the director of the Institute of Mental Hygiene to, later, in 1948, obtain the official title of psychiatrist

Stalinist imprisonment

In 1949 the Polish government, under the guidance of Iósif Stalin in the Soviet Union, decided to close the Institute of Mental Hygiene and Kazimierz Dąbrowski was declared persona non grata.

Dąbrowski and his wife Eugenia were deprived of their liberty in 1950, remaining eighteen months in prison. Once released, the psychiatrist's activities were closely watched by the communist authorities.

After a few years working as a specialist in tuberculosis, without having the right to educate or to deal with psychology nor psychiatry, the Polish authorities considered him a 'rehabilitated person' and he was allowed to return to practice those fields.

In 1962 the Polish state allowed him to travel to the other side of the iron curtain., visiting countries such as Spain, the United States, France and the United Kingdom, giving lectures on his vision of personality and the treatment of people with mental disorders.

Last two decades of life

In the 1960s, Dąbrowski traveled to the United States and was able to translate some of the research carried out by Polish colleagues into English, to ensure that the world knew about the psychiatry and psychology practiced in Poland.

It was in 1964 when his main work, positive decay was published in English, becoming widely popular within the field of personality psychology.

During his stay in America, Dąbrowski was able to meet great American psychologists and psychiatrists, among them Abraham Maslow, who was interested in his theory.

Throughout the two decades of Kazimierz Dąbrowski's life, the psychiatrist devoted himself to teaching and writing, traveling between Canada and Poland.

Kazimierz Dąbrowski passed away in Warsaw, Poland on November 26, 1980. After his death, the communist Polish authorities expropriated his property from his widow and children.

positive decay theory

Kazimierz Dąbrowski's positive decay theory is a theory of personality development. Unlike most psychology, Dąbrowski's view is that anxiety is a necessary factor for the proper development of an individual's personality. This aspect, seen as something 'disintegrative' becomes something positive if it is given in the appropriate way and one knows how to deal with it.

In the model it holds that there are up to five levels of integration-disintegration, which influence the formation of a unique personality and far from the lack of individuality.

1. Level I: primary integration

At this level people are influenced only by their biological factors, ie heredity, along with influences from the environment.

People manifest a 'primitive' personality, characterized by present selfish and egocentric behaviors, with the sole purpose of satisfying their own desires and desires, being something typical of childhood.

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2. Level II: unilevel decay

This level occurs before a crisis, such as puberty and menopause, or in periods in which you have to face a stressful event. It is here where there is a greater role for automatic dynamisms, such as greater self-awareness and self-control.

The person can reconsider many things that, either because of the education received or because of the culture in which he lives, have been taught in a way that he now questions, criticizing the status quo.

This, according to Dąbrowski, is the moment in which his own personality begins to form, which will go in one direction or another depending on how the events put into question are assimilated and ethically considered. doubt.

3. Level III: spontaneous multilevel integration

After having critically considered a specific situation or fact, the person considers multiple ways of coping.

The appearance of several alternatives makes him consider what what just happened to him would be like if he had done it the other way he had thought.

Based on the decision you have made and the consequences that have been given, the person will develop or not an increasingly adapted personality, but at the same time own and unique.

4. Level IV: directed multilevel decay

At this level the person comes to achieve absolute control of their development.

If in the previous level what was done was done in a more or less random way, in the fourth it is done deliberately, fully conscious and with well-directed intentionality towards a specific goal.

5. Level V: secondary integration

At this level, the person is already a fully stable individual, as long as you have successfully passed the four previous levels. He has become a responsible person who properly ponders his actions.