Resources
Explore ideas, stories, research, and conversations about positive disintegration, neurodivergence, autonomy, relationships, and personal development.
Whether you’re encountering Dąbrowski’s theory for the first time or looking to deepen your understanding, these publications and resources offer different ways to begin.
Positive Disintegration
Our primary publication and subscription home
Positive Disintegration brings together writing, research, and conversations exploring Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration and its relevance to our lives.
Through essays by Chris Wells, Emma Nicholson, and guest contributors, alongside episodes of the Positive Disintegration Podcast, we explore emotional intensity, neurodivergence, identity, relationships, inner conflict, and the process of becoming more fully ourselves.
The podcast, co-hosted by Chris and Emma, brings scholarly perspectives together with personal stories and conversations about the theory and the experiences it helps illuminate.
Subscribe to receive new writing and podcast episodes, explore our archive, and support the continued development of this work.
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More Podcasts and Publications
PDA: Resistance and Resilience
With Marni Kammersell and Chris Wells
What does it mean to live with a pervasive drive for autonomy?
In PDA: Resistance and Resilience, Marni and Chris explore PDA through personal experience, curiosity, and critical reflection. Their conversations examine autonomy, demand avoidance, resistance, relationships, parenting, neurodivergence, and the challenge of building lives that fit who we are.
Rather than presenting definitive answers, the podcast makes space for complexity and evolving understanding, especially around PDA in adults and the ways people experience expectations, authority, and demands.
Cosmic Cheer Squad
With bee mayhew and Chris Wells
cosmic cheer squad is a home for candid conversations, creative exploration, and unexpected connections.
Bee and Chris bring humor, curiosity, and heart to conversations about neurodivergence, identity, belonging, friendship, grief, joy, and the courage to question familiar ways of thinking.
Moving between personal stories and wider social questions, cosmic cheer squad celebrates the possibilities that emerge when people speak openly, challenge expectations, and find connection with others
From our Collaborators
Research, History, and Archives
The Dąbrowski Center
The Dąbrowski Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the understanding, research, and application of Kazimierz Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration.
Its extensive resource library provides opportunities to explore the theory's historical foundations and the scholarship that has shaped its development.
Particularly valuable are two collections:
The Dąbrowski Archive brings together historical writings, selected excerpts, introductory resources, and materials exploring the development and central concepts of the theory.
The Piechowski Archive preserves and shares the scholarly contributions of Dr. Michael M. Piechowski, whose collaboration with Dąbrowski helped shape the theory's development and its application within gifted education.
The Center also provides access to research papers, articles, podcast transcripts, and other educational resources.
Scholarship
Links to academic papers
Overexcitability Reconsidered: Domestication of a Developmental Theory (open access, Gifted Child Quarterly) by C. Wells
Relational-Developmental Autoethnography: A Method of Qualitative Inquiry that Fosters Personal Growth (open access, The Qualitative Report) by C. Wells
Voices at the Margins: Podcasting as Neuroqueer Collaborative Autoethnography and Epistemic Healing by Hughes, Wells, Nicholson, Mayhew, Gay, Kammersell, Mogler
Kazimierz Dąbrowski: The Existential Therapist by Falk & Wells
Mentors, Meaning, and Metamorphosis by C. Wells
The Origins and Conceptual Evolution of Overexcitability by Wells & Falk
Reexamining Overexcitability: A Framework for Understanding Intense Experience by Piechowski & Wells