Where is neurodiversity in Dąbrowski’s theory?

This is one of the questions I hear most often from people exploring the theory. The answer is everywhere, once you see it clearly.

The most direct bridge is the title of Dąbrowski’s 1972 book: Psychoneurosis is Not an Illness. He argued that what psychiatry labeled pathological—anxiety, obsessions, hypersensitivity, emotional intensity—was almost always a developmental process, and that the diagnostic frame was the real problem.

But the connection goes well beyond that single claim. Dąbrowski rejected the statistical mean as the standard of mental health, calling it a formulation that was "humiliating to mankind." He dismantled the equation of social adjustment with mental health. He argued that positive maladjustment, the conscious rejection of norms incompatible with one's developing values, was a prerequisite for authentic growth. Neurodiversity advocates make the same basic argument: the problem is the fit between person and environment, rather than a defect in the person.

And he went further than most neurodiversity discourse goes today. He argued that the very traits psychiatry sought to eliminate were necessary for development itself. The sensitivity, intensity, low frustration tolerance, and inability to adjust were the engine of development through positive disintegration.

This is the thread I've been pulling on in my recent research and writing. I have so much to share that it’s honestly been a little overwhelming.