Unwrapping Gifts: Understanding the Inner Workings of Giftedness Through a Panoply of Paradigms in the Field of Psychology

ABSTRACT This article reviews the implications of many of the major schools in the history of psychology for understanding giftedness and its inner workings: operationist, psychometric, psychoanalytic, associationist, behaviorist, Gestalt, cognitive, humanistic/positive psychology, functionalist/pragmatic/constructivist, cultural, and biological. Each paradigm has elucidated different aspects of human nature and functioning, and each has somewhat different implications for how we can understand giftedness. No one paradigm can provide complete understanding of giftedness. Rather, the paradigms should be viewed as different windows toward understanding giftedness, all of which together tell us much more than any individual one. It is regrettable that so many theorists and practitioners have locked themselves into an operationist paradigm, which simply accepts current measurement operations as sufficient for identifying and developing giftedness. The operationist paradigm is wholly insufficient to meet the challenges of the world of the 21st century.