Andrea Brackmann

Andrea Brackmann is a German author and psychologist .

Life

Andrea Brackmann studied acting and psychology. From 1992 to 2008 she worked as a psychotherapist in Frankfurt am Main . In 2009 she became seriously ill and has not practiced since then. Brackmann has been dealing with the topic of giftedness for many years . It does not only refer to children and adolescents, but also to the problems of adults whose giftedness has not yet been discovered or has only been discovered late.

Giftedness

In her first book, Beyond the Norm , Brackmann puts forward the thesis that intellectual giftedness is based on the ability to process information more quickly and in a more complex manner. This applies to mental, but also to emotional and sensory stimuli: highly gifted people are often highly sensitive .

She goes on to propose the thesis that there are mental disorders that can only be understood and treated against the background of gifted people. Brackmann suspects that autistic disorders represent an extreme form of giftedness and are an extremely pronounced form of mental overactivity, emotional sensitivity and sensory stimulus sensitivity. This would explain both the many impairments as well as the sometimes outstanding talents of autistic people. Brackmann suspects that people with borderline personality disorder are traumatized, gifted people. She claims that a borderline patient cannot be cured or can only be cured with great difficulty if their giftedness is not recognized.

The second book, Quite Normally Gifted , deals with highly gifted adults; a topic that has received little attention in gifted research so far. The majority of those affected therefore do not know anything about their special abilities, but only perceive themselves vaguely as "different". Brackmann presents biographies of "completely normal" highly gifted people and comments on them from a psychological point of view. In doing so, she deepens her main thesis and summarizes it as follows: "Giftedness is more of everything: think more, feel more, perceive more." She emphasizes that this can be as enriching as it is stressful.

The third book, Extremely gifted, deals with different levels and forms of giftedness. According to Brackmann, the group of gifted people is far more heterogeneous than previously assumed. On the one hand there is moderate, extraordinary and extreme giftedness, on the other hand there is intellectual, artistic, social or psychomotor giftedness. On the basis of partly contradicting findings from scientific studies that identify gifted people as particularly stable and successful on the one hand, and as more sensitive and susceptible on the other, Brackmann approaches possible basic mechanisms of giftedness by considering extreme forms. It shows that extremely talented people like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Charles Darwin actually combine various contradictions, including sensitivity and willingness to take risks or shyness and assertiveness. This leads Brackmann to two core ideas of the book: Although many highly gifted people showed a slightly increased susceptibility to mental and health problems (especially if their talents were not recognized or promoted), they also had more and more creative coping strategies, i.e. a higher degree of resilience . Most gifted and gifted people would therefore gain stability in the course of their lives. Secondly, outstanding or ingenious achievements are often the result of “productive discomfort”: the excessive mental activity and increased perceptual abilities of extremely gifted people are most effectively bundled by a strong focus on one or more specialist areas. The long, intensive work on a topic is again an important prerequisite for groundbreaking achievements.

Works

• Beyond the norm - gifted and highly sensitive? Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-89014-3 .
• Normally gifted - life as a gifted adult. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-86100-6 .
• Fairy tale. Children's book. Oculus-Verlag, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-942567-04-6 .
• Extremely gifted - The personality structure of the most gifted and genius . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2020, ISBN 978-3-608-89258-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Andrea Brackmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Different from other spectrum of science - Brain & Mind 9/2005.
• Help for particularly intelligent people Deutschlandradio Kultur , September 25, 2007

Individual evidence

1. ^ Publisher's website , accessed on January 14, 2013