Interview on Giftedness and IQ
Author(s): Sam Vaknin & Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/05/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have been measured three times with a high IQ, an understatement. An IQ between 180 and 190, between ages 9 and 35. You referred to this in some writings, in passing, including pages 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7, of epigrams, in an interview with Richard Grannon (2018), with Smashwords (2014), and on a YouTube video answering viewer questions. It has been mentioned in an article by Gavin Haynes (2016), too. With the IQ scores of 185 at age 9, 180 in the army at age 25, and 190 in prison at age 35, presumably on a standard deviation of 15, what was the reaction of family, friends, peers, community, even the psychometricians or psychologists administering the tests each time?
Prof. Shmuel “Sam” Vaknin: First, let me clarify than any result above 160 (some say, 140) is not normatively validated: it is rather arbitrary and meaningless because there are so few people to compare with (the sample is way too small). Matrix IQ tests are better at validating higher results, though.
Everyone always loathed me. I am a sadist, so from a very early age, I have leveraged my IQ to taunt people, hold them in contempt, and humiliate them. This did not endear obnoxious me to anyone. My own teachers sought to undermine my academic career, peers shunned or attempted to bully me (they failed), my mother detested me, my father pendulated between being awe-struck and being repelled by me. Both my parents beat me to an inch of my life every single day for 12 years.
Jacobsen: To you, as a scientific person, what defines intelligence?
Vaknin: Anything that endows an individual with a comparative advantage at performing a complex task constitutes intelligence. In this sense, viruses reify intelligence, they are intelligent. Human intelligence, though, is versatile and the tasks are usually far more complex than anything a virus might need to tackle.
Jacobsen: What defines IQ or Intelligence Quotient?
Vaknin: The ability to perform a set of mostly – but not only – analytical assignments corresponding to an age-appropriate average. So, if a 10 year old copes well with the tasks that are the bread and butter of an 18 years old, he scores 180 IQ.
IQ measures an exceedingly narrow set of skills and mental functions. There are many types of intelligence – for example: musical intelligence – not captured by any IQ test.
Jacobsen: What defines giftedness, to you? Even though, formal definitions exist.
Vaknin: Giftedness resembles autism very much: it is the ability to accomplish tasks inordinately well or fast by focusing on them to the exclusion of all else and by mobilizing all the mental resources at the disposal of the gifted person.
Obviously, people gravitate to what they do well. Gifted people have certain propensities and talents to start with and these probably reflect brain abnormalities of one kind or another.
Jacobsen: Inter-relating the previous three questions, what separates intelligence from IQ from giftedness, i.e., separates each from one another?
Vaknin: IQ is a narrow measure of highly specific types of intelligence and is not necessarily related to giftedness. Gifted people invest themselves with a laser-focus to effect change in their environment conducive to the speedy completion of highly specific tasks.
Jacobsen: What defines genius?
Vaknin: Genius is the ability to discern two things: 1. What is missing (lacunas) 2. Synoptic connections.
The genius surveys the world and completes it by conjuring up novelty (i.e., by creating). S/he also spots hidden relatedness between ostensibly disparate phenomena or data.
Jacobsen: How does genius differentiate from intelligence, IQ, and giftedness?
Vaknin: A genius can have an average IQ or even not be analytically very intelligent (not be an intellectual). Some craftsmen are geniuses. Musicians, athletes, even politicians.
Jacobsen: What happens to most prodigies, or adults with exceptionally, profoundly, or unmeasurably high IQ?
Vaknin: A majority of them end badly. IQ is a good predictor of academic accomplishments, but not much else. Character, upbringing, mental illness, genetics, nurture, the environment (including the physical environment), sexual and romantic history matter much more than IQ.
Many “geniuses” with a high IQ (Mensa types) are dysfunctional and deficient when it comes to life, intimacy, relationships, and social skills. Additionally, as Eysenck had correctly observed, creativity is often linked to psychoticism.
Jacobsen: What are the optimal things for raising gifted children and prodigies, and for resuscitating drifting adults with exceptionally, profoundly, or unmeasurably high IQ, if at all possible, to productive and healthy lives?
Vaknin: All interventions are somewhat effective only during childhood and adolescence, up to age 21. Afterwards, it is an uphill battle.
The most crucial thing is to never remove the gifted child from his peer group (as was done to me). I am also dead set against academic shortcuts.
The gifted child should follow the same path as everybody else but feed his voracious mind with extracurricular enrichment programs and materials.
Jacobsen: Who seem like the greatest geniuses in history to you?
Vaknin: The usual suspects: Einstein, Newton, Freud, da Vinci, other polymaths who had upended every discipline or field that they had turned their scintillating minds to.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Professor Vaknin.
Vaknin: The opportunity is all mine.
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