First Impressions

This book is written by Willem Kuipers, a successful career counselor who specializes in finding jobs and accommodations for gifted or extra intelligent employees. He is particularly skilled at identifying strengths in people whose strengths aren’t always so obvious in our current cultural climate. Kuipers offers invaluable information and perspective into the different ways brilliant minds are brilliant. This book served as the backbone for my stance that our societal conceptualization of intelligence is incomplete and often harmful. It taught me a lot about our beliefs about ‘giftedness’ and where these understandings fall short. Enjoying the Gift of Being Uncommon criticizes our use of the IQ system and offers new ways to understand intelligence. It is what led me to consider intelligence a neuro-diverse characteristic. And it inspired much of my previous writing on intelligence. It was also a crucial step on my way to understanding and accepting my Autistic identity.

“XIPs are well able to structure information in a new manner, and therefore to make new relations between areas that were initially separated from each other. where averagely intelligent individuals are skilled at analysis, XIPs are also strong in synthesis.” p.94

“Extreme XIPs are able to simultaneously analyze and synthesize. They work with a helicopter view but at the same time watch every move of the ants on the ground. They do not lose themselves in details and their perception is both global and detailed. This is the result of extremely efficient information processing, which for them takes place automatically.” p.94

Though I wish I could laud praises endlessly, the book does have some drawbacks. Beuro-diversity is rarely mentioned, and the few times Autism came up it was described incorrectly and stereotypically. The book, too, rather reads like a textbook - which isn’t great for accessibility.

What is XIP?

XIP stands for Extra Intelligent Person or Extra Intense Person. These are people who demonstrate more intensity, complexity, and drive than maybe most of us would consider normal. It’s potentially genetic and often seen in groups of family members. XIP is an awkward name and comes off somewhat arrogant. Which on one hand makes me like it more (confidence shouldn’t be gatekept or criticized as much as it is), and on another hand means it’s never going to become a normal or common term in our culture. But that’s fine. The XIP concept doesn’t integrate super well with current popular conceptualizations of personality or intelligence or neuro-diversity anyway. It acts a bit like oil on water - or rather like pretentiousness in pop-culture. That doesn’t mean a brief exploration into the idea isn’t beneficial.

“Effective Extra Intelligent People achieve the results that they aim to achieve, while optimally applying their extra intelligence, and consciously ensuring that their effort and its setting sustain their personal development and well-being in a balanced way.” p.5

Kuipers breaks down the XIP identity into a series of degrees, not unlike the way Autism is broken down into a series of spectrums. Kuipers also outlines the different kinds of intelligences he’s observed, including verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical-rhythmic, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. This isn’t a complete list, but it does bring attention to the restricted way we often think about intelligence, and challenges us to broaden our beliefs about it. Kuipers also offered examples of the amazing things human minds are capable of, that few of us can even imagine possible.

“Imaginal thinking happens at a high speed, usually with the frequency of some 32 images per second.” p. 68

In conclusion, anyone who has questions about intelligence: What it is. How it works. What it changes about people and their lives. This book will help them find some answers.

Other Favorite Quotes

“The interaction among XIPs has a special quality to it. It speeds up, and becomes intense and very satisfying.” p.3

“The first challenge has to do with being uncommon… This is, for some people, not an issue, and for others a long struggle with their memories… To realize that some of one's personal qualities are quantitatively and/or qualitatively and positively very unusual.” p.6

“Some of our clients have absolutely no desire to know their IQ score. Some of them would probably score well in the gifted range, of others I am not too sure due to their different kinds of intelligence. But at times there are clients who explain to us how knowing their IQ score would help them to accept being an XIP more readily.” p.23

“It is very possible that the true love of an XIP is also an XIP. Their mutual attraction is heightened by their shared need for intensity and complexity and by their shared Drive.” p.35

“This realization of “being different”, certainly if this occurs at a young age, does little to instill a feeling of security in the individual. .Many people therefore do their utmost to keep that feeling a secret, and try their best to behave normally.” p.39

“It is well known that XIPs may have difficulties with easy tasks, as they cannot imagine or perhaps accept that an authority seriously proposes something that obvious. They conclude that there must be some hidden meaning involved, and postpone the task to think about a clue first.”

“Accommodating some variety is a practical tool that has more adaptation potential in changing circumstances. Monocultures are vulnerable to external disrupting influences.” p.53

“Xips can be change agents in organizations. They may be able to foresee possible harmful consequences of current market actions that others cannot yet imagine. They will often be the first to make a growing organizational unrest visible, urged by their own high sensitivity for fairness and justice. Are both helpful for, and helped by, a style of management that is actively striving to handle differences, similarities, tension, and complexity in an open way… Diversity works as a sensor for and facilitator of the need to change.” p. 53

“XIPs Can often follow each other's cascading thoughts without having to use many words.” p.67

“For centuries, the prevailing conviction has been that women are naturally less intelligent than men, and therefore giftedness in women actually does not exist… Given the conviction that giftedness has to be proven by notable public achievements, few women at the time were in a position to prove their point.” p.78

“One can experience [abnormally] intense joy, compassion, or innovative creativity, but also intense sadness or frustration about “the state of the world.’’’ p.83

“An important step in the acknowledgment of someone's extreme intelligence… is therefore dealing with and accepting of this extreme uncommonness that has in it characteristics of structural loneliness.” p.93

“For the extreme XIP it can be virtually impossible to put himself/herself in the mindset of the slower thinking of others.” p.93

“Their opinions and ideas often differ from what majorities think to be right or normal.” p.108