Living with Extreme Intelligence

by Sonja Falck

In Living with Extreme Intelligence: Developing Essential Communication Skills, Dr Sonja Falck provides a unique and practical manual of how to improve interpersonal interactions that involve adults who stand out from the neurotypical majority by having top 2% IQ. Her main message is that understanding the individual differences involved in extreme intelligence and mastering relevant communication skills can break through barriers of frustration, underachievement, and loneliness, to bring about brain-changingly positive conversations and interpersonal effectiveness, connection, and joy. Dr Falck begins by explaining the neurophysiological and social foundations of why we communicate the way we do, and then explains in detail seven essential communication skills. Following this, she shows how to put these skills into practice, applying insights from depth psychology and demonstrating how to have better conversations in a variety of contexts from general social gatherings to the workplace and intimate relationships. Particular attention is paid to areas that Dr Falck’s research and professional practice have repeatedly shown her are challenging for adults with extreme intelligence, such as small talk, office politics, dating, and handling conflict. She draws on case examples from her consulting work (psychotherapy and coaching) with clients who have extreme intelligence, and examples from novels, cinema, the media, the literature on giftedness, and biographical material on high-profile high-IQ figures like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Lady Gaga. Throughout she emphasizes the theme from her original model of interpersonal relating, which is that experiencing freedom of self-expression with others who offer you a high level of acceptance is what puts you in a state of thriving. The book provides step-by-step guidance for engaging in numerous interpersonal situations, such as how to handle difficult conversations, how to write effective emails, how to breathe, listen, play, take a risk, bond, repair a broken connection, and keep yourself well through changes like failure, success, and falling in love. It is essential reading for anyone affected by, or interested in, issues associated with extremely high intelligence.

Genres: Psychology

180 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2023

Reviews

[Stephen Sorensen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book read to me like it was written by someone wholly fascinated and intimated by people with extreme intelligence (IQ over 130). Overall I was unimpressed and would not recommend this book. Hopefully if she reads this review and works on a second edition some of the information here will be incorporated. It needs a lot more citations to back up the claims.

Page 5 has a list of target audiences, of which I can't imagine this book would be very helpful for the majority of them, especially those affected by or working with autism.

Her treatment of Mr. B was either unfair or she didn't put in enough effort or information to make her case persuasive. To me it came off as her feeling insulted and then working to rationalize it in a "I'm ok" (her), "you're not ok" (Mr. B) framework. Where there was a great opportunity to ask Mr. B questions like:
- "how does your use of this language make you feel?"
- "do you feel it's a fair or useful label?"
- "do you feel I'm an idiot?"
she instead opted to ignore him and change the topic because of her own insecurities. This is one of the reasons why I feel the author is intimidated by high-IQ individuals, regardless of if she is one or not (she never discloses her own IQ).

Her inclusions of the "I'm ok, you're ok" dynamics were incredibly shallow and not helpful in light of the larger framework in which that one pairing exists.

The academic rigor of the book was lacking. Almost none of the claims made about high-IQ individuals were accompanied by citations. It felt more like she was just stating her perceptions as facts without having any basis founded in testing or studies, just vibes based on her interpretations of her experiences, which are not good for people looking to really understand living with high-IQ. As we can see with one of her only disclosed interactions with a high-IQ person she warps the conversation to make an example out of him, not demonstrating much confidence in herself or understanding of "the other", in this case Mr. B.

It read more like a really general introduction on how to communicate effectively with her own, unsubstantiated notions of high-IQ individuals sprinkled throughout. That's one of the reasons why I don't feel it's suited for most of the people, if any of the people, she listed as the target audience. What is her info based on? "Trust me bro". The information on effective communication was all very base level and didn't really add anything to what I've found in short internet articles or other books about conversations and communication.

I don't have confidence in her other books given her content here, but it does make me much more curious about why she even wrote this or why she chose to do many of the things she did. The Mr. B conversation is at the start of the book and in retrospect after finishing the book it feels really ironic that she didn't learn or apply much of what was said in the book to that conversation. It really felt like she had a vendetta because of his comment, and I wonder what Mr. B's reaction to reading this book would be.

The concluding comments were also very odd and subsequently erase some of the major issues we face in society today pertaining to consensual relationships and unwanted pregnancies.

[Carys · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book and will be recommending it to clients and others who I think would resonate with it. Written concisely and informatively, there's a lot to make sense of within.