Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of Exceptional Individuals and an Examination of Our Extraordinariness

The brain of Albert Einstein has been preserved by pathologists in the hope that some day neuroscientists will be able to study genius under a microscope. The distinguished psychologist Howard Gardner would argue that they will need more than Einstein’s brain to understand his genius. He believes that extraordinary achievement is the result of a dynamic interaction between “the individual,” “the domain or discipline,” and “the field—the set of persons and institutions that render judgments.”

Gardner made his academic reputation as a proponent of the idea that there are multiple intelligences rather than one generic ability. He occupies the opposite pole from Dr. Samuel Johnson, who opined that true genius is “a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction” (Lives of the English Poets, “Cowley”). This long-running debate continues, although Gardner’s side has the good fortune of being both politically correct and, as we learn more from functional imaging studies of the brain, supported by scientific evidence. The idea of multiple intelligences has important consequences for how we think about IQ and how we educate our children.

Gardner has studied gifted individuals who might demonstrate one particular form of intelligence developed to its highest potential—the cellist Yo Yo Ma, for example. Needless to say, the idea that there are different kinds of intelligence suggests biological and genetic explanations. Unfortunately, in this book Gardner does not address those questions, and the name of Galton, who studied the genetic basis of genius more than a century ago, is not even mentioned. It is not that Gardner is a doctrinaire opponent of genetic endowment and biology but that he is working the other side of the street. His thesis is that endowment is not destiny. In fact, one of his basic tenets is that extraordinary individuals “are distinguished less by their impressive ‘raw powers’ than by their ability to identify their strengths and then to exploit them” (p. 15). Unfortunately, the case studies in this book do not support his argument very well. Indeed, the entire book leaves one with the feeling that Gardner has been unable to go very far in the journey “toward a science of extraordinariness.”

Gardner’s goal as a social scientist is to be able to generalize about individuals who all would agree are extraordinary. He selects as examples Mozart (the master), Sigmund Freud (the maker), Virginia Woolf (the introspector), and Mohandas Gandhi (the influencer). Gardner’s categories (master, maker, introspector, and influencer) do not have convincing explanatory power, and his case histories are fragmentary and superficial. To say that Mozart is only a master—the “apotheosis of the classical genre”—rather than the maker of a new domain as well seems more the coining of a clever phrase than the capturing of a definitive insight. Musicians who find in the last act of Don Giovanni whole new vistas of musical invention will certainly want to quibble with Gardner’s description.

Psychiatrists who know Freud’s various biographies are also unlikely to find any new insight here. It seems to me stunningly incorrect to describe Freud’s psychological genius as that of a “quintessential naturalist” (p. 82). Gardner sees Freud as the maker of a domain to distinguish him from Mozart the master and Woolf the introspector. But these categories raise as many questions as they answer.

Gardner is at his weakest in his discussion of Gandhi, the influencer. First, his case study and his psychological understanding are overshadowed by Erik Erikson’s exceptional biography (1), which is barely mentioned. Gardner introduces the idea that influencers offer a narrative that creates a common bond that explains something about their own identity and that of the people they influence. This interesting idea, like others, is tossed into the mix rather than being developed, and it is less than clear how Gandhi demonstrates this.

Gardner also has a “how to” agenda in this book. He wants to help those of us who are not extraordinary learn from those who are. He suggests that we reflect on our daily life in the light of long-term aspirations, leverage our own strengths, and frame our experience in positive ways that help us move ahead. This sounds like good advice (cognitive therapy?), but I am not at all convinced that Gardner found it in Mozart, Freud, Woolf, and Gandhi. Gardner seems to have slapped this book together for a general audience. That may explain why it is far from the best demonstration of his own extraordinary mind.