Living with Extreme Intelligence: Developing Essential Communication Skills

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.

Sonja Falck is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of East London. She is the author of Extreme Intelligence - Development, Predicaments, Implications (2020, Routledge). She is an accredited psychotherapist and supervisor with the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP), and Senior Accredited with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).