“My main point is that [IQ tests] leave out the unconscious, the depths, the inner principle. They leave out the impulse-life, the emotions, the intuitions, the wisdom of the unconscious, the poetic and esthetic, the values… the wisdom of the heart…
It is certainly useful to have intelligence tests… they… can be quite useful. But we must in the last analysis remember that any dope can have a high IQ…
In the integrated person, at peace with himself and not fighting his old brain (his animal nature), it is possible… [conscious intelligence and nonconscious intelligence] are synergetic and not in opposition. Much more frequently than anyone ever expected, what is good for the unconscious is good for the conscious too. And what the impulses demand is what common sense and logic and rationality approve of.”
In 1956 Abraham Maslow wrote down his thoughts on IQ in an essay he never published. Since so much of my doctoral dissertation was on nonconscious intelligence and the importance of openness to experience, I resonated so much with this essay. This essay just provided further evidence to me that Maslow and I are the same spirit animal. 🙂
I’m reproducing the full essay for the first time. Enjoy!
