The 8 Different Types of Intelligence
So my mom lives near a lake with a jogging path on it, which we always walk along whenever I visit. During our last trip, my daughter Abby noticed that there were large images spray painted along the path: a huge butterfly, with a stake in the grass beside it, “.5 mile.”
Next, we passed a giant apple with a stake in the grass beside it, “1 mile.”
The pictures continued throughout the trail and Abby asked my mom, “Gigi, why did someone color everywhere?”
My mom explained to Abby that the markers were there to help people know where they are on the path.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
Later that night after Abby had gone to bed, my mom told me that someone recently had a heart attack on that path. While several people were there to call 911, no one could help orient the paramedics to their location on the path because no one could remember the numerical markers (was it 2.5 or 4.5?). The town added the images with the idea that people who aren’t numerically oriented ("numbers people") may be more likely to recognize and remember a visual image, “We just passed the butterfly.”
The pictures drawn on the jogging trail highlight a concept I think about all the time, esteemed developmental psychologist Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.
The gist behind Garnder’s brilliant notion is that there are at least eight definitive types of intelligence (FYI: traditional school only measures two).
A lot of brilliant people move through life feeling ashamed of not being “smart;” what a waste of genius.
Understanding the eight distinct intelligences is a powerful way to recognize your strengths, as well as the strengths of others.
Here are Gardner’s 8 different types of intelligence (from his website):
Linguistic: Finding the right words to express what you mean. (example: the chillingly beautiful way author, activist, and mental health advocate Yrsa Daley-Ward can spin poetry out of a grocery shopping list.)
Naturalist: Understanding living things and reading nature. (example: the people who keep plants alive.)
Spatial: Visualizing the world in 3D. (example: viewing an apartment which needs a gut reno and being able to imagine an entirely different layout in your mind without anyone showing you a picture.)
Musical: Discerning sounds, their pitch, tone, rhythm, and timbre. (example: someone who can play a song just by hearing it, 'play it by ear' as they say.)
Bodily-kinesthetic: Coordinating your mind with your body, (example: why I’ve always thought Michael Jordan is a genius.)
Logistical-mathamatical: Logical analysis of data, problems, and systems. (example: all the Good Will Hunting things.)
Interpersonal: sensing people’s feelings and motives. (example: a comedian who's good at 'reading the room' pivots their act accordingly.)
Intrapersonal: Understanding yourself, what you feel, and what you want. (example: knowing just the right time to leave a party so that you can enjoy socializing but not be exhausted by it.)
Think about it: does your mind work in butterflies, sonically, through algorithms, through storytelling? Do you feel most focused through physical movement? Are you operating off pure instinct?
You have so many intellectual strengths; identify and use them. Whatever you don’t have, don’t worry about it.
I have no spatial intelligence whatsoever, for example. When someone tells me that something is thirty yards away my response is, “Right, but how far is it?” I can’t see the world in 3D unless it's directly in front of me; my brain simply doesn’t work like that. I look at a floor plan for an apartment and it looks like a maze game that belongs on the back of a cereal box. Also, when someone tells me to “go east” - not helpful.
I always think east is just, I don’t know, to the right somewhere? Because the little “E” on a compass is on the right? I have no idea where east is!
I don’t care. I’m not a sailor. I have Google maps and navigation. I don’t waste my time thinking about my paucity of spatial intelligence - I'm too smart for that.
Similarly, I’m not interested in focusing on all the ways your mind doesn’t work well. That’s like hosting a book club where your selection criteria is based on books that bore you, don’t move you, and which center around characters you’re not invested in at all. For what?
It’s so much more fruitful, energizing, and transformative to dive deeper into the books you couldn’t put down. The same is true for self-engagement.
Centering the exploration of yourself upon what you don’t like about the way your mind works is pointless. Dive deeply into what you love about the way your mind works. Celebrate that. Maximize that. Tell me everything about that.
We’ve been trained to view mental health through a lens of pathology and deficit: what’s wrong with us and how can we fix it. That kind of thinking is on the way out.
Twenty years from now, therapy is going to center on the exploration of what’s going well and why. Don’t wait until the field catches up with strengths-based models to engage the following questions:
What are you getting right?
Which type of intelligence does your strength represent?
How can you use your star intelligence to get more of what you want?
Do me a quick favor?
Remember that there’s always something going right.
No one’s getting it right all the time but more importantly, no one’s getting it wrong all the time, either.
Turn your attention toward your strengths.
Katherine Morgan Schafler is an NYC-based psychotherapist, author, and speaker. For more of her work: get her book, follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her newsletter, or visit her site.