GENIUS

in psychology, a person of extraordinary intellectual power. The word genius is used in two closely related but somewhat different senses. In the first sense, as popularized by U.S. psychologist Lewis M. Terman, genius refers to high intellectual ability as measured by performance on a standardized intelligence test. The exact intelligence quotient designating genius varies. Terman set the intelligence quotient for potential genius at 140 or over, a level reached by about 1 in 250 of the general population. This seemed insufficiently stringent to some writers, who set a higher standard. In any event, genius here means simply high intellectual ability and refers to potentiality rather than to attainment. In this sense, the term may be used to characterize children who have not yet had an opportunity to gain eminence by achievement. A growing and probably more practicable usage is to refer to children of this sort as gifted and to make a distinction between first-order gifted children, those in the upper 0.1 percent of the general population, and second-order gifted children, those in the upper 10 percent of the remaining population. In the second and more popular sense, as derived from work of the 19th-century British scientist Sir Francis Galton, genius is used to designate creative ability of an exceptionally high order as demonstrated by actual achievement, always provided that such achievement is not merely of transitory value or the result of accident of birth, as in the case of hereditary rulers. Genius is distinguished from talent both quantitatively and qualitatively. Talent refers to a native aptitude for some special kind of work and implies a relatively quick and easy acquisition of a particular skill. Genius involves originality, creativeness, and the ability to think and work in areas not previously explored and thus to give the world something of value it would not otherwise possess. Although geniuses have usually left their unique mark in a particular field, studies of the early development of these people appear to show that their general intelligence is also exceptionally high. There have been a variety of attempts to explain the nature and source of genius. One theory holds that the genius belongs to a separate psychobiological species, differing as much from ordinary man in his mental and emotional processes as man differs from the ape. Another theory looks upon genius as closely related to neurosis and psychosis. The Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso is perhaps the most widely cited among those who held or hold this point of view. Although modern psychoanalytic theory would also hold that genius, like neurosis and psychosis, has its source in basic conflict between the self and environment, in the genius these conflicts are resolved in such a way that the symptoms and products are socially useful and valued. Investigations indicate that the genius is actually somewhat less prone to mental disorders, physical weakness, and bodily deformities than are people in general. Children who show exceptionally high general intelligence of the sort that may be classified as gifted or potential genius are on the average superior to other children in physique and health and in emotional and social adjustment. Galton, who inaugurated the systematic study of genius, formulated the theory that genius is a very extreme degree of three combined traitsintellect, zeal, and power of workingthat are shared by all persons in various grades. In his Hereditary Genius (1869), he presented the first clear statistical evidence that genius, as measured by outstanding accomplishment, tends to run in families. Since then, scientists have differed over how much biological heredity, as distinct from education and opportunity, is responsible for the great differences in achievement of different individuals. The consensus is, however, that genius is a function of both hereditary and environmental factors. The original potentiality for exceptional achievement comes from heredity, but whether or not this potentiality is brought to fruition depends, at least to some extent, upon opportunity and training. See also gifted child; prodigy. ((Latin: begetter), ) plural Genii, in classical Roman times, an attendant spirit of a person or place. In its earliest meaning in private cult, the genius of the Roman housefather and the iuno, or juno, of the housemother were worshiped. These certainly were not the souls of the married pair, as is clear both from their names and from the fact that in no early document is there mention of the genius or iuno of a dead person. The genius and iuno were probably the male and female forms of the family's, or clan's, power of continuing itself by reproduction, which were in the keeping of the heads of the family for the time being and passed at death to their successors. In this as in all forms of his cult, the genius was often conceived as appearing in the form of a snake, although he is also shown in art as a young man, generally engaged in sacrificing. At every wedding a bed, the lectus genialis, was made for the genius and iuno of the husband and wife, and its presence in the house was a sign of matrimony. Owing to the rise of individualism and also to the prevalence of Greek ideas concerning a guardian spirit, or daimon, the genius lost its original meaning and came to be a sort of personification of the individual's natural desires and appetites. Hence the phrases indulgere genio, genium defrudare, signifying, respectively, to lead a pleasurable life, and to lead a stingy life. The development, however, did not stop here. The genius came to be thought of as a sort of guardian angel, a higher self; and, as the Greek daimon was sometimes rationalized into the individual's character or temper, so also the poet Horace half-seriously said that only the genius knows what makes one person so different from another, adding that he is a god who is born and dies with each one of us. This individual genius was worshipped by each individual, especially on his birthday. A few inscriptions even mention the genius of a dead person, as Christian epitaphs sometimes speak of his angel. To show reverence for the genius of another or to swear by it was a mark of deep respect; hence, it is not unnatural that the genius of Augustus and of his successors formed objects of popular cult. Thus, to worship the genius Augusti avoided affronting the feeling against worshipping any living emperor, which remained fairly strong in Italy; for, of course, all genii were divine and might properly be worshipped. As with the Greek daimones, there was a vast variety of genii, or guardian spiritsthose of places, genius loci, including buildings (genius balneorum, etc.), and of corporations of all sorts, from the state (genius populi Romani) to small bodies of troops, guilds of tradesmen, and so forth. A very curious development is that one sometimes heard of the genius of a god, even of Jupiter, or of the iuno of a goddess.