The aim of this study is a better understanding of the high intellectual abilities. From the emergent paradigm, high intellectual abilities are understood as multidimensional and as the result of the life-span development, this is to say, not only the result of their neurobiological bases but of the interrelation among opportunity, personality, psychosocial factors and individual effort. This theoretical study analyses the differences between excellence and perfectionism, their types and incidence on high intellectual ability functioning. We propose a comparative view of the state of the art through recent research and their results referred to different types of perfectionism, their measure and relation with high intellectual abilities, its metacognitive regulation and its goal orientation. Finally, we propose a starting research comparing the relationship between perfectionism as a multidimensional cognitive pattern of functioning (positive or negative) and the measures of metacognitive performance.