Roberto Assagioli published his first book, simply titled ‘Psychosynthesis’, in 1965. Now Will Parfitt shares his own studies on the text with the Psychosynthesis Trust for our core concept series.
I was sorting out old files on my computer and came across a PowerPoint presentation I gave back in the 2000s for a European training centre. The whole presentation is focused around Assagioli’s original book “Psychosynthesis” and all the quotes in the presentation are from the text of that book.
People sometimes assert that many things come back to ‘haunt us’ which is surely true in some cases, but here it was to remind me that the ‘story’ in this presentation is interesting and worth an airing. There’s no way I’m going to get round to recording a soundtrack, so I’ve made some brief notes beneath most of the slides.
Some of you might enjoy going through this; some might agree or disagree with various assertions made [by Assagioli or me!] but that’s not the point. More relevant is to get us all reflecting about the roots of Psychosynthesis, how Assagioli created this synthesis of ideas and practice and, by simply leaning into its roots, we have a body of tradition behind us to support our work with Psychosynthesis.
Someone once suggested that Assagioli had ‘stolen’ (or euphemistically ‘borrowed’) much that is found in Psychosynthesis; this is ridiculous, even as a metaphor – but he has certainly left us an Aladdin’s cave of riches to explore.
Exploring the Psychosynthesis Manual
Psychosynthesis by Roberto Assagioli – here called “The PS Manual” – all the quotes from Assagioli in the presentation are from this book. The language and sometimes opinions may seem outdated in some ways, but the book is a rich source of material that is worth regularly referring to.
Quotes from Assagioli’s writing often lead to interesting and worthwhile explorations. For instance:
Assagioli reminds us of the situation we are in. Shows how even 50 years ago these issues were relevant and Assagioli was clearly not only aware of them but also proposing an alternative.
These 8 ‘psychologists’ are all named by Assagioli in the book. No time here to go into their individual, different views but they are worth exploring. Briefly:
- Pierre Janet ¬ Didn’t name them but introduced idea of subpersonalities
- Alfred Adler ¬ The drive to self-assertion and will-to-power
- Otto Rank ¬ Separation and union/ polarity and the function of the will
- Karen Horney ¬ Importance of conflict and the need for security [c/f Maslow]
- Erich Fromm ¬ Social pressures on the individual
- Viktor Frankl ¬ Existential analysis
The better-known Freud and Jung who had a long association with Assagioli are most worth exploring.
All of these paths are of these ‘connections’ and influences on PS one way or another and are given credit by Assagioli. Times change and none of the influences, including the more esoteric ones, need to be hidden now – any more than they need to be shouted from the rooftops either.
Worth mentioning whilst Assagioli didn’t specifically refer to bodywork here, he said the “proper” full name for PS is Bio-psychosynthesis. “In practice,” he wrote, “it is usually more convenient to say Psychosynthesis, but it must be understood at all times that it includes the body, the bios, and that it always stands for Bio-psychosynthesis.”
Assagioli as an adult. What does it mean to be an adult? Does Psychosynthesis help us to be adults?
Perhaps paradoxically, one of the best ways to ‘become adult’ is to acknowledge and nurture the ‘inner child’.
Assagioli ‘the seeker’ in 1906 and again in 1935, still a ‘seeker’ …as he remained throughout his life
Communication: from ‘an esoteric source’ – i.e. Theosophy – in 1935. He is given the task of developing a spiritual psychology for the ‘coming age’; it doesn’t matter what we believe about this, he believed in it and acted upon it through his dedication to service.
We can recognize when someone is ‘initiated’ when they dedicate their lives to service, to the care and growth of others, as Assagioli did.
(The ‘Master DK’ referred to is Djwal Khul who is believed by Theosophists and others to be a Tibetan and one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, defined as the spiritual guides of humankind and teachers of ancient cosmological, metaphysical, and esoteric principles. According to Theosophical writings, Djwal Khul is said to work on furthering the spiritual evolution of our planet through the teachings and this ‘message’ for Assagioli is a major part of this ‘transmission’).
!["Psychosynthesis Definitely affirms the reality of spiritual experience... it appreciates, respects the necessity of [religions] but its purpose is to help attain the direct experience." - Psychosynthesis, Roberto Assagioli, 1965](https://psychosynthesistrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Will-Parfitt-Slide-9.jpg)
Central to Gnosticism is experience rather than faith; Assagioli aligns PS with Gnosticism very clearly and explicitly by quoting this statement in the PS Manual.
PS is also basically Hermetic, as this quote from the book clearly demonstrates. Again, a stress on practice and experience rather than ’belief’ is stressed.
Important for therapists to remember the ‘reality’ of their clients might not be the same as, or indeed is inevitably going to be, different from their own ‘reality’.
An example cover of one of Assagioli’s more esoteric books; Assagioli believed in the power of blessing and this short book describes some basic ‘mudras’ – spiritual postures and shapes – aimed at blessing.
Self-development is about uncovering what is already there – and nurturing its growth. Growth in itself is a blessing. Key to the ‘blessing mudras’ Assagioli describes in this book are that whatever we receive, we give … and the more we give the more we receive.
This is more difficult to live as an experience than just believe in it, but that’s the aim set and lived by Assagioli (it’s not difficult find this book on the internet if you wish to read it).
The Egg diagram; note the variant ‘field of awareness’ which I draw as an amoeboid shape to stress its elasticity and constantly changing focus (Assagioli’s original circle is far more elegant in the original diagram than my amoeba, but I use this to stress the non-fixed-ness of the field of awareness).
Another version of the egg diagram: notice how this one shows the Self at bottom as well as at the top of diagram; the Self isn’t only present in the heights but also in the depths.
The Forman/Gila egg – no ‘Self’ at all
The empty egg and/or the egg of blessing.
An exercise based on the content of ‘The Science and Service of Blessing’ book introduced earlier:
Imagine a magic egg, it’s shape, colour and size, and hold it in both your hands stretched out before you …
Fill the egg with all your aspiration to be most fully yourself…
Hold it up high before you and draw light into the egg to charge your aspiration with energy …
Bring the egg filled with light into your heart…
Circulate light from your heart to fill your whole body …
Share the light out from you to others, to the world, as an act of blessing…
… And make sure you ground yourself well afterwards.
The scrambled egg – what happens if you try to get too complicated with it…. e.g. sometimes people like to imagine subpersonalities all over the egg when all subps without exception live on the boundary of the middle and lower unconscious (it’s a masquerade if they appear to be elsewhere).
Eggs in relationship:
top left – in contact but not much in common;
top right – a dynamic meeting of the lower unconscious – all very earthy and disconnected on finer levels;
bottom left – great meeting on higher levels but no depth to the interaction ‘head in clouds together’;
bottom right – a full meeting of two people where all levels of the egg meet and interact.
An artistic representation of the egg. When studying PS, this artist, Shakti Genaine, did over a hundred different ‘egg diagrams’ like this. Demonstrates how what the egg diagram represents can be “seen” everywhere in everything.
The rainbow egg – makes a connection between the egg diagram and the chakras … not entirely accurate but makes the point about the usefulness of the diagram in many different ways.
The Tree of Life from Kabbalah. Assagioli was knowledgeable about Kabbalah and it is (arguably) true that the egg diagram is a simplification of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Even if Assagioli didn’t consciously do this, it corresponds precisely as the next slide shows…
The Egg diagram and the Tree of Life; the overlay clearly shows their connection.
The Tree, Egg & Therapy: Through the connection between the egg diagram and the tree of life, we can make lots of possible connections and correspondences, e.g., as here with aspects of psychotherapy.
The egg is a richly rewarding study! Don’t dismiss it – seriously worth reflection.
Another apposite and timely quote from Assagioli – please read it.
Stages of Attainment as presented in the PS Manual. We’ll explore them now a little more deeply. Such work is Assagioli’s plan for solving the problems of humanity he described in the last quote.
Stage 1 – Assagioli stresses the importance of analysis as vital to synthesis. He speaks of the ‘phantasms’: ancestral and childlike images that obsess or silently dominate us, the fear that paralyzes us, the inner conflicts that waste our energy.
It is possible to work on this by the methods of psychoanalysis, but we include this as a stage of a larger process of Psychosynthesis. After all, even the ancient alchemists realised that to create a new substance (‘the gold of well-being’), that for this synthesis to work, it was vital to take apart (analyse) the old material first.
Stage 2 – control of various elements: Instinct + ego… as this quote from Freud shows, he understood the purpose of synthesis, though he saw it as an organic outcome of analysis rather than something to nurture.
Assagioli adds potential to id and ego: …once you add potential to instinct and ego (along of course with love, will and imagination) you get Psychosynthesis.
Remember Assagioli stresses analysis as a first step of PS and how the three levels of the egg diagram correspond to time:
- lower unconscious = past,
- middle unconscious = present
- higher unconscious = potential = future
Stage 3 realisation of one’s true self; the quote is the most central important statement in the whole of PS … thus the self-identification exercise:
(I’ve used the ‘but I am not’ version as originally devised by Assagioli; the ‘and I am more than’ version is a useful alternative but carries the danger of the user not truly disidentifying but just shifting identification from one function to another which in many cases is enough to break the pattern but not necessarily to lead to a ‘full’ disidentification).
The external unifying centre … who you may be for your clients – always with the intention of fostering the growth of their own centre from where they have more awareness and more choice about their life (with transference and projective identification undoubtedly happening whether the practitioner likes it or works with it or not, you’re going to be in this role so better to consciously chose it, then you have more power for returning it to its rightful place in the client).
The formation of new personality around centre … extremely vital to understand – the point of disidentifying from the contents of the personality and then Self-identification is definitely not to avoid or sidestep anything but to be in a position to step in, to choose with awareness.
To have choice to be able to re-identify in a clearer way.
The first of the three definitions of PS used by Assagioli in the PS Manual.
Assagioli says: “If we now consider PS as a whole, with all its implications and developments, we see it should not be looked at as a particular psychological doctrine, nor as a single technical procedure.”
The second definition of PS used by Assagioli in the PS Manual.
…and adding the third definition of PS used by Assagioli in the PS Manual.
The core purpose of the work … inter-dependence with others and inclusion in a superindividual reality.
Assagioli says: “Each person may be considered as an element or cell of a human group; this group in its turn forms associations with vaster and more complex groups, from the family group to town and district groups and to social classes; from workers’ unions and employers’ associations to the great national groups, and from these to the entire human family”
Assagioli’s famous writing re the cosmos!
Note the egg again with the past present and future.