Trust trainer Allan Frater, is guest editing the Dec 2023 edition of the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis (AAP) Quarterly.
Read Allan’s statement on how to submit to the magazine below:
One of my favourite lines from Roberto Assagioli is, “When will and imagination come into conflict, imagination wins” *. His meaning being that imagination is an important precursor to change. Good ideas and motivations are not enough. Without the ability to imagine those ideas as realistic opportunities, we go with the flow of the familiar rather than step into the uncertainty of the new. In this view, therapy is primarily an act of imagination. To the extent imaginative possibilities can be engaged, a new “will” or a way forward can emerge, one that is able to carry ideas and dreams into expression in the world.
To this end imagination is very much valued and utilised within psychosynthesis: theoretically as a psychological faculty of equal importance to feeling, thinking and sensation – as seen in the Star Diagram and the Psychological Laws; and in practice across a plethora of image-based experiential techniques and methods. The principles and methods of image-based work originally presented by Assagioli continue to be applied broadly across the psychosynthesis community.
Clearly, these have a lasting value and place. However, I imagine individuals and groups of psychosynthesis practioners have built upon this foundation over the years. The forthcoming December edition of the AAP Psychosynthesis Quarterly is therefore an opportunity to share any such developments in the theory and practice of psychosynthesis image-based work.
If you are interested in putting your new ideas and/or experiences on the how and why of image-based work into print, we’d like to hear from you. It might be a modification to a specific guided imagery or visualisation exercise; a revisioning of the basis for image-based techniques in general; or a closer integration of image-based work with other aspects of psychosynthesis theory and practice. It might be a new theory of change which addresses the transformative and healing power of imaginative experience; or an integration of new influences into psychosynthesis from contemporary perspectives in ecological and indigenous paradigms or complexity and quantum theories.
Whatever you’re thinking and practice, large or small, we’ll be interested to include it as part of the wider-web of a living and evolving psychosynthesis.
DEADLINE: 1st November 2023
Articles should be submitted in word.doc format with all images sent as jpegs or pngs attachments. Please also send a brief bio in a word doc format and recent photo as jpeg or png attachment. Send your contributions to: newsletter@aap-psychosynthesis.org Please send submissions as soon as they are ready so we can get started reading and editing before the deadline. If you need any further guidance on the topic or submission guidelines do please get in touch.
Thank you so much!
Allan