This lecture is the third and final part of Assagioli’s three lectures delivered in 1966 at the Instituto di Psicosintesi in Florence, Italy. You can find transcripts of the first two lectures here.
The transformation of the personality and its integration or psychosynthesis—apart from the transference process—often occur spontaneously, or, as Jung maintains, as a result of the creative and synthesising action of the symbols that emerge from the unconscious. Jung does not advise the active intervention in this process either of the therapist or of the will of the Ego, the conscious “I”.
Psychosynthetic therapy—while fully recognising the importance of the spontaneous processes of self-healing and the integrative function of symbols—proves that these processes can be promoted and effectively assisted by the co-operation of the conscious personality. This action is performed by what constitutes the centre, the dynamic element, that is, the conscious and active subject, using the will.
The necessity for such active co-operation is based on two reasons. The first, already mentioned, is to contain and control the energies erupting from the unconscious, and then to promote their transmutation, sublimation and constructive application. This particularly applies to sexual, emotional and aggressive tendencies and energies, which lead to the intensification of those already present in the conscious personality. The importance of this part of the treatment is evident, as is that of the knowledge and use of the active methods for its implementation. These methods can be widely applied in education and auto-psychosynthesis as well, and should be generally made known and practiced.
The second reason for active co-operation in achieving the integration, the synthesis, of the personality lies in the advantage, sometimes indeed the necessity, of developing, by means of active training, the psychic functions that have remained at primitive, infantile levels, paralysed by devaluation or inhibited by repression. In modern man, engrossed in his interests and practical concerns—often with a one-sided development of the intellectual function—the higher feelings, aesthetic sensitivity, the capacity to commune with nature and the ability to establish human communication with others are often lacking or have atrophied. In other people, instead, emotional and imaginative exuberance relegates to an inferior position of mental, and sometimes also practical, activity.
There are still other cases, to which Jung draws attention, in which the higher aspirations and needs are ignored, underestimated or feared, and thus neglected or repressed. One of Jungʼs most valuable contributions is his having called the attention of psychotherapists to these cases and encouraged in his medical work the expression and satisfaction of these spiritual needs.
But further advance can be made along the road opened by him. The irruption of the superconscious spiritual contents and energies can be actively assisted. As mentioned above, in many cases-indeed I believe in most of them—an active training is required to eliminate, or at least attenuate, the lack of balance in the development of the various psychological functions. This assistance is of particular importance in enabling the conscious “I” to contain and assimilate the irrupting superconscious energies and to integrate them harmoniously into the totality of the psychic life.
The use of the active techniques can and should be promoted by the therapist. I have said “promoted”, since it is not incumbent upon the therapist to teach and apply them personally. They can avail themself of the services of competent assistants, entrusting the patient to their respective competencies, but always controlling and guiding the treatment according to a well-defined program, and encouraging the patient to learn to carry it on by themself as soon as possible.
The techniques amount to some dozens, and I will enumerate only the principal groups:
Psycho-physical techniques
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- Exercises in relaxation
- Concentration on and awareness of physical sensations, including the muscular (methods of Vittoz, Schultz, etc.).
- Exercises in neuromuscular co-ordination—Rhythmic movements and dancing.
- Physical activities of various kinds.
- Handicrafts.
- Drawing, painting and modelling.
- Playing musical instruments.
- Diction—Recitation-Singing.
Psychological techniques
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- Observation.
- Visualisation.
- Evocation of auditory, tactile, olfactory, etc., “images”.
- Mental exercises—Meditation, etc.
Psycho-spiritual techniques
These fall into two groups:
- Those which promote the elevation of the “I” or Ego, the centre of self-consciousness, to levels usually superconscious and towards union with the spiritual Self.
- Those which promote the opening of the consciousness to the “descending” inflow of the contents and energies of the superconscious
The choice of the techniques to be used in therapy must be determined by the requirements of each individual case. They should be combined and alternated according to a plan or program that is intended to promote the gradual and harmonious integration of the personality. This program gives psychosynthetic therapy and education its specific character. I have included psychosynthetic education, because the greater part of the techniques enumerated can, with appropriate adaptations and modifications, be applied effectively in educational practice, in the family as well as in school.
Education
This brings us to the consideration of Jungʼs ideas on education. Though he did not concern himself directly and actively with the educational application of his conceptions, his writings on the subject contain much of interest and value. As far back as 1910 Jung published an essay on Conflicts of the Infantile Mind, in which—on the basis of a series of accurate observations on the psychological development of a 4-5-year old child—he ably examined various problems that arise in the infantile mind and must therefore be tackled by parents. These problems concern the birth of children, the contrast between imagination and thought, the effective relations with parents, etc. The various Prefaces to the successive editions and the Appendix contain some wise observations on the relative and complementary features of various points of view and interpretations in psychology. These are supplemented by useful advice on how to teach and explain to children the facts about sexuality. Later Jung elaborated his educational ideas and experiences within the general framework of his psychological conceptions in a series of lectures, which have been published under the title Analytical Psychology and Education in the volume Contributions to Analytical Psychology (London: Harcourt Brace, 1928). Jung summarises his ideas in the following statement:
“The difference between this and any former psychology lies in the fact that analytical psychology does not avoid dealing with admittedly complex mental phenomena, such as the four main functions of orientation: thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation. We admit that we do not know what these functions really are. We should like very much to know into what primitive elements feeling, for instance, could be resolved. But de- spite our ignorance of ultimate principles, we deal with these functions as if they were clearly definable organs of the mind. Another difference is the method of investigation. We have no academic laboratory. Our laboratory is the world. Our tests are real events of daily human life and the persons we test are our patients, relatives, friends, and—last but not least—ourselves. There are no needle pricks, artificial shocks, surprise-lights, or any of the manifold paraphernalia of laboratory experiment; but there are the pains and joys, the terrors and achievements of real life that provide us with our material. Our method is the understanding of life as represented in the psyche of men.” (Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 348)
Jung, as we have seen, not only attaches great importance to the human relationship between patient and therapist, but also considers the psychological rapport between parents and children and between teachers and pupils as having decisive significance. For this reason the educator must acquire a clear awareness that his psychological ignorance and deficiencies, his own complexes and conflicts, inevitably produce injurious repercussions upon those he wishes to educate. He should therefore recognise the heavy responsibility he bears and his duty to train himself for his noble but arduous task by means of an adequate self-education, founded upon the discoveries and methods of the new dynamic psychology.
On this point, Jung has expressed himself thus: “It is of course quite impossible that parents should have no complexes at all: that would be superhuman. But they should deal with them consciously; they should make it a duty to work them out for the sake of their children. They should not evade their troubles, and try to repress them in order to avoid painful discussions.” (ibid., p. 375)
The specific applications of Jungʼs ideas and method of education do not lend themselves to being summarised. The way he puts them into practice in the cases on which he reports should be studied, and this can be done in the above-mentioned book. Furthermore, one of Jungʼs pupils, Dr. Frances Wickes, has written an excellent book on child psychology, for which Jung himself provided an extensive Introduction. Its title is The Inner World of Childhood (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft; 1927) and it contains much valuable advice on the education of children, in particular on the problems of parental influence on the child. In a chapter of special interest and originality, the author deals with an aspect of the psychic life of the child that is little known—his creation of imaginary companions.
At a conference on education in Basel in 1942, Jung delivered a lecture on The Gifted Child. Its subject is of much importance and present interest in view of the growing consideration being given to the recognition and education of gifted and particularly gifted children. The value of Jungʼs essay is enhanced by the description of his own personal experiences and hardships as a “boy of talent”, and therefore deserves being quoted at some length. Here is Jungʼs lively and amusingly written account of his scholastic vicissitudes:
“When I was a schoolboy of ten, I did not feel at all sleepy or stupid. I was often exceedingly bored when the master used to take particular pains with pupils unable to follow. But the boredom was by no means the worst part. Among our many composition themes, which were hardly inspiring, we were once given one that interested me. I set to with enthusiasm and polished my sentences with the utmost care. In the joyous anticipation of having written the best composition, or at least one of the best, I handed it to the teacher. After giving back the compositions, it was his custom to discuss first the best, and then the others in order of merit. Mine was not the first, nor the second, and not even the third. All the others preceded mine, and when he had finished discussing the last effort, the weakest of them all, the teacher inflated himself in a threatening and ominous manner and delivered his verdict: ʻJungʼs composition is by far the best but he has ruined it by triviality and lack of thought.
For this reason it does not merit a place in the list.ʼ ʻItʼs not true,ʼ I interrupted the teacher, ʻIʼve never worked so hard on a composition as I did on this.ʼ ʻItʼs a lie,ʼ he shouted. ʻLook at X (X was the pupil who had produced the worst composition); he has really taken trouble. Heʼll get ahead in life, but you no, because one doesnʼt succeed with ability and tricks!ʼ I said nothing, and from that moment on I did no more work in my German class. “This experience, it is true, dates from more than a half-century ago, and I do not doubt that in the meantime school conditions have greatly changed and improved. But that episode gave me much to think about and left me with a sense of bitterness, which, however, with broader experience of life has given place to a more balanced assessment. 1 understood how, deep down, the masterʼs attitude had been prompted by the noble principle of helping the weak and eradicating the bad. Sometimes, however, it unfortunately happens that these principles get turned into mechanical rules, which, in their turn, get accepted without further consideration and give birth to deplorable caricatures of the good of this sort. The weak are helped and the bad is fought in this way, it is true, but at the same time the danger of neglecting the more gifted individual is exposed. It is as if emergence from the ranks were in itself an awkward and troublesome affair. Thereʼs nothing to be done about it; the aver- age man distrusts and is suspicious of all his intelligence cannot grasp. ʻIi est trop intelligentʼ—a phrase that justifies the direst suspicions!” (pp. 135-137)
Jung rightly deplores this pseudo-humanitarian concept and false conception of democracy. “The desire to bring all people to the same level and reduce them to the status of sheep by suppressing the natural aristocratic or hierarchical structure (in the psycho-spiritual sense, be it well noted) leads infallibly, sooner or later, to a catastrophe.” (pp. 144-145)
Jung then adds some valuable observations on the difficulties of recognising and educating talented children. “The problem of the gifted child,” he writes, “is in no way a simple matter, since he is not recognisable merely by the fact of his being a good scholar. In certain cases indeed he is the very reverse. He may even be aggravatingly distinguishable by his special brand of absent-mindedness, with his head full of nonsense, by his laziness, negligence, lack 0f attention, rudeness, obstinacy and by giving the impression of being only half awake. Judging only by superficial observation, it is often hard to tell a talented child apart from a weak-minded one. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that gifted children are not always precocious but apt to develop slowly, so that their gifts may remain latent for a long time.” (pp. 137-138)
Jung draws attention to and shows the importance of what he calls the gifts of the heart:
“In addition to the gifts of the head, there exist also those of the heart, which are no less important, but of which it is easy to be un- aware, because often in these cases the head is weaker than the heart. And yet people of this sort are frequently more useful and valuable to the well-being of society than those with different gifts.” (p. 141)
“Gifted children come up against complications not only in the intellectual but also in the moral field, i.e., in the sphere of feelings. Adults who frequently distort the truth, tell lies and commit innumerable other sins of moral negligence can create problems in a morally gifted child that upset him a great deal. In precisely the same way that one fails to notice or undervalues intellectual sensitivity and precocity, one adopts similar attitudes towards a talented childʼs criticism in moral and emotional situations. Often the gifts of the heart are less evident and striking than the intellectual and technical ones; and just as the latter have the right to exact special understanding from the educator, so the former also call for the best of which he is capable; in other words, they demand that he himself be educated.” (p. 140)
Finally, Jung calls attention to the lack of balance and to the contradictions existing in gifted children and to the dangers of their gifts being used in antisocial and destructive ways. He writes: “There are not a few talented individuals whose usefulness is paralysed, even perverted often, by their human shortcomings in all other fields. Talent has no real value of itself; it only has it if the rest of the personality is capable of following its lead to the point where it can be applied to advantage. Unfortunately, creative ability can exhibit itself equally effectively in a destructive direction as well. Whether it is directed towards the good or the bad is decided solely by the moral attitude of the personality.” (p. 142)
In connection with the education of these children, Jung raises the problem whether they should be brought together in special schools or left in normal ones. He favours the second alternative, but does not go into the various aspects of the problem. I have discussed this subject in a pamphlet The Education of Gifted and Supergifted Children (New York: Psychosynthesis Research Foundation).
Education is a form of inter-individual relationship; let us therefore examine the problems and methods of inter-individual and social relationships, from Jungʼs standpoint and that of psychosynthesis. In practice, the goal or ultimate phase of Jungian therapy is Individuation. I say “in practice”, because Jung admits that (to quote his own words) “the actual process of individuation carries with it an awareness of what the human community is…Individuation presupposes a unification with oneself and therefore with humanity, of which everyone carries a particle within him.” (La Guérison Psychologique, p. 228) “The single individual,” reiterates Jung, “does not live his life to the full and fails to grasp its purpose, if he is incapable of putting his ʻIʼ at the service of a spiritual and superhuman order.” (p. 145)
Jung, however, limits himself to these allusions which indicate an aspiration more than an effective move in that direction. His method is not designed to actively help the patient to initiate and to “live” that communion with other human beings. Rather he insists strongly on the opposition, indeed the conflict, between the individual and the mass, between the personal life and the collective pressure exercised by modern social life. This is mechanised and regimented, not solely materially but also psychologically, as evidenced by the mass ideologies, the pressure to conform, the suggestion and “persuasion” of advertising and various forms of propaganda. Jung shares this position with a number of other critics of modern life: philosophers, sociologists and psychologists, among whom Erich Fromm is outstanding.
There is, unfortunately, a great deal of truth in all this, but that rigid and extreme opposition appears to be one- sided and too absolute. We must recognise that the individual and the mass are included in the extensive sphere of human relations, forming part of the normal life of the human, who is, in their inner nature as well as from external necessity, a being both social and sociable. It is indeed true that these human relationships are far from being easy, harmonious and constructive. We can observe this all the time. Apart from mass pressures, human relationships come up against many difficulties. Those who are predominantly introverted find it difficult to create psychological relations with others, to communicate “humanly.” The predominantly extraverted, on the other hand, establish a wide network of relationships, but these are superficial, incidental, so that in reality the individual remains psychologically and spiritually isolated.
The difficulties and conflicts in human relations are due in large measure to an excessive tendency to self-assertion and over-valuation of success in the external world. This leads to the depreciation or repression of the higher feelings, and the capacity for loving understanding, compassion, altruistic love. The revaluation and active development of these feelings thus become a necessity. There are, as I have said previously, effective methods of doing this, and the therapist and educator should consider one of their most important tasks to be the fostering of the awakening and expression of those feelings.
The first step is the recognition and proper appreciation of the human and higher values. One effective practice to this end is the study of the inspiring lives of those who have exemplified these values—the heroes, the saints, the great humanitarians. But many of them, far more than one might suppose, are to be found among simple and humble people, as the “awards for kindness” (which should be greatly extended) have demonstrated.
The second step is to arouse and foster goodwill. There are several ways of doing so; and a particularly effective one is direct contact with human suffering, and this can be obtained by visits to, and, better still, active help in hospitals, prisons, city slums, and visiting and helping lonely individuals—particularly old people. Also there is co-operation in creative and socially useful activities, in which the group spirit and solidarity are developed, and understanding and friendships established.
There is a series of methods with which I cannot deal now; I will merely enumerate them:
- Preliminary methods: Elimination of obstacles: egocentricity; separative self-assertion; hostility and combativeness; prejudices and preconceptions.
- Positive methods: Understanding; generosity; goodwill; altruistic.
Help in achieving interpersonal and group psychosynthesis (also called inter-individual and social psychosynthesis) forms an important, indeed an indispensable part of psychosynthetic therapy and education. It can be justly maintained that our civilisation is neurotic and ill-balanced, and that there exist real group neuroses and psychoses; for instance, national glorification and ideological fanaticism. Therefore psychotherapy should include and undertake these more comprehensive tasks, for which it is well equipped. Every sick individual who is helped to establish right human relations becomes an element of balance and health in his community; and inversely, every effort aimed at adjusting unbalance and collective psychoses makes it easier for the single individual to reach and maintain his personal health.
Thus the tasks and activity of therapists, educators and all who, in different fields and ways, devote themselves to the healing of social ills converge and unite in a double purpose. The first and urgent one is to safeguard humanity from the dangers its blindness and folly have created for itself. The second, to promote the coming of a new and better civilisation, in which the individual can, in freedom and for the good of all, give expression to and make the most of the wonderful potentialities inherent in each human being.