In The Act of Will, Roberto Assagioli outlines a set of psychological functions that can be harnessed to develop a skilful way of willing, and the psychological laws that govern them.
According to Assagioli, imagination is one of these psychological functions that we can harness, with skill and training, to successfully and efficiently do what we desire to do. It is evident in Assagioli’s ten Psychological Laws that imagination, imagery and ideas are significant psychological elements we can use to develop the act of willing process.
Below we take these laws each in turn, featuring extracts of Assagioli’s wider text. Do these laws resonate in your own practice or experience?
The Ten Psychological Laws
Law I – Images or mental pictures and ideas tend to produce the physical conditions and the external acts that correspond to them.
“… the centrally located will can mobilise the energies of imagination and of thought, and utilise these energies within the individual to carry out its plan. So the will can be used purposefully and consciously by the individual to choose, evoke, and concentrate on the images and ideas that will help to produce the action his desires …”
Law II – Attitudes, movements and actions tend to evoke corresponding images and ideas; these in turn (according to the next law) evoke or intensify corresponding emotions and feelings.
“… For example, the individual who is working to develop and express courage by utilising his imagination and his thoughts according to Law I can also use his body purposefully by assuming the corresponding physical attitude. Thus his body will intensify and reinforce his imagination and thoughts, according to Law II, and this will in turn evoke and intensify the experience of courage itself… “
Law III – Ideas and images tend to awaken emotions and feelings that correspond to them.
“… This relates closely to Law I. Ideas and images tend to produce acts in accordance with the first law, and emotions in accordance with this law. … Again, with a skilful application of this law the centrally located will can mobilise the energy of emotions and feelings through the use of appropriate ideas and images …”
Law IV – Emotions and impressions tend to awaken and intensify ideas and images that correspond or are associated with them.
“…. The emotions evoked through ideas and images (Law III) can in turn awaken and intensify associated ideas. Here, too, we have a feedback process which can operate for good or ill…”
Law V – Needs, urges, drives and desires tend to arouse corresponding images, ideas and emotions.
“… One of the most widely occurring examples of this law is what is termed in psychoanalysis as “rationalisation.” … Once we are aware of this law, we can be on the alert for the possibility of the mental and emotional illusions produced by rationalisation. We can learn to become more aware of our drives, urges and desires and what they want us to do … we can … decide for ourselves, from the central vantage point of our wills, whether or not we want to follow them.”
Law VI – Attentions, interest, affirmations and repetitions reinforce the ideas, images and psychological formations on which they are centred.
“… There can also be an opposite utilisation of this law. We can deliberately withdraw interest and attention from an unwanted image, idea, or psychological formation, and thus gradually de-energise it and reduce its activity. …”
Law VII – Repetition of actions intensifies the urge to further reiteration and renders their execution easier and better, until they come to be performed unconsciously.
“In this way, habits are formed. They can be compared to streets and roads: it is so much easier and more convenient to walk along a street than to force one’s way through the undergrowth. … As repeated habitual actions are taken over by the unconscious, the conscious is freed for other and higher activities. …”
Law VIII – All the various functions, and their manifold combinations in complexes and subpersonalities, adopt means of achieving their aims without awareness, and independently of, and even against, our conscious will.
“… Many creative artists and investigators have had practical experience of the working of this law. Providing the initial impetus, they allow the further elaboration to occur naturally and spontaneously. But this is quite a different matter from the “cult of spontaneity” as expressed in uncontrolled giving way to any emotion, impulse, or whim.”
Law IX – Urges, drives, desires and emotions tend and demand to be expressed.
“… [urges, drives and desires] must be recognised and examined with the same objectivity with which one studies a natural object. The procedure necessitates disidentification from them… and this in turn means acquiring awareness of the self, the conscious “I”, as distinct from these psychological elements and forces…”
Law X – The psychological energies can find expression: 1. directly (discharge–catharsis) 2. indirectly, through symbolic action 3. through a process of transmutation.
“… The transformation of combative and aggressive drives [for example] has a central importance because it constitutes one of the most effective, perhaps the most effective, means of eliminating interpersonal conflicts and preventing war….”
These extracts from Assagioli’s Psychological Laws were taken from his The Act of Will. Read Chapter Five, ‘The Skilful Will & Psychological Laws’, to see them in full.