Psychosynthesis. Theory and practice. From mental crisis to the higher self, page 1

Description of the method

At the beginning of the 20th century, Roberto Assagioli, combining various techniques and approaches of psychotherapy in his psychotherapeutic practice, developed a new method of treatment, which he gave the name “psychosynthesis”. The creation of psychosynthesis was an attempt to combine all the best created by S. Freud, C. Jung, P. Janet and others, as well as to create opportunities for self-knowledge by the individual, self-liberation from illusions and restructuring around a new “center of the Self.”[2]

To achieve harmonious internal integration, comprehension of the true “I” and the formation of correct relationships with other people, Assagioli proposed the following approach:[2]

1. Deep knowledge of your personality.
2. Control over the components of your personality.
3. Comprehension of your “Higher Self” (see model) - identifying or creating a unifying center.
4. Psychosynthesis: the formation or restructuring of personality around a new center.

Psychosynthesis by Roberto Assagioli

Classical psychology, as it was taught until recently in European and American universities, takes for granted the unity of the individual and reflects it as a transcendent reality. For her, consciousness, reason, will, morality and certain classes of emotions (“bad” or “good”) are integral attributes of a given individual, in whom spirit and matter, mind and passion, God and the devil wage an endless struggle for the possession of his immortal soul . An individual endowed with “free will” can and must choose his own path. Left to himself, he would obviously move towards evil and matter, but with the help of the grace of God and His Son (or His messengers - the founders of religions and spiritual teachings), the individual can be saved and regain the lost Divine gifts.

These are the origins of psychology, coming from Plato and Christianity, with which Freud struggled, as a representative of the pragmatic, empirical and scientific approach to nature and human experience. Being a doctor dedicated to helping people suffering from mental disorders and personality disintegration, he set out to a priori not take into account all existing theories about a person as an individual and re-perceive only what he sees with his own eyes. Studying mental illnesses, especially acute neuroses, he found that he was dealing with the processes of psychological adaptation and inhibition, which are actually present in a less pronounced form and in the behavior of completely healthy people.

This marked the beginning of the study of many features of human behavior that did not fit into the clear picture provided by Platonic-Christian psychology or that were explained by supernatural causes. Freud analyzed dreams and mystical revelations, jokes and great works of art, childhood affections and prophetic predictions. Ideals and idols crumbled at his touch. After all, their source turned out to be the same psychological processes that occur in mentally ill people. What is the difference between the conviction of a paranoid who declares himself to be God and the faith that motivated the prophets of antiquity? What is the difference between the fruits of a neurotic’s “automatic writing” and the Koran and other divinely inspired books? If dreams can be convincingly interpreted based on physical or psychological abnormalities, then wouldn’t similar interpretations be suitable for visions of saints?

Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli, the founder of the technique of psychosynthesis, sought to integrate depth psychology with modernized forms of occultism, a Platonic-Hindu approach to God and man. These two directions in psychology, complementing each other, have become important answers to the obvious needs of humanity, confused in the world of machines.

After the war, Assagioli took up the task that had long been standing before him - the presentation of the concept of psychosynthesis. He wrote to me that he was working on an extensive manuscript entitled From Man to Humanity, which outlined his psychological ideas. He was especially interested in a new, more detailed than Jung's, definition of psychological types from the point of view of studying psychological deviations associated with various phases of spiritual development and various types of group relationships.

This is how he himself characterized the main tendencies of his special approach: “The diagnosis of an illness currently affecting psychology quite definitely indicates what kind of treatment is necessary and how we can initiate a new, more creative phase of its development.

This new phase, unlike what has led to the current crisis, must be highly synthesizing in nature. Its character and tendencies will be manifested in a number of factors. The following points must be taken into account:

1. To collect together all available materials that may be of value or usefulness, without any exception based on their source, time or place of appearance.

2. The starting point for studying a person should be his inner center, what he essentially is, and all other psychological, energetic and external manifestations should be considered in their living connection with this center, which constantly strives to coordinate and synthesize them into a single living integrity .

3. It is necessary to fully take into account all the higher supraconscious and spiritual aspects of human nature, which psychology left before philosophy and religion, creating a gap, and often a conflict, between different approaches to human nature.

4. The principle of synthesis should be increasingly applied to group psychology and on its basis an interpersonal psychology should be developed, which considers various types of group psyche, from the loving couple and family to various communities and humanity as a whole.

5. Using the principle of synthesis in psychological practice, developing a method and technique of psychosynthesis aimed at the complete and harmonious development of the human personality and attaching special importance to its higher and spiritual aspects.

Dr. Assagioli's psychosynthesis is not only a response to chaos, but also a universalization of the aspirations and interests of our generation. The multiplicity of energies and accentuations, the complexity of global openness to the world - these are the facts we are faced with. Assagioli had to come into contact with them himself, and this encounter gave rise to resolution. How completely he managed to resolve this conflict in his personal life is not the topic of our consideration. But the “structure of resolution” - the principle of salvation, the reconciliation of opposites - is clearly present in his chart (individual horoscope - comp.). Psychosynthesis is the interpretation of this card. At the level of personal life, it corresponds to the global planning of a new society that is now taking place.

It is impossible here to give a complete overview of Assagioli's ideas about human nature as a whole. Only the following can be stated. According to Assagioli, a person includes:

1) the lower unconscious, which embraces and generates elementary psychological activity that controls bodily instincts and lower passions, “complexes,” dreams, fantasies of the lower kind, manifestations of lower “psychism,” mediumship, and so on;

2) the middle unconscious, formed by psychological elements similar to the elements of our waking consciousness and easily accessible to it;

3) the higher unconscious, or superconsciousness, from where the highest intuitive insights and inspiration come, the source of genius and mystical states;

4) waking consciousness - the part of our personality that we are directly aware of;

5) personal conscious “I”, which at the same time is the center of our consciousness, including the changing content of consciousness (sensations, thoughts, feelings, etc.);

6) spiritual “I”, unchanging spiritual, fixed, unchanging, not influenced by the “stream of consciousness” or “states of the body.” The personal conscious “I” serves only as its reflection, its projection into the sphere of personality. This concept of the existence of a personal “I”, which is just a “reflection” of the spiritual or true “I” (unmanifest and in most cases unconscious to the conscious ego) is typical of the Platonic-Christian approach in psychology and is closely related to the ideas of Helena Blavatsky, with whom Assagioli was familiar.

While Dr. Kunkel strives to restore spiritual reality to human consciousness through Christian mysticism, Assagioli moves along a similar path in line with ancient and modern theosophy. Thus, the Nordic, Germanic approach complements the Mediterranean tradition, the origins of which go back to Hindu transcendentalism and the teachings of Yoga.

Assagioli for the liberation of man." The path to such liberation, to delivering a person from “fundamental inherent inferiority” to “peace, harmony and strength,” passes through four stages. Assagioli describes them this way:

1. Complete knowledge of one's own personality.

2. Control over its various elements.

3. Realization of one's true self, or at least the creation of a unifying center.

4. Psychosynthesis: the formation or reconstruction of the personality around this new center.

Without being able to characterize each stage in detail here, I will only point out that the last of them (process and reconstruction) includes three important phases:

a) using the energy of forces released by the previous process of analysis and disintegration of subconscious complexes and attachments; the use of hidden forces, capabilities and tendencies that we have not used before and that exist at various internal levels (use of psychodynamics).

b) the development of elements that we lack or that are inadequate to the goals facing us, through their direct awakening, self-hypnosis, creative self-affirmation or methodological training of weak or undeveloped abilities, similar to sports training or teaching singing, music, etc.

c) coordination and subordination of various psychological energies and abilities in the creation of an internal hierarchy, a stable organization of the personality.

This approach is more theoretical and philosophical than purely psychological. However, its structural clarity and well-designed formula can pay dividends.

Assagioli's model of man

Scheme of the structure of a person’s inner world, proposed by R. Assagioli.
Assagioli’s concept can be represented in the form of the following model (“egg diagram”):[1]

1. The lower unconscious
   is the simplest forms of mental activity that control the life of the body; basic drives, primitive impulses; “complexes”, dreams; various pathological manifestations (phobias, manias, obsessions and desires), etc.
2. The middle unconscious
   contains elements similar to the psychic elements of the waking consciousness. In the middle unconscious, the experience gained is assimilated and the fruits of the daily activities of the mind and imagination appear, manifesting themselves in the light of consciousness.
3. The higher unconscious
   is the area of ​​manifestation of higher forms: intuition, inspiration, higher feelings, the desire for heroic deeds, talent.
4. The field of consciousness
   is the directly conscious part of the personality; a flow of thoughts, feelings, sensations accessible to observation, analysis and evaluation.
5. The conscious self
   is the point of pure self-awareness; the semantic core of the individual’s consciousness.
6. The Higher Self
   is the true Self that exists above the conscious self; returns to consciousness (after sleep, hypnosis, fainting, etc.)
7. The collective unconscious
   is the external mental environment.

Selected bibliography

• Roberto Assagioli
  Psychosynthesis: A Collection of Basic Writings. ISBN 0-9678570-0-7
• Roberto Assagioli
  The Act of Will. ISBN 0-670-10309-8
• Roberto Assagioli
  Jung and Psychosynthesis. New York: Psychosynthesis Research Foundation.
• Piero Ferrucci
  What We May Be: Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth Through Psychosynthesis. ISBN 0-87477-262-1
• Molly Young Brown
  Unfolding Self: The Practice Of Psychosynthesis. ISBN 1-58115-383-X
• John Firman and Ann Gila
  Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit. ISBN 0-7914-5534-3
• Will Parfitt
  Psychosynthesis: The Elements and Beyond. ISBN 978-0-9552786-0-0
• Jean Hardy
  A Psychology with a Soul: Psychosynthesis in Evolutionary Context. ISBN 0-14-010218-2
• Henryk Misiak and Virginia Staudt Sexton
  Phenomenological, Existential, and Humanistic Psychologies: a Historical Survey. ISBN 0-8089-0814-6

In Russian

• Spiritual development and nervous disorders // Journal “Urania”, M., 1991, No. 2.
• Psychosynthesis. Theory and practice. - K: PSYLIB, 2002.
• Rudyar D.
  Roberto Assagioli and psychosynthesis // Urania Magazine, M., 1991, No. 2.

Notes[ | ]

1. ↑ 1 2 Bibliothèque nationale de France
   identifier BNF (French): open data platform - 2011.
2. ↑ 1 2 3 L.A.
   Karpenko. Assagioli (inaccessible link from 05/10/2013 [2768 days]) // History of psychology in persons: personalities. — 2005. (Retrieved January 10, 2012)
3. ↑ 1 2 Sørensen, Kenneth, Hanne Birkholm.
   Roberto Assagioli - His Life and Work (English). Kentaur Træning. Access date: April 28, 2011. Archived July 29, 2012.
4. B. D. Karvasarsky.
   Psychosynthesis // Psychotherapeutic Encyclopedia. - St. Petersburg: Peter (Russian). - 2000. // Psychotherapeutic Encyclopedia. - St. Petersburg: Peter. B. D. Karvasarsky. 2000.
5. Psychosynthesis (inaccessible link) (inaccessible link from 10-05-2013 [2768 days]) // Clinical psychology. Dictionary / Ed. N. D. Tvorogova. - M.: PER SE, 2007. - 416 p.
6. Keith Hackwood Psyche's Cinderella: in appreciation of Roberto Assagioli