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The Psychosynthesis Approach
Roberto Assagioli was the founding father of psychosynthesis. What led him to develop psychosynthesis? What was his background? What kind of person was he?
ā¢ As a young medical student in 1910, with much enthusiasm he introduced Sigmund Freudās psychoanalysis to his professors in Florence, and then later that year severely criticized it.
ā¢ In 1927 he proposed that the purpose of psychological healing was to contact a deeper centre of identity, the Self, to nurture its unfoldment while removing obstacles to its actualization.
ā¢ He created an optimistic vision of human nature in spite of the dominance of the pathologically orientated psychology of that time; and maintained this vision for sixty years.
ā¢ He dared to emphasize the Soul; manās spiritual Being, by postulating that this was the source of psychological health.
ā¢ He recognized the need for meaning and purpose as being fundamental to human existence and well-being.
ā¢ He perceived life as an evolutionary journey of development and differentiation, and problems as opportunities which aid this unfoldment.
ā¢ He viewed a human being both as individual with unique qualities and as universal, intimately interconnected both with others, the entire world and with the environment.
ā¢ He maintained that the active evocation of potential was necessary for the treatment of neurosis and pathology.
ā¢ He noticed that people repress not only the unacceptable aspects of themselves but also their higher impulses such as intuition, altruism, creative inspiration, love and joy.
It is useful to place Assagioli in his historical context. As a young medical doctor he was in his prime at the time when Einstein was developing his theory of relativity in Berne, Freud was pioneering psychoanalysis in Vienna, James Joyce was revolutionizing literature in Trieste, Jung was giving birth to analytical psychology in Zurich, Lenin was formulating the Russian revolution in Zurich and Heidegger was preparing to espouse existentialism in Fribourg. Most of the great intellectual revolutions were initiated in central Europe around this time, and everywhere new trends of thought were springing up.
In addition to his Western medical and psychoanalytic training, Assagioli studied the major world religions and was touched especially by the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian traditions. He was a friend of Martin Buber and was knowledgeable about Judaism. He practised Hatha and Raja yoga, the yoga of the body and of the mind. He was influenced by many Eastern and Western visionary approaches and was actively involved in the explosion of new thinking in the first thirty years of the twentieth century.
In 1910, while still in his early twenties, Doctor Roberto Assagioli was the first psychoanalyst to start practising in Italy. During this period he visited Zurich to train in psychiatry with Bleuler, the pioneer who defined āschizophreniaā and one of the first doctors to accept psychoanalysis. There he met Jung, with whom he established a life-long friendship.
An abundance of contacts and interchanges was significant in Assagioliās background. Among these were: Russian esotericist P.D. Ouspensky, German philosopher Hermann Keyserling, Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, Sufi mystic Inhayat Khan, Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, psychologists Viktor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy, and Robert Desoille, creator of the guided day-dream. These contacts, made before and after his separation from psychoanalysis, both inspired and motivated his creation of a wide perspective and vision, which he called psychosynthesis.
Although he was touched deeply by his studies with Freud and his exploration of the unconscious psyche, Assagioli quickly became dissatisfied and was inspired to delve into the further reaches of human nature. Thirty years later his ideas were in agreement with psychologist Abraham Maslow, who maintained that one could not draw universal conclusions or theories about human nature by extrapolating from the pathology of human beings or studying the sick psyche, but that one should study humankind in its greatest, most beautiful manifestations.
Although its roots are in psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis went beyond the two previously recognized forces in psychology, behaviourism and psychoanalysis. Freudās theory of the unconscious psyche stressed the impact and consequences of childhood experience upon adult behaviour. Behaviourism addresses itself to dysfunctional behaviours and is used to replace them with socially acceptable and less painful adaptations. However, in the late 1950s a radical shift occurred in the field of psychology, a shift which even today is not fully integrated into conventional psychology ā the emergence of the third and fourth forces, of humanistic and of transpersonal psychology.
Humanistic psychology promoted a movement away from the earlier tendency of psychology to limit itself to pathology, towards what the human being is capable of becoming. It studied self-actualized people and psychological health, and formulated a model of a healthy, fully functioning human being. It focused on the evocation of potential, on higher values, and on the enhancement of that which is beautiful and inherently positive in man. Psychosynthesis, which had held a similar perspective since 1910, gained more acceptance with this larger development.
Born in the late 1960s, transpersonal psychology, the fourth force, took psychology one developmental step further. It enlarged the vision of health to include the search for meaning and purpose and extended the domain of psychological enquiry to include the individualās experience and aspiration for transcendence as well as the healing potential of self-transcendence. Andras Angyal, for example, addressed not only the individualās need to become autonomous, but also his need for the experience of homonomy, of union with the greater whole.
James Hillman (2000) in his book The Soulās Code spoke against what he called the psychology of causality and the parental fallacy ā that psychology needed to recognize that the idea that we are ācausedā by childhood and parental conditioning doesnāt work any more. He goes on to say that we have been analysing our pasts, our childhoods, our memories and it is not changing our lives. It is just too simplistic a view of human experience. Furthermore, he stresses that in the cosmology behind traditional psychology there is no real reason for anyone to be here or do anything with their lives and that ultimately we are all victims ā of past experiences of upbringing, social class, race, gender, social prejudices.
Transpersonal psychology recognized that the integrated personality would not only have a balanced development of the psychological functions, but also an experience of human interconnectedness and an awareness of those social conditions most conducive to fostering potential. This further development emphasized more than the power of the individual for self-regulation and responsibility. It also emphasized the creative capacity for global thinking and vision, and is concerned with meta-needs, ultimate values and mystical experience. As this new field has evolved it has increasingly stressed the actualizing dimension of transpersonal experience.
Psychosynthesis, as one of the prime forces in transpersonal psychology, stretches beyond the boundaries of personal psychology and individuality by postulating a deeper centre of identity: the Self, our essential Being. It includes, but transcends, our personal day-to-day consciousness, leading to an enhanced sense of life-direction and purpose. It is the postulate of the Self, the value placed upon exploration of potential, and the hypothesis that each individual has a unique purpose in life that primarily differentiates transpersonal from humanistic psychology. At the transpersonal level we find many important aspects of being human; acts of altruism, creative and artistic inspiration, the perception of beauty, intuition, curiosity about the universe and our place in it, and a sense of the universality of life.
We can perceive these four forces of psychology as a developmental flow with each force representing a step forward and a transcendence of what has come before. Viewed in isolation they form unique psychologies, each with their own contribution and therapeutic system. If framed as an evolutionary unfoldment, each force builds upon the strengths and includes the best of what existed previously. Psychosynthesis seeks to incorporate elements of each of these forces in psychology while further stepping into the exploration of values, meaning, peak experience and the ineffable essence of human life.
Goals of Psychosynthesis Counselling
Assagioli recognized and developed two mutually dependent and interactive aspects of psychosynthesis: personal psychosynthesis, which aims to foster the development of a well-integrated personality; and transpersonal psychosynthesis, which offers the possibility of realizing oneās higher nature and purpose in life. He recognized the individualās need for meaning, both the meaning of our own individual existence and the meaning of the world in which we live, indeed of life itself. This need is a major concern of our world today and we are impoverished without it being addressed.
Traditionally, psychological growth and the spiritual quest have been labelled and sometimes experienced as separate and essentially antagonistic directions. Freudian psychology rationalized spiritual pursuits as escapist or delusional, and tended to view manās higher values and achievements as adaptations of lower instincts and drives. On the other hand, those following spiritual disciplines have often dismissed psychology as an unnecessary distraction to the path of inner awakening. Psychosynthesis seeks to integrate these interdependent levels and asserts them as complementary aspects necessary for the resolution of psychological problems and the awakening of the Self.
Although Assagioli was perhaps the first to make the above assertion, his work corresponded with Maslowās later article, āTheory Zā (1971, 1993), in which he discriminated between two types of self-actualizing people: those who were clearly healthy, free from basic deficiency needs and effectively functioning in the world; and those who achieved the above but went further in their development by recognizing the limitations of personal identity and transcending them to move towards the realization of higher values.
Personal psychosynthesis fits within the domain of humanistic psychology. It employs many techniques to assist the integration of the personality while dealing with personality deficiencies, psychological conflicts, archaic behaviour patterns and neurotic complexes. The clientās ability to function effectively and invest herself fully in the achievement of a rewarding and productive life is of key importance. Hopefully, the outcome of this work is a strong sense of personal identity.
Hence the goals of psychosynthesis parallel those of humanistic psychology and in particular Maslowās concept of self-actualization. Of course the primary and most immediate objective of psychosynthesis is to alleviate suffering. Other objectives are: to evoke strengths and latent potential; to foster integration between the inner and outer world of the client; to help the client become the creator of her own life and to express herself meaningfully; and, finally, to evoke the clientās inner authority and wisdom thereby rendering the counsellor obsolete.
All of the above are worthy goals for counselling. To become a strong individual fully invested in life, and to function well and effectively can be a great achievement. But what next? What is this Self? What follows when a person has attained a reasonable measure of competence and well-being? What are we to do with this hard-won psychological integration? What are the deeper values to live for? Am I evolving in a positive direction? These questions are well worth asking anyway, but the success of counselling may depend upon their exploration.
Assagioli maintained that the purpose of psychosynthesis is to help integrate, to synthesize, the multiple aspects of the individualās personality around a personal centre and, later, to effect a greater synthesis between the personal ego and the transpersonal Self. According to Kaufman ([1984]2010) Jung also postulated a similar drive towards individuation or intrinsic wholeness and believed that this force autonomously pushes us towards fulfilling our truest self. This groundwork is also essential to authentic transpersonal awakening in order to ensure that a pathology of the sublime does not replace previously neurotic symptoms.
As previously mentioned, the transpersonal dimension is that area of the human psyche which is qualitatively higher than, and which transcends, personal existence. It is the home of greater aspirations, the source of higher feelings like compassion and altruism, and forms the roots of intuition and creative intelligence. Transpersonal awareness emerges in different ways at different times. At any point in life an individual may experience an inner awakening, a longing for life to be more deeply fulfilling and inspiring than it previously has been. This awakening is not necessarily religious by nature.
There can be an inflow of superconscious energies, peak experiences in Maslowās terms, which momentarily foster clarity of vision, a transcendence of personal identity, an awareness of the oneness of all life, and may provide experiences of a qualitative nature like serenity, love and beauty. Transpersonal experiences have a reality which many feel to be more profound than normal everyday existence. They embody an intrinsic value, a noetic quality, leaving the individual with a deepened sense of value and meaning.
It is also not unusual for transpersonal interests to be evoked by a trauma or serious disruption in a personās life. A divorce, an accident, a near-death experience can force an individual to let go of something to which she was attached and in which she had invested a great deal of life-energy. This disruption can lead to questioning the significance of life and a search for meaning and answers beyond individuality and oneās everyday existence.
Levels of Psychosynthesis Counselling
The purpose of this section is to establish the groundwork of psychosynthesis counselling by examining the three psychological levels which it addresses: the past, the present and the future. At the heart of psychosynthesis is its emphasis on the transpersonal, the primary factor differentiating it from other schools of counselling. This section also includes an introduction to the transpersonal dimension.
The Past
Freudās work demonstrated that various physical symptoms and psychological disturbances were due to instincts, drives and fantasies buried in the unconscious and retained there by resistances and defence mechanisms. It is an exaggeration to say that we are our history and yet it is commonly understood that our past and childhood experiences influence how we behave as adults. This influence is multi-dimensional, often indirect and pervasive. It profoundly affects our capacity for love and intimacy, for assertion and self-affirmation; it determines our perception of life, and colours our deepest attitudes and values. Unless we are to remain puppets of the past, our unresolved elements must be brought into consciousness and transformed.
Assagioli (1965: 21) believed that the first step towards self-actualization was a thorough knowledge of oneās personality. He wrote:
We have to recognize that in order to really know ourselves, it is not enough to make an inventory of the elements that form our conscious being. An extensive exploration of the vast regions of our unconscious must also be undertaken. We first have to penetrate courageously into the pit of our lower unconscious in order to discover dark forces that ensnare and menace us ā the phantasms, the ancestral or childish images that obsess or silently dominate us, the fears that paralyze us, and the conflicts that waste our energies.
In this sense the counsellor must begin by assessing the personalityās blocks and potentials to allow a purposeful exploration of the underworld of ...
