- The context and challenges
- Psychospiritual psychology
- Institute of Psychosynthesis N.Z.
History of psychosynthesis
Psychosynthesis was founded by Dr. Roberto Assagioli, who trained in psychiatry with Eugen Bleuler, known for his formative work with schizophrenia. Assagioli was involved with the early psychoanalytic movement in Europe, writing a critique of psychoanalysis for his doctoral thesis. He became a member of the Freud Society in Zurich, and the only Italian member of Jung's study group in 1910.
Assagioli practiced as a psychiatrist in Italy and developed his own thinking and practice in the creative cultural milieu of Florence. In 1926 he founded an Institute there which in 1933 became the Institute of Psychosynthesis. Facist hostility towards his international humanitarian activities forced him to close the Institute in 1938 and he was imprisoned for a month. He and his son Ilario had to take refuge from Nazi persecution for a time, the privations of which may have caused Ilario's premature death in 1951.
Michael Murphy (one of the founders of the Esalen Institute at Big Sur) is quoted in The New Yorker:
"What Aurobindo called yoga, what Abe Maslow called self-actualization, Fritz Perls called organismic integrity, Assagioli called psychosynthesis. All these share basically the same idea – that there is a natural tendency toward evolution, towards unfoldment, that pervades the universe as well as human sphere, and that our job now is to get behind that and make it conscious. But the disciplines that emerge to deal with this unfoldment have to reflect the many-sidedness of the human psyche, and this is why psychosynthesis is so valuable. Assagioli himself was really a man of very wide European culture. He was the truest sage I've ever met."
The context and challenge of change
There is an idea that is beginning to take hold in our personal and collective awareness. It is not a new idea, but in returning to it, we are having to turn upside down a cherished and convenient notion of the world and our place in it.
Whether in the fields of agriculture or economics, education or politics, medicine or manufacturing, what is increasingly having to be acknowledged is a context that assumes, rather than denies, the idea of interrelatedness.
There is growing realisation of this idea at all levels – personal, local, national and global. This is because technology is not only increasing the amount of change people experience but also the amount of information about such change.
The most creative human response to incoming information is to look for the ordering pattern, or context, that enables the information to cohere. Old mechanistic and separative ways of thinking which deny interrelatedness can no longer satisfactorily order the information we are receiving about ourselves and our world. Such thought patterns have led to widespread pollution and destruction, and it does not make sense to poison and destroy resources, the atmosphere and the environment. We endanger our optimum survival as well as the survival of many other species.
An evolutionary response is being demanded that seems to require us to think in new ways. The challenge of change is to liberate the unused creative potential in our minds and souls, awaken to the loving wisdom of our hearts, and express the highest sense of our values powerfully and in such a way that this response is made.
Psychospiritual psychology and psychosynthesis
One aim of psychology is to help us understand the nature of human consciousness. In the West, initial understanding was derived from studying pathology (mental illness) and animals. These approaches were increasingly challenged as being too limiting, and people like Maslow articulated the need to study healthy people in order to develop comprehensive models of human experience.
From this broader base of humanistic psychological understanding, it then made sense to look at people who seemed particularly creative, self-actualised, and in touch with a deeply transcendent experience of life – which has long been the study of Eastern psycho-spiritual traditions. This has become the context of Psychospiritual psychology, though not its sole focus.
Psychospiritual psychology addresses the spectrum of human experience from undifferentiated, pre-personal consciousness, through development of a healthy personality and centre of identity in the world, and beyond. It explores opening to, and integrating, higher states of consciousness. This involves the process of ego-death, and the emergence of an expanded sense of Self, both individual and universal, knowing boundaries yet not limited by them. It is an evolutionary psychology, most relevant to our present day need to discover and express the best in human consciousness for the well-being and healing of person and planet.
Psychosynthesis is widely acknowledged as one of the most coherent and effective frameworks of psychospiritual psychology. Initially working in the analytic frameworks of the time, Assagioli found his experience also kept pointing him towards the higher reaches of what came to be called ‘self-actualization’ which was little addressed in the pathology based practices of the time. He began to integrate Western analytic depth psychology and Eastern meditative ‘height’ psychology into a comprehensive approach to human growth and development.
Psychosynthesis has continued to evolve its holistic perspective and unifying principles and can be successfully applied not only therapeutically and in self-development, but also in any context of systemic organisation and process.
The Institute of Psychosynthesis New Zealand
The Institute was founded in 1986. It was established to offer the powerful, transformative principles of psychosynthesis in a number of ways to the community.
These are:
• Courses and Workshops
• Counselling and Therapy for individuals and couples
• Consultation for organisations
• Supervision for counsellors, therapists and other helping professionals
• A professional training programme
The vision of the Institute is to help realise the magnificent potential of humanity by encouraging individuals, in whatever socio-economic and cultural context they live, to have the courage to make what they choose of their lives, in accordance with life-enhancing values.
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Assagioli in New York, 1937
