Typology, by Roberto Assagioli

Below is a compilation of quotes by Roberto Assagioli about typology:

Psychosynthesis Includes Typology

“Psychosynthesis has several fields or ways of application:

1. Self-psychosynthesis , that is the action that each can carry out on himself, considering his own personality as a “subject” to be shaped, or rather, as a set of psychophysical elements to organize, transform, compose in harmony, and use. This could be called a scientific and modern yoga.

2 Medical psychosynthesis, which can be considered as a synthesis of the various aspects and methods of therapy, but not in the sense of an indeterminate eclecticism, but on the basis of a well-defined conception of the integral therapeutic goal. Medical psychosynthesis also includes physical therapies, as it takes the utmost account of the reciprocal actions and reactions that continually take place between psyche and body, on which psychosomatic medicine is based. Therefore, if the word did not appear too technical and “difficult”, it should more exactly be called “bio-psychosynthesis.”

3 Psychosynthetic education , which aims to favor the development and implementation of all the latent potentialities in the child and adolescent, tending above all to awaken and enhance the higher and spiritual ones, which are often neglected or, worse, hampered or suppressed. Particular attention is dedicated to the research, recognition and enhancement of particularly gifted children and young people, both intellectually and in other ways (artistic, musical, technical, inventive, spiritual skills or genius).

4 Interpersonal and interindividual psychosynthesis , which aims to establish just, harmonious and creative human relationships between the individual and other individuals (particularly between spouses, and between parents and children); between the individual and the various human groups to which he belongs; between the different groups and human communities amongst themselves, up to the hoped-for synthesis of all humanity.

5 Differential or typological psychosynthesis. I mentioned at the outset that each individual is unique, in that his personality is made up of a combination of different elements, in ways and proportions that are not the same in any other person. Already in ancient times, however, it was observed, and then studied more precisely by modern psychology, that men can be grouped into various types , having similar or similar biological and psychological characteristics; thus, extroverts and introverts, sensory, emotional, mental, intuitive, and various other types have been recognized and described.

In Psychosynthesis, these differences of temperament and character are taken into full account, and the plan and the various healing and educational tasks are adapted to the particular individual type, in the sense of developing deficient or immature psychological functions, and of valuing the gifts or talents. Psychosynthesis and Parapsychology 1

Why we use typology

“… the essential unity of all souls does not exclude differences existing in their personal appearances. Therefore, we must make a serious study of these different qualities. This study should become more and more a part of the new psychology. We should endeavour to understand the true nature, the underlying function and purpose, the specific problems, virtues and vices of each type, as it manifests in and through a human individual.” Assagioli, R. “Loving Understanding.” Psicosintesi. October 1994. Firenze, Italy.

“The practical importance of the science of human types lies in its application to ourselves – the attempt to classify ourselves and others is an interesting and useful exercise that should enable us to refine our psychological perception.” (Psychosynthesis Typology, p.11)

“In order truly to understand, we must be willing to make the necessary preparation and develop in ourselves the specific faculty, namely, empathy. The preparation consists in acquiring an adequate knowledge of psychology, both general and specific; this includes:

A knowledge of the psychological constitution of the human being;
A comprehension of the differential psychology of ages, sexes, types, etc.
An acquaintance with the unique combination of traits in different individuals.” (The Training of the Will)

“In order to have a true and profound self-knowledge, the direct observation just mentioned is very useful, but not sufficient. It has to be supplemented by the use of certain analytic methods which allow the search of the subconscious, and by the comparative study of the different psychological types.” (Practical Contributions to a Modern Yoga, part III, April 1934, The Beacon)

“The practical use of psychosynthesis is a delicate art. It implies:

The psycho-spiritual diagnosis, that is the study of the whole subconscious and (when necessary) superconscious constitution of the patient; the classification of his psycho-physical type (1); the discovery of the psychological causes and mechanism of the illness. …

(1) The description and interpretation of the “psychological types” have not yet reached, in spite of their valuable recent developments, a final and satisfactory stage, owing chiefly to the lack of a synthetic standpoint and of the proper consideration of the spiritual elements. The best which has been published up to now on this subject is found, in my opinion, in C. G. Jung’s book Psychologische Typen and in two chapters (A study of psychological typen and Masculine and feminine psychology) of the book, already mentioned, of Dr. Hinkle, The recreating of the individual.

“But in the case of patients, who generally have a particular sensitiveness and special difficulties to overcome, the use of all those means must be wisely advised and regulated by the doctor, in order to suit the psychological type and the possibilities of each patient, to avoid the danger of excesses and exaltation, to prevent as much as possible the reactions and complications which easily occur in such cases.” (A New Method of Healing, 1927)

The work of understanding exactly our special psychological constitution is neither easy nor simple, given the complexity and frequent contradiction of the elements that compose us, but it is facilitated if it is divided into two parts:

To study the various psychological types that exist, and to recognize which of them we belong to. It is the field of ‘differential psychology’ or ‘typology’. This – which until recently was limited to a simple classification of temperaments, to a purely descriptive characterology – has been deepened and refined in recent decades. The different types of extroverts and introverts, sensory, emotional, intellectual, intuitive, among others, have been discovered and described; and the various combinations are being studied.
From the recognition of the type to which we belong, it is necessary to proceed to the most subtle ascertainment of the special, singular mixture or combination, qualitative and quantitative, of elements that make each of us a unique being, and which gives humanity its inexhaustible variety and a wealth of individual manifestations. This variety and richness constitute its interest and charm (think how tedious it would be to be all the same or reduced to just a few models in series!), But also create the complications and dramas of the resulting misunderstandings.

Having made this double investigation, it is then a question of choosing, among the various psychological methods we have mentioned, the most suitable ones to correct and develop each type, to solve the particular problems of each individual. It is necessary that each formulate his own “action plan”, that he chooses and creates, or rather, understands and understands, the “ideal model” to which to adapt.

It is a question of “building” one’s personality and making it an agile and obedient instrument; it is a question of creating the most suitable form to manifest and realize our individual “note”, to find the “lifestyle” that is right for us, to implement our “internal vocation”. It is a work of science and art at the same time and is, at the same time, essentially a practical thing. In it lies the secret of satisfaction and success, understood in their broadest and highest sense.

The complexity of this work should not worry or discourage us. It can be implemented in a gradual and orderly, harmonious and serene way. And the joy and the advantages brought by the first successes, from the first conquests, give stimulus and encouragement to continue. Of course, adequate teaching and the help of competent guides can facilitate the task and accelerate its pace.

But psychology has not only personal and individual applications; its range of action extends into the vast field of inter-individual and social relationships.

Here, too, there is first of all a great task of enlightenment to be carried out. If we understand and know ourselves little, we understand others even less. From such ignorance – made greater by the fact that it mostly ignores itself! – derives a sad series of errors of judgment, of misunderstandings, of conflicts, with which we harm each other and – painfully to say – also, and sometimes above all, to those who are dear to us. In fact, a large part of these mistakes are committed within the family. (The Art of Living)

Warning about typology

“The tendency—rather, the temptation—to accord an excessive value to typological classifying needs to be resisted; and even more the inclination to attach labels to individuals. Those who are attracted by such “cataloguing” often become harmfully conditioned and limited by it, while others rightly rebel against it. The inadequacies and limitations resulting from rigid and static typological classifying have been plainly indicated and criticized by both Allport and Maslow.” (The Act of Will, 1974, p. 252)

“However useful typology may be for understanding and dealing with different human beings, it fails to give a full view, a comprehensive account of an individual. Every individual constitutes a unique combination of countless and differing factors. If even the combinations between elements as simple as the lines on the skin of the fingers are so different that: fingerprints are sufficient to identify an individual, it is clearly apparent that the combinations of the vast number of biological and psychological characteristics in each single human. being make of each of us a most complex, diverse, and genuinely unique individual.

Even more than this, those countless factors and their combinations are not static and fixed as fingerprints are. They are changing constantly, owing both to the inner development and growth of the individual and to the constant impact and intake of influences from the outside world and from other human beings.

But important as this realization is, it should not lead us to believe that it is hopeless to establish a scientific “psychology of the individual.” Such a psychology is possible, and is beginning to be developed.” (The Act of Will, 1974, p. 258)

“I think that no one method of study can give us an adequate understanding of such a complex unity as a human being, and that only by using all the available channels of approach, only by looking at this multi-faced prism from many angles, only by tracing as far as possible the origin of the elements of which it is composed, and endeavoring to visualize the goal towards which it consciously or unconsciously proceeds, we may hope to really know a human unit, a microcosm. Only thus we will become able to coordinate and harmonize the disconnected and often complicating energy and faculties of our personalities into a harmonious whole, to achieve our psychosynthesis.” (Individual Psychology and Spiritual Development, Oct. 1930, The Beacon)

“But this and other classifications expose those who adopt them to the dangers of schematicism and pigeon-holing, of yielding to the (so comfortable!) tendency to “label” human beings. We must be on our guard against overlooking the multifarious and complex facets of human reality. It is all too easy to regard others as “objects” instead of “subjects”. And this labeling, with its associated attitudes of judging, or more often of depreciation, often provokes hostile reactions, sometimes of an intense kind, which are thoroughly justified.

All this shows the great complexity of the human psyche and the impossibility of framing or pigeon-holing it in some designation or description arrived at from a single viewpoint. Only the sum of the various points of view, of the different approaches or “frames of reference”, can give a less imperfect conception of the psyche of that strange creature, a member of the fourth kingdom of nature—the human being.” (C. G. Jung and Psychosynthesis)

Typology in Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis (1965)

A Concordance of “Type” and the Extraversion–Introversion Polarity.

Purpose and method

It is sometimes said that typology is marginal to Assagioli’s mature psychology. This concordance tests that claim against the text of Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques (New York: Hobbs, Dorman, 1965), the work in which his clinical method is most fully set out. It records every occurrence of the words “type” and “types,” and of the extravert–introvert family of terms, classifies each by its sense in context, and notes where the typological distinctions actually govern the choice of technique.

Method: a full-text search of the 1965 edition for the standalone forms type / types and for extravert(ed) / extraversion / introvert(ed) / introversion. Each hit was read in context and assigned to one of the categories below. Page numbers were located from the book’s running headers and are accurate to within a page; for the polarity they have been checked against Assagioli’s own index, which lists Extraversion at pp. 12, 25, 147–48, 190 and Introversion at pp. 99, 147–48, 189.

1. “Type” and “types” — 65 occurrences

The word appears sixty-five times — sixty-four genuine, since one instance (p. 288) is “archetypes” divided by a line-break. Of the sixty-four, twenty-seven denote psychological, characterological, or temperamental typology; six denote the perceptual (visual / auditory) types Assagioli also treats typologically; and thirty-one carry the generic sense of “kind” or “sort.” So roughly half of the tokens bear on typology proper.

Psychological, characterological, and temperamental typology (27)

Intro “classification and description of psychological types” — Rank and others

p. 24 an ideal practicable to one’s “stage of development and psychological type”

p. 26 active vs. passive methods, each “appropriate to the corresponding type”

p. 74 “two classical types”: the he-man in the office, the milquetoast at home

p. 92 technique varies with “the psychological type of the patient”

p. 94 differential psychology — “establishing psychological types”

p. 106 the discharge depends on “the psychological type of the patient”

p. 106 effectiveness varies with “the various psychological types”

p. 106 forces belonging to “the psychological type of the individual”

p. 110 a warning to “emotional types” over critical analysis

p. 124 Adler “so well described their type” — the “Adlerian cases”

p. 146 “the psychological type, i.e., in regard to extraversion or introversion”

p. 156 “the more pronounced type, or rather class” — the hypochondriacs

p. 162 cites Jung, Psychological Types, p. 601 (signs vs. symbols)

p. 162 symbols suited to “different types of people”

p. 188 method limited for “types opposite to those just mentioned”

p. 200 consciousness projected “corresponding to their type and way of functioning”

p. 206 “with this type of person” — the inner Christ figure

p. 206 “certain types of individuals” may reach creativity without mystical experience

p. 210 the “clash of psychological types and temperaments” in group work

p. 216 nature symbols suit “the more objective and practical type of patient”

p. 216 cites Jung, Psychological Types (1933), p. 569 (intuition)

p. 222 a contra-indication for “certain types” prone to hunches

p. 242 “a listener of the intellectual type,” emotionally cold

p. 244 William James: “no more contemptible type of human character”

p. 246 persons of “the practical or … the mental type” with repressed emotion

p. 280 from 1946, “courses of lectures … on psychological types”

Perceptual types — visual / auditory (6)

p. 102 whether the patient is “a visual or an auditory type”

p. 148 improvement turns on “the visual or non-visual type”

p. 152 “subjects being auditory or visual types”

p. 154 in auditory evocation “the type is really outstandingly important”

p. 156 “two extreme types”: deficient and excessive auditory ability

p. 282 art’s power “upon those who belong to the visual type”

Generic sense — “kind / sort of —” (31, plus 1 line-break artifact)

The remaining uses qualify things other than persons: type of conflict and of crisis (pp. 36, 48); kinds of dreams (p. 94); type of self-identification (pp. 110, 112); type of patient defined by state (p. 120); type of action (p. 120) and of approach (p. 124); types of imagination (p. 144); type of auditory evocation (p. 154); every type of sensation (p. 162); a higher type of psychosynthesis (p. 190); type of material (p. 198); types of aesthetic experience (p. 202) and a personified type of symbol (p. 202); simpler types of cases (p. 226); four references to types of conscience (p. 232); type of music (pp. 244, 256); types of operations (p. 246); types of neuropsychiatric patients (p. 252); types of ideal figures (p. 274) and the highest type of womanhood (p. 274); the subtitle of Sorokin’s book (p. 276); a transcendental type of style (p. 284); “Freudian type analysis” (p. 288); and a type of visualisation (p. 292, twice). The artifact “Arche-types” occurs at p. 288.

2. The extraversion–introversion polarity — 23 occurrences

Counting all word-forms, the polarity is invoked twenty-three times in the body of the text (twenty-five including the two index entries). Of these, eleven function as a clinical variable governing the selection or adaptation of technique — and these cluster sharply in the chapters on visualisation (pp. 146–48) and symbolic imagery (pp. 188–90). The other twelve are descriptive or theoretical. The polarity therefore governs technique locally and decisively, in the imagery work, rather than evenly across the book.

Governing the selection or adaptation of technique (11)

p. 146 E/I taken as the indication of psychological type for visualisation

p. 146 “extraverted people can visualize more easily with closed eyes”

p. 146 the extravert’s interest tied to the open eyes

p. 146 eyes closed “force” the patient to “introvert”

p. 146 “introverts have more difficulty with closed eyes”

p. 148 “extraverts on the sensation level” struggle with eyes open

p. 148 “an introvert on the sensation level” flooded with eyes closed

p. 188 technique “used with discretion” for introverted psychoneurotics

p. 188 scanty results with “extremely extraverted” subjects

p. 190 technique attempted only once “the excess of extraversion has been corrected”

p. 190 “extremely extraverted patients” show little symbolic activity

Descriptive or theoretical (12)

p. 24 “a certain degree of extraversion” in vital outer relationships

p. 26 the harmonious ideal “aimed at chiefly by introverts”

p. 26 specialised-efficiency models “preferred by extraverts”

p. 56 counteracting “the tendency to excessive introversion”

p. 98 “excessive introversion, … morbid self-analysis” as a danger

p. 102 “an introvert attitude of masochistic self-complacency”

p. 104 diaries said to encourage “excessive introversion”

p. 148 Jung’s point that one may be introverted in one function, extraverted in another (four word-forms)

p. 240 “extraversion and introversion” among the mood-states music influences

3. What the concordance shows

Typology is woven through the 1965 manual rather than confined to a single chapter: psychological, perceptual, and temperamental types surface across the discussions of method, symbols, the superconscious, group work, and music. But it is not the book’s dominant frame, and a bare word-count overstates its presence, since half the occurrences of “type” mean simply “kind.” The one place where a typological distinction does real clinical work is the extraversion–introversion polarity in the imagery techniques, where it determines whether a patient should work with eyes open or closed and whether a symbolic method can be applied at all. This is the operational residue, in the public manual, of the typological system Assagioli had been teaching since the 1932 lectures.