How To Work With Subpersonalities

Assagioli offers good advice about how we work with subpersonalities as part of our counseling practice. 

By Roberto Assagioli, 1973. The following text is an extract from The Opening Address To The International Conference On Psychosynthesis, Val Morin, Quebec, August 1973, delivered by Fred Rosenzveig. In this opening address, Assagioli shares ways to work with subpersonalities and suggest the writing of an autobiography and the type of questions the counsellor can address to the client, particularly when it comes to our important relations, which create many of our diverse subpersonalities. 

Relationship With Family

What kind of people were your parents or the people who raised you? If you were raised in a non-orthodox family, describe the significant adults of both sexes in your life. If you were not raised by your natural parents, describe the fantasies you had about the missing parent(s). Give a character sketch of each parent (or parental substitute) as you perceived him or her at various stages of your life: early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and the present time. Also describe yourself as you believe each parent perceived you at different stages. Did your relationship with your parents change as you grew older?

What do you see as the major strengths and weaknesses of your mother and of your father (or of the male and female parent substitutes in your life)? How are these reflected in you, including both the positive and negative qualities? Remember that we often reflect the qualities of our parents by our rebellion against them, by our attempt to cultivate and express the opposite qualities. It may help you to get in touch with this material to imagine (even if you do not remember the actual happening) your mother criticizing your father and your father criticizing your mother. How did you feel as a child when your parents were in conflict? Did you take sides? Do you see the situation differently today?

What roles did you play in your family and did these change as you grew older? Did you feel that you were “cast” to play a certain role in the family and expected to do this? If so, how did the family convey its expectations to you? Did you act out these expectations or rebel against them?

Make a drawing of your family group as you experienced it 1. in early childhood; 2. in middle childhood; and 3. in adolescence. Make a fourth drawing expressing the way you experience your relationship to your family of origin today.

Relationships With Other Key Figures

Describe any other significant relationships you have had with people: e.g. brothers and sisters, teachers, friends, enemies, lovers, spouses, your own children, business partners. Indicate only those which have marked you significantly or which you feel have reflected important aspects of your personality. If you are familiar with the concept of subpersonalities, indicate those which you believe were manifesting in these different relationships.

Make a drawing of your relationship with each of these persons.

Your General Development

What kind of person were you at different stages in your life? How have you changed? Did others perceive you in the same way you perceived yourself? What kinds of masks did you wear for the world? How did you distort yourself in order to be accepted by others or to defend yourself against others?

Make drawings to illustrate all of these points. Draw a “lifeline”.

How did you resolve your psychosexual identity? How have you felt about being male or female, and has your attitude changed on this? What do you like and dislike about the sex you were born with? What would you dislike or prefer about being of the opposite sex? In what ways do you feel that you are masculine and feminine?

Describe any developmental crises or turning points in your life which were the occasion of a shift in attitude or in level of consciousness. Frequently such events are experienced as a “trial” or “initiation” and may take the form of a crisis or test of strength.

What recurrent patterns do you notice in your life? Are there particular conflicts that you have acted out repeatedly in different situations? Are there certain lessons that you seem to have been learning through your life experience?

Specific Questions

What is your earliest memory? It does not matter if this is an actual memory or an imagined one.

Describe any recurrent childhood dreams

Indicate any traumatic events in your life: e.g. illness, accident, death, separation, violence, sexual abuse, etc. How did these affect you?

Life Pattern And Meaning

As you tell your life story, what sort of archetypal pattern does it seem to express? Outline or write a myth or fairy tale about your life. What title(s) and subtitle(s) could you make up for it? Illustrate, by drawing pictures of the key figures in archetypal form.

What do you understand about the meaning of your life experience? How much Of it can you accept as having been valuable and how much of it do you reject?

Guidelines For Writing Up Subpersonalities

A. How to become aware of your subpersonalities

Start by asking yourself what different “faces” you present to the world under different circumstances. You will find clues if you consider the different roles you play with different types of people (e.g. authority figures, younger people, your peers, a companion of the opposite sex, your subordinates, someone you admire, etc.) and under different conditions (e.g. at home, at work, on vacation, at church, etc.)

Although you may find the concept difficult to grasp at first, begin to write anyway and, as you do so, the subpersonalities generally start to become clear.

You may use any of the techniques for “answers from the unconscious” to get in touch with subpersonalities you may have difficulty contacting from conscious levels. To do this, you can ask the question “What important subpersonalities have I missed?” and work with any of the following techniques to find the answer: the Review exercise focussed on subpersonalities of the day or from a recent period of time; mental imagery (visual, in the form of pictures or of words written on a screen, or auditory, in the form of words spoken or heard, or a combination as in the technique of addressing your question to a Sage or other symbol of inner wisdom); spontaneous movement, drawing, writing, or sounding.

It is a good idea to start by listing as many subpersonalities as you can and then make a selection from among these to focus on. You may find that several subpersonalities you have listed are different versions of the same thing and could be considered together. Choose those which seem to play the most important role in your life and those which cause the greatest conflict to make a detailed analysis of.

B. Questions to answer about your subpersonalities

For each subpersonality, consider the following questions, but do not feel obliged to answer each question for each subpersonality if it does not seem appropriate. You may find other relevant questions to ask or discover additional techniques to help you in making contact with your subpersonalities.

1. Naming
   Give your subpersonality a descriptive name – e.g. “The Guru”, “The Clinging Vine”, “Bitchy Bertha”, “The Doormat”, “Harry the Haggler”. A humorous name is helpful if it seems appropriate, as humor facilitates detachment and disidentification from the subpersonality, making it less overwhelming and more subject to your conscious direction.
2. General character sketch
   Describe the subpersonality. What does it look like? How does it behave? What feelings does it have? What thoughts does it think? What does it tell you? What does it tell others? What image does it try to project? What physical posture does it assume? How does it feel inside its body? Where does it experience tension? What expression does it wear on its face? How does it dress? What does it like to do? What would your life be like if this subpersonality had its way all the time? How would this subpersonality like to live ideally?
3. Needs and desires
   What are the needs and desires of this subpersonality? How does it seek to fulfill them? Does it use direct or devious, effective or ineffective, constructive or destructive ways to fulfill its needs? Can you think of more constructive ways it might use to fulfill them?
4. Drawing
   Make a drawing that expresses the essential qualities of this subpersonality.
5. Circumstances that evoke the subpersonality
   Under what circumstances does this subpersonality tend to emerge?  In what social roles does it express itself? What specific people in your life does this subpersonality interact with? What is it about these people that evokes the subpersonality? Is the “demand” to behave in this way coming from the other person or from within yourself?
6. Strengths and weaknesses
   Every subpersonality has both valuable and limiting or negative aspects. What are the strengths of this subpersonality and how can you use them more effectively? What are its weaknesses and limitations, and how can you learn to overcome them?
7. Centrality and prominence
   How important a role does this subpersonality play in your life? What proportion of the time is it on stage? Is it a long-standing subpersonality that has been part of you for many years or is it fairly recent? Do you remember when and under what circumstances it began to manifest itself? Does it seem to be a fairly deep and basic aspect of your personality structure or is it something more superficial and transient? To what degree do you feel identified with this subpersonality? – i.e. is it something you think of as really “you” or is it something you can stand back from and see as a pattern over which you have control, which you can choose to act out or refuse to act out?
8. Interaction with other subpersonalities
   How does this subpersonality interact with other subpersonalities? Which ones does it come into conflict with? How are these conflicts resolved? Which subpersonalities reinforce this one? How do the subpersonalities in conflict with it help to sustain it- i.e. are they in some ways like opposite sides of the same coin?
9. Integration
   To what degree and in what ways do you, as the Self, take an active role in mediating the conflicts that involve this subpersonality? How is this related to the extent you feel identified with or disidentified from it?

In looking at this subpersonality from the standpoint of an objective yet compassionate observer, what suggestions would you have to give it? -e.g. What might it be able to learn from other subpersonalities? How could it interact more harmoniously with other subpersonalities? How could it develop and use its strong points more effectively? How can it overcome its weaknesses? How could it express more fully the will of the Self?

There are a number of techniques that you may find helpful for carrying on a dialogue between the subpersonalities and the Self. These include correspondence (writing letters from the Self to the subpersonality and from the subpersonality to the Self); spoken dialogue (speaking aloud or silently to the subpersonality and as the subpersonality to the Self); and role-playing  (acting out in a more complete way the two parts. It is helpful in doing this to switch back and forth between seats as you alternately play the two roles, and to assume the physical posture, tone of voice, expression, etc. of the subpersonality. Attempt to become centered and aligned in playing the role of the Self.