What if your thoughts and feelings were forms and forces? Assagioli’s working notes on idea-forces — those living, intelligent fusions of thought and feeling that grow inside us with their own will to live
By Roberto Assagioli, MD [i]
Assagioli Archives, Florence, Doc. #18455
Original title: Vita Interiore III – Il mondo interiore (II)
Transcribed from an original written document by Istituto di Psicosintesi
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. As Jan Kuniholm notes in his editorial commentary, this document is taken from undated, unrevised handwritten notes and contains development markers and unfinished phrases that Assagioli left for himself. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
In these working notes, the third in a series on the interior life, Roberto Assagioli sketches the inner world as a field of forms and forces parallel to the matter and energy of the outer world. Drawing on Mulford’s claim that “thoughts are things” and his own that feelings are forces, he develops Fouillée’s concept of idea-forces: thought and feeling fused into living units that combine into ideo-affective complexes, push to grow, and assert themselves with something like a will to live. The notes outline the territory still to be examined: psychic induction, the bridge between psyche and body, and the spiritual side of inner life.
The outer world can be considered, from a general point of view, as consisting of matter and energy, or, more precisely, of forms and forces . The same can be said in a certain sense and as a first approximation, of the inner world. In the writings of Prentice Mulford [iii] and other “New Thought” authors we often find the phrase, “ Thoughts are things .” This statement, which at first is surprising and may shock some people because of its crude and materialistic appearance, has the value — precisely because of its extreme and paradoxical form — of making us realize a truth that is generally ignored or overlooked. Yet it has enormous theoretical and practical importance. Yes, in a sense it is literally true that “thoughts are things.” Thoughts and ideas (taken in their broadest sense as cognitive facts , ranging from sensations to images and concepts) are “things” — that is, they are realities that are as definite and distinct in their sphere, in the inner world, as material objects are in the outer world. A preconception, a prejudice, or a fixed idea can be obstacles that are just as real, “hard,” and as difficult to overcome, as a palisade, a wall, or a boulder are in the external world. A philosophical system or a special conception of life truly constitutes a castle or a prison for the soul that has formed them: a dwelling in which it rests, or a limitation it cannot transcend.
But the statement that “thoughts are things” must be integrated with another, no less important one, that ” feelings are forces .” [iv] The truth of this one is even more obvious. Feelings are the “living forces” of our personality, the underlying springs that make us act. It is enough to mention the miracles performed by intense and elevated love, the heroism stirred by patriotic sentiment, or the destruction produced by passionate whirlwinds, true storms and cyclones of the soul. These findings are fundamental, but elementary: we need to deepen our examination of complex psychic reality. For ideas and feelings are almost never found in the inner world in a “pure” state and isolated from each other; rather, they are generally intimately associated in various and complicated ways. Each idea tends to be intimately connected with the feeling that corresponds to it, so that the evocation of one immediately awakens the other. The thought of danger immediately arouses fear; the image of the beloved person, the idea of the homeland, the thought of God arouse the corresponding feelings of love and devotion in the lover, the patriot, or the mystic.
Conversely, each feeling, as soon as it arises, tends to awaken the representations or ideas appropriate to it. A feeling of sadness, whatever the cause that produced it, awakens images of gray landscapes or heartfelt music, or pessimistic ideas. A feeling of well-being and joy, on the other hand, evokes happy visions, rosy projects, thoughts of success. Such connections are often so strong and intimate that the idea and the feeling become virtually inseparable, forming a relatively fixed and permanent “combination.” Such “combinations” of psychic elements have been designated, especially by Fouillée, [v] who made the most extensive and accurate study of them, by the very appropriate and expressive term “idea-forces.” [we]
Variety of idea forces:
- those in which the mental side prevails
- those in which the affective side prevails.
— Example: batteries.
Need for balance between the “container” and the “force” that is contained:
dispersions — bursts — deficit action
(we will develop this in the psychological part).
But even these “ideas-forces” rarely remain separate from each other in the inner world. ([There are] complex laws of associations between ideas and between ideas and feelings; see Ribot [vii] ). Just as chemical elements join in simple combinations and these in turn associate with each other in gradually more and more complex bodies, up to the molecules of certain organic substances (such as albumins that are composed of hundreds of atoms of various species), [viii] so simple idea-forces combine with each other in ways that are often very complicated. An image or an idea can associate with different and sometimes even conflicting feelings: the memory of a person can arouse feelings of attraction and repulsion at the same time. [ix] Likewise, a vivid and deep feeling does not tend to be linked to only one mental representation, but rather to a crowd of images, thoughts, judgments. . . These more complicated “psychic compounds” have been called “ideo-affective complexes” or more simply “complexes” and have been studied especially by psychoanalysts.
Ideas and feelings, especially when associated in “complexes,” are living, intelligent forces that tend to assert themselves, grow, and manifest themselves.
“Every idea . . .”
[This unfinished phrase is probably the author’s self-reminder to use thoughts which were later fully expressed in Psychological Laws III and IV in Chapter 5 of his book, The Act of Will (1974) :
Law III: Ideas and images tend to awaken emotions and feelings that correspond to them.
Law IV: “Emotions and impressions tend to awaken and intensify ideas and images that correspond to or are associated with them. —Ed. ]
They show a preservation instinct, a will to live (eg, a passion or a fixed idea . . . (develop).
Examine:
I. Their relations and reactions to each other
II. Their relationships with the body and the external world.
Conflicts-Repressions. Transformations and sublimations.
“Psychic induction” — First lines of a psychodynamics.
III. Psychic world and material world.
1) Psyche and body. Reciprocal actions and reactions. “Ideas-forces are creative.”
Law: “Every idea . . .” — Eymieu [x] — James [xi] — Curtis [xii]
Psychotherapy. Telepathy. Ideoplasty [xiii] (Geley [xiv] ); this leads us to:
2) The inner world and the outer world. “Art of Creation” [xv] (Carpenter [xvi] ).
So far we have considered this play of psychic forces as from the outside, objectively. In the next [essay or lecture] we will have to examine their relations to the spirit, to the ego, and then how they exist in an individual psyche.
Talk about the spiritual side of the inner world, the mystery, the higher, supermental and super-emotional forces.
[i] This document, which is taken from undated, unrevised hand-written notes which were apparently preparation for a lecture, should not be confused with other writings by Assagioli bearing the same or similar title, which were written and published in Ultra or The Beacon. — Tr.
[ii] Editor’s interpolations are shown by text in [brackets]; Elision. . . Are shown as found in the original. -Oath.
[iii] Prentice Mulford (1834-1891) was an American author who was pivotal in the development of the New Thought movement. He was the author of Thoughts Are Things (1889) and Your Forces and How to Use Them 1886-1892). -Oath.
[iv] The word “feeling” should be taken here in its broadest sense, which includes every affective state. —Author’s Note.
[v] Alfred Jules Émile Fouillée (1838-1912) was a French philosopher. -Oath.
[vi] See La Psychologie des idées-forces [ The Psychology of Idea-Forces ] (1893). —Author’s Note.
[vii] Theodule-Arman Ribot (1839-1916) was a French psychologist who is known as the founder of scientific psychology in France. Some of his work focused on the physical elements in mental life. -Oath.
[viii] One example among thousands: the molecule. . . —Author’s Note.
[ix] Recall the well-known nec tecum posso vivere nec sine te [ I can neither live with you nor without you ] of the Latin poet. —Author’s Note.
[x] Antonin Eymieu (1861-1933) was a French Jesuit priest, spiritual director, and author of Le Gouvernement de soi-même [ Government of the Self, Essays in Practical Psychology in four series (1905-1930)] —Ed.
[xi] William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, author of Principles of Psychology in two volumes (1890). -Oath.
[xii] Adela Curtis (1864-1960) was founder of The Order of Silence, later known as The Community of Christian Contemplatives, and author of several works somewhat influenced by the New Thought movement, including The Way of Silence . -Oath.
[xiii] Ideoplasty is a term that refers to physical processes that can be modified by mental activity. In so-called occult or mediumistic activity the term has been used to mean psychic energy that is transformed into material manifestations. -Oath.
[xiv] Gustave Geley (1865-1924) was a French physician and psychical researcher, known as an investigator of psychic mediums. -Oath.
[xv] The Art of Creation: Essays of the Self and Its Powers – A Spiritual Philosophy of Matter and Energy (1904) by Edward Carpenter explored new concepts coming into the Western World from Eastern religions, explaining how creative processes were changing with the advent of shared cultures. -Oath.
[xvi] Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was an English poet, philosopher and anthologist. -Oath.
