Interview with Roberto Assagioli 

In this fascinating interview, Roberto Assagioli speaks about his first awakening and his relationship to the various religions.  

By: Stuart Miller and Michael Murphy^[i], May 1971, Formatted and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm^[ii]

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Abstract: In this interview, Roberto Assagioli discusses his journey of awakening and the development of psychosynthesis, a therapeutic approach that integrates various psychological and spiritual traditions. Assagioli recounts his early fascination with Nietzsche and his subsequent disillusionment with the philosopher’s ideas. He then describes his encounter with esotericism and Eastern philosophy, which led to a profound awakening and a deep interest in the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. Assagioli also shares his introduction to psychoanalysis and his decision to pursue it as a thesis topic, despite skepticism from his professors. He highlights his reservations about psychoanalysis and his belief that there is more to be explored in the field of psychology. Assagioli explains how his experiences with patients and his own reading shaped the development of psychosynthesis, learning the importance of breaking the vicious circle created by a neurosis and its reaction from Paul Dubois. He also discusses his relationship with Carl Jung and his interest in Christian mysticism. Assagioli’s approach to psychosynthesis is described as universal and inclusive, drawing from various philosophies and religions. He believes that the core truth is the same in all traditions, and his goal is to synthesize the best aspects of each. Assagioli concludes by emphasizing the neutrality of psychosynthesis in terms of theology, religion, and philosophy while also acknowledging the existence and importance of spiritual experiences.

Roberto Assagioli: My true awakening happened, when — wait a moment — at about fifteen or sixteen. I was infected with what was then an infectious disease: Nietzsche.^[i] Most of the youth at that time went through that “measles.” And I caught it in full for about two years. Of course it was a stepping stone towards something higher, but it was his revolutionary attitude and protest against the established values was just . . . right at that age. And I read most of it, but then I [became] disgusted: I saw his limitations, and especially his theory of “the eternal return,”^[ii] which is absurd, based on false premises that the elements are finite and time is infinite — but elements are not finite, and so I saw through that soon, and so I got cured. 

And then I was ready for the next step which came [up]: my contact with esotericism and Eastern philosophy. Through some Dutch friends I came in contact with that, and it was a rapid, joyous awakening, but nothing spectacular, [I] just recognized . . . something natural, something that was in me — just an awakening in the literary sense. I realized that I had been asleep up to then, and I woke up. But it was perfectly natural, just the “Aha!” and so I threw myself in the reading of the [Bhagavad] Gita, of the Upanishads, and all the main texts. I had a good time with that. It was in the sense of Plato, remembering. It was the feeling of remembering. Not details of a previous reincarnation or anything of that kind. Just remembering what was in me, latent, and of course that was in complete contrast with all the atmosphere, the attitude, especially of the medical . . . and so I began to be very combative against that. Combative in a purely verbal sense. And I found a humorous drawing of that period, I had one friend who made this drawing, and that shows that still from then I had the idea of the will: that shows the balance, and the axe of the will [which] makes . . . ^[iii]

Stuart Miller: How old were you then? Eighteen?

Roberto Assagioli: No, I was already nineteen or twenty. Volontà è il scure means, “May will be the axe.”^[iv]And here on the contrary there is my friend. “Love, suffering, desire: what can I do?” 

About the same time, or so, came the discovery of psychoanalysis. I read an article or two, and of course [became] very interested in it, and went headlong into it. I think I went first once to Zurich, and as I had to decide for my medical thesis,^[v] I thought I might [write] a thesis on psychoanalysis. Of course the situation seemed hopeless, because the professor of psychology was a very intelligent man, [but he] was an absolute skeptic about everything, except perhaps himself. He didn’t believe in psychiatry, in psychology, anything, but when . . . oh, first I [took] the examination with great success, because it was the one examination which I prepared [for] well, because I was interested in this, and for this ulterior motive of [doing] the thesis. And the way in which I succeeded, was that I [expounded] a pet theory of [his], about hallucinations. He was surprised, and it satisfied his vanity, so . . . the day after the day after the examination, I went to his house, and proposed to him to [write] a thesis on psychoanalysis. He looked at me. Not only [doing] a thesis on psychiatry — because it was considered a third class subject — anyhow he was pleased that somebody thought of making a thesis in psychiatry, and he knew very little about psychoanalysis, but he said that, as he was a very lazy man [. . .] I said, “I will give you no trouble, I will go to Zurich, and I will serve it to you ready made, you have only to read it, or pretend to read it, and that’s all.” So he looked at me as if I were a queer animal, and said, “Well, if you like, go ahead.” I thanked him and escaped. 

So that was the beginning of . . . and I went to Zurich, and worked at the psychiatric hospital there,^[vi] chiefly with word association, which was the fashion then . . . it was a little difficult because they spoke the [Zürich German, the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect], so I had to learn this dialect, but I managed.^[vii] I think I had already met Jung, and Maeder,^[viii] especially, who was very good, and others. Also I prepared my thesis thoroughly. 

You know, the discussion of the thesis was in front of eleven professors, and that was very amusing, the discussion. First, as my thesis was rather bulky, the professor showed it to the others, and said, “that’s a weighty work.” He had [a great] sense of humor, and in the discussion he began to use the most complicated technical terms of psychoanalysis, and looked at the other doctors — who were oculists, gynecologists, etc. — and nobody understood this crazy language, of course [he did this] to make fun of me and of psychoanalysis; but I retaliated, with more technical terms, and the others didn’t know what was going on. So that was my official entrance into psychoanalysis. 

But the medical University atmosphere was stifling. I spent a few months at the psychological laboratory, which was not in the medical faculty. So I chose liberty. Fortunately, I had no need to earn my living for a certain time, for I remained with my father and mother, and my father was very understanding. He had also been a rebel in his own way, so he understood and had most confidence in me, so that was . . .

My doctoral thesis was on 1910, and my trip to Russia in 1911, and then with the recklessness of youth I started a psychological magazine in 1912, Psiche. It had some success, and from the third year on, it even paid [for] itself. But then came the war — [the magazine] went on from 1912 to 1915. But then in 1914, the World War broke [out], and in 1915 Italy went in, and so I had to go in the military service and had to interrupt [the publication]. Anyhow, for years, that was a good training for me. 

And I translated also . . . something of Freud ^[ix] . . . Since then I began [having] my reservations about psychoanalysis, I said it was rather one sided, and there was more to do, but I gave information about it, and that was an article published in the Jahrbuch, the journal of psychoanalysis.^[x]

Michael Murphy: Did you feel any affinity with Jung at that time, personally, or in any way?

Roberto Assagioli: At that time Jung was still within the psychoanalytic [community] . . . he was actually the President of the Psychoanalytic Society, before the split.^[xi] And I watched . . . there was a meeting in Nuremberg, which I attended, and then the split began. I was present at that, and they began to fight each other, and that amused me, and Jung didn’t do anything significant at that time. My relationship with Jung was years later, when he had published something of his own, and then I went to see him in Zurich at his place, several times, year off, year on; we had very good contacts, he was a delightful man, also interested in Eastern things, and he was also a book fiend, as I was. And then I developed the techniques through practice and direct experience with patients, more and more. 

I saw Dubois in Bern, he was a pioneer of psychotherapy.^[xii]At this point I can say that from Dubois I learned one of the chief therapeutic tools. He said that a neurosis consists of two or three stories.^[xiii] The first story is the neurosis in itself, the neurotic or psychoneurotic trouble, but then a second story built by the reaction of the patient to the neurosis, and he didn’t use the term which I used later, but that created a vicious circle, a phobia creates a fear of the phobia. Depression breeds depression of being depressed, anger breeds anger at being angry, and [he] saw everything in terms of stories, and said that the second story often was much larger than the first story, and it was useless to fight the neurosis on the first story if you first didn’t demolish the second story. And that was very sensible and very true, and often it is not practiced, trying to directly fight the trouble, without taking care of the reaction of the patient to it. The neurosis produces the symptom, so then the symptom starts another . . . that creates a reaction, and that emphasizes the symptom, and then it goes on and on in a vicious circle. So what has to be done is to break here. So it was through direct experience and also some reading of what other psychologists experienced elsewhere that I developed psychosynthesis. I had, since the beginning, a healthy phobia of theories, and I always stuck to experience, to what happens. And so it went. 

The war [World War I] was not particularly eventful for me. I had a trouble with a foot, I was born with my foot so, and it was my father who [corrected it somewhat] without [an] operation . . . but something remained, and so I was not able [go to] to the front, and remained in the hospital, and eventually [was sent to the] psychiatric hospital.

[I was a] psychiatric consultant in the Army, but I didn’t participate at all existentially in the war. I fought, it was inevitable; Italy had to enter [the war] for its survival, but it didn’t affect me deeply. The only thing was that I never bought a revolver — also medical officers had to have a revolver, in case of necessity — but I was determined never to shoot, so it was useless to spend the money on the revolver, so I stuffed newspapers in the revolver case. That was my only protest against militarism. I considered myself lucky to be a medical officer, so I had no direct involvement in the killing. But existentially it didn’t mean much to me. 

Then after the war I resumed my practice. I did some psychotherapy on some psychosomatic troubles of the soldiers. During the armistice I was still held in the army, but had little to do, so I threw myself in the study of Christian mysticism — of St. John of the Cross, two bulky volumes; and Saint Theresa, and Saint Catherine, so I had a very good time.

That takes me to a subject of more interest, that is my relationship with all these religions and philosophies. My attitude since the beginning has been in a sense universal, not binding myself to any presentation — if you want to call it philosophical relativism — that there is one universal truth, and that all human presentations are only partial and conditioned by many individual, cultural, historical reasons; but the core is the same in all, and the variations are of less importance, secondary, and due to these other conditioning elements. So I always tried to go to the core of each; and I never did, after my Nietzschean disease, I never bound myself to any presentation, to any philosophy, to any religion, and always tried to make a synthesis of all the good parts of all of them. That I had begun already — we must go back to 1906, when I was a medical student — and not only did I study Sanskrit, but there was a group of the literary cultural men, and then they had [started] the magazine Leonardo ^[xiv] — the name shows the trend towards universality. And I contributed to that, and one of my articles was “For a New Humanism: Synthesis of East and West;”^[xv] so this tendency to humanistic psychology was already there [in me] in 1907. 

The fundamental trend of psychosynthesis was already there, and the curious result is that more broadminded people of the various religions, each [has] considered psychosynthesis as very [much] in harmony with their presentations; here I give you . . . The beginning trend of psychosynthesis existed [in my life] very early, all the rest was a development. One is also this [Assagioli probably handed out something]. This is all psychodynamics in a nutshell: idee-forza: dynamic ideas. Psicagogia is really a synonym for psychosynthesis, it is a word used by Plato to lead to psyche toward synthesis and perfection.^[xvi] So before 1910 all the trend [toward] psychosynthesis were already at [its] beginning — psychodynamic, psychosomatic, trends to integration, to synthesis, and the upward trend, towards the superconscious.

Stuart Miller: [referring to some written material] Give it to me, the whole thing!

Roberto Assagioli: No, no! It has to be revised and . . .

Then another thing I give you is by this Jesuit father, who said that the psychology and psychotherapy most akin to Christian tradition is psychosynthesis, and very cleverly pointed out the similarities with St. John of the Cross. He was very clever, because they are there, and I have studied St. John of the Cross very much. And then an English Protestant priest also wrote on article showing the similarities between Christianity and psychosynthesis. So the Hindus find it similar to Vedanta, the Jesuits to St. John of the Cross, and others to Christianity in general. So that proves my claim that psychosynthesis is neutral theologically, religiously, and philosophically. It is like a picture which can be framed with a golden or silver [frame] or painted wood. That I like to be emphasized. But existential, because these feelings do exist, and can and should be investigated scientifically and favored with special techniques. But independently of any framework.

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^[i] Friedrich Wilhelm Niezsche (1844-1900) was a German philologist and philosopher.—Ed.

^[ii] “Eternal return,” or “eternal recurrence,” is an idea mentioned in several of Niezsche’s works, and was suggested by Nietzsche to be his most important idea. His particular version of the idea, unlike the philosophies of India and ancient Greece, suggests that a person’s life will recur in every minute detail in an eternal series of cycles. The texts that present Nietzsche’s ideas are said to be “hypothetical, or extremely elliptical and allusive or highly metaphorical and quasi-hermetic, and are considered by philosophers to be difficult to interpret. —Ed.

^[iii] The location and nature of the drawing are unknown. —Ed.

^[iv] The word “axe” appears in the typed manuscript twice, and one of the meanings of the Italian word “scure” is “axe.” The MS reads “Volontà fia scure,” which makes no sense, so I read it to mean Volontà è il scure, which does translate as “will is the axe.” But Assagioli’s meaning here is not clear. Perhaps the drawing mentioned shows an axe cutting something, and the caption indicated that the will was the function that made the division. —Ed.

^[v] Assagioli was a student at L’Istituto di studi superiori pratici e di perfezionamento di Firenze [The Institute of Higher Practical and Specialization Studies in Florence] which was a university institute, whose establishment, which lasted from 1858 to 1924, before the re-establishment of the University of Florence. There was no He received his medical degree in 1910. —Ed.

^[vi] Burghölzli is the Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich (‘Psychiatric University Hospital Zürich’), a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland, now associated with the University of Zürich. It was directed by Eugen Bleuler from 1898 to 1927, and at the time Assagioli was there it was associated with psychoanalysis through Bleuler’s assistant, C.G. Jung.—Ed.

^[vii] Biographical notes indicated that Assagioli had learned eight languages by the age of 18, but they did not include local dialects. —Ed.

^[viii] Alphonse Maeder (1882-1971) was a Swiss physician who specialized in psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Assagioli’s Archives contain numerous references to him and to his writings. —Ed.

^[ix] In the first year of Psiche, Assagioli translated Freud’s Psychoanalytical Method following his own article, “The Psychology of the Subconscious.” —Ed.

^[x] The Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschung [Yearbook for psychoanalytic and psychopathological research] was under the direction of Bleuler, Freud and Jung, and was published from 1909 through 1914. —Ed.

^[xi] Jung resigned as President of the International Psychoanalytic association in 1914. —Ed.

^[xii] Paul Charles Dubois (1848-1918) was a Swiss neuropathologist who was interested in psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy. He as professor of neuropathology at the University of Bern. He was known for the introduction of “persuasion therapy,” that employed a rational approach for neurotic disorders, and was the first proponent of what is now called “cognitive therapy.” Several of Dubois’ books have been translated into English. —Ed.

^[xiii] This is a correction of a typographical error in the original typed manuscript, where it reads ”. . . two or three stores.” Dubois’ books refer to “a second story” to a malady, such as adding “phobophobia to the phobia that torments you.” (The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders, translated by Jelliffe and White, Sixth revised edition, Funk & Wagnalls, 1909, p. 367. —Ed.

^[xiv] Leonardo was a philosophy magazine published in Florence between 1903 and 1907, founded by Assagioli’s colleague Giovanni Papini. —Ed.

^[xv] In the April-June 1907 issue of Leonardo Assagioli published an article titled “Per un nuovo umanesimo ariano” [“For a New Aryan Humanism”] in which he discussed the wisdom of eastern, specifically Indian (Aryan) philosophies and spiritualities, and indicated how beneficial many of these could be for western culture. —Ed.

^[xvi] In 1909 Assagioli published an article titled “La Psicologia delle Idee-forza e la Psicogogia” [“The Psychology of Idea-Forces and Psychagogy”] in The Journal of Applied Psychology.This appears as Doc.#23793 in the Assagioli Archives, and has been translated into English by this editor. —Ed.

^[i] Michael Murphy (1930- ) was a co-founder of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and Stuart Miller (1938-2014) was Esalen’s Vice President of Development. They met with Dr. Assagioli in Italy. —Ed.

^[ii] The original document for this essay is a rough typed manuscript that appears to have been a transcript of this interview. The transcript contains numerous typographical errors which have been corrected by this editor, whose interpolations are shown in [brackets]. Occasionally word order has been corrected for easier reading. Ellipses . . . in this essay are shown as they appear in the manuscript, indicating either a pause, or a part of the conversation that was apparently unclear to the transcriber and was omitted. —Ed.