Psychosynthesis can be applied alongside any religion because it is neutral toward the metaphysical conceptions and focuses mainly on the spiritual experiences per se.
By Roberto Assagioli and Others, From the Assagioli Archive in Florence, Doc. # 23488. Original Title: Discussione[i]Translated and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm
Abstract: Using neutral psychological language we cannot discuss the meta-physical status of Platonic ideas or other religious or philosophical concepts. However, people’s reflections on such concepts and ideas exist, and this is what interests us as scientists and practitioners. All people have some conception of what is good, for example, event criminals or demented persons. Psychosynthesis is perfectly compatible with Catholicism and other religions, because it deals with psychology and stops short at the threshold of any precise theological or metaphysical formulation. It is only incompatible with materialistic philosophies, such as Southern Buddhism. Many therapeutic cases must take the spiritual element into account, but not all. A therapist should not go looking for what a patient does not ask for, or what a patient is not mature enough for. A practice should be framed within a patient’s beliefs and conceptions. A therapist should be polyglot, able to speak each person’s language to each. This may be difficult but it is possible. Collaboration between psychotherapists and clergy is a promising collaboration. What matters to the therapist is the superconscious and personal awareness. We leave the rest to philosophers and clergy.
Assagioli: First of all, Platonic Ideas have been understood in many different senses by various interpreters and commentators, and I cannot go into that. I will only mention a few purely psychological notions. First of all, according to Jung (not according to me) the Platonic Ideas correspond to what he calls “archetypes of the collective unconscious;” but one could say, in neutral scientific psychological language, that Platonic Ideas can be conceived of as universal ideas of qualities that are expressed more or less imperfectly in every human being.
Let’s take the three fundamental ones: the beautiful, the true and the good. Whether they exist metaphysically or not, what their origin is, and what their essence is, we cannot say in a psychological context, and perhaps not even in any other context. So, we cannot discuss this in psychology. However, the existence of reflections on the true, the beautiful and the good in the consciousness of the individual is undeniable, and this is what interests us as scientists and as practitioners, is it not? If there is the consciousness of the true, the beautiful and the good in everyone, then how can it be stimulated, how can it be fostered, how can it be made current and creative? This is the problem we pose, not the metaphysical essence of these ideas. So it is a very real problem: these ideas exist.
There is a French psychiatrist, Prof. […], who has done very interesting studies that show that even in the demented, even in criminals, there is an idea of the good — badly understood and badly interpreted. For that matter, even in the lives of our thieves there is this sense of honor, this sense of justice applied in their own way, but […] and so, a certain sense of aesthetics, one could say, is there in almost everyone; but it can be developed and cultivated and above all awakened — evoked is the right word, in the sense of being awakened. All of these latent possibilities can be fostered and awakened by the proper techniques, because these possibilities are in the superconscious.
{P}:[ii] I would like to say this: one objection. It seems difficult to me to be able to adopt the attitude that you have proposed, of a kind of religious agnosticism. These conceptions that you have been expressing for many years, and which you have also illustrated in many writings, are not basically separate from some fundamental conceptions in the history of human religious thought, and especially […] they reconnect, ultimately, what you say about the higher self and […]. I don’t know. It seems to me that a psychotherapy, as much as I am really oriented toward an integral psychotherapy that gets to the bottom of the many problems that the sense of our self imposes. But it seems to me, I don’t know, that you necessarily have to connect them to some conception, some […].
Assagioli: I am glad that you specifically raised this point, because I want to be very precise.
{P}: It is good, to specify a little bit….
Assagioli: I can say that, in my opinion, and not only in my opinion, this whole conception of psychosynthesis is perfectly compatible with Catholicism. There is the previous Pope’s speech, [which was] precisely on psychotherapy . There is the […]’s book on psychoanalysis, in which he says essentially this: that there is nothing in it that is contrary to any Catholic doctrine. Calling the Soul the Self does not change the nature of the Soul at all. According to Christianity, the Soul is immortal, it is stable, it is made in the image and likeness of God. Now this is one way of expressing the same concept. There is nothing incompatible, because psychosynthesis stops, and must stop, right at the threshold of any precise theological or metaphysical formulation: it arrives there and goes no further. It is at odds only with materialistic philosophies. But that the Soul considers itself with […] as a […] or as […]. If anything, it is contrary to Southern Buddhism, which denies the permanence of the Soul: if anything! But not […].
{P}: It is contrary, in that it denies what I believe, and so many others believe to be a lived interpretation, namely the existence of this Self.
{P}: Anyway, it goes beyond a therapeutic, medical view….
Assagioli: Slowly. Now, several psychotherapists, for example the [… ] and many others, and I would say also existential (but non-existentialist) psychiatrists — both German, Austrian and American — deny that you can do psychotherapy without taking into account the spiritual element. Mind you: not in all cases. There are many cases where this does not enter at all. When there is massive — sexual or affective — psychic trauma in a person in which dissociation is caused, and with analytic psychic methods one can cause reassociation and the symptoms disappear, there the psychotherapist goes no further. So, I would say, there are purely Freudian cases, there are purely […] cases. They exist! And there one should not go looking for what the patient does not ask for and is not mature enough for. But there are also cases, let us call them […] in which any psychoanalysis is not enough, because the problem is precisely one of conflict between superconscious and subconscious elements.
{P}: Well, it is certain that this gradation exists, because if we think that modern neuroleptic [i.e. antipsychotic] therapy has eliminated the necessity and laboriousness of psychotherapeutic therapies, because at that level they prepare the new synthesis with great ease …
Assagioli: But of course! There is no conflict between the two: they should be associated. Very well!
{P}: At some time these elaborate techniques may be replaced by some pills. But always [or only], of course, at certain levels. I agree with this: that at different levels there may be a psychoanalytic therapy in the Freudian sense, another […] at the spiritual level and of the deeper problems of the personality. Here, having arrived at that level, it seems to me that we have to connect with the great conceptions that the history of religious thought […].
Assagioli: Not necessarily. Look […] I speak from my decades of experience and that of others. I believe that you can effectively treat people of the most varied religions, and of none, by framing psychotherapeutic practice within their [beliefs and] conceptions. In a sense the psychotherapist is neutral, but he or she should be polyglot in that sense, and be able to speak each person’s language to each one, but without at all touching […].
{P}: In broader conceptions — it is very easy to slip into broader conceptions. It is difficult to stay on the level of this and on the level of that….
Assagioli: Difficult does not mean impossible. And we have to try to succeed in doing the difficult things. I remember that inspiring motto of the American Marines. I don’t know if you remember it. Maybe not everyone knows it: “The difficult things we do right away. The impossible ones take a little longer.” In short: we are not required to do the impossible, but the difficult we are required to do. But then there is another fact: that sometimes the patient imposes a spiritual problem on us — he comes with a spiritual problem. You cannot say to him, “That doesn’t concern me!” And one last thing, which perhaps will bring us more […]. In America there is now an increasing collaboration being established between psychotherapists and various religious people. Just […] an operational team in which the psychotherapist and the priest, pastor, rabbi, or whatever, get together and work in harmony. The psychotherapist goes up to the height of superconsciousness, and the priest goes beyond that.
{P}: You have seen that a Benedictine has written a book, Christian Yoga.[iii]
Assagioli: Exactly, even here with us it is spreading. But it is really a practice there now. A praxis, of doing this collaboration, that is, an [organization] in America, which proposes precisely this task: first the understanding, and then the collaboration between psychotherapists and religious people, and it has three thousand members, with many associates. I can say with satisfaction that a paper of mine on this subject was circulated by the […] to all the members of the Regional Academy of […], and I had some very nice responses from religious people.[iv] So I would say that it is a problem that I did not create, but that exists, that is imposed. And my practice shows that although it is difficult, but it can be done. I too have more than once asked for the collaboration with priests: it went very well.
{P}: Just as priests ask for collaboration from doctors. For example, since we are on the subject, I have men and women patients sent to me by their confessor who said, “Look, you go to Dr. Racanelli who, here, will solve this matter better.” And vice versa, when the patients expressed doubts and difficulties like that to me, I sent them to priests who were my friends, open-minded and […] psychological, and it went very well. It cannot be avoided.
[…]{P}: I have to congratulate the distinguished psychiatrist for his powerful parapsychological faculties, because just what I was going to say, you have now said it yourself, in admirable language, as you are “Doctor mirabilis.” [v]
Assagioli: Interpsychism! Maybe it is better not to entertain the audience anymore, because the effort of attention is not […].
{P}: I wanted to say this, Roberto: but what goes above, does it not enter the spiritual religious plane?
Assagioli: But no, [then] the psychotherapist doesn’t go into it.
{P}: Why shouldn’t he go into it? When the patient himself poses the religious problem.
[…]Assagioli: Take again the example of the beautiful, the true and the good: universal concepts that all philosophies and all religions admit. The question is not whether there is a personal God who created them, or not. Whether God is personal or impersonal, what is the Spirit, what is, I don’t know, of the Soul after deaths. Whether the Soul pre-existed before death or not. These are all very […] problems.
[…]Assagioli: Whatever the theological or philosophical solution is, that does not matter. What matters is the superconsciousness of […] that we are Souls. The rest is up to the philosopher, the priest, and the metaphysician.
{P}: You see we have had occasion to clarify these basic points.
[i] Because this document is a transcript of a live discussion, some passages that appear illogical or ungrammatical have been left unchanged. Ellipses shown as […] are given as they appear as blank spaces in the original typed manuscript. The language was apparently unclear to the original transcriber. Interpolations by this editor are indicated in [brackets].—Ed.
[ii] {P} is used in this text to indicate the question or response of another participant in this discussion. These persons were not named in the original document. All other text is spoken by Roberto Assagioli. —Tr.
[iii] Christian Yoga,by J.-M. Déchanet. Harper & Brothers, 1960. —Ed.
[iv] This may be a reference to an occasion in which one of Assagioli’s papers was circulated among member of one of the subcommittees of the American Psychological Association as well as to some groups of Christian and Jewish clergy, and some written positive responses were received by the Psychosynthesis Research Foundation. —Ed.
[v] Latin: “wonderful doctor.” —Tr.
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