Psychological Multiplicity

We are not a psychological whole but rather a multiplicity of subpersonalities often in conflict with each other and in this article, Roberto Assagioli offers his insights into our inner domain.

By Roberto Assagioli, (Undated), Assagioli Archive Florence

One of our major blind spots, one of the most naive and dangerous illusions which all of us harbour and which prevent us from being really integrated personalities, is the self-complacent belief that we have already attained such an inner wholeness and coherence.

Indeed, at certain moments we are forced to acknowledge that within us exist many contradictions which we should try to harmonise. But such realisation is unpleasant and disturbing; it confronts us with an exacting and difficult task; therefore, we try more or less consciously to ignore or to minimise this “human condition”. We try in a rather haphazard way to keep within bounds the various drives that clamour for satisfaction. We try to appease them with partial concessions or to repress them through fear or a sense of guilt. At times we acknowledge and endeavour to follow our higher promptings, but when they appear to be too exacting, we try to evade their challenge and even to suppress them. In this way, we take no firm stand, we follow no definite direction, but we muddle through by a series of makeshifts and compromises. We remain, so to speak, at the surface of ourselves, and we build up for ourselves and for others a hypocritical facade; we try to act more or less ably and consistently a certain role.

In this way, we manage to get along, and when we succeed in sailing smoothly, we congratulate ourselves on our smartness and on our good sense; often, however, such “normal” methods of handling the business of life prove inadequate. The way of compromise and appeasement does not subdue our drives which may instead make greater and more insistent claims. While we try to satisfy one side of our nature, other sides arise in protest; if we indulge in laziness and “dolce far niente”, the wasp of ambition stings us unpleasantly. If we give in to self-indulgence, our conscience makes us uncomfortable; if we give in to a passionate outburst, its consequences strike us back like a boomerang; if instead, we repress our urges too rigidly, these play havoc in the unconscious and are apt to produce psychosomatic or other nervous and psychological troubles. Thus, we generally live in a state of inner strife and insecurity. An honest insight in ourselves and in others obliges us to recognise this fact, however unpleasant.

This state of affairs can be changed; a real and satisfactory solution is possible but, it can be achieved only through a courageous facing of the situation and a willingness to start and carry through a process of a complete transformation of our personality. This is, indeed, the central theme and purpose of psychosynthesis.

Now we shall deal with the first step, that is the discovery of how great is our inner multiplicity, of how many, almost countless and how utterly diverse are the energies and qualities, biological, emotional, mental and spiritual, actually seething in ourselves.

All the true knowers of human nature have known and emphasised this fact. We will give only two significant quotations, Father Sertillange stated: “Actually there is in each of us an unlimited multiplicity. We are indeed “legion”. Herman Keyserling asserts no less decisively: “Each fundamental tendency is actually an autonomous entity and its combinations and various transformations create in every man a kind of animal kingdom whose richness is no less than that of the real one. One can really say that in every one of us, there develops and is active to a different degree, all the instincts and passions, all the vices and virtues, all the tendencies and aspirations, all the faculties and gifts of humanity.”

This should hardly cause surprise if we think of the diverse background and of the distant origin of the many traits that have come together into the strange being we are each one of us. There is, first of all, our hereditary background. We are in large measure the outcome of a long evolution; many ancestral, atavistic traits exist in the depths of our psyche and make themselves felt indirectly in our dreams and fantasies, and at times they break forth into our consciousness, causing trouble and confusion. Such traits have been studied by Jung in particular, who considers them the contents of the “collective unconscious”.

Then there are the more direct hereditary traits, often quite obvious, coming from one’s parents and near forefathers. In this connection, there is an interesting fact not often noticed, that such traits skip a generation. Certain characteristics peculiar to grandparents reappear in their grandchildren. Sometimes certain characteristics of more remote ancestors pop up unexpectedly in later descendants.

(This subject has been thoroughly dealt with by Leon Daudet, a politician and journalist as well as a French thinker of great merit, even though at times a bit extreme. In his book, l ‘Hérédo, he emphasises with some exaggeration on the importance of such hereditary influences; his book contains some really striking facts.)

Such hereditary traits do not all appear at the same time but rather, brusquely, in succession, under various circumstances.

During childhood, they emerge in a kaleidoscopic fashion but are apt to vanish after a certain time; at adolescence, they appear in a more definite way; later on they emerge more slowly but are more persistent. Such a group of hereditary traits is very extensive; even if we consider only four generations, we find that there are sixteen streams of hereditary influences flowing into each individual.

All this regards our past. But there is then a large group of elements which have, since birth, come into constituting a large part of our personality. Neither biologically nor psychologically are we a “closed system”, Our physical body is not isolated from the surrounding life; it is constantly affected and modified by meteorological and cosmic influences of all kinds. These being more and more recognised, and very interesting studies have been made on this subject. But the exchanges and interpenetrations of a psychological and spiritual nature which are going on between human beings are far deeper and more potent. They are either direct, from one human being to another or from one group to another group, or indirect, but not less effective, through the creative work done by men far away in space and time but still emanating their influences through their books and ideas, their paintings and their music. We are apt to overlook the fact that Plato, or Leonardo or Beethoven can enrich our personality far more than our next-door neighbour.

So intimate can the direct influence of other human beings be that at times one cannot really say where the boundaries between them overlap. Among the direct individual influences, the most potent and far-reaching are those of the parents (or of their substitutes) during early childhood. Modern psychology and particularly, psychoanalysis, and the more illumined educators such as Dr Montesorri, have realised and emphasised this fact.

The discovery of such influences and upsetting many which are harmful constitutes one of the main tasks of the psychoanalytical investigation, which must precede the constructive work of psychosynthesis. Later on, and particularly during adolescence, the fascination exerted by some living or historical figure, which becomes an ideal model or pattern, can affect and mould in a decisive way the individual personality at that fluid and plastic stage. (Let us remember that in this, as well as in other respects, many men and women remain psychologically adolescent throughout their lives)

Unfortunately, the most ‘charming’ and suggestive models are more often of a lower than of a higher order. We have recently seen and still can see how the personality of a dictator or the “mask” of a cinema star are consciously or unconsciously imitated by countless thousands of unwary youths.

No less potent are the collective influences which enter into the make-up of our personality. In certain very harmonious groups, in a tightly knit organisation, in a homogeneous audience or in a mob swayed by one same emotion, the limiting surfaces, so to speak, of the individual disappear, and an actual psychological blending takes place. Besides that, we are surrounded and pervaded by the general psychological atmosphere of the civilisation and culture in which we live, of the generation to which we belong, of our own nation and of our own class and community. There is a constant intake and output from and to each individual and each of these groups. We are constantly being nourished – or poisoned – and we each reciprocate in a small or great way.

We have so far considered the group of elements coming from the past and the group of elements coming outside, But these do not exhaust the collection of the psychological atoms and molecules (to use a chemical analogy) which make up the wonderful compound constituting a human personality.

There are some characteristics which appear specifically our own. We feel at times something existing deep in us which is different from all else. We cannot trace its origin, but we feel it as an expression of our truer and deeper self. The existence of such an unknown quality seems to be confirmed by the fact that at times there are fundamental differences among the children of the same parents having the same background and environment. Some feel quite different and foreign from the members of their family circle, as in the case of artists and musicians appearing as strange birds in the nest of 100 per cent Babbit’s.

As contemporary chemists and physicists have proved that the apparent static atoms are in reality made up of various electrical charges, of electrons and particles whirling at terrific speeds, so modern dynamic psychology is demonstrating more and more that the psychological elements which make up human beings are not static; they are animated by drives, they seem to proceed in specific directions towards some end; they show the urge to self-preservation, to develop, to assert themselves above and against all other competitive urges. They appear to be something living, to be elementary psychological entities among which a constant “struggle for life” is going on.

But this constitutes only one aspect of the picture. If this was all, we would only have psychological chaos, a kind of psychic nebula, and one could not speak of “personality” at all. In reality, these psychological units do not remain isolated. They have a tendency to associate with each other.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the coordinating and organising action of the principal psychological function of the prevailing human interests, valuations, attitudes and relationships which form the warp and woof and the directive patterns of our lives, tend to combine not only in complexes of various kinds and degrees, but even form into well-defined entities which could be called sub-personalities, or selves.

Let us take some of the outstanding examples, which are those which occur in our various relationships with others. We can clearly differentiate in a man his “self” as a son, his “self” as a husband, his “self” as a father. Each of these “selves” is made up of a combination of specific attitudes, feelings and behaviour patterns. Thus can be said to constitute a sub-personality of very diverse nature and quality and often conflicting with each other. The same man can have a good “Son-personality” and a ‘bad” “husband-personality”, or visa versa. The same man can be shy and submissive as a son and tyrannical and exacting as a father. Likewise, a woman can be rebellious and obstinate as a daughter and instead, weak and yielding as a mother.