Integrating Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, Maturity, and Old Age
Transcribed lecture conversation with Roberto Assagioli
Participants include Prof. Cirenei and others
Undated, Assagioli Archives, Florence
Original title: Conversazione sulla Psicosintesi della Età
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [1]
Editorial Note
This text is a transcribed conversation involving Roberto Assagioli and other participants. Assagioli is a speaker in the dialogue, not the author of a written article. The abstract, contextual subtitle, and cross-section headings in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sorensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording of the transcript has not been altered.
Abstract
In this transcribed conversation, Roberto Assagioli and other participants explore the psychological and spiritual dimensions of each stage of human life, from childhood and adolescence through youth, maturity, and old age, through the lens of psychosynthesis. Assagioli argues that each age carries its own specific qualities, gifts, and developmental tasks, and that genuine psychosynthesis involves not the suppression of earlier stages but their conscious integration and elevation. The conversation addresses practical questions of education and parenting, the challenges of adolescent negativity, the risks of regression, and the therapeutic principle of replacing darkness with light rather than fighting it.
The Ages of Life: Cultural Ideals and the Problem of Unlived Stages
Dr. Assagioli : Then we can have conversations: there are representatives of all ages [here].
Prof. Cirenei : I wanted to mention an idea that came to me only now. In every historical era some age has been idealized. For example, in ancient Rome it was the Vir , the adult, the mature man; in Romanticism, the adolescent; in China the old man — at least in old China. Now it seems to me that in the historical moment in which we live we are idealizing the “ungrateful age.” Isn’t that right? — the “bad boys.” Then shouldn’t an evolution be encouraged, from the ungrateful age to youth? Or maybe going through adolescence?
Dr. Assagioli : That’s a very good, insightful observation. The ages of different cultures.
Mr. X. : The importance of this moment is to study adolescence and its problems. In terms of age, adolescence is the crucible where our personality is formed, where the foundations are laid.
Prof. Cirenei : It is important to have experienced adolescence.
Mr. X .: That’s it, and many times people don’t [really] live it. It’s just a difficult age to live, and they don’t live it with a certain naturalness, with a certain spontaneity. Yes [. . .] [there are] influences and pushes from all sides.
Prof. Cirenei : It is difficult to make up for an adolescence that is unlived.
Dr. Assagioli : It is difficult but it is not impossible. I would say that one of the most valid reasons for the current [social] protests is the fact that in the cities, in city life, children, teenagers and adolescents cannot live their age to the fullest. There are no gardens, no parks, and no way to have a physical outlet, and so many other things. It is just the way city life is arranged that prevents this, and in this they are right to protest.
Remedying Unlived Ages and the Crises of Transition
Prof. Cirenei : How do you do it, for example, if the individual has never been a child, has not [really] experienced childhood? How do you remedy these disharmonies that come up?
Dr. Assagioli : By going to the country to an educational institution where there are children, and becoming children again. Since there is a latent repressed potential, by giving [it] free expression it comes out [. . .] it can; it can’t just be done [. . .] you need an environment that fosters that, and that’s what you should create: the possibilities are there. Then for kids, all the different kinds of camps. Currently there are more possibilities: camps, team work, volunteer work. In short, intelligent parents of willing children can find solutions. Now there are many institutions that encourage
and make this possible. The city [. . .] explorers is the oldest and most organized, but now there are so many such organizations. More protest, however right it may be at certain times, is not enough. You have to see all the possibilities for positive solutions to take advantage of them.
Prof. Cirenei : There was a lady who correctly mentioned this point: that sometimes there is a refusal to move from one age to the next. The refusal of the child to become a youth, or the young person to become an adult, or the adult to become old.
Dr. Assagioli : I had to simplify, because there would be so much to say, but in fact the passage from one age to the next is marked by a crisis.
Prof. Cirenei : How can a crisis of transition from one age to another be helped? How can you help teach psychosynthesis to young people from the ages 15 to 20?
Peer Relationships, Teenage Negativity, and the Psychophysical Transition
Dr. Assagioli : You can’t give a general formula, you have to look case by case. But what is needed above all, in general — and too little is being done, and even under the present conditions much more could be done — is to bring peers of all ages together. Everyone needs peers, and unfortunately we often force children and young people to be with adults. I often say: think of an adult with an old person. If you had to be exclusively with 90-year-old people, it would be exhausting, terrible.
Well, it is even worse for a child to be exclusively with adults. Every age needs “horizontal” relationships with their peers, and you have to find ways to do that. Now I give a small, practical example. Many women say: but how can that be done? I have only one child. Well, as has been done, a group of women could agree to take turns taking their friends’ children once a week, so they would each have the advantage of having a day off, and the children would be together. This is a small example of small practical solutions that can be implemented even in an unfavorable environment.
Prof. Cirenei : One gentleman asks whether teenagers’ negativity and assertion of independence have a physiological basis, because sometimes in different children they occur at different ages? Is it perhaps a different physiological maturation?
Dr. Assagioli : Those are natural, inevitable reactions. They are uncomfortable but unavoidable. They can be more or less channeled and guided, one can try to give some external objective goal; but they are needed, they are a way to find oneself, to affirm oneself. Confrontation is a way to grow, and at that age it is natural, it should be recognized as legitimate. It is a matter of finding ways in different cases to contain it within certain limits, to channel it. First of all admit it, acknowledge it, never condemn it as so many adults do.
Of course the physiology also influences things; there is a continuous action and reaction between body and psyche, but they are complex relationships and they are not always the same [in everyone]. So you can’t say, it just depends on [. . .] It is a psychophysical evolution, sometimes parallel, sometimes dissociated, and you have to look at things case by case, you can’t give a general answer; I repeat again that [in the previous talk] I had to schematize for brevity.
The Exercise: Psychosynthesis of the Ages
Now I propose an exercise — you always have to do exercises here. It is a difficult exercise, and it will probably not succeed well, but there is no need to be discouraged. It is the exercise of the psychosynthesis of ages. This is the exercise of the ideal model specifically aimed at this: to imagine oneself possessing the best qualities of the various ages, that is, the ideal model of the specific self as the living synthesis of each age, and becoming capable of manifesting each of the qualities according to the opportunities. That’s easy to say; but let’s try it.
I will guide the exercise a bit. First of all, let us quickly review, quickly recall the qualities of each age: of childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age, and try to feel them resonate in us. I would say that I feel that there is the capacity in us to evoke them and express them. Let us try to imagine it as vividly as we can.
* * *
I was briefed in order to hear some comments. Is there any comment? Has anyone succeeded even in a small way?
It takes time to execute this properly, and then it should be done fractionally — in the sense of first summoning the child, then another day the youngster, another day the young adult, then the adult, and so on.
Prof. Cirenei : For young people, imagine even the later ages.
Dr. Assagioli : Whereas the adult has to evoke what he has lived, or not lived, or lived badly. The young person with creative imagination has to imagine when he will be an adult or an elder, and for now try to prepare for the positive aspects of those ages. One could call it time travel. Of course the best way is to do it “from the eternal” [perspective]; that is, first ascend to one’s spiritual center, out of time, and carry out the exercise from that level.
I highly recommend doing this exercise, but it has to be divided up. Tonight I only wanted to give the general idea. I would say that it is also fun in the higher sense of the word; that is, it literally di-verts, dis-tracts from one’s present condition with its attendant concerns. Imagine each age, imagine experiencing it.
Mrs. Z. : Imagine the good parts, the beautiful [aspects] of the various ages.
The Positive Path: Replacing Darkness with Light
Dr. Assagioli : Of course, the higher qualities. To forestall any objections, here I have limited myself to talking about the good sides. I know very well that there are also all the negative and/or pathological aspects, that is, the developmental setbacks of a given age, that the lady was mentioning; there are the regressions after psychic traumas, or certain experiences in which one tends to regress to past infantile states.
Prof. Cirenei : In the worst cases an old man can revert back; that is, become a child again.
Dr. Assagioli : Of course the lower aspects of a past age [. . .] So there is a whole pathology in the psychoanalysis of the ages. I didn’t want to talk about that [today] because the emphasis here is on the positive aspects; the negative ones are there, we know, but [. . .] the way to overcome them is to replace them by emphasizing the positive aspects. I repeat what I said, “to overcome darkness one must turn on a light, and not fight darkness.”
Mrs. Z. : I don’t know whether I was able to think correctly in the exercise. This occurred to me: When I was very little, I used to try very hard to spice up my games with my imagination: I used to invent many beautiful things, I used to enjoy them, very beautiful games, I used to imagine that the dolls were alive, that they were doing this or that. Then around the age of 12 came the time of poetry: I saw everything beautiful, everything poetic. At the same time also there was a religious phase, in the Catholic religion: I made no distinctions and felt exalted in religion. Then came the artistic phase: I wanted to reach as far as possible into the beauty of art, both in painting and music, and this artistic phase lasted for a long time. After that came the time of wanting to know, of going deeper. And now in my old age the spiritual age has come. This is the good part. Then of course there is the bad part.
Dr. Assagioli : That’s fine, but going back to childhood, I haven’t mentioned enough the imagination and fantasy that is very much alive in children. In Wickes’ book [2] they talk about the imaginary friends that somewhat isolated children create for themselves. They make up for the fact that their parents don’t provide them with real friends by creating imaginary friends. There is a good chapter that exactly describes this side of the imaginary world that children create for themselves, and the greater real value it takes on compared with the external world.
The Fear of Death and Life as Continuous Transformation
Prof. Cirenei : What can be done to help those people who have an obsessive fear of death?
Dr. Assagioli : That is a long discussion that cannot be given on this occasion. For example, the radical cure would be to keep in mind that death does not exist.
Prof. Cirenei : There is one aspect of this matter for which I was able to give very practical advice. There are some people who are afraid and horrified by the decomposition of the body. Then have them cremated — I suggested — so that this fear is eliminated. As for the rest, something higher is needed for that.
Dr. Assagioli : This shows how materialistic we are; we are almost hypnotized by matter, by sensations. The body [of a dead person] is but a used garment that has no importance. It is believed that the cult of the corpse is honoring a deceased person.
Prof. Cirenei : For those people who have this fear I would recommend the study of parapsychological phenomena.
Dr. Assagioli : For many, the study of parapsychological phenomena can be a great help. For certain modern mentalities who cannot have a naive, devotional faith [or who follow] the scientific way, the demonstration of supernormal powers [. . .] Now I don’t want to go into that, but there are various testimonies of people who have found themselves out of body, who have consciously seen their body lying in bed while they were elsewhere. Now if this experience is genuine, if truly one can consciously leave the physical body momentarily, then when the physical body no longer functions, this happens permanently, but the individual remains alive and conscious in the unseen. But this is not part of our [. . .]
Prof. Cirenei : But there is one thing to observe. The passage from one age to the next represents a death. After all, we always experience death.
Dr. Assagioli : We die every day, even biologically. Every day thousands of cells die, and thousands of cells are formed; and so “death” in a catastrophic, static, dismal sense is a prejudice, a materialistic preconception. Life is a continuous transformation, nothing is fixed; life and death are a unity.
[1] This conversation was found as a separate document from that in Part I. The original document in the online Archives has not been located by this translator, and this version comes from psicoenergetica.com. Editor’s interpolations are indicated by [brackets]. Ellipses in brackets [. . .] are gaps in the original transcript. – Oath.
[2] The Inner World of Childhood by Frances G. Wickes. See Note 4 in Part I of this document. – Oath.
