We bury our darkest instincts, but the repression of the soul runs the other way: we fear the heights as much as the depths and hide the spiritual from view.
By Roberto Assagioli
Assagioli Archive, Florence
Extract from Telepatia Verticale
Translated by Gordon Symons
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. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
In this extract, Roberto Assagioli argues that the personality represses not only its lower instincts, as psychoanalysis showed, but also the higher promptings of the soul. He traces this hostility to fear of the unfamiliar and of the disciplines the soul seems to demand, then reframes the soul not as a harsh master but as a wise educator working for our good. He distinguishes the spiritual self from Jung’s Anima and Animus, warns against treating the unconscious as a being, and describes the soul’s guidance as a quiet warning, the voice of conscience.
Why is it so relatively rare for the Soul to inspire the personality? Why does Humanity do so much nonsense, individually and collectively? Why is it not guided and illuminated by the Soul? I repeat here the analogy already mentioned before, but which is very illuminating. Electricity has always existed, it has always been around us, electrical phenomena occur continuously in our body, and electricity has always been ready to serve us. Well, only for a century has humanity been aware of it, and has actually used it. While there have been great civilizations in which men have been superior in certain respects, but which have left this enormous cosmic power unused, except for the trick of rubbing amber.
We now live in a similar and hardly lesser ignorance of formidable spiritual psychic forces. But ignorance is only one of the reasons for this. There is also another major and more interesting one, namely the active hostility that the human personality often feels towards what is spiritual, in general, and in particular towards the voices and indications of the Soul. This also has its reasons, and it is very interesting to examine them, also to see how to eliminate this conflict which is entirely to our detriment. The fact is that a whole series of precautions and fears are present in the human personality. To put it in scientific psychoanalytic language, the conscious personality of man is located between the lower unconscious and the superconscious and is afraid of both. Psychoanalysis has amply demonstrated the existence of a repression, of a censure towards all instinctive drives. Instead of recognizing them objectively and sincerely, and therefore disciplining them, using and directing these instinctive lower forces, the conscious part, instead, blocks them, is horrified, condemns them and then removes them to the unconscious, thus believing that they have solved the problem.
Instead, it hasn’t solved anything at all, because these forces stir in the unconscious and produce neuro-psychic disorders, or they suddenly break out. So, the problem is not solved at all: this is pure and simple psychology. What is generally ignored, however, is that the same happens for the energies, impulses and thrusts that come from above. People are afraid of it for different reasons and reject them. He is afraid of them, as he is generally afraid of what is new: out of tenacious misoneism, out of tenacious adherence to so-called daily realities, to current opinions. In fact, very few have the intellectual courage to go against the current, to think for themselves, and not to obey collective suggestions. Then there are things that, because of the ignorance I mentioned earlier, seem to be unusual, strange, fantastic. There is a fear of “losing one’s mind” by dealing with these things. Then there are even deeper and more subtle resistances: in fact, there is a great fear of the needs that the Soul can have; the fear that it imposes renunciations, unpleasant, uncomfortable disciplines – and this is partially and superficially justified. The soul really has its needs, but these are by no means unreasonable, excessive, or inhuman. It requires disciplines and obedience that contribute to the benefit of the personality itself. It does it for the best and for our own good, and in this it can be compared to a parent, a wise educator who tries to help the student grow up while making him avoid certain excesses, mistakes and whims.
