Roberto Assagioli in the Chicago Tribune (1923)

The soul gets sick, not the flesh: a newspaper encounter with psychic diagnosis, the neuro-psycho-spiritual equation, and a Florentine healer likened to St. Francis

Article by V. De Santo
Published in Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1923
Featuring Roberto Assagioli
Original headline: Soul Gets Sick, Not the Body, Says This Specialist

Editorial Note
This text is a newspaper article published in the Chicago Tribune in 1923, written by journalist V. De Santo and reporting on the ideas of Roberto Assagioli. Roberto Assagioli is the subject of the article and not its author. The title, 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 of the article has not been altered. This article is a historical document. It reflects the perspectives, language, and assumptions of the time in which it was written and does not necessarily represent the views held by the editor or the authors today.

Abstract

In this article, journalist V. De Santo profiles Roberto Assagioli for a Chicago Tribune readership, presenting his claim that illness originates in the soul rather than the body. De Santo outlines Assagioli’s concept of the ‘neuro-psycho-spiritual equation’ as a tool for psychic diagnosis and relational understanding, his three-step therapeutic method, and his distinction from Coué, Freud, and other contemporaries. The piece closes with Frank Vanderlip’s tribute comparing Assagioli to a modern St. Francis.

Dr. Roberto Assagioli claims he has discovered the cause of all human ailments and troubles. Medical science for many centuries has been trying to cure ailments by applying remedies to the body. It was all wrong.

The body is invariably well. It is the soul that gets sick. A man is not made only of flesh and bones. In fact, his physical self represents a very small part of his entire makeup. Emotions, imagination, passion, aspiration, intellectual faculties are just as real and infinitely more important than his physical attributes.

According to this Florentine scientist, medical knowledge must be considered, from now on, only as an adjunct to the knowledge of the psyche, or science of the soul, which is bound to assume the greatest importance in the near future and which will be the panacea for all human ailments.

Dr. Assagioli told me that most of the troubles and tragedies that oppress humanity are the consequences of continued misunderstandings occurring in our everyday relationships with our fellow beings. The reason for these misunderstandings is the failure to grasp or appreciate the psyche of the people with whom we come in contact.

In other words, if we have troubles with our friends, wives, sweethearts, it is because we do not know their neuro-psycho-spiritual equation.

“what’s her or his neuro-psycho-spiritual equation”? This is a question that will become very popular if Dr. Assagioli succeeds in doing what he intends to do; because if you know this sort of equation of a girl you want to marry, or of a man you want to sell a suit of clothes to, you will surely attain your aim.

The greatest trouble, Dr. Assagioli says, arises from the difficulty of soul understanding between persons of different sexes. He says the feminine neuro-psycho-spiritual equation is always very different from that of a man. He says women psychologically are superior to men, although men are more robust physically and intellectually. He uses the following formula to show the relationship between the sexes:

In this table, the minus and plus signs indicate that men are “negative” in some qualities and “positive” in some others and that women are just the opposite. Divorces and domestic troubles can be avoided, according to Dr. Assaggioli, if these facts are well understood, for they are the key to the neuro-psycho-spiritual equation.

But Dr. Assagioli adds that misunderstandings between two persons of the opposite sex are complicated by the fact that no man is 100 per cent masculine and no woman is 100 per cent feminine. Therefore, to arrive at the right valuation of the equation, one must use great care and patience.

The finding of the neuro-psycho-spiritual equation in a person Assagioli calls the psychic diagnosis. His method of cure consists of three steps. First, the diagnosis; second, a process of treatment especially adapted to the particular case; third, teach the process to the patient himself, for he alone can apply it efficaciously

I asked the soul doctor to give me an example of the cure or explain to me what the process would be in a given case, but he said that each case is different. He said that it is not auto-suggestion, like Dr. Coué’s method, nor, psycho-analysis, like the theory expounded by Prof. Freud, nor again the study of the superconscious, like the doctrine of Profs. Meyers and Geley, but something original which in the coordination of the methods of all these scientists added to the discoveries he has made himself in the psychic world.

In Florence, he is known as a good nerve specialist. Very few know him as a healer of the soul. But those who are acquainted with this activity of his speak highly of him. Even Frank Vanderlip speaks of him most reverently in his book, “What Next In Europe?” He calls him the modern St. Francis and says he [Assagioli] impressed him deeply. He concludes some paragraphs on him as follows:

“If I am not mistaken, this man has the sort of human goodness that has characterized other men who have initiated great moral movements which had small and humble beginnings”.

Assagioli is presenting his theory about the four types here https://kennethsorensen.dk/en/category/the-seven-types/