Straight Talk For Adults

Roberto Assagioli discusses the importance of understanding and supporting the development of children and adolescents and highlights the work of Maria Montessori. 

By Roberto Assagioli, Doc. #23741, #23743, #23744, #23748 and #23751 in Assagioli Archives – Florence. Original Title: Parole Franche Agli Adulti – I-4[1]. Translated and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm[2]

Abstract: In this four-part article, Dr. Roberto Assagioli discusses the importance of understanding and supporting the development of children and adolescents. It highlights the work of Maria Montessori in promoting the liberation and education of the child. The author emphasizes the serious and urgent nature of the issue, as the misunderstandings and mistreatment of children can lead to negative consequences such as mental illness, crime, and unhappiness. He asserts that adults often hinder rather than help the child’s formation and expression, and that it is a duty to cooperate with Montessori’s crusade of liberation.

The author explores the root causes of these misunderstandings, including the harmful illusion that love alone is enough to raise and educate children properly. He discusses the differences between children and adults, particularly in terms of their subconscious and unconscious thoughts and desires, which can greatly impact their behavior and development. He also highlights the challenges of adolescence, a time of crisis and transformation, and the conflicts that often arise between adults and young people.

The author emphasizes the responsibility that adults have in understanding and supporting children, as the mistakes and harm inflicted on children can be perpetuated onto future generations. He argues that prevention and intervention is possible, and that adults must engage in self-reflection and personal growth in order to effectively support children. The author also discusses the importance of recognizing and respecting the individual differences and psychological types of children, as this can inform how they should be treated and supported. He suggests that the Montessori method provides an excellent means of observing and understanding children’s development and needs. Overall, the author emphasizes the importance of education and cooperation in promoting the well-being and development of children and adolescents.

Part I.

For many years Maria Montessori[3] has promoted her holy crusade for the redemption of the child with both the fervor of an apostle and the seriousness of a scientist. Now, having returned to Italy after a long absence, she has resumed this work among us with renewed energy by means of her international courses, articles in journals and newspapers, and the founding of the magazine which bears her name.

Beneficial results of this noble work of love and science are beginning to be noticed, but there is still infinitely much to be done to break through the thick veils of illusions, prejudices, and distrust that obscure the truth. Therefore, I feel that it is a definite duty for all those who have seen and recognized the new light to cooperate with all their strength and in every possible way with Dr. Montessori’s crusade of liberation, extending it more and more to adolescents as well.

This series of articles aims to be a small contribution to that work. In them I will try to summarize the results of my own experience and activity as a physician and psychologist, and [conclusions] from the studies of others who have worked in this field in various ways.

First of all, we must realize the seriousness and urgency of the issue. The problem of relationships between adults and children and adolescents is difficult and complex, and we must face this courageously, sincerely, without fear of hurting our adult sensitivities, pride, and selfishness.

We must begin by acknowledging a rather disconcerting and humiliating truth: in general, we do not understand the child and the adolescent at all. Far from helping him, as we often delude ourselves about what we do, we continually hinder him in his formation and vital expression. To use Maria Montessori’s strong and succinct expression: “The child tries to live and we want to prevent him from doing so.” [4]

The results of our blindness are ruinous. Countless failures must be attributed to it as well as the unhappiness of young people and adults, a great many cases of nervous and mental illnesses, and even certain more serious cases of crime and suicide.

The victims of these vital hindrances and mutilations can be divided into three main categories:

• the downtrodden, who, deprived of their normal impulses and impulses become the losers of life.
• the repressed, whose energies are forcibly driven back into the subconscious[5] but are neither extinguished nor transformed, and which make them hysterical, phobic, or obsessed.
• the rebels, who, embittered and enraged by adult oppression, overreact violently to the point of becoming antisocial, extremists, or anarchists.

Even in the apparently fortunate cases, in those who seem to have remained unharmed, there has actually been an incalculable squandering of precious time and energy — there has been an incomplete development of their personality, so that they know how to actualize only a little of the rich, wonderful potential of the human soul.

But that is not enough: these evils do not stop with the individual; they spread in the family and society, and they propagate over time. As Dr. Bircher-Benner[6] rightly notes, “the same errors of upbringing perpetrated on a child will later be perpetrated by her on her children when she becomes a mother.” [7]

We must therefore fully realize once and for all this enormous responsibility that we adults have. We must have the courage to recognize in all its gravity the painful paradox that parents and teachers, the very people who often sincerely love children and should protect them and help the new shoots sprouting on the great tree of life, are the architects of their harm and ruin.

How can this happen ?

The root cause of it is the fundamental and harmful illusion that “it is enough to love your children to know how to raise and educate them properly.” This persuasion is so ingrained, especially in mothers, that when one attempts to fight it, or even to question it, passionate reactions and violent resistance are provoked. But passionate reactions and offended feelings do not change this hard truth: even the most dedicated love, such as a mother’s love, can produce disastrous effects when not combined with understanding, enlightened by intelligence, and directed by wisdom.

To truly, fully understand is much more difficult than we think, and we are still a long, long way from it! Maria Montessori convincingly demonstrated our deep misunderstanding of children, and asserted that this is primarily due to our ignorance of the radical differences between children and adults.

Moreover, the adult understands neither the child nor himself, because he ordinarily can know and observe only one part — the smallest part — of his own and others’ personality: the part which appears on the surface, which appears in the light of consciousness. But the studies of Janet, Freud, Prince, and so many others have now shown with certainty that there is another and larger psychic life which takes place in us without our realizing it. There is a multitude of thoughts, memories, images, instincts, impulses, and subconscious desires that stir in us without our knowledge and yet profoundly affect our attitudes, reactions, and decisions, our whole way of thinking and conducting ourselves — and the less we are aware of them, the more they dominate us. It is easy to imagine what complications, misunderstandings, errors of judgment and behavior this produces in the way we act with children.

Then there is the serious question of adolescence. This is an age of crisis and transformation, in which the state of the personality is chaotic, and in which sexual, moral and religious problems arise and become more acute. For some time now various scholars (I will name Stanley Hall,[8] Mendousse,[9] Evard,[10] and Marro[11] among many) have begun to study the psychology of adolescents with scientific method, so that we have already acquired considerable data, and various unresolved problems have at least been discovered and raised. But parents, even those of the educated and upper classes, with a few rare exceptions, have not the slightest idea of all this. Yet it is then (in adolescence) that the bitterest conflicts with adults erupt; it is then that the fate of a life is generally decided; that is, such a life is not infrequently marked by failure.

There is yet another important cause of misunderstanding and struggle between adults and young people: the different mentality of successive generations. This has always existed and we have a good document of it, both artistic and stoic, in Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons.[12] In our time this divergence has increased and the conflict has worsened, both because we are in a period of transition and general crisis — in a kind of collective adolescence of mankind — and because the accelerated pace of life and the rapidity of changes mean that the “psychological distance” is now much greater than in the past.

All these causes of misunderstandings and evils are of a general nature. But to them are added others of an individual character; namely, the particular shortcomings of each parent or teacher. As we have already mentioned, educational mistakes suffered in childhood are often repeated by the adult on the new generation. Then there are numerous deficiencies, impairments and abnormalities of the adult psyche, either of a constitutional nature or produced by the events, adversities, and blows of life, which have harmful repercussions on children and students. These include, for example, the abuse of authority; the venting of one’s bad moods or “nerves;” overly passionate and possessive love; overly anxious and oppressive affection; emotional partiality that produce the contrasting damage of the “favorite child” or the “Cinderella;” identification [of the adult] with the child so as to overwhelm him or her with one’s own personality and distort it; etc.

Particularly harmful are the differences in viewpoints and educational methods [which result in] arguments and fights between parents, of which too often the children are witnesses, and not infrequently the object.

The causes of harm are thus many and serious, but they should not lead us to discouragement, and thus to inaction. It is possible to eliminate them; and that being possible, it is a definite duty to do so. The most important and beneficial work is the prevention of harm, and as we shall see, this consists essentially in recognizing its various causes and in correcting them promptly by the means appropriate to each of them. But even when certain mistakes have been made and certain harm has occurred, there is no need to despair. Fortunately, the human soul is changeable, and the same flexibility that has enabled distortions also makes corrective and restorative action possible.

In fact, in recent decades various methods of psychotherapy for nervous and psychic disorders (suggestion, persuasion, reeducation, psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis, etc. ) have been found and widely used, by means of which many adults have been freed from the harmful consequences of [their own] childhood impressions and educational errors. And all the more can these methods heal children and young people from similar disorders, which, being more recent, have had less time to imprint and fix themselves in their souls and bodies.

This work of prevention and cure, however, requires serious work by adults on themselves, and here lies the greatest difficulty! We mostly shy away from doing such work, held back by laziness and moral inertia that arouses our aversion to internal action. We are inhibited or sidetracked by subconscious reluctance and tendencies that do not want to be tamed. A long and bitter struggle is often needed. To fight it and to win it, we can make use of two strong incentives: a serious sense of responsibility for the harmful consequences that our mistakes have on those we love or those entrusted to us; and the inherent beauty and nobility of the work and its twofold usefulness.

For this work of knowledge and self-mastery liberates ourselves from ignorance, bondage, and suffering even before it frees our children and students; it makes us more worthy before ourselves, before others, and before God.

Part II.

The divergence between the adult and the child — The Subconscious

The primary, fundamental cause of misunderstanding between adults and children and its painful consequences is, as we have mentioned, our ignorance or disregard of the radical difference that exists between us and them.

This difference was brought out by Dr. Montessori so perspicuously and effectively that I can do no better than to quote some of her words on the subject:

The child must struggle with his parents, with those who gave him life. And this is because his childhood life is ‘different’ from that of his parents: the child must ‘form’ himself while his parents have already formed themselves. The child has to move a lot to [learn to] coordinate his still disordered movements. The parents, on the other hand, [already] have organized voluntary mobility and can control their movements; perhaps they are often tired from work. The child does not yet have well-developed senses: the powers of adaptation are insufficient and he must help himself to become aware of objects as well as space by touch, with feeling . . . In contrast, parents have developed senses — they do not need to touch. Children are eager to get acquainted with the outside world: parents know it to the full. Therefore they do not understand each other. Parents would like children to be like them, and this being different is a ‘badness.’[13]

And elsewhere:

The adult is the able, strong-willed being who transforms the environment and puts all his activity into the external world; the child is the individual who also does a great work, however, it is profoundly different and opposite — the work of forming a human being.[14]

Understanding and respecting this wonderful work of the child is the first duty of the adult. The adult must free himself from the presumptuous and harmful illusion that it is he who can — who must — shape the new person that is being formed. To use a witty and effective comparison by Maria Montessori, it would be ridiculous and absurd for a mother-to-be to worry about how to build the skeleton, how to attach the muscles, how to arrange the organs of the little being being formed in her womb.[15] This is taken care of by itself, by the mysterious energy and intelligence that is immanent in the organism being developed.

In the same way, the claims and concerns of educators, who are busy building the child’s personality from the outside, as if it were a set of Legos or a building, are unjustified. Unfortunately, the child is not protected as the fetus is: he is at the mercy of his “educators,” who often spoil his very delicate inner organism by their coarse and intemperate actions and expressions.

Let it not be thought that this should lead to educational inaction or to abandoning the child to himself. Developing the analogy, it can be said that just as the mother-to-be can do a great deal for her child-in-formation, creating the most favorable physical and psychic environment for her and offering her the healthiest and purest foods; so the educator can greatly foster the self-formation of the child by surrounding her with a favorable environment, offering her the most suitable stimuli for her faculties and the most timely help for her needs, based on a wise study of the phases and laws of the child’s spontaneous growth.

In this lies the originality and value of the Montessori method and material.

* * *

To fully understand how the infant soul is formed and developed, it is necessary to know the nature and laws of subconscious psychic activity. And understanding the formation and development of the child is also the only way to fully understand how the adult is made up. It is therefore a study that doubly deserves our attention.

Because of the very nature of subconscious psychic life, we cannot have direct and immediate knowledge of it, just as we cannot see the organs within our bodies. However, that inner activity, like the bodily organs, provides visible outward manifestations that reveal its existence and general characteristics. Also there are methods of sounding and exploring the interior of the soul, procedures of psychoanalysis, which, similar to radioscopy and surgery for the body, allow us to lay bare certain aspects and activities of our subconscious.

The first manifestations of the subconscious psychic life that were observed and studied were the abnormal ones, which attracted the attention of scholars and aroused their curiosity the most because of their strangeness and prominence, as well as the morbid ones that required appropriate treatment.

First of all, there is the strange state that is created in hypnosis. In it normal waking consciousness is suspended, but there is a sui generis[16]psychic activity which sometimes demonstrates faculties that are even higher than the individual’s normal ones, and this is precisely the surfacing of what usually stays in the subconscious. That such activity continues even during waking life is proved by experiments with posthypnotic suggestions.[17]

A spontaneous surfacing of the subconscious also occurs in certain morbid states such as somnambulism and delusions. Most interesting for the flashes of light they throw on the perplexing mystery of the human soul are the strange cases of psychic dissociation in which two and even more different and sometimes conflicting personalities alternate in the same individual.[18]

Among the normal manifestations of the subconscious, the best known and most obvious is dreams. This has always interested mankind, which has sensed in it a means of penetrating deeper inner regions, to have clues to a larger and more obscure world, from which warnings and omens come to people. And for the past few decades psychological investigations have tended to both correct and also partly to confirm and clarify many inferences and divinations in this field.

Less obvious, because it is more elementary and “subterranean,” but essential to our life, is the subconscious psychic activity that regulates organic life, from that of individual cells to the complex and wonderful functional coordination and correlations of the nervous system, of internal secretions, and of the great circulatory, digestive, and internal ecosystems. The fact that these are not only physico-chemical reactions, but that they are regulated by an intelligence and are all directed toward a purpose — the preservation, growth, and propagation of life — has been demonstrated to us in a way that seems convincing to anyone free from materialistic and doctrinaire preconceptions. [19]

Then there are many actions that we perform without conscious attention, such as performing well-rehearsed pieces of music, walking the streets while thinking about something else, etc. These are called “automatic actions,” but in reality they require in some cases an adaptation to new circumstances, which is not a stereotypical repetition, but involves the intervention of intelligence.

If we sometimes behave in this way without realizing it, we often, in fact it can be said that we almost always act while ignoring the real motives that drive us to perform our actions. Just as one who has undergone a posthypnotic suggestion does something without knowing that it is determined not by his conscious will but by a force buried in his subconscious and operating there unbeknownst to him, so we all generally act under the impetus of motives that we ignore — of deep impulses, of dark forces stirring within us. The “reasons” that we believe we act on are only pretexts and masquerades used by those forces to delude us; they induce us to believe them, indeed often to willingly affirm them.[20] Sometimes those illusions can be useful, but more often they are harmful, even nefarious. Our gravest errors stem from them and to them must be ascribed many of the disabilities, distortions and sufferings that adults inflict on children and young people.

Another, and more fruitful, function of the subconscious is the processing of experiences, of what has been perceived and learned. It is a process quite analogous to that of digestion and assimilation of food by the physical organism, which is regulated by natural laws and occurs in well-defined ways. But just as in physical nutrition, so in the even more delicate psychic diet all kinds of mistakes are made in the quantity and quality of food and in the duration and frequency of meals. And again: just as the digestive system of children is particularly sensitive and suffers most from the aforementioned errors, so it is with their very delicate psychic assimilation system. It has particular modes and rhythms that must be known and respected.

Subconscious processing is often the first stage of higher unconscious activity: inspiration and invention. These are known to take place largely independent of the conscious will, which has no direct control over them, which is apparent from the poets’ emotional invocations to their Muse, symbol of the subconscious, to be favorable to them. Artistic, scientific, and philosophical inspirations show us that there is a higher sphere in our soul, a level of spiritual life higher than that at which our ordinary personality feels, thinks and operates, and which well deserves the name of superconscious. When the consciousness succeeds in rising to that subtle and luminous region it has new and more vivid experiences: there it experiences aesthetic and mystical ecstasies, there it glimpses greater truths, there it draws the energies for great sacrifices and moral heroism; there also more subtle capacities of perception and beneficial supernormal healing and arousing powers are awakened in it. [21]

As can be seen, the manifestations of subconscious psychic activity are multifaceted and of very different nature and value. Therefore we believe it appropriate to sort them into various groups and also to indicate their relations to each other and to the waking consciousness by means of a graphic scheme [below] which, if it is far from rendering the richness and variety of psychic life, yet it may prove not unhelpful for a first orientation in this world which is nearer to us than the external one, but which we still know so little about! [22]

1. Lower Subconscious
2. Middle Subconscious
3. Higher Subconscious, or Superconscious
4. Field of Consciousness
5. Conscious “I”
6. Higher or Spiritual “I”

(#7 “collective subconscious” was not shown on the original published diagram)

Lower Subconscious

This includes: 1. The elementary but wonderful psychic activities that govern organic life; 2. The instincts and elemental passions; 3. Many psychic complexes with strong affective tonality; remnants of both near and distant individual, hereditary and atavistic past, (infantile impressions, familial tendencies, psychic formations of the collective subconscious); 4. Elementary and lower types of dreams and imaginative activity; and 5. Certain abnormal and uncontrolled psychic sensitivities of a mediumistic type.

Middle Subconscious

This consists of psychic elements of a nature similar to those of waking consciousness and easily accessible to it. In it takes place the processing of experiences, the preparation of future activities, much of the intellectual (theoretical and practical) and imaginative work, and artistic creation of medium degree and value.

Higher Subconscious or Superconscious

From it come the higher, artistic, philosophical, and scientific insights and inspirations; the creations of genius: the enlightenment, contemplation, and ecstasy of mystics. Here reside the latent and potential higher energies of the spirit, the faculties and supernormal powers of an elevated type.

Consciousness

This is what we usually call the part of our personality of which we are directly aware, with a term that is not quite scientifically exact but clear and convenient in its brevity. It includes the continuous alternation of psychic elements and all kinds of states of mind (sensations, images, thoughts, feelings, desires, impulses, etc.) that we sense and can observe, analyze and judge.

If the subconscious has so much importance in the adult, it has much more in the child in whom the circle of clear consciousness is even smaller, in whom its powers are weaker. In a sense it can be said that the child’s life is almost all subconscious. This means that the child is to a very great extent at the mercy of the influences exerted by the environment and adults. And this is a new confirmation, I would say indeed scientific proof, of the grave responsibility we have toward the young lives entrusted to us, but also of the marvelous opportunities for good that are available to us.

In the meantime, let us rejoice in the fact that the human soul is far broader, richer, more multifaceted than we thought. On the one hand it deepens to the point of permeating the most minute cells of the body with intelligence, on the other hand rises to the most lofty and resplendent summits of the Spirit.

Part III.

Modes and Rhythms of Inner Formation

One of the most important functions of the subconscious, and at the same time one of the essential “moments” of the educational process, is — as we have mentioned — the processing of experiences, the vital assimilation of what has been perceived and learned.

This elaboration can be considered as a true “psychic gestation,” which has close analogies with the physical one. Both take place in the depths, in mystery; one in the maternal womb, the other in the intimate recesses of the subconscious. Both are spontaneous and autonomous activities, but delicate and sensitive so as to be easily disturbed and even compromised by external influences. Both culminate finally in the crisis and miracle of “birth,” of the manifestation of a new life.

But psychic life is much more multifaceted and complex than physical life; thus its rhythms are more varied and intricate and the knowledge we have about it is much scarcer. Yet even what little that is known to us so far would be sufficient to avoid serious errors and damage, to give useful standards for intellectual and artistic work and for educational work — provided it were generally known and remembered and followed appropriately.

The existence of subconscious processing is demonstrated by the often-observed fact that an action succeeds best after some time has passed since it was learned. Thus to one who is learning to play a musical instrument it usually happens that [after a certain point] the more he persists in repeating a difficult piece the less he succeeds in performing it well. But when, after [stopping his practice for] a few hours or a few days, he hesitantly tries to play that piece again, he finds to his delighted surprise that it succeeds perfectly the first time. He has learned it while resting.

The method of a certain English piano teacher is based upon this law: she makes her pupils stop all study three weeks before the examinations, and only a few days before the audition allows them to do technical exercises and review the pieces to be presented. I was assured that in this way her students achieve much better results than other candidates who studied until the last moment.

Similar observations have inspired the paradoxical German proverb, “One learns to swim in winter and skate in summer.”

* * *

Admitting this basic fact leads us to the desire to know its modalities more precisely; and the question arises, “How long must be the rest to allow the processing?” This question cannot be answered precisely and categorically. Psychological rhythms are far more complex and changeable than organic ones, and the creatures of our soul are far more different from each other in structure, size, value, than the children of our flesh.

One can only formulate a very general law, that The more important and significant a stimulus is, and the more the connections with existing psychic elements that it makes in the subconscious, the longer is the processing period. We have a famous example of this in Goethe’s Faust, the development of which went on during much of the long life of its author, who anticipated [completing] it on several occasions over many years.

But the action of this law is often and greatly affected by the fact that, while in physical gestation usually only one new life is formed and only rarely two or three, in psychic gestation there is a coexistence of numerous parallel processes which may have begun at different times, have different rhythms, and which often influence each other, supporting or obstructing, intertwining or repelling [each other].

Indeed, this profound life can be compared to a marvelous polyphony in which various “voices” alternate and overlap to create a complex and rich music. According to the beautiful motto of St. Hildegard: Symphonialis est anima.[23] Unfortunately, in the human soul there are often painful disharmonies, and harsh conflicts. Often its life rather resembles certain chaotic modern music, without [melodic] line, without regular rhythm, full of dissonances — or even the cacophony of instruments [tuning up] before an orchestral concert — rather than a well-constructed Bach fugue!

However, this should not lead us to abandon the study of inner rhythms. Only it is better to do it under the most favorable conditions, in which those processes take place in the simplest, most spontaneous and best observable way. Such a study is far easier in the child than in the adult, first because the psyche of the former is simpler, less modified and deformed by disparate and conflicting influences, and also because in the child the more tenuous and limpid layer of waking consciousness easily allows one to perceive the workings of the subconscious, which often indeed rise freely to the surface.

But, in addition to these favorable general conditions, it is necessary that during observation the child’s life should unfold as spontaneously and undisturbed as possible, yet at the same time can be carefully monitored. Now this ideal condition is offered precisely by the Montessori Method,[24] which thus adds to its immense educational merits that of constituting an excellent means of scientific observation and psychological experiment.[25]

In fact, for more than 15 years Maria Montessori and her students have collected a wealth of most interesting observations and results, which have been set forth by her in the chapter titled “My Experimental Contribution” in the Work Self-Education in the Elementary Schools.[26] I consider it appropriate to quote in full the account of the “fundamental finding” that led Montessori to develop her method. It is a historic page that makes the reader feel the frisson of emotion that one has when faced with great discoveries:

… I happened to observe a little girl of about three years of age remaining deeply absorbed over interlocking blocks, putting the little wooden cylinders into their respective places. The little girl’s expression was one of such intense attentiveness, that it seemed to me that this was an extraordinary manifestation: such focus on an object had never been observed in children until then. My conviction about the characteristic instability of attention in the young child — which passes unerringly from thing to thing — made me even more sensitive to the phenomenon.

At first I watched the little girl intensely without disturbing her, and began to count how many times she repeated the exercise, but then, seeing that she went on for a very long time, I took the little chair on which she was sitting, and placed chair and little girl on the table: the little girl quickly picked up her piece, then put it down across the arms of the little chair, and placing the little cylinders in her lap she continued her work. Then I invited all the children to sing: they sang, but the little girl continued undaunted to repeat her exercise even after the brief singing had ceased. I had counted forty-four exercises; and when she finally stopped, this was quite independently of the stimuli of the environment that might have disturbed her, and the child looked around contentedly, almost waking from a restful sleep.

I think that my unforgettable impression resembled that felt by those who have made a discovery.

That phenomenon then became common [in what we observed in] children; it could thus be established as a constant reaction that occurs in relation to certain external conditions that may arise. And whenever such a polarization of attention took place, the child began to transform completely, to become calmer, more intelligent and expansive; displaying extraordinary inner qualities, reminiscent of the highest phenomena of consciousness, such as those of conversion.

It seemed, as if in a saturated solution, that a crystallization point had occurred, around which the whole chaotic, fluctuating mass then gathered into a wonderfully shaped crystal. Similarly, the phenomenon of polarization of attention having occurred, everything disordered and fluctuating that existed in the child’s consciousness seemed to be organizing itself into an inner creation, whose surprising characteristics were reproduced in each individual.

This made one think of the life of man, which can remain scattered between one thing and another, in an inner state of chaos, until a something special intensely attracts and settles him, and then man has the revelation of himself, and feels that he is beginning to live.

This spiritual phenomenon, which can involve the entire adult consciousness, is thus but one of the constant aspects of the facts of “inner formation.” It is found as a normal beginning of the inner life of children, and accompanies its unfolding, so as to become accessible to research, as an experimental fact.

Thus it was that the child’s soul gave its revelations, and under the guidance of these arose a method where spiritual freedom was illustrated. [27]

An extensive series of subsequent observations made it possible to determine the general and average pace that work takes in a Montessori classroom that is well established and disciplined.

In the first period of the morning, until about 10 o’clock, the chosen   occupation is generally work that is already known and easy.

At 10 o’clock there is a time of great shift, the children are restless, not working at anything, not looking for objects. After a few minutes the most perfect order is established, the children are even immersed in the most intense work: they have chosen new and difficult occupations.

When this work ceases, the children are happy, kind and calm.

If in the period of “false fatigue,” at 10 o’clock, the unpracticed teacher intervenes, interpreting the phenomenon of suspension or preparation for the great work as disorder, calls the schoolchildren back to herself, “makes them rest,” etc., then the agitation persists and the next work does not organize itself. That is, if children are interrupted in their cycle, they lose all the characteristics that are connected with a regularly and fully developed inner function. [28]

* * *

Some of the essential principles of psychological learning and training are evident from these observations.

The first is the importance — indeed the necessity — of repetition of the initial stimulus. In this lies the secret of the deepening of that stimulus in the unconscious and thus its effectiveness.

The second is the unifying and formative power of attention which is spontaneous, intense, and concentrated for a long period: this brings about true self-creation or psychosynthesis. The child’s personality is awakened and organized; new intellectual aptitudes and new moral qualities are manifested in him.

Among these, perhaps the most striking and valuable are the development of discipline and social sense. Children feel the need to have a rule; they become exact and methodical, and experience satisfaction in overcoming difficulties. At the same time they develop respect for the work of others and consideration for their rights; this is because they more frequently observe the work of others and compare it with their own. They broaden the sphere of their interest by placing themselves in harmonious relationship with their companions and the environment. But there is more: children become capable of obeying spontaneously and willingly. When they are led in teaching lessons where they [themselves] serve as “subjects of study,” they willingly comply with what is asked of them, and perform the exercises with interest and not with resignation, as if they were conscious of collaborating with the teacher.

This shows how respect for spontaneity and the right [degree of] initial freedom produce the effect not of whim, indiscipline and intolerance of any restraint, but rather of prompt obedience and willing cooperation.

Each of us can understand what important consequences can be drawn from this finding for education and for the whole system of social and human relations.

There are many other interesting facts and observations in Montessori’s book about the “explosive” character of the “discoveries” made by children and the emergence of their aptitudes; about the joy that accompanies ordinary work, which is indicative of internal growth; about the various rhythms of work (illustrated with clear graphics) of both children who have not yet organized themselves, and those who have reached a higher level of “order.”

That book — or at least the first part of it, in addition to the chapter we have examined, which contains valuable writings on the various faculties of the child (attention, will, intelligence, imagination), on the environment, the moral question, etc. — should be read, pondered . . . and followed, not only by teachers, but also by every mother and father who are aware of their serious responsibility and high privilege.

It is not enough to send children to school, even the best one; the home environment exerts a powerful and unavoidable influence: if it does not educate, it dis-educates; if it does not form, it deforms. School and family should proceed together; teachers and parents, anxious and reverent before the miracle of the “formation” of children’s personalities, should be equally aware of their task, which is that of loving, yet respectful, gentle and wise collaborators in the child’s self-education.

Part IV.

Individual Types

One of the most difficult problems that arises in education is that of the profound psychological differences that exist among various individuals and that begin to be detected even from the earliest years of life. Different children and young people, even if they belong to the same family and are raised in the same material and moral environment, often react very differently to the same stimuli and influences. It is therefore appropriate, indeed necessary, that educators should first have a clear idea of the various psychological types that exist and then know how each type should be treated.

Modern psychology has replaced the old and generic classifications of temperaments and characters with others that are more precise and more useful practically. A first fundamental distinction among human types is based on the varied prevalence of what C. G. Jung calls the four basic psychological functions with their spheres of interest and activity.

These functions are:

1. Perception (sensory), with its corresponding “field,” consisting of the body and the external world;
2. Feeling (emotional), with its world of passions and feelings;
3. Thinking, which is expressed in the world of ideas and concepts, of rational relationships;
4. Intuition (spiritual), which manifests itself as synthetic vision, illuminative penetration, identification of subject and object, and which has its purest manifestations in the field of aesthetic contemplation and mystical vision and communion.

These four psychological functions exist in everyone, but they are developed very differently in various individuals. Thus for example, the fourth, the intuitive one, is still latent and not very active in the great majority of present-day humanity.

According to the varied prevalence of these functions, various psychological types can be distinguished.

First, four pure types:

1. The Practical Type, characterized by the clear prevalence of the sensory function and the corresponding orientation toward the external world. Generally manual workers such as farmers and laborers belong to this type, as well as diligent housewives, many technicians, surgeons, explorers, and also visual artists with realistic tendencies (especially architects and sculptors);
2. The Emotional Type, to which belong people in whom the passionate and affective life prevails. This is a type very common among women and among artists endowed with vivid feelings such as poets and musicians;
3. The Mental Type, which is predominantly masculine and whose clearest representatives are scientists and philosophers;
4. The Intuitive Type, to which mainly mystics and certain spiritual artists belong.

There are the mixed types, which are clearly characterized, such as:

1. The Practical Mental type, found, for example, among inventors, merchants, and industrialists;
2. The Practical Emotional Type, to which belong men of action who have strong passions: for example, leaders and ambitious politicians;
3. The Intuitive Emotional Type, religious people of a devotional type: emotional mystics and certain artists;
4. The Intuitive Mental Type: scientists with active intuition. such as certain mathematicians (H. Poincaré, Einstein), clinicians, philosophers (Bergson), and speculative mystics (Eckhart).

Another distinction proposed by Jung is based on the movement and direction of the “vital interest.” This movement can follow two opposite directions: one centrifugal and the other centripetal. In the centrifugal motion, called extraversion, interest turns toward the external world, which is like a field of attraction, a magnet, for the personality. The external world (in the broadest sense, including other people) is the object that captures the attention and affectivity of the subject, that modifies and determines its activities. In contrast, in centripetal motion, called introversion, interest becomes detached from the external world and turns toward the subject himself, which, with its modes and qualities, becomes the center of attention, the inner field of observation and activity.

This double movement of interest, of “psychic energy,” usually alternates rhythmically in normal people. Both are fruitful and necessary moments of a complete human life, and their alternation constitutes a foundational rhythm of psychic life. However, even though these two movements alternate harmoniously, balancing each other, in the theoretical “normal person,” in real individuals one or the other of them is often prevalent.

Thus we distinguish two great and opposite human types: the extraverts, whose vital interest is directed more often and more intensely outwardly; and the introverts, in whom interest in the subject himself and his inner activities prevails. The actual existence of these psychological types is easy to demonstrate even if we consider a few salient personalities of each type. For the introverted type the mind immediately turns to Emanuel Kant, who constitutes one of its purest and most extreme exemplars. As is well known, his lack of interest in the outside world was such that he never deigned to move from his small native town, while his constant inexhaustible interest in the inner world, his thought tirelessly attempting to think itself, produced the monumental Three Critiques.[29]

Other extreme examples of introverts are given to us by those mystics who combined a complete devaluation of the world with an insatiable yearning for inwardness to reach the very profoundest depths of their spirit, such as Meister Eckhart.[30]

For the extraverts, our thoughts run first of all to the great men of action who projected themselves outward and left vast footprints of their passage in the world: it suffices to mention Julius Caesar and Napoleon. But in other fields, too, one finds numerous typical extraverts, such as the even more numerous passionate women who pour all their vital interest into a loved one and come to depend on him so much that they sometimes do not know how or want to survive without him.

Even though the existence of these two major types is clear and obvious, the brief hints and examples we have given of them show that each of them includes personalities that are very different from each other and that therefore a further differentiation of more defined types is necessary. This differentiation can be achieved by combining the distinction between introversion and extraversion with the previously mentioned distinction between the various psychological functions. In this way Jung distinguished eight types: the extraverted sensory: the extraverted emotional; the extraverted mental; the extraverted intuitive; and the four corresponding introverted types.

This classification constitutes an advance and refinement on the previous ones, but it cannot be considered as complete and definitive either. Indeed, it can sometimes be seen that a person is extraverted in one respect and introverted in another. There are, for example, quite a few women who, while they are extraverted in the sphere of feeling (that is, they have strong emotional attachments), they are introverted mentally, taking an interest in continually observing and analyzing their states of mind. Then there are mystics and saints who combined a pronounced mystical introversion with an intense practical extraversion that has made them great men or women of action (St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius). There are numerous possible combinations of this varied dynamism of vital interest, corresponding to the great psychophysical variety found among human individuals. By examining the types in greater depth, other important differences can be noted, such as those between the active and passive character of extraversion and introversion, and between the various degrees of the original intensity of vital interest. These distinctions may seem complicated and difficult to recognize, and in fact the psychological classification of various individuals is often difficult with regard to more complex individuals or those lacking well-defined characters, even if it is easy in extreme types. However, in children and young people the psychic constitution is mostly still simple, and can be seen in a direct and spontaneous way, and therefore, the distinction of the various types is easier.

[1] The literal translation of the title is “Frank Words for Adults.” This was a four-part series of articles published in successive issues of Montessori: Pubblicazione Mensile dell’Ente Morale “Opera Montessori,” the monthly magazine of the Montessori educational foundation, in 1931-1932. The published version of Part I is not in the Archives, so two typed versions of Part I of this essay were consulted. The published versions, which are found in the Archives, were followed for Parts II, III and IV. Dr. Assagioli clearly believed in the continuing importance of what he presents in this essay, for he used some of this material in later lectures and publication.—Ed.

[2] Interpolations by editor are shown in [brackets]. —Ed.

[3] Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for her philosophy of education and her writing on scientific pedagogy. She developed an educational Method which bears her name and was the author of numerous books. Her Method has been used in public and private schools world-wide. —Ed.

[4] from L’auto educazione nelle scuole elementari [Self-Education in Elementary Schools], (Rome, Maglione e Strini, 1916, p. 220). —Author’s Note. This may be the same volume translated into English by Arthur Livingston in 1917 as The Montessori Elementary Material, which is still available. —Ed.

[5] Note that in later writings Dr. Assagioli used the term “unconscious” in this context and elsewhere in this series of essays. —Ed.

[6] Maximilian Bircher-Benner, MD (1867-1939) was a Swiss physician and pioneer nutritionist, the value of whose teachings was not realized until the discovery of vitamins in fruits and vegetables.—Ed.

[7] Der Menschenseele [The Living Soul] Not I – Zurich und Leipzig, Wendepunkt Verlag, 1929, p. 165. —Author’s Note.

[8] Granville Stanley Hall (1846-1924) was a pioneering American psychologist, first President of the American Psychological Association and first President of Clark University, and author of Adolescence (2 volumes, 1907). —Ed.

[9] Pierre Mendousse, author of L’âme de l’adolescent [The Soul of the Adolescent], Paris, Alcan, 1909. —Ed.

[10] Marguerite Evard (1880-1950), Swiss psychologist and teacher, author of L’Adolescence,1914. —Ed.

[11] Antonio Marro (1840-1913), Italian psychiatrist, known for studies of criminality and puberty. —Ed.

[12] Father and Sons (1862), by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, documented the growing divide between two generations of Russians and reflected a growing cultural schism, and was the first Russian work to gain prominence in the western literary world. —Ed.

[13] L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari [Self-education in elementary schools], pp. 219-220. —Author’s Note.

[14] “L’adulto e il bambino nella nuovà educazione.” [“The Adult and the Child in the New Education”], in Il Loto, Nov.-Dec. 1930, p. 113. —Author’s Note.

[15] L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari, op.cit., p. 26. —Author’s Note.

[16] Latin: “unique, individual, in a class by itself.” —Ed.

[17] These consist of commands of the hypnotist that the subject then performs awake, hours and even days later, without knowing anything about the suggestion that was accepted, believing to act of his own free will. —Author’s Note.

[18] See R. Assagioli, “La psicologia del subcosciente, II. Personalità alternanti e concosienti” [“The Psychology of the Subconscious. Part II: Alternating and coconscious personalities.”] in Psyche, 1. 1912, year 3. —Author’s Note.

[19] See W. Mackenzie, “Alle fonti della Vita” [“At the Sources of Life”], Genova. Formaggini. 1912; also the extensive bibliography published in Psiche II. 1913. n. 6. —Author’s Note.

[20] See the extensive psychoanalytic literature. Some simple and demonstrative examples are acutely analyzed by Freud in Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens [The Psychopathology of Everyday Life] (Berlin, Karger, 1910). —Author’s Note.

[21] SeeMyers, F.W. The Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. London, Longman Greens, 1902. —Author’s Note.

[22] The diagram shown is taken from later writings by the author and is identical to the diagram first appearing in this essay except for the use of the word “unconscious” instead of “subconscious,” and except for the addition of #7, “the collective unconscious” which was added to the diagram later. —Ed.

[23] Latin: “soul is symphony [or harmony].”

[24] The Montessori Method is a unique form of early education developed Maria Montessori. The program is presented in several books in English, including The Montessori Method. —Ed.

[25] This last sentence and all of the following portion of this section of this essay also appeared in the author’s 1956 essay titled “Modes and Rhythms of Psychological Formation.” —Ed.

[26] L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari, by Maria Montessori, published in 1916 and available in modern editions.A variety of Montessori’s works are available in English-language editions. These quotations are taken directly from Assagioli’s essay without reference to the original work, for which the author gave no specific citation. —Tr.

[27] L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari [Self-education in Elementary Schools](Rome, Maglione and Strini. 1916), pp. 51-52. —Author’s Note

[28] Ibid. pp. 74-75. —Author’s Note.

[29] Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher from Königsberg, was author of Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment, which are considered major works in the history of western philosophy. —Ed.

[30] Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1328) was a German Dominican theologian, philosopher and mystic.—Ed.