Subpersonalities are one of the chief aspects of psychosynthesis, and in this article, Assagioli gives an overview of all the different and competing subpersonalities and the need for synthesis.
By Roberto Assagioli, from “Verso la luce” – November 1966. Doc. #23065 – Assagioli Archives – Florence. Original Title: L’Animo Molteplice. Translated and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm
Abstract by Jan Kuniholm: One of the greatest obstacles to reaching our full potential is the illusion of possessing a single, well-defined personality. In reality, we are often consumed by external pursuits—material success, social approval, and personal relationships—neglecting the essential task of understanding and realizing our true selves. Occasionally, we become aware of internal conflicts but tend to avoid addressing them due to the discomfort and complexity involved. This avoidance leads to a life of compromises, where different facets of our personality vie for dominance, resulting in perpetual instability and dissatisfaction. To transcend this condition, we must confront our internal chaos, recognizing the multiplicity within us. Influences from ancestral, familial, and external sources shape our psyche, contributing to the formation of various sub-personalities, each with distinct and sometimes contradictory tendencies. These sub-personalities manifest in different social and personal roles, often leading to conflicting behaviors and internal strife. Despite this complexity, achieving a higher unity is possible through self-awareness and deliberate effort. Historical figures like St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Goethe exemplify the transformative power of integrating diverse internal elements into a harmonious whole. Psychosynthesis aims to guide individuals in this unifying process, turning internal multiplicity into a source of strength and fulfillment.
One of the greatest blindnesses, the most harmful and dangerous illusions that prevent us from being what we could be, from reaching the high goal for which we are destined, is to believe that we are, so to speak, “all of a piece;” that is, that we possess a well-defined personality.
In fact generally all our attention, our interest, our activity are taken up by external, practical problems, by tasks and goals that are outside of us. We worry about earning money, possessing material goods, achieving professional or social success, pleasing others or dominating them. Caught up in these mirages, we neglect to realize ourselves, to know who and what we are, to own ourselves.
It is true that at certain moments we are forced to notice that there are conflicting elements in us and we have to take care of bringing them into agreement: but since that is an unpleasant and uncomfortable observation and a task that seems difficult, complex and tiring — a penetration into a world that is almost unknown to us, in which we glimpse a chaos that disturbs and frightens us — we decline to enter it and we try to think about it as little as possible.
We try to appease the different tendencies that make claims or demand satisfaction, making concessions to one or the other, depending on whether they seem stronger and more threatening. So sometimes we satisfy our senses or instincts within certain limits; at other times we do what a passion or a feeling urges us to. At certain times we take the luxury of following the urgings of our moral conscience (up to a certain point!) or we try to realize an ideal in some way.
But we don’t go all the way in any direction. We juggle with a series of retreats, compromises, adaptations — and, let’s face it, hypocrisies — with ourselves and with others.
So we get by as best we can, and when things go well for us we congratulate ourselves on our skills, our cleverness, our common sense and the balance we show. But often these methods, which could be called the ordinary management of life, prove to be inadequate and insufficient. The concessions we make do not satisfy; on the contrary, they give rise to new and growing demands. While one part is satisfied, others rise up and protest. If we indulge in laziness, in doing nothing, we are nagged by ambition; if we give in to selfishness, our conscience troubles us; if we loosen the reins of a passion, it takes us by the hand and makes us tumble over a cliff. If we suppress a vital part too hard, we can bring on a nervous illness. In this way we live in a state of perpetual instability, discomfort and insecurity. It is easy to see this if we observe ourselves and others with a little attention and sincerity.
If we don’t want to remain in this condition that is so unsatisfactory and actually inconsistent with our dignity as men, we must courageously confront the situation, look reality in the face, and get to the bottom of the problem in order to find (and then implement) radical and decisive solutions. This we propose and will try to do with these lessons.
The first step on this path to clarity and truth consists in recognizing the chaos, the multiplicity and the conflicts that are within us. There is no lack of warnings and testimonies in this regard. Father Sertillange[1] says, “In reality there is an almost indefinite multiplicity within us. We are ‘legion.’”
Hermann Keyserling states no less precisely:
“Each fundamental tendency is actually an autonomous entity, and their combinations, conditions, and sublimations reproduce in each man an inner fauna, an animal kingdom, whose richness is equal to the external one. Truly it may be said that in each of us all the instincts and all the passions, all the vices and all the virtues, all the tendencies and all the aspirations, all the faculties and all the talents of humanity are developed and active to varying degrees.”[2]
This should not surprise us, if we think of the different and distant origins of the elements that have come together from various parts to form the strange being that each of us is.
There is first of all the remote heritage. We are the result of a long evolution; ancestral atavistic elements swarm in the depths of the psyche and reveal themselves indirectly in dreams, fantasy and delusions: but sometimes they burst out and overwhelm us. They were studied especially by Jung, under the name of “collective unconscious.”
There are also hereditary family elements, which are often very evident and come from parents and ancestors. This is noticeable, but perhaps less obvious is the fact that sometimes these elements skip a generation. Characteristics of grandparents and sometimes of more distant ancestors reappear in descendants. This subject was particularly studied by Léon Daudet,[3] who was a politician and journalist, but also a very brilliant French thinker, although sometimes a bit excessive. In his book L’Hérédo,[4] he insisted — even exaggerating — on the importance of these elements, and the book contains factual data that deserve to be pondered. The hereditary elements do not emerge all at once, but emerge abruptly, as in waves, under various circumstances. In childhood, they appear in a kaleidoscopic, intermittent way; sometimes in adolescence they surface clearly defined; at other times, they manifest themselves slowly and become stronger in maturity. This group of elements from the past is already impressive, and there are dozens of personalities and influences that converge even from the most direct ancestors. It is easy to understand what a heterogeneous mixture this represents!
Then there is the large group of factors that come from external influences. Psychically we are not “closed systems.”[5] There is a continuous exchange of living elements and profound influences with other beings. Even physically our body is not isolated; it is subject to continuous meteorological and cosmic influences of all kinds. But the psychic exchanges and interpenetration are even more intimate and profound than the physical ones. Often we cannot really tell where one person begins and another ends. In certain well-knit groups, in an organized community, the limits of the self, of the personality of their members, are “diffluent;” i.e. not sharply distinct from each other. We are really immersed in a psychic atmosphere, in the collective psyche and its various differentiations.
Let’s see which are the most important groups of this large class of external influences. First of all there are the prenatal psychic influences, often neglected, at least practically, but very important, of which there is clear evidence. A mother’s psychic impressions and states of mind enter the psyche of children and become deeply rooted.
So too the psychic influences of early childhood have a great importance, often a decisive action in shaping all the rest of a person’s life. They have been studied in a special though one-sided way, especially by Freud.
Then there are continuous collective and individual influences, by which we are fed or poisoned throughout life. There is a spirit of the age, the mentality of a generation which, like a rushing tide, sometimes overwhelms many people who do not have a well-defined psychic constitution and so have no resistance to it.
On the individual side there is the fascination of personalities who are closest, which often mold or absorb a weaker being. Or the fascination of powerful personalities that form almost an ideal model to which hundreds or thousands of people tend to follow, consciously or often unconsciously.
So far we have examined the group of past elements and the group of external elements. However, there are also our own intrinsic elements: a deep individual part that we often feel to be clearly different from all others and more intimate to ourselves. Its origin is mysterious, but it seems to us the direct expression of our truest and deepest self. Here is the source of the fundamental differences between children of the same family, who often feel strangers to each other and from their parents.
How many elements of different origins, different values, different levels! And these elements are in constant turmoil; each of them is something alive, almost a psychic entity, and as such tends to exist and develop, to manifest itself and assert itself over and against the others. The tendency of life is to preserve and increase itself; therefore a real “struggle for life” takes place within us.
If there were no more this, there would be an irreducible chaos, an atomism, a psychic pulverization. But in reality this is not the case: these elements do not remain in isolation in us: they tend to associate and organize themselves. Through the coordinating action of the main functions, of the most important attitudes and human relationships that form the plot and the guidelines of our life, they tend to form real sub-personalities, different “I’s” in us. In addition to what we are to ourselves, there are thus various groups of “I’s” in us.
Thus in a man there is a filial “I,” a conjugal “I,” and a paternal “I.” A man has different sets of feelings, attitudes, relationships and behaviors as a son, as a husband, or as a father. These form corresponding sub-personalities of a different nature and value which may often be contradictory. Thus a man may be an excellent son and a bad husband, and vice versa. A woman may be a bad wife and a good mother. A man who is timid and submissive as a son may be overbearing or violent as a father; a woman who is rebellious as a daughter may be weak as a mother.
So these attitudes, these relationships, are something sui generis that form true sub-personalities in us. Real changes occur on sight — immediate transformations — according to the person with whom we enter into a living relationship.
Then there are the “social self,” the “professional self,” the “class self,” even the “national self.” William James[6] goes even further:
“. . . a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him. But as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may practically say that he has as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares . . . A man’s fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor, are names for one of his social selves. The particular social self of a man called his honor is usually the result of one of those splittings of which we have spoken. It is his image in the eyes of his own “set,” which exalts or condemns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements that may not be made of one in another walk of life . . . What may be called “club-opinion” is one of the very strongest forces in life. The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his gambling-debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code of honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either of which is that so we best serve one of our social selves.” [7]
James was, in this, a precursor of Pirandello.[8] I would say that Pirandello’s main thesis in his writings is this: there are as many “I’s”, as many contradictory beings in us as there are appearances and images that are reflected in others and that are created by them. And he shows how often these “I’s” are very uncomfortable! Here is another complication added to the previous ones! Not only do we have a conglomeration of disparate elements within us, but all the other people who have relationships with us project a series of “images” onto us — they see us and feel us in different ways from who we are, and that conflict with us and with each other. Especially in the novel One, None and a Hundred Thousand, Pirandello developed this theme dramatically.
This disparity of elements, these contrasting personalities, are there in everyone, and James himself, as keen a psychologist as he is, does not escape this rule. In fact there are obvious contradictions in his Principles of Psychology.[9] He had one personality of an empirical, positivist scientist, and also a broad, unprejudiced, intuitive human personality, and these personalities are contrasted in his book.
Also, there are different personalities in us that follow one another over time. There is an infantile “I” or self, and then an adolescent “I,” which often creates an abrupt contrast to the “infantile self.” There is the “young I” or self which is different from the “adult I.” There is the “I or self of the old person,” which is still different. And the passage from one to the other not infrequently takes place with abrupt changes, sometimes with serious crises.
After having bravely seen all this, we must not be disturbed or discouraged, much less afraid. The multiplicity is great, the conflicts are numerous and painful; but after all, this multiplicity is wealth. Great men have often been the most complex and have shown the greatest contrasts. I could make a long list, but it will suffice to mention St. Paul, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Tolstoy, and Goethe himself. On the other hand, men who are naturally balanced are often so because of “internal poverty;” they are petty, narrow, arid, or closed. So let us not regret this internal wealth, however tumultuous and uncomfortable it may be.
However, things must not remain as they are at present; the coordination of the various sub-personalities into a higher unity is possible. This is not a theory but a fact. Many people — though relatively few in the great human multitude — have accomplished it; not perfectly, but enough to appear completely different at the end of the work from the way they were at the beginning: to be “remade,” “regenerated,” or transformed at the end. We mention St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Goethe. The comparison between the youthful Goethe, who was romantic, unbridled, sentimental and disorderly, and the mature Goethe, who was “human” in the broadest sense of the word, who made a classical harmony out of his impulsiveness, shows how much can be done for one’s own unification, and he consciously accomplished it.
Unity is therefore possible. But let us realize that it is not a starting point, it is not a free gift; it is an achievement, it is the high reward of a long work — a laborious work, but magnificent, varied, fascinating, and fruitful for us and for others, even before it is completed.
This is how we understand Psychosynthesis.
Notes:
[1] Anonin-Gilbert Sertillanges (1863-1948) was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer. —Ed.
[2] Hermann Graf von Keyserling (1880-1946) was Baltic German philosopher and author of numerous works. The source of this quotation, translated from Assagioli’s Italian, is unknown. —Ed.
[3] Leon Daudet (1867-1942) was a vocal critic of democracy in general and of the French Third Republic in particular. —Ed.
[4] L’Hérédo; An Essay on the Interior Drama, was published in 1916 and is still in print in French. It attempted to demonstrate how the human personality can be fully realized, escaping determinism and what he called “scientific fatalism.” —Ed.
[5] The author uses the term “psychic” in its widest generic sense, to include all mental, emotional and non-physical phenomena, including both “normal” and “subtle” energies, that a person may experience.—Ed.
[6] William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first to offer a psychology course in the United States.
[7] James,W. Principles of Psychology, Vol.1, originally published in 1890. This quotation is taken from the original English edition reproduced by Global Grey ebooks, pp.265-266. www.globalgreyebooks.com —Ed.
[8] Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet and short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. Assagioli may have met him personally. —Ed.
[9] The original text reads Treatise on Psychology, but James wrote no such title; therefore it is assumed that the author mean to cite James’ major work Principles of Psychology, published in two volumes in 1890. —Ed.
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