{"id":21108,"date":"2024-02-07T17:53:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T16:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=21108"},"modified":"2026-05-18T13:31:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:31:52","slug":"interview-roberto-assagioli-origins-psychosynthesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/interview-roberto-assagioli-origins-psychosynthesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Roberto Assagioli by Michael Murphy, 1971"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A rare Roberto Assagioli interview from 1971, recorded three years before his death. At eighty-three, he traces how psychosynthesis came to be, in his own voice.<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Interview with Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
Conducted by Stuart Mille<\/strong>r and Michael Murphy<\/strong> [i]<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/span>
May 1971
Assagioli Archives, Florence
Formatted and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
This text is a transcript of an interview with Roberto Assagioli conducted by Stuart Miller and Michael Murphy in 1971. Roberto Assagioli is the subject of the interview and not the author of a written article. The title, abstract, and cross-sections in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording of the interview has not been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Roberto Assagioli’s early life in his own voice. In this May 1971 interview, conducted three years before his death by Stuart Miller and Michael Murphy (the co-founder of Esalen Institute), Assagioli at age 83 reconstructs the path that led to psychosynthesis. He recalls his “Nietzschean measles” at fifteen, his early engagement with Eastern philosophy and Sanskrit, his 1910 doctoral thesis on psychoanalysis (one of the first Italian works in the field), his time at the Burgh\u00f6lzli alongside Bleuler and Jung, his exchanges with Paul Dubois, his founding of the magazine Psiche<\/em> in 1912, and his 1907 article calling for “a new humanism: synthesis of East and West.” Throughout, Assagioli insists he never bound himself to any single school: the fundamental trend toward synthesis was already there in his youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Roberto Assagioli:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em> My true awakening happened, when \u2014 wait a moment \u2014 at about fifteen or sixteen. I was infected with what was then an infectious disease: Nietzsche. <\/span><\/span>[i]<\/span><\/span><\/a> \u00a0Most of the youth at that time went through that \u201cmeasles.\u201d And I caught it in full for about two years. Of course it was a stepping stone towards something higher, but it was his revolutionary attitude and protest against the established values \u200b\u200bwas just. . . right at that age. And I read most of it, but then I [became] disgusted: I saw his limitations, and especially his theory of \u201cthe eternal return,\u201d <\/span><\/span>[ii]<\/span><\/span><\/a> \u00a0which is absurd, based on false premises that the elements are finite and time is infinite \u2014 but elements are not finite, and so I saw through that soon, and so I got cured.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then I was ready for the next step which came [up]: my contact with esotericism and Eastern philosophy. Through some Dutch friends I came in contact with that, and it was a rapid, joyful awakening, but nothing spectacular, [I] just recognized . . . something natural, something that was in me \u2014 just an awakening in the literary sense. I realized that I had been asleep up until then, and I woke up. But it was perfectly natural, just the \u201c <\/span><\/span>Aha!<\/span><\/span><\/em> \u201d and so I threw myself into the reading of the [Bhagavad] Gita, of the Upanishads, and all the main texts. I had a good time with that. It was in the sense of Plato,\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>remembering<\/span><\/span><\/em> . It was the feeling of remembering. Not details of a previous reincarnation or anything of that kind. Just remembering what was in me, latent, and of course that was in complete contrast with all the atmosphere, the attitude, especially of the medical. . . and so I began to be very combative against that. Combative in a purely verbal sense. And I found a humorous drawing of that period, I had one friend who made this drawing, and that shows that still from then I had the idea of \u200b\u200bthe will: that shows the balance, and the ax of the will [which] makes . . . <\/span>[iii]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/span>\u00a0<\/a> <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart Miller<\/span><\/span><\/em> : How old were you then? Eighteen?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roberto Assagioli:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em> No, I was already nineteen or twenty.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Volont\u00e0 \u00e8 il scure<\/span><\/span><\/em> \u00a0means, \u201cMay will be the axe.\u201d <\/span><\/span>[iv]<\/span><\/span><\/a> And here on the contrary there is my friend. \u201cLove, suffering, desire: what can I do?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n