{"id":21220,"date":"2024-05-06T08:34:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T07:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=21220"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:17:14","slug":"indirect-suggestion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/indirect-suggestion\/","title":{"rendered":"Indirect Suggestion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Doomscroll the news, then wonder why you feel scattered? Assagioli on psychological hygiene and the five everyday channels that quietly shape who we become.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
From the Assagioli Archive in Florence, Doc. #21887 [1]<\/span><\/span><\/a>
Edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial Note<\/strong>
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth S\u00f8rensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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

The subconscious records everything it meets, like a film camera that never stops rolling. The images we absorb, from books, newspapers, pictures, landscapes, music, do not stay images. They become living forces inside us. Assagioli calls this a problem of psychological hygiene, and lays out a practice with two halves: eliminate the harmful, and consciously choose the beneficial. He walks through five concrete channels: mottoes and phrases, readings, images and colours, the influence of nature, and music. His critique of the daily newspaper reads, almost a century later, as a critique of the feed. The closing word for the practice is the art of living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The plastic subconscious is like an inexhaustible supply of unused photographic film. We, as conscious beings in vital contact with external reality, are like a cinematographic camera functioning uninterruptedly, so that each moment a new section of the sensitive film receives impressions of the pictures which happen to appear before the lens. But in our case the impressions thus received do not remain as mere images; they <\/span><\/span>act<\/span><\/span><\/em> in us. They are living forces which stimulate and evoke other forces, according to the psychological laws of association by affinity, by resemblance, and by contrast. They tend to produce the ideas, the emotional states, the physical conditions and the external actions corresponding to their nature.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can consider the question also from another angle and use another analogy. Our body is continuously absorbing vital elements from the outer world, from the air, from light, water and from various foods, and these elements exercise corresponding influences upon it according to their nature, which may be beneficial or harmful, pure and wholesome or impure and unwholesome. In the same way our subconscious is absorbing all the time, through our sense organs, vital elements from the psychological surroundings. It breathes, as it were, and unceasingly assimilates psychological substances, and on the nature of the laughter depend the helpful or harmful effects upon ourselves.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n