{"id":22500,"date":"2025-01-20T17:07:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T16:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/?p=22500"},"modified":"2026-05-06T22:11:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T21:11:19","slug":"development-of-immature-and-higher-faculties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethsorensen.dk\/en\/development-of-immature-and-higher-faculties\/","title":{"rendered":"Development of Immature and Higher Faculties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some inner faculties wait like dawn light, others arrive like lightning. Assagioli’s 1933 lecture on the development of higher faculties and the long work of bringing every neglected part of the personality into the light<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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By Dr. Roberto Assagioli<\/strong>
Lesson IX, Lecture Course on Psychosynthesis
Unrevised notes from June 18, 1933
Assagioli Archives, Florence, Doc. #24077 [i]<\/a>
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]<\/a><\/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. Jan Kuniholm’s editorial appendix on Hermann Keyserling’s use of Eros and Logos has been preserved as part of this edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This lecture was given in 1933 within the Italian psychosynthesis circle and uses a binary masculine-feminine framework for psychological development that reflects perspectives of its time, including the typing of Eros faculties to men and Logos faculties to women. It is presented here as historical material to support study of the tradition’s intellectual lineage; contemporary psychosynthesis and related fields have continued to develop and refine these framings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In this 1933 lecture, the ninth in his Course on Psychosynthesis, Roberto Assagioli turns to the development of immature and higher faculties of the personality. He observes that some psychological faculties never reach maturity but remain primitive and unconscious, erupting unpredictably into ordinary life. Their development calls for clear self-knowledge, the patient educating of repressed elements, and a method drawn from Jung of conversing directly with these inner sub-personalities as one would with a child or a student. The development of higher faculties asks for something different: stilling the ordinary mind into a clear mirror, transforming feeling into aspiration, and freeing the personal will to obey the higher Self. He closes with the manifestation of unconscious forces in two ways, like the slow spread of a foggy dawn or like sudden flashes that illuminate a vast landscape for an instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In addition to people\u2019s constitutionally weak psychological elements and functions, there are others which, while they may not be \u201cquantitatively\u201d less than the others, have never undergone their normal evolution and maturation and have remained at a primitive, undifferentiated and chaotic stage. These are psychological faculties that generally remain more or less unconscious, which do not fit into the normal personality but can erupt into it in sudden and tumultuous ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even without going into a detailed study of them, we may note that in men the faculties that are part of \u201cEros\u201d more often and easily remain immature and dissociated; and in women the faculties of \u201cLogos\u201d [remain similarly immature and dissociated]. [iii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, we find not infrequently that in modern men the intellectual, practical and active faculties are well developed and adapted to reality; while sensitivity, feeling and imagination have remained in a primitive state. Those aspects of the inner life are misunderstood, devalued and neglected by men, so that they remain in a primitive and almost infantile state. This produces a disharmony and almost a psychic mutilation in them that has the effect of habitual barrenness, interrupted by violent outbursts of elemental passions, or by disordered and unhealthy activity of the imagination. This \u201cpractical\u201d men \u2014 while they can conduct themselves very well in their professional and social life \u2014 are  often incapable of healthy, harmonious and elevated affective relations with the opposite sex and in their own families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, in women, the emotional, affective and imaginative life is [often] well developed \u2014 indeed, often excessively so \u2014 while the intellectual and rational faculties do not have a corresponding and above all autonomous development, but are overwhelmed and enslaved to \u201cEros.\u201d This is typically manifested in superstitions, preconceptions, fixed ideas and obstinacies that are not easily corrected by rational means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This deficient development of certain fundamental faculties [in both men and women] prevents a full and harmonious psychosynthesis, and is the cause of many errors, failures and misunderstandings, and thus of unhappiness. It is therefore well worth taking serious care to eliminate them. This can be done if the appropriate and necessary methods are used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These methods are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. First of all, let us clearly understand what the characteristics of both well-developed and immature faculties are. That is, we need a good knowledge of human psychology \u2014 knowledge that should not remain the privilege of specialists, but should be made available to everyone and taught to young people as they enter life.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n